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'GOD', says Pascal,
'has established prayer,
in order to communicate to His creatures
the dignity of causality.' He delegates to
our half-grown spirits something of His own power
and freedom; allows our wills, under His incitement,
and in union with His own, to originate action upon
spiritual levels, exert influence within the web of
circumstance. Christ's teaching about prayer emphasizes
its energetic power; and suggests that we
by our confident action evoke a responsive movement
from the enfolding spiritual world. This is
intercession; that creative prayer which crowns the
life of adoration and communion. For the goal of
this life can never be a sterile beatitude, a 'divine
duet' between God and the soul. It must always
point beyond itself. Even the purest prayer of
adoring contemplation and self-mergence needs for
its justification the whole economy of that spiritual
universe within which it arises, to which it contributes,
and by which it is fed.
For the aim of soul's self-giving to Spirit, and
Spirit's possession of soul, is that the soul may
expand, become more deeply living and creative,
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and be woven into that spiritual body, the Invisible
Church, through which the work of the Spirit is done.
The great liturgic action of the Church Visible, its
ceaseless corporate life of intercession, self-offering,
adoration, only has meaning as the outward expression
of this mystery of
'the Spirit and the Bride'.
And on the other hand, the personal life of prayer
only has its meaning, because it is part of that great
life-process, of which the limits are unknown to us,
and which is bringing in the Kingdom of God. And
hence, its full exercise is only possible where the
Divine Charity purifies and possesses the soul. As
adoration led on and in, to a personal relationship
of communion and self-offering; so, from that entire
self-offering and not otherwise there develops the
full massive and active prayer in which the human
spirit becomes in a mysterious way the fellow-worker
with the Holy Spirit of Creation; a channel or
instrument through which that Spirit's work is done;
and His power flows out to other souls and things.
The dynamic Love of God, moving secretly and
quietly within the web of circumstance, finds in the
man of prayer the most subtle and powerful of its
tools.
'Thou hast made us for Thyself': not only to be worshippers but to be workmen. The will transformed
in charity, and united with that power of
God which indwells our finite spirits, can and does
reach out by supplication, by immolation,
by suffering,
or by a steady and a patient love; to rescue, heal, change, give support and light. In and through
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it is manifested some small ray of the saving and
redeeming power of God. That is real intercession;
a spiritual activity which is entirely misunderstood
by us, if we think of it merely in terms of petition.
For real intercession is in the last resort a part of the
creative action of God, exercised through those
created spirits which have achieved a certain union
with Him. And it requires for its real and safe
exercise that temper of humble worship, and that
habitude of docile correspondence, which the life of
adoration and communion develops in the soul.
Only a will that is purified and nourished by the
indwelling Spirit and confirmed in the humble knowledge
of its own dependent state, can recognize those
quiet pressures which indicate the path its intercessions
should take, and subordinate its work for
souls to the overruling Divine Will: preserved from
perverse desires and vagrant choices by its meek and
adoring inclination towards God.
For as there is a counterfeit devotion which
ministers to spiritual self-interest and self-love, and
is content with a greedy enjoyment of the sweetness
of prayer; so there is also a counterfeit intercession,
which may be merely the disguised exercise of a
vigorous but unsurrendered will not self-given for
the promotion of the Divine purpose, but demanding
the fulfilment at all costs of its own desires. This,
and this only, is open to the common accusation of
'trying to change the mind of God'. For here the
aim is not a self-abandoned collaboration in His
unseen purpose, the conveyance of grace or healing
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in accordance with a hidden design; but the achievement
of self-chosen ends, the particular success,
conversion, rescue, or recovery on which our determination
is set.
It is even possible that such a vigorous action of
the will under the form of impetration may achieve
its object, and snatch a dubious triumph; as our
wilful intervention on the physical plane may sometimes
enjoy an undesirable success. But this effective
employment of our psychic energy is not to
be claimed as an 'answer to prayer'; and is not
necessarily in accordance with the Spirit's will.
The mysterious power of mutual influence is little
understood. But at least we know that it can
operate on many levels, some of them less than
spiritual; and in many directions, not all of which
may lie in the direction of the Mind of God. That
this should be possible is inherent in our limited
freedom, and brings with it the capacity for going
wrong, and even perhaps for doing harm. There
may therefore be real danger in the persistent exercise
of a strong and unmortified will, an obstinate
choice, a passionate craving, under the appearances
of prayer. It is clear, for instance, that the fervent
and competing supplications born of national or
sectarian intolerance, which demand with complete
assurance the failure or success of military operations,
the triumph of opposite doctrinal views, or the
conversion of individuals from or to a particular
Christian Church, cannot all be the work of the
Spirit Who 'prays in us and above us'. Yet these
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acts of will make their contribution to our invisible
environment; and in proportion to their vigour may
produce certain effects upon the psychic atmosphere.
It is true that in so far as any desire,
however crude or mistaken, is really lifted up with confident trust into the spiritual realm, it is thereby cleansed and made safe; and may, in proportion to the praying soul's docility, be transformed into a channel of grace, unrecognised perhaps as an 'answer' yet truly the response of Spirit to the Godward movement of the soul's desire. For here there has been an appeal to the Holy; a virtual acknowledgement of its priority, which involves real subordination to its Will, even though the prayer itself be little better than a yelp of anguish or an desperate appeal for relief. And by this very fact, the situation, however little understood by us, is changed; subdued to the influences of the supernatural world, and rought into immediate contact with the 'power of God to salvation'. This is possible because intercessory action is always in the last resort the action of the Spirit using the human creature as its tool.
But this means once more that the will transformed in Charity, the desire which has been brought to Gesthemane and subordinated to the purposes of the Spirit—fusing all petitions in the great Fiat of surrendered love—is alone fully effective and entirely safe. So the final purification in love of the human spirit and the full achievement of its peculiar destiny as a collaborator in the Spirit's work, must go together; obverse and reverse of the unitive life.
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Then the soul's total prayer enters, and is absorbed into, that ceaseless Divine action by which the created order is maintained and transformed. For by the prayer of self-abandonment she enters another region; and by adherence is established in it. There, the strange energy of will that is in us and so often wasted on unworthy ends, can be applied for the world's needs—sometimes in particular actions, sometimes by absorbtion into the pure Act of God.
For all real prayer is part of the Divine action. It is, as St Paul says, Spirit that prays in us: and through and in this prayer exerts a transforming influence upon the created world of souls and things. But the path and method of this deep essential prayer may vary between the saint's entire self-immolation for the world's sin, and that symbolic battering at the doors of heaven. that agony of petition by which many sould actualise their ardent desire. All the apparatus of verbal intercession, with its lists and litanies and intentions, is meant to deepen and give precision to that intercessory life which shall gradually include in its span all the deeds, renunciations and sufferings of the soul; and is itself a small part of that redeeming life by which spirit purifies nature and makes it susceptible of God. Thuis the object of intercessory action may be general or particular, spiritual or physical. It may concern the most homely or transcendental levels of life: the fulfilment of little hops or of great ideals. Or it may seek without ceasing that restora-
page 184
tion to wholeness of life of the diseased or the sinful,
which must always lie within the will of the Creative
Love.
For the prayer of a wide-open and surrendered
human spirit appears to be a major channel for the
free action of that Spirit of God with whom this soul
is 'united in her ground'. Thus it seems certain
that the energy of prayer can and does avail for the
actual modifying of circumstance; the renewing of
physical health; the refraining from sin; and that
its currents form an important constituent of that
invisible web which moulds and conditions human
life. It may open a channel along which power,
healing or enlightenment go to those who need
them; as the watering-can provides the channel
along which, water goes to the thirsty plant. Or the
object achieved may be, as we say,
'directly
spiritual'; the gradual purifying and strengthening,
and final sublimation of the praying soul, or of some
other particular soul. In all such cases, though
much remains mysterious, the connexion between
prayer and result does appear as the connexion of
genuine cause and effect. Living as we do on the
fringe of the great world of Spirit, we lay hold on its
mysterious energies and use them in our prayer.
We are plainly in the presence of that which Elisabeth
Leseur called 'a high and fruitful form of
action, the more secure that it is secret', and only
limited by the power and purity of our faith and love.
There is, on the other hand, an intercessory prayer
which seems to have no specified aim. It is poured
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out, an offering of love, in order that it may be used;
and this is specially true of its more developed forms
in the interior life of devoted souls. As spiritual
writers say, its energies and sufferings may simply
be 'given to God', added to the total sacrificial
action of the Church. It may then do a work which
remains for ever unknown to the praying soul;
contributing to the good of the whole universe of
spirits, the conguest of evil, the promotion of the
Kingdom, the increased energy of holiness. Such
general and sacrificial prayer has always formed
part of the interior life of the saints; and is an enduring
strand in the corporate work of the Church. It
may be done by way of a secret immolation of the
heart, by a routine of ordered petitions, or by the
solemn ritual of vicarious suffering. It may capture
and consecrate all the homely activities of daily life,
and endue them with sacramental power. When
St. Teresa founded the discalced Carmelites, it was
not to promote the culture of individual souls; but
in order that the corporate hidden prayer and sacrifice
of these communities might generate power,
combating in some degree the wickedness she saw in
the world. It was of this aspect of prayer that
Cardinal Mercier spoke, when he said in one of his
pastorals,
'Through an ever closer adherence to the
Holy Spirit in the sanctuary of your soul, you can,
from within your home circle, the heart of your
country, the boundary of your parish, overpass all
earthly frontiers and . . . intensify and extend the
Kingdom of Love.' As the rhythm of Christ's life
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went to and fro between adoring prayer upon the
mountain and the manifestation of the Divine
redeeming power in the world, so these two movements
should form the rhythm of the life of prayer.
For only such a double life can express our double
relation to Spirit; the entire dependence on that
which is higher than our highest, and the faithful
mediation of that which is nearer than our most
inward part.
It is true that many phrases of the great masters of
prayer, taken alone and out of their context, seem
entirely to exclude this spiritual action of one soul
on other souls, for and in God; and make the life of
prayer consist entirely in adoration and adherence.
But this contradiction is only apparent: and is
simply a vigorous statement of the obligation to put
first things first. The adoring surrender of the soul
to God, and even a certain union with the immanent
Holy Spirit, forms the one essential foundation of
all intercessory action. For this action depends
primarily, not on the intensity of our sympathetic
interest, our psychic sensitiveness, the sustained
energy and confidence of our demands, or our
telepathic power—though all these may contribute
to its effectiveness—but on a profound and selfless
devotion to the purposes of the Divine Charity.
Even in the crudest, most naive act of prayer, the
soul lays itself open in some degree to that overruling
Divine action; and this movement, initiated
by God, is completed and used by Him. Thus the
action of God and the soul collaborate in different
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ways and degrees in every prayer.
'Feelings',
'experiences' and all the rest, fade into insignificance before this most solemn privilege of men.
Here we are surely face to face with one of the
great mysteries of that spiritual world in which our
real lives are lived; one of the ways in which, as
Newman said, we can already
'share the life of
saints and angels'—those ordained distributors of
the love and power of God. We cannot understand
it, but perhaps we grasp its reality better if we keep
in mind two facts. The first is, that all experience
proves that we are not separate, ring-fenced spirits.
We penetrate each other, influence each other for
good and evil, for the giving or taking of vitality,
all the time.
'Souls, all souls', said Von Hügel,
'are deeply interconnected. The Church at its best
and deepest is just that—that interdependence of all
the broken and meek, all the self-oblivion, all the
reaching out to God and souls. . . . Nothing is
more real than this interconnection. We can suffer
for one another. No soul is saved alone or by its
own efforts.' This accessibility, and this changefulness,
is at once our weakness and our strength. And
this interaction of souls, this mysterious but most
actual communion, depends for its life and reality
on God, Spirit, the immanent creative life, Who
penetrates and indwells us all, working in and with
us. We are all linked in Him. Therefore it is literally
true that the secret pressure of the Eternal is
present in all movements of mutual service and love.
And the second fact is, that the value and reality
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of our souls is at least as much social as individual.
We do, and must, reinforce each other; make good
each other's weakness. Each saint has something
to give which adds to the glow of all saints: and
only by self-loss in that one radiance can make his
own life complete. We are woven together, the
bright threads and the dull, to form a living tissue
susceptible of God, informed by His infinite, self-spending
love.
'We have soon', says Von Hügel
again,
'reached the limit of what we ourselves can
ever become: it is in joy for the others, for the
countless constellations of the spiritual heavens, it
is only there but even there, at bottom, because of
God, the Sustainer and fulfiller of all that splendour
that our poor hearts and wills find their peace.'
Thus, intercession is the activity of a spirit which
is a member of this living society, this fabric of
praying souls penetrated and irradiated by God-Spirit. For this membership gives to each unit a
special quality, vigour, power; a power only given
in order that it may be used and shared. Its essence
is not the activity of the little soul over against
Spirit, but the action of Spirit through and in the
little soul self-given to the Spirit's Will. Here we
reach the real dignity of the creature, and the very
object of the life of prayer: it is able to convey God
because it has become susceptible of God. We see
this again and again in the lives of the Saints. In
the arrogant Sienese scholar, asking the girl Catherine
with an insulting pretence of reverence for her prayers,
and brought in two days by their steady pressure
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to an abject and heart-broken penitence. In the
Curé d'Ars, drawing to himself and then vanquishing
the malice of invisible powers. In the transforming
action of Christian philanthropists, whose lives are
given to the Spirit's will.
Hence all effective intercession depends on the one
hand on the keeping alive of the soul's susceptibility
to God, its religious sensitiveness, by constant self-openings
towards Him and movements of humble
and adoring love; and on the other hand, on keeping
keenly alert to the needs of the world; through an
untiring and informed pity and sympathy,
'a wide
spreading love to all in common'. Only a charity
poured out in both directions can become and remain
a channel of the Spirit's Will. And such a vocation
in its fullness means much suffering; a bearing of
griefs and a carrying of sorrows, an agonized awareness
of sadness and sin. For the great intercessor
must possess an extreme sensitiveness to the state
and needs of souls and of the world. As those who
live very close to nature become tuned to her rhythm,
and can discern in solitary moments all the movements
of her secret life, or as musicians distinguish
each separate note in a great symphony and yet
receive the music as one whole; so the intercessor,
whether living in the world or enclosed in a convent
(for these are only differences in technique) is sensitized
to every note and cadence in the rich and
intricate music of the common life. He stretches
out over an ever wider area the filaments of love,
and receives and endures in his own person the
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anguish of its sorrow, its helplessness, its confusions,
and its sin; suffering again and again the darkness
of Gethsemane and the Cross, as the price of his
redemptive power. For it is his awful privilege to
stand in the gap between the world's infinite need
and the treasuries of the Divine Love.
