Blessed Easter!
I picked up a little book a few weeks ago at church when two Divine Mercy sisters came to speak. The book I bought is called The Spirituality of Saint Faustina: The road to union with God. Years ago I bought her diary; that was before she was even beatified. I read some of it at the time; I figure I must have given it away at some point because I don't remember having seen it for years and years. I was going to buy it from the good sisters the other day, but they were sold out of her diary. I started reading my new little book today.
On page twenty-four I found this beautiful quote from her Diary #1523: "I can never help being amazed that the Lord would have such an intimate relationship with His creatures.... Every time I begin this meditation, I never finish it, because my spirit becomes entirely drowned in Him." That corresponds well with what I am trying to say. One of my main points is that we are all called to such an intimate relationship with God.
The Church teaches that all are called to holiness. Holiness comes through a deep prayer life. The well-known and very faithful spiritual guide and author, Father Thomas Dubay, S.M., has an entire chapter on this question in his classic, Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel--on prayer. He says there is no true holiness without deep, mystical prayer: "Ss. Teresa of Jesus and John of the Cross are emphatic that without a deep rooting in a serious prayer life no one comes close to living the Gospel ideals with completeness" (199).
Father Dubay poses the question this way: "Is everyone called by God to infused contemplation and to the very fullness of it, the transforming union? Can a person attain to perfect holiness without this kind of prayer? Are there two ways of sanctity, an active, ascetic way and a passive, mystical way? Or is there only one way meant for all, active and ascetic in the beginning, but becoming passive and mystical in full development?" His answer is that in the Scriptures, Saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, and the constant teaching of the Church, there is only one way to holiness, and it is the transforming union.
This is what I am trying to say: all are called to mystical marriage with God. I am not saying that many get there; I am only saying that all are called. I am arguing it primarily from the Scriptures with an emphasis on the first few chapters of Genesis. Father Dubay says "...That most people, lay, religious and priestly, assume without study that they are not called to advanced prayer. They take it for granted that the prayer of which Ss. Teresa and John write could not be meant for them. They lose sight of the fact that both of these saints are presented by the Church as universal Doctors precisely because of their teaching about the lofty reaches of the spiritual life. So deeply engrained among us is the minimalistic view that the majority are surprised to hear it said that the heights of prayer are open also to them. Yet people who really want God are, I find, thrilled at the thought that they too can aspire to fullness" (200-201).
I am not a good guide for reaching the heights of prayer; others like Father Dubay are able to do that. My ability is to better enable others to understand the Scriptures; of course, understanding God's Word is helpful in loving Him more and drawing nearer to Him. First and foremost, my goal is to awaken in people the realization that God created us for a marvelous reality. He created us for Himself, to be His spouse. That is why He was willing to become a baby, live an obscure, poor life for thirty years, and die a horrible death as a man nailed naked to a tree. He did all that because He thirsts for you and me.
I'll end with one more quote from the good Father Dubay: "...Once we understand the universal call [to mystical marriage] we are more likely to be willing to pay the price to attain its object. Advancing in prayer is not the result of a mere velleity any more than the selfish loving of another human person issues from wishful thinging. Both demand great detachment from self-centeredness and a strenuous carrying of the cross. If we see that the summit is open to us, we find in the vision a fresh impulse to go sell all that we have and buy the pearl of great price" (201).
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
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3.23.2008
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2 comments:
Very intriguing. So tell us more about infused prayer. How does this differ from the prayer you might say while you're cleaning the floor or typing in a blog, where you can have a parallel conversation going on with our Lord?
Infused prayer is not a technique; rather, it refers to who the acting agent is. In discursive prayer, we are the acting agent, and in infused prayer, God is the one primarily acting. He infuses Himself into us to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how prepared we are to receive Him. We have no ability to influence the infusion, for it comes from and is initiated by God; we are only able to prepare ourself.
Thomas Dubay says, "Infused contemplation is by no means a dry or sterile intellectualism, a platonic gazing upon abstract essences. Nor is it an oriental, impersonal awareness. Rather, it is a 'loving awareness of God...a loving contemplation...a loving wisdom...a loving light and wisdom'. Indeed, it becomes 'a fire of loving wisdom'. When we put these traits together, a yearning or delightful loving with a cognative contact touching the divine, we have, as John [of the Cross] so well puts it, an inflow of God Himself. Contemplation is a deepening self-communication of the Trinity, a self-communication that we are given to experience."
He continues his explanation: "Though we have said it already, the point must be made explicitly and with some development: the prayer of which we are speaking can in no way be originated, intensified or prolonged by anything we can do. It is divinely given in its entirety. This is the literal meaning of infused, a word stemming from the Latin infudere, infusum, to pour in, that which is poured in. John therefore writes of a 'tranquil reception of this loving inflow...the touch of burning in the will...the touch of understanding in the intellect...an inflaming of love'. These expressions make it clear that the prayer is not a result of our efforts, our reading, imagining or reasoning. It is not of human origin" (p.63 of Fire Within).
In the beginning stages of this prayer, people usually do not even know that it is happening. It is so subtle and gentle that for those just beginning down this path, it doesn't seem like anything.
That's all I will say for now, for one, it is the middle of the night, and two, this is pushing the outer limits of my knowledge of this topic.
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