Pray always, and a lot

I was listening to Fr. Tom Hopko the other day, and he offered this advice:

Have a keep-able rule of prayer that you do by discipline. You can’t just pray when you feel like it. You have to pray by discipline, the times of day where you would remember God and say your prayers.

It reminds me of a maxim among the desert fathers: To pray always you must pray often.

Sine intermissione orat

St. Paul commands us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing.” How can a real human being with real commitments do such a thing?

This question has received innumerable interpretations throughout the ages, from the unceasing repetition of the Jesus Prayer epitomized in the eastern spiritual classic, The Way of a Pilgrim, to St. Augustine’s deft assertion that the restless and ceaseless desire for God in the heart is in itself a sleepless and ever-yearning prayer.

But even Augustine, who offers a very sensible solution to the quandary of how sleeping, working, A.D.D. humanity might dare claim it has done justice to St. Paul’s command to pray always, asserted that stoking such a sleepless fire within requires a serious discipline and commitment to daily, marked-out prayer times. I guess it seems an obvious conclusion that if I fail to dedicate regular time to commune with the One I love, that love will soon cool, grow erratic and eventually wither away in an apathetic death.

Too often, people — myself included — use sorry excuses to whisk away the dutiful need to actually stop and pray: I’m too busy to pray; my work is my prayer; I’m too A.D.D.; or some such.

Four Constants

How one chooses to “pray often” in order to “pray always” varies, but there are some constants in our Catholic tradition. The resources for prayer, the forms of prayer – sacramental liturgical and private — are vast and rich. Here are some very simple insights into only four of those “constants” of private prayer. Though they are simple, if you are someone who does not pray with any discipline, if you try them out for even a month I guarantee you will notice something very different about your outlook.

1. Lauds. Morning should always begin with prayer. When your eyes open, instead of saying, “Good God, it’s morning,” say, “Good morning, God.” Begin with praise of God and with petitions for what is needful. Before you read/listen to secular things spend a certain amount of time prayerfully reflecting on some sacred text (e.g. the daily mass readings, a spiritual book or devotional) that will nourish your mind and heart and fortify you to face the challenges of the day. Review your upcoming day with the Holy Spirit and see if He gives you any new insights into your day’s plans. Be sure to allow some listening silence for Him to speak. It’s truly amazing what rich perspicacity (love that word) He brings into our daily plans if we simply invite His input.

2. Feasting. Every meal gives us a chance to pray in thanks, to offer public witness to our grateful faith and to remember in our prayer those who go hungry.

3. Compline. Night should always end with prayer. It’s an especially useful time for family prayer. Night is especially characterized by prayers of thanksgiving for graces received and contrition for graces squandered.

4. Arrow prayers. The desert monastic tradition gave birth to a lovely tradition of prayers — short, sweet, scriptural and shot-through with love for God — that arise spontaneously in our hearts throughout the day in response to whatever people or events come our way. “Lord, make haste to help me!” “I love you Lord, my strength.” “You are my God, for you I long.” “Have mercy on me, O God.” “Your will be done.” These aspirations of the heart arise to God from the midst of joy, weariness, anger, sorrow, love, pain, i.e. from every circumstance, inner state and place. As we “practice” God’s presence, we become ever more aware that He is, as promised, with us. And by responding to that presence frequently and simply, we make space for God to freely act in and through us in the world that He made for Himself.

To pray thus consistently and often is to cultivate within the spirit of unceasing prayer. Keep it simple and doable.

Caution

Two final warnings: (1) When you dedicate yourself consistently to such prayer, God will begin to act not just in your life-circumstances but, more importantly, in your mind and heart. You will notice His surgical action deep within if you remain faithful in your dedication, regardless of hardship; and (2) When you dedicate yourself consistently to such prayer, the evil spirits will, as one of the desert fathers put it, come from all four corners of the earth to put a stop to your prayer. So expect every imaginable circumstance, distraction and good-rationale for quitting to arise. Why? Because when you pray, their Enemy is granted full and luminous access into the dark corners of creation where evil still seeks its shelter from the coming judgment of God’s fearsome mercy.

A Resource

Last note: if you want a good primer to prayer that will help you acquire a Catholic mind in a very down-to-earth format, read Peter Kreeft’s fantastic Prayer for Beginners (which is all of us, always).

Be still

“The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, ‘Create silence’.”

― Søren Kierkegaard (d. 1855)

Imagine what it means to say that, in 1855, Kierkegaard thought the disease of the world festered in a culture of noise and distraction.

A student I occasionally met with at Florida State University would share with me his desire to escape from the frenetic pace of life he was caught up in, a pace that I thought consisted of doing much of nothing between real commitments. That pace, he felt, made him unable to find time for prayer. I counseled him to practice 20 minutes of silence daily for a week. The next week when we met, he summed his experience of silence this way: torture.  ”It’s like I’m a stimulation addict,” he said.

Over a year or so he worked consistently at moving from a few minutes a day to an hour, and in that transition moved from the ability to remain peacefully still to being able to pray. Such perseverance is rare! And what he found in this remarkable commitment to overcome his fear of stillness is just how entangled he was in noise — his phone, his computer, his radio, his MP3 player, his TV. And what he had discovered, in my judgment, that made him “feel” so much better about himself and his lifestyle and his faith was this taste of inner freedom. He found that this freedom allowed him to more easily be served by the things in his life and not to serve them.

His signature biblical passage was, “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

What entangles your freedom?

Stop!

This morning I was reading the work of St. John Climicus, 7th century monk-author from St. Catherine’s monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and came across a passage that triggered an edifying memory.

Boldness

A number of years ago, I was speaking with a gentleman who was deeply involved in the charismatic renewal. He was a wonderfully a balanced fellow who really knew how to integrate his charismatic gifts with a spirituality grounded in humility and prudence, but he also possessed that marvelous quality that men and women in the Renewal often display: remarkable boldness in being explicit about their faith.

In fact, I remember that this man lived out an amazingly “out there” interpretation of that oft quoted St. Francis saying, “Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary use words” — he would do “silent” things that would of their nature create situations “of necessity” and “give them something to talk about,” giving him chance to speak about Christ. For example, he would always stop before his business meetings and enter into a brief moment for quiet prayer, which would often lead at some point to someone asking about what he was doing and his faith tradition (and nearly always astonished to learn he was Catholic, having never witnessed a Catholic praying in such manner). And because he did not otherwise look or act like a religious kinda guy, I understood why this would provoke fascination from others.

Oremus

But to my point. There was one time when we were talking about a difficult fellow we both knew, sharing our common concern over his bad behavior. At some point in the conversation, after I had shared a slew of details about this person’s “issues,” my charismatic friend suddenly said to me: “Tom, I think we need to stop talking about him in this way now and turn him over to God.” And he proceeded to lead us in a prayer about this man, turning all our gripes and observations into petitions.

This experience stirred in me a mixture of shame for not thinking to pray for this man, of awkwardness for the sudden shift of course in our conversation, and of admiration for this friend whose faith had so-permeated his manner of being that such a shift from talk to prayer was absolutely natural to him. Though my own approach to such prayer would have been to pray for this man at my scheduled private time of prayer, or to pray quietly within, I loved three things about my friend’s approach: (1) The fact that he “got” the faith-fact that even when you talk critically about someone out of love and genuine concern, you must not fail to invest even more vigorous energy into prayer for them; (2) that when he started to pray, his prayer evinced a profound sense that the Jesus he addressed in prayer had been listening to our whole conversation; (3) that his request to suddenly turn to prayer in no way seemed to be a judgment on me or on our conversation, but rather made our critical observations, like so many church bells, into a call to prayer.

Stop!

And so you ask, what was the Climacus quote that stirred up this memory? Well, it’s not exactly related to my recounted situation, but it addresses the question of how a Christ-attitude affects critical talk about others; and it addresses the ease with which we can slip from fraternal concern or cathartic venting to infernal detraction (see Catechism for a handy description of this slip). Climacus is acutely aware that human beings tend to mask their own faults by unmasking others’ faults, and, as with all the desert fathers, he argues that a God-inspired awareness of my own innumerable sins and faults should severely curtail the pleasure I derive from deriding others for their faults and sins. And though it may not always be wise or appropriate to be as abrupt as my friend or Climacus, the spirit of the call to prayer or to refuse to share in disparaging talk should always permeate a Christian life.

Do not regard the feelings of a person who speaks to you about his neighbor disparagingly, but rather say to him: “Stop, brother! I fall into graver sins every day, so how can I criticize him?’ In this way you will achieve two things; you will heal yourself and your neighbor with one plaster. This is one of the shortest ways to the forgiveness of sins; I mean, not to judge. `Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”

Near the Silent Night

As we near the Nativity of God according to the flesh — aka Christmas — the world seems to get louder and louder, less attuned to the divine wayfarer who sneaks into our world through an out-of-the way cave outside the City of Jerusalem to dwell among the lowly.

One of the essential dispositions we must have to receive the God who is coming among us is inner silence, and one of the requirements for cultivating inner silence is set-aside time and space for outer silence. Silence, in the spiritual tradition, is never seen as a mere absence of sound in the environment, but rather as an inner posture of receptivity to hear and be shaped by God’s Word; an inner unity that pulls together our fragmented attention to hold a simple gaze turned toward the utterly Simple God. In that gaze we are able, even in the most frenetic contexts, to see God unveiling His Face.

Medieval Dominican theologian Meister Eckhart counseled something like this:

Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this.
Others say they would be better off in church.
If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are.
Your surroundings don’t matter. God is with you everywhere — in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church.
If you cling to nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you.
God is not distracted by a multitude of things.
Nor can we be.

So, this Christmas, amid the natural chaos and noise that we will find ourselves in, take care to guard silence in your heart that God might find there a welcome Inn in the silent night of our faith. If He dwells there welcomed, nothing can steal our peace.

I will allow St. Isaac of Syria, the saint of silence, to have the final word:

For God is silence, and in silence is he sung by means of that
psalmody which is worthy of Him. I am not speaking of the silence of
the tongue, for if someone merely keeps his tongue silent, without
knowing how to sing in mind and spirit, then he is simply unoccupied
and becomes filled with evil thoughts: … There is a silence of the
tongue, there is a silence of the whole body, there is a silence of
the soul, there is the silence of the mind, and there is the silence
of the spirit.

Kyrie eleison

Día de los Muertos

Today we honor the memory of the dead who, dying in a state of grace, still journey toward the full vision of God through the purifying immaterial fires of divine mercy that heal in us the disfigurement caused by sin.

Whatever hold sin still has in us at the moment of death, in Purgatory God uproots. St. John of the Cross says that the sufferings of the dark night of the spirit, in which we experience the painful and disorienting deprivation associated with God’s disentangling from our deepest spirit sin’s entwining and choking roots, is really the beginnings of Purgatory already at work in us now. This final purification on the journey to union with God is an entirely passive experience of God’s action, as the only involvement of human agency is the choice to consent to God’s surgical grace. And the most frightening part of this night, John says, is that it requires us to surrender all control over to Him even as we are being unmade and remade by his secret grace. He also says that this purifying of the innermost self by God is absolutely necessary for our perfection, since we are utterly incapable of healing the damaged core of our spirit from whence everything we are springs. While we can trim the foliage of sin’s weeds, God alone can kill the roots.

It is an act of charity to remember the dead in our prayers, and above all in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, asking God to grant them the grace to surrender to their purification and speed them along the way into the fullness of eternal life.

So be sure to remember by name on this day all those you know who have died, and remember also all those who have no one to pray for them.

Here is my favorite Orthodox chant for the dead to help you along, and then the Latin chant for this feast, Dies Irae:

Maximal love

I was praying with St. Maximus the Confessor’s exquisite writings in the Philokalia, and came across a rich text.

After talking about struggling in prayer to detach ourselves from our disordered love of the world (i.e. our inner disposition toward greed, lust, gluttony, envy, wrath, etc), Maximus then talks about how freedom from such disordered inner ‘passions’ allows us to love our neighbors with a Godlike love. But, he argues, the demons are utterly enraged by any likeness to God in humanity, and so throw up innumerable obstacles to such a love. Here’s one obstacle he mentions:

When the demons see us disdaining the things of the world in order through them not to hate men and fall away from love, they then incite slanders against us, hoping that, unable to bear the hurt, we will come to hate those who slander us.

Amor omnia vincit, ‘love conquers all.’

St. Ignatius, Pebbles and Bam Bam

For those of you who, like me, found the Flinstones to be a cartoon-staple as a child, you’ll appreciate this.

I was recently reminded of one of the episodes where Pebbles and Bam Bam get to sing at the Hollyrock Palace. We all listened to it on youtube this morning at breakfast, and it was then that I realized that the author of that song must have been a thoroughly Ignatius-minded thinker.

Let me ruin a perfectly good cartoon by theologizing it!

The song, Let the Sun Shine In, talks about shooing shady diabolic desolation, clinging to luminous divine consolation, and prayer as the way to preserve one’s center in the Light.

My fav line: ‘If I forget to say my prayers the devil jumps with glee, but he feels so awful-awful when he sees me on my knees.’

Listen for yourself…

Guard me, O Lord

A simple post for today’s feast of the Guardian Angels.

Angels are non-bodily persons, with intellect and will, created by God (according to Tradition) prior to the creation of the material cosmos. Each angel, because it was created ex nihilo, ‘out of nothing,’ is its own species, though the angels were created with certain unique missions that define them as groups (i.e. the 9 choirs). They are brilliant, powerful according to their ‘rank’ in the hierarchical choir and, except for the rebel angels who fell, ceaselessly behold God’s unveiled presence.

It is a core spiritual truth that to grow in the life of grace we must frequently engage the angels in prayer and supplication.

Our guardian angel’s entire mission is us, each of us individually from conception to death. So, constantly avail yourself of your angel’s friendship, and his ability ‘to light, to guard, to rule and guide.’ And if you are a parent, your child’s angel is your best au pair.

For more fun facts, see Kreeft’s book.

Conquering Temptation

I wanted to share a scenario that came to my attention “once upon a time” in a land far far away — I asked the person if I might share it for the keen insight it gives into the nature of temptation and the value of spiritual friendship.

Here’s a paraphrase of the exchange that this person shared with me:

A friend called me the other morning and started telling me about how she was struggling with temptation, with having feelings for another man outside of her marriage. After she told me all about this person, I proceeded to tell her, “Soak yourself in Adoration, prayer, rosary, Reconciliation, etc. It’s a very normal temptation. I told her about Jesus being out in the desert, alone, and the devil preyed on Him; and he will prey on you. Then I said this is suffering and you have to fight it; live through it; pray through it; be faithful through it.” Then she said to me, “why is this happening to me? I never thought I would ever even consider the thought of cheating.” I said, “We all have to suffer, be tempted, and it’s just part of your walk.” She said, “Yea, I think it’s my walk and my bubble butt!” I said, “No your walk with Christ you NERD!, Your walk with Christ!!!” Now we can’t stop laughing…

What a beautiful treasure these two friends hold! Here are a few of the many gems I found embedded in this brief exchange:

1. Temptation can strike anyone at any time. No one is immune. This realization should make us humble, trusting less in our own goodness or power and more in God’s goodness and power.

2. Temptation comes to us under the guise of good, which makes it easier to justify than the lure of naked evil.

3.  Temptation flourishes in secrecy, but crumbles in the light of honest self-disclosure. All spiritual health requires what the desert Fathers called the ‘baring of thoughts,’ and especially of temptations, to a trusted friend or mentor. Every Christian should pray for a spiritual friendship, a trusted soul friend who can hear our deepest thoughts, encourage us and challenge us to greatness in Christ.  And laugh with us.

4. Temptation not only tests our basic commitments, but also offers us the chance to grow in virtue and cling more closely to Christ as we recognize our fragility and weakness.

5. Temptation often allures us with the false promise that breaking our vows will free us from struggle and suffering, but the truth is, after the initial euphoria of being “released,” the suffering we will bear after succumbing to temptation will be far worse. In addition, suffering for your infidelity lacks the heroic redemptive character that flows from struggling/suffering out of fidelity to (in this case) marriage.

6. Temptation is best confronted indirectly — not by fighting it head on, but by “soaking” oneself in relentless prayer and the grace that flows through the Sacraments. “For the battle belongs to the LORD” – 1 Samuel 17:47