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WITHIN
the living experience of the soul
it is impossible to separate the spheres of
purification and of prayer; for this
breaks up the solidarity of that Godward life of
man, which is at the same time an ever-renewed
movement of abandonment, an intercourse, and a
transformation. The life of prayer, in its widest
and deepest sense, is our total life towards and in
God; and therefore the most searching of all the
purifying influences at work in us. It is the very
expression of our spiritual status, a status at once
so abject, and so august; the name of the mysterious
intercourse of the created spirit with that Uncreated
Spirit, in whom it has its being and on whom it
depends. We are called, as the New Testament
writers insist, to be 'partakers of the Divine Nature':
and this is a vocation which shames while it transforms.
So prayer may be, and should be, both
cleansing and quickening: by turns conversation
and adoration, penitence and happiness, work and
rest, submission and demand. It should have all
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the freedom and variety, the depth and breadth
of life; for it is in fact the most fundamental
expression of our life. And though it is and must
be developed by means of a deliberate discipline,
and through the humble practice of symbolic acts,
these only have importance because they set free
the will from unreal objectives, and help our whole
being to expand towards God.
In all its degrees, from the most naive to the most
transcendental, and in all its expressions from the
most simple and homely devotional acts, to that
passive waiting on the Spirit,
'idle in appearance,
and yet so active', which is called by Grou 'the
adoration most worthy of God'—the very heart of
prayer is this opening up of human personality to
the all-penetrating and all-purifying Divine activity.
On one hand, we acknowledge our need and our
dependence; on the other the certain presence of
the supernatural world, the Patria ever in intimate
contact with us, and our own possession of a seed,
a supernatural spark, which knows that world and
corresponds with it. Thus all progress in prayer,
whatever its apparent form or achievements, consists
in the development of this, its essential character.
It must nourish and deepen our humility,
confidence and love; and thus set up and maintain
an ever more perfect commerce between the
soul's true being and that Being in Whom it lives
and moves. This is why, in the concrete reality of
the interior life, prayer and purification must
always go hand in hand.
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For this mysterious intercourse, so crudely and
so casually practised by us, so little understood,
places our souls conditioned as they are by succession
and contingency at the disposal of that
immanent Spirit of God which indwells and penetrates
our life, and yet transcends succession and
contingency. It is a movement out towards absolute
action; man the ever-changing acknowledging
the presence and reality of the Changeless, and
adhering to It in trustful love. This communion
with the Supernatural then, whether active or
passive, interceding or adoring for all these are
the partial expressions of one rich and various
correspondence is the religious act, the religious
state par excellence; the very substance of a spiritual
life. The apparatus of institutional religion, its
verbal and visual suggestions, its symbolic acts, are
intended to evoke, nourish, organize and direct it.
The form it will take in any one life, will depend
on that soul's particular situation and type; the
prayer itself, whether active or passive, corporate
or secret, will always consist in a profound and
active correspondence with the Spirit, more and
more recognized as the inspiring cause of all we
do and are. Devotional words and deeds, meditation,
aspiration, recollection and the rest, are there
to help us to evoke and maintain this, which alone
matters; to steady the vagrant imagination, give
us suitable suggestions, teach and tranquillize our
souls. In meditation, says Sunn, we go to God on
foot; in the prayer of affection we go on horseback;
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in the prayer of simple recollection we sail in a
good ship with a favouring wind. The essential
thing is that we should undertake the journey;
that the soul's face should be set towards its home.
Yet, because prayer is indeed a supernatural act,
a movement of spirit towards Spirit, it is an act
which the natural creature can never begin or
complete in his own power. Though it seems to
him to be by his own free choice and movement
that he lifts up his soul towards God, it is in truth
this all-penetrating God, who by His secret humble
pressure stirs man to make this first movement of
will and love. The apparent spontaneity, the
exercise of our limited freedom—genuinely ours, and
most necessary to the soul's health—are yet entirely
dependent on this prevenient and overruling
Presence, acting with power and gentleness in
the soul's ground. Progress in prayer is perhaps
most safely measured by our increasing recognition
of this action, the extent in which Spirit
'prays in
us' and we co-operate with it: till, in the apparently
passive and yet most powerful prayer of the
great contemplative, the consciousness of our own
busy activity is entirely lost in the movement of the
Divine will, and the soul is well content to 'let
Another act in her'.
But having said this, we must at once add that
here, as elsewhere in the spiritual life, the action
of God is always felt to deepen, stimulate and
direct the self's own action—never to abolish it! The 'holy passivity'
of the extreme quietist is
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coma, not contemplation.
Refer my note in the previous chapter. The last sentence adds little to the sense of the passage except a repetition of the invective we have come to expect in this area of her experience. See also, "limp dependence" in the next paragraph.
DCW |
Again and again experience
endorses the axiom of St. Thomas: 'God's
grace and man's will rise and fall together.' And
if by
'grace' we mean, as we should, the actual
self-giving of the immanent Divine Life, the personal,
manward-tending, love and will of God; then
prayer, from the human side, begins with man's response to God's incitement. It is the movement
and expression, part-effort, part-surrender, of his
Godward-tending love and will. 'A certain impulse
of the will tending to God with all its strength ',
says Malaval, is the first point of real prayer.
This means that even the most passive prayer
shall never be a state of limp dependence. Concealed
within its quiet is a vigorous and yet humble
co-operation with Spirit's ceaseless action; sanctifying
and sensitizing our spirits, and turning them
to the purposes of Eternal Life. Though all that
really matters is indeed done to us and not by us,
and we realize this more and more fully as the life
of prayer proceeds and deepens our creaturely
sense, the 'marvelous intercourse between finite and
Infinite' is a genuine communion. It demands the
deliberate use of our initiative and will. Acknowledging
that we can do little, we must yet do all
that we can: be alert to look, listen and adhere.
The asking, seeking, knocking of the Gospel, are
surely the successive stages of an action 'which at
last takes all that we have of determination and
desire; a deliberate
'drawing nigh' to that only
Reality, the Father and living Ocean of all life—
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ever ready to pour in on the creature who desires
Him, and proves its desire by an exertion of
the will, an opening of the soul's door. This is
why the great masters of the spiritual life attach
so much importance to the form of mental prayer
which is known as
' forced acts of the will
'
; a
spiritual and psychological discipline which is
often laborious and fatiguing, but unequalled in its
power of bringing the reluctant will into ever closer
conformity with the Will of God. For real prayer
is a mutual act. It is that correspondence between
our dependent spirits and His Absolute Spirit,
worked partly by grace, but also partly by our
wills, which is our mysterious privilege as living
children of the Spirit of all spirits, God. This deep
communion, this
'
prayer which is ceaseless ', continues
without interruption in the ground of the
loving soul.
It is true that in the advanced degrees of prayer,
the action of the will is chiefly realized as a total
movement of surrender, a mere placing of the soul
in God's hand; and the further deep action which
follows this surrender is always felt to be the
action of God, rather than that of the soul. Hence
the exaggerated language of some contemplatives
about 'ceasing to act'. But this language really
describes their own overwhelming sense of the
Divine activity; as the salmon going down-stream
might feel itself wholly passive in the powerful
current that sweeps it to the sea. Yet the salmon
must do some steering, if it is to make the voyage
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in good order; and maintains itself in the torrent
by a thousand subtle movements of adjustment and
response. So too that willed surrender, that faithful
adherence, which maintains the contemplative
in prayer, is itself an action which makes great
demands upon the soul—an active and passive
co-operation, minute by minute, with the subtle
pressures and incitements of God. The Indian
teachers of Bhakti devotion describe two ways in
which the finite spirit may be abandoned to the
Infinite Life : the 'Way of the Cat' and the 'Way
of the Monkey'. In the first, the soul is like a
helpless kitten in the mother-cat's mouth, carried
to safety without any effort on its own part. In
the second, it cleaves to God with all its might,
like the baby monkey clinging to its mother's
breast. The full creative energy of prayer is
found in those who follow the monkey-way.
As we are nearest facts when we think of Spirit
in terms of Creative Will, so too prayer in its wholeness
is best understood in terms of will and intention.
Therefore the special form and kind of prayer
developed by any one soul matters very little ;
and distinctions based on the use of set words, the
practice of meditation, the degree of abstraction
from images, have little more importance than distinctions
of custom and dress. All that is required
of any
'degree'
of prayer is that it should be the
unstrained response of the praying soul to its true
light and vocation ; and so bring it into ever more
complete harmony with the immanent Divine will.
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And since the vocation of each soul within that great
symphony differs, and all are needed for the complete
expression of the thought of God, we need not be
surprised by the wide diversities, or even the apparent
contradictions in attrait and in practice, which
are found in the world of prayer. We are not to
criticize our neighbour's monotonous performance on
the triangle, censure the first violin's deliberate
silence, or look dubiously at the little bit of score
we have received. All contribute to one only
music; and this alone gives meaning to their
prayer.
'This it is that I ask and desire', says
Thomas a Kempis,
'that I may always laud and
praise thee.' Some will do this above all in the
upward glance of an adoring worship, some by a
more intimate love, some by the small offerings of
a devoted industry.
Yet something of all these responses of spirit to
Spirit must enter and mingle in the full Godward
life of every awakened soul; as the hymn of the
Sanctus, the act of Communion, and the prayer of
oblation, have each their necessary part in a perfect
Eucharist. For the first gives us realism and awe,
protects us from pettiness: it maintains and
nourishes the transcendental sense.
'Cease the
beholding of yourself and set yourself at nought,
and look on Me and see that I am God.' The
second warms and strengthens that close personal
adherence which is the heart of a spiritual life;
enriches awe with deep tenderness, and makes the
praying self more and more supple to the delicate
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pressures of the indwelling Power. The third
redeems our prayer from selfishness, and gives to it
its special place and function within the mystical
body which is built of praying souls. And each of
these responses, will have its active and its passive
form; and often the two will alternate within the
self's experience. For passive prayer does not consist
in abnormal states of soul, or peculiar feelings.
It is simply that deep movement of surrendered love,
that muted music, in which our own small action is more and more subordinated to the living Charity of God.
If we turn from this great vision to our own poor practice, and ask what that is or should be, we find that the span of man's actual prayer, his total Godward
aspiration, stretches from the extreme of a crude and child-like demand, to the extreme of a
disinterested and undemanding adoration, offered to
'God Himself and none of His works'. At one
end, we acknowledge our utter and detailed need
and dependence on Spirit—our creaturely status—and turn with an instinctive confidence to the
'hidden richness which can meet that need in all
its forms. At the other end, the soul's innate passion
for Reality flames out, in awed and delighted worship
of the holy loveliness of God. And between these
terms, one so homely, and one so august, there is
no point at which the intercourse of spirit with
Spirit cannot take place.
It is easy for a hurried or fastidious fervour to
point out the clear superiority of that worship which
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'means only God', and discredit all petitionary
prayer. Certainly this is the most primitive and
instinctive of all the movements of the soul, and the
one that may most easily be tainted by selfishness.
Yet a loving and confident relation with our Home
and Father, an entire trust in the intimate loving kindness
of the Unseen, a deliberate laying hold on
the forces of the spiritual universe, is declared by
Christ to be the first point of efficacious prayer.
And being small and limited in resources and understanding,
we must manage this the best way that
we can. 'Ask and ye shall receive . . . every one
that asketh receiveth. . . .' Not perhaps the
expected answer to its petition; but a disclosure
and gift of Spirit, penetrating and transforming our
situation, with all its needs and desires. Therefore
'what matters here is not the thing demanded, the
poor range of our asking, but the trustful, childlike
temper of the soul; its straightforward relation to
God. Where this relation is set up, a new factor
enters human experience. Man is in personal and
filial touch with that Transcendent Life which
penetrates and engulfs him; and because of his
acknowledged dependence and confident expectation,
he becomes capable of its gifts. For the indwelling
Spirit, in His creative freedom, must reach down to,
and touch, every need and relationship of His
creation. Indeed, He is already present within
those relationships those we call little and those
we call great in the ceaseless activity of His flexible
love. Thus the soul deliberately bringing in the
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Divine factor, appealing to it with a realistic trust,
does effect a genuine change in every situation so
treated ; even though the change may not be apparent
on the visible surface of life. So petition or
'impetration'
is the naive expression of a real
relationship: all that Origen meant, when he said
that
'the Christian life is a prayer'.
It is true that the actual prayer of demand, like
all man's religious activities, is a symbolic and
dramatic act. We cannot escape this judgement,
when we consider the relation of that battering on
the doors of heaven, that desperate wrestling with
the Spirit to which we are sometimes drawn, with the
God Who is
'present everywhere and at all times'
and works in tranquillity within the soul. Yet this
urgent and trustful petition, crude though its expression
may sometimes be, is the beginning of realistic
and efficacious prayer; and one of the most significant
of all the movements of man's spirit. The open
beak and expectant trust of the baby bird are a
tribute to the mother's faithfulness and love; an
acknowledgement of fact. So, in this ever-renewed
movement of supplication, this waiting on God, we
express that deep sense of the infinite Generosity on
which we depend and our own poverty and need
over against it, which is the very heart of man's
religion: tempering the awe-struck worship of the
Holy by a confident appeal to the Father and
Shepherd of souls. As the child said when she first
heard the Te Deum, ' the splendid bit is where you
change the gear'.
