A Few Exploratory Thoughts On Prayer

What is prayer?  St. Bonaventure’s brief summary articulates the common Christian understanding: “Prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God.”  By “heart” he refers to our willing and desiring, including our emotions; by “mind” he means our reason, intellect, that with which we think and know. As he does not mention the body, we can usefully remember the words of the Apostle Paul: “Offer your bodies [yourselves] as a living sacrifice to God, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service [or, spiritual worship].  Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds / hearts” [Romans 12].

Bonaventure’s brief phrase raises some questions: Does one raise the heart and mind to God [ad deum], or into God, or perhaps both? Raising the heart and mind “into God” seems preferable, for it communicates the notion one is dealing with present reality, and not with a “thing” or “being” that is “out there” or “up there.”  Praying as an activity “to God” is more spatial, suggesting that God may be a “separate substance” or being-thing apart from what one experiences here. To move “into God” leaves open the possibility that what we call “God” and is already present to one’s consciousness [or soul], whether or not one chooses to remember and to attend.

To what human activities is prayer most akin?  It is a kind of communication, as are speaking and listening. But it is more of a communing with than a “talking to another,” I would suggest.  If this is true, than prayer is close to meditation or thinking about God, when one is aware that “God” is not apart or a being or a thing at all, but the divine Presence experienced in consciousness. In this sense, to pray is essentially to be aware of God’s presence, as suggested by the Psalmist: “Be still and know that I AM God.”  Stillness and awareness of divine presence, perhaps remembered as He Who Is, would seem to be the basic activity underlying various kinds of prayer. Without this simple remembering awareness of divine presence, one may be speaking towards God or a god, but perhaps not “praying” in its essential meaning.

In other words, are not some types of prayer more truly prayer? Is it possible that one thinks that he or she is “praying,” but is not? Is it possible that someone may actually be praying, although they are not aware of it as “prayer?” Could it fittingly be claimed that any form of activity in which one is truly mindful (attentive, aware) is prayer, at least implicit prayer?  Or does one need to invoke certain words, such as “God,” or “Lord,” in order for the activity to be prayer?
 
Example, or a brief remembrance: In 1992, while walking through the Imperial Gardens near the Emperor’s palace in Tokyo, I photographed, as has been my custom since childhood. With the ancient stone walls, the immaculately groomed plants, and the utter silence and lack of commotion in the gardens (no one running, no one speaking loudly [not even an American], no children crying], I was able to concentrate to a high degree on photographing.  The combination of the Zen-inspired beautiful order, the silence, and my loving concentration induced an intense state of awareness that I still recall twenty years later. Although I did not explicitly call on a deity or saint, I was intensely aware of reality--of It as a whole--as I was fully conscious in the moment. I felt intensely alive, present, joyful. To my way of thinking, this experience was truly “prayer” as union with that which is, not a mere uttering words towards God without recollection and concentration. Unfortunately, the photographs, which I knew at the time were among the best I have ever taken, were not properly developed. They recorded my focused state, or “Zen mind, open mind,” borrowing the phrase of a Zen master. The photographs have been lost, but recollection of the experience abides.
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We begin again, understanding that a meditative experience, or an experience of open consciousness, of quiet awareness, may not be what some of us would consider prayer. (Admittedly, I wonder, “Why not?” But I also assume that many have been taught that using words towards God is prayer, and I know that new paths need to be explored carefully and in a way that some, at least, may follow.)  So we employ some words in a prayer: You creatively form all things according to your wisdom. We humbly ask You to guide our hearts, LORD God, so that we truly love you, and guide our minds to wonder about you, and perhaps to know you as you let yourself be known. Bring each and all of us, every creature, into full communion with you, each according to its way of being. Make us awake and alive during our brief sojourn here. Amen. 

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote prayers and hymns, but I think that his great prayer was his scholarly work, for it is evident that his heart and mind were set on God first and foremost, and that he examined other beings (especially human being) in relation to God.  If one would not wish to call such philosophical theology “prayer,” then perhaps one could call it: mindfulness of the reality of God, and a concentrated act of response to the One seeking Thomas to love and to know Him.

What is mindfulness of the reality of God? Well, it surely is remembering what one ought to remember, and not forgetting: that the “I AM” who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush is also present to the consciousness of every human being.  That which we call “God” is the eternalizing or immortalizing presence experienced in consciousness.  And it is this divine “Creator” that forms and orders each being thing for what it is, as depicted in the opening chapter of Genesis in the great story of creation. To be mindful of this creative, formative presence is to be mindful of God.

Without mindfulness of God, without awareness of divine presence, what would prayer be?  “To say one’s prayers” could mean to one without this awareness of presence, “Talk to `the man up there.’”  Is that prayer, or it is more an act of unformed imagination?  I wonder if some persons never get past this form of praying as “saying your prayers.” Does it dawn on a person in this mode of existence that one does not form one’s words alone, but that Another, the divine, is present aiding the process, and moving one to pray as a means of realizing a truer union? What would prayer be, if it were the product of someone who thought that he or she was praying by one’s own strength and light, and not aware of the inner light and divine force moving in and through one? Would not offering prayers in the belief that oneself is doing it an example of the ancient heresy called Pelagianism?  If one can pray by himself or herself to God, could not one also save oneself, or perfect oneself? Is it possible that a person who prays without being aware that God is moving the prayer is actually immersed in an exercise of self, engaged in a self-centered activity? Could such a form of prayer be a kind of alienation from God, more than a union with the Spirit of the Creator? 

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Do you pray? If so, why? And who or what is causing you to pray?  Could it be that when you pray, it is the divine that is praying, and you are listening? Is it possible that the ultimate source and cause of all that exists draws human beings to be aware of the divine present and active here, now, everywhere? Is it possible that prayer is more a response to divine activity in us than something we generate on our own? If our prayer is not a response to God, to what is it a response? Could self-generated prayers be a response to fear--of being damned to hell, or of failing to be “a good boy or girl” if one does not pray in a “churchy” way? 

A possibility: Anything in one’s life that is a response to divine presence could be called “prayer,” for it is a means through which one is becoming one with the One. Praying in words is one way to respond. So is listening to God, or waiting in utter silence. So is what the Benedictine tradition called “divine reading” (lectio divina), in which one studies a sacred text with the desire to listen to God, and with firm trust that God is speaking to the reader in that very activity, in and through the words on the page. So here we see three ways to respond to God moving us to pray: speaking words to God; listening for the Lord in silence; studying a sacred text, mindful of God working through the words on the mind of the attentive reader.
 
And when Mother Theresa arose from the chapel where she had been meditating before the Blessed Sacrament, and walked into the streets of Calcutta to find and to tend to the sick and dying, was she not responding to God, and hence, still praying? Was not her service of love a heartfelt response to the living God, who loves all of its creatures? Deeds of charity, done by one longing for God’s companionship, are surely ways of responding to God, and hence I would say, within the range of what is called “prayer” in our Catholic tradition.

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Do you pray, and if so, what in particular makes you want to pray? Where do you go to pray? Do you have a favorite place, or time of day, when you deliberately turn your heart and mind to God? Or are you content to just utter a few words every so often, and chalk up your chatter to “prayer?”  Do you need to be in a church to pray? Can you pray in church at all, or is it too distracting for you there?  Do you struggle against distractions in order to concentrate on what you are doing, or do you just let the distractions rule you? Are these questions a form of distraction, or a form of prayer, or neither, or perhaps both?  How does one know when one is praying, and not just “going through the motions?” Are you going through the motions, “jumping through hoops” (so to speak) when you pray? Or are you truly making contact with God?  Is your prayer in God, or out of God?

Do you seek God? If so, how? If you do not seek God, why not?  Did not Jesus say, “Seek, and you will find?” He did not say, “Assume that you have already found God, just the way you are.” Nor did he say, “I got saved!”  What he did say was, “It is not those who cry, `Lord, Lord,’ who enter the Kingdom, but those who do the will of my heavenly Father.”  And what is God’s will for you? Do you ask the LORD to make it known, and do you faithfully follow His pulls in you?

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It is speaking to me this evening, and I am attending. It arrested my attention by its beauty in the setting sun. Then it caught my attention as I walked by the bedroom, with the stain glass art of the burning bush hanging in a window, illuminated by the light of the reddened sun. It made me stop what I was doing, be attentive, look closely, enjoy. I was surely drawn by beauty, which I understand to be the glory of God, the face of the hidden One. No words were spoken.  My prayer was my loving gaze at God’s beauty shining through, And yes, I am mindful of being experientially close to a famous passage in St. Augustine’s Confessions as I write these words.

Why not, when the same One is drawing everyone to itself, and many are moved to attend through the perception of beauty? “But that is not prayer,” someone may say, “because you are not talking to God.” No, the divine is speaking to me, and I am awed by its beauty.  Awed and humbled, to be in the presence of that which is overwhelmingly beautiful and good. 

Where have you gone, you who spoke to my heart through the setting sun? Why have I stopped seeing what you display? Perhaps because I am concentrating on writing, and not attending to your divine work all around me / within me. Have you guided this brief meditation in any way? If there is any truth or goodness here, it comes from you. But I sense that my thoughts have moved too quickly, my words sometimes flippantly, not giving you the quiet in which to work. God opens the soul into peace. But to experience God’s peace, one must cease being merely complacent. In the realm of prayer, this means, perhaps, letting go of old habits and attending to God afresh, and sometimes in ways not so often travelled. 

Stopping to write, I simply look up. I see so much beauty around me: the dogs lying on the bed, sleeping; the moody-dark, cloudy sky in the evening twilight, brooding mysteriously outside the windows; paintings and works of art all around where I am sitting, and looking back at me as I look at them; light gracing the hard wooden floor, revealing it as alive in some way; the stillness of the evening, when you and I have time together, apart from the clatter of the day. And a slowing down even of my breathing, as I move towards my resting place. I do not feel you, but I trust that you are here, in me and with me, even as I write. What energy would I have, if not for you? What sense of purpose, what desire to write something for these good parishioners who sacrifice time to attend faith class?  I am conscious of your loving, guiding presence, LORD, and this awareness is joyful, and quiet, and the best kind of prayer I know for me.  Indeed, I feel fleeting moments of a joy that borders on ecstasy when, mindful of you, I see with a loving and joyful freshness. With you and in you, all has meaning, and beauty, and finds its home.  Each thing lights up, radiant with your light, shining within and without. Apart from you, life is stale, dull, tedious, and unprofitable. “Lord, you are my light and my salvation.”  Being mindful of you, and grateful, is prayer, and what I desire to offer to you until I enter fully into your peace.  And then “all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
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Remember: “Your life work is to have such experiences, and to seek to understand them.” “Do not forget the deeds of the LORD,” but remember.

--Wm. Paul McKane, OSB
13 June 2013

"See What You Receive and Become What You Are"

That each of us has his or her favorite or habitual ways to pray is obvious. Some of us may virtually neglect to pray, all of us need to become more earnest and dedicated in prayer. Because of our need to become better in prayer, we are offering the new series of adult faith classes. Do you pray?  How do you pray?  Why do you pray?  What is prayer? What are major forms of Christian prayer? How is the Eucharist a form of prayer? How does one find suitable forms of prayer for himself or herself? Our intention is to explore these and similar questions, and our common text will be drawn from the recent Catechism.

At the root of any form of prayer I know is attentiveness. Not to be truly attentive, but to allow the mind to wander, is daydreaming, not prayer. In prayer, one turns the gaze of his or her mind towards that which we call God. Whereas some souls neglect to turn towards God, and some actively resist, others turn with fear. We aim to turn with loving mindfulness. That towards which one prays is not something “out there,” a being floating around in space, but the divine presence that is moving us lovingly to obey: “Seek and you will find.”  If one does not seek, one does not find; and in finding, one attunes oneself to the God moving one to seek. So explains the Benedictine monk, St. Anselm. In this light, prayer is essentially a loving response to being moved to pray. Our primary responses to God’s drawing are prayer and deeds of charity. Prayer joins us to God; charity unites us to one another. If we dare to say so, God seems to be moving us to oneness, to a communion in which all beings find their home, and are brought to perfection in God.

We begin again. Into what we call the soul, the mind, or consciousness, the Divine breaks forth. Often we do not know that God is moving us, because we remain in relative darkness; or at least what we call “God” remains largely unseen, unknown, and surely mysterious to our limited minds. Hence, we may spontaneously and often ask, “Who are You, LORD?” Who or what is this God moving us to Himself? We do not ask in a void of darkness, knowing nothing. Rather, we seek God out of our response to Christ.  For in Christ Jesus we see the embodiment of a full union between God and a particular human being. In Christ we see what we will essentially be like if and when we live in an ongoing state of pure and intense love of God. We find in prayer, and here and now in the Eucharist, means to becoming more like Christ, more “filled with the fullness of God.” The foremost goal of our Eucharistic celebrations is and ought to be a growth in our union with God in Christ. In other words, we seek to become what we are in Christ: the Body of Christ. By God’s grace and our loving response, we are becoming the Body of Christ. This is the beautiful reality we celebrate on the feast of Corpus Christi. In words of St. Augustine fitting for this feast and for every Eucharist, “See what you receive and become what you are."

An Example Of Using The Mind In Prayer

 

When we offer the next series of class in adult faith formation, the plan is for us to read a classic work on praying. The book which I am inclined to present was written nearly a thousand years ago, by St. Anselm. He was a Benedictine monk in France, who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury, England. He wrote a number of significant works in Christian theology while living as a monk, including two famous meditations on using the mind in prayer. One of these works is called the Proslogion, a Greek word meaning speech to another, an address, a prayer; it is an exercise of what he calls “faith seeking understanding.” I offer a brief excerpt from St. Anselm’s work:

“Let me discern Your light, whether it be from afar, or from the depths. Teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek You if You do not teach me how, nor find You unless You reveal Yourself. Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking; let me find in loving; let me love in finding.”

“I acknowledge, LORD, and I give thanks that You have created Your image in me, so that I may remember You, think of You, love You. But this image is so effaced and worn away by vice, so darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do what it was made to do unless You renew it and reform it. I do not try, LORD, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I also believe this: that `unless I believe I shall not understand.’”

“Have you found, o my soul, what you were seeking?... If you found [Him], then why do you not experience what you have found? Why, LORD God, does my soul not experience You if it has found You?....”

“You permeate and embrace all things. You are before and beyond all things....You alone, LORD, are what You are, and You are who You are.

Note on an Upcoming series of classes

We continue our study of the Letter of the Apostle Paul to Christians in Rome (“Romans”), and it may take a number of weeks.  

Our next study will be a non-biblical work, as requested by several parishioners, and it makes good sense, I think, to turn to other writings. What is evident is that our scientisitic, literalistic culture has confused people on how to interpret symbolic language. Scripture has many passages that are so highly symbolic and often mythical that they confuse many contemporary minds. Trying to interpret the symbolic language in light of the engendering spiritual experiences is not a method familiar to most of our parishioners, as I have seen. Hence, we shall read together a work that is less steeped in symbolic language, or at least more explicitly attuned to the truth of reality as we experience it.  Hence, we shall study St. Anselm’s masterful work, the Prologion (Address to God), to which Anselm gave the explanatory title, “Faith seeking understanding.”  

We will need to get an account of the approximate number of parishioners who will attend these classes, so that I may order the proper number of books in advance.  Some of us may prefer to download texts onto our e-readers (iPad, Kindle, Nook, and so on). 

Adult Faith Class on Romans

Why do I teach adult faith classes, and why do I think that they are significant for our parishes?

According to Catholic law and theology, a parish priest has three duties, listed in order of importance: teaching and preaching; celebrating the Sacraments; administration of parish properties. Preaching in the sense of proclaiming Christ is expected at every Eucharistic celebration. Teaching is the priest’s duty in his “care for souls,” in the effort to help ground human beings in the truth of Christ. Generally teaching our little ones is entrusted to worthy lay people in the parishes, who have a good grounding in their faith and desire to share that with our children. Adult education generally takes the form of initial instruction for non-Catholics who wish to enter our church (RCIA), and ongoing faith development, or mystagogy, for Catholicsseeking a deeper understanding of our common faith.

Regarding the significance of adult faith education, let me quote an exchange with a senior monsignor with whom I worked in Maryland. Parishes asked that I offer faith classes, but he refused to allow me, saying that “They are not needed. You learn your faith as a child.” As I said to the monsignor, “The faith you learn as a child is a child’s faith; it must grow.” It is that simple: Faith in God needs to grow into understanding, insight, wisdom, and ultimately, a more genuine love of God and of neighbor in God.

Our new class begins on 09 and 11 September at the times listed. After some thought, I have chosen to have us study together the New Testament letter often briefly called “Romans.” This letter is the longest and most developed presentation of the Apostle Paul’s understanding of our life in Christ. It justly can be called “the Gospel according to St. Paul.” Rather than present stories from the life of Jesus to flesh out the meaning of his death and Resurrection, the Apostle Paul explains the meaning of Christ for human life.

To enhance our understanding, I shall draw at times on Old Testament passages or from other letters of St. Paul, or from writings by Church fathers and theologians. But above all, we shall seek to read the text of “Romans” closely, and try to enter into its meaning and underlying spiritual experiences. Needless to say, we must proceed using not only reason, but the Spirit to help us understand this profound letter by the Apostle.

Please know that all adults and maturing younger people are invited to attend these sessions of our adult faith class.