Pope Benedict XVI on the Power of Prayer

Pope Benedict XVI's first papal visit to the United States is only five days away, and while most of us will not get the chance to see him in person, the Holy Father has asked that we remain close to him in prayer during his visit. If you haven't yet read his address to United States Catholics, I encourage you to do so. (Or you can watch the video here!) I found the following excerpt to be a particularly appropriate reminder to us as students as we press on toward the end of this semester:

"I am especially grateful to all who have been praying for the success of the visit, since prayer is the most important element of all. Dear friends, I say this because I am convinced that without the power of prayer, without that intimate union with the Lord, our human endeavors would achieve very little. Indeed this is what our faith teaches us. It is God who saves us, he saves the world, and all of history. He is the shepherd of his people. I am coming, sent by Jesus Christ, to bring you his word of life."

Too often we forget that our good works are only as effective as the prayer that supports them. With prayer, even the simplest acts of love plant seeds that in time bear great fruit. Without prayer, even the most extravagant good deeds "achieve very little."

God doesn't ask us to save the world - He is the Savior of the world, and we are only His instruments. If we wish to participate in His saving work, then we must remain intimately united to Him in prayer.

Let us especially pray for our Holy Father as he travels next week, and for one another as we continue to study, to seek the Truth, and to bring the "word of life" to our teachers and classmates.

Order through Prayer

In teaching my students about what it means to be an image of God, a much clearer view of human nature has emerged within my own spiritual vision.

What is natural to man? Is indulgence in worldly affairs natural? Is revelry in sexual adventure that which completes man? Are we naturally bound to the desire for the accumulation of material goods? To know what is natural to man, one must first know man’s nature.

To say that something is natural, one is claiming that that which is deemed natural is in accordance with the nature of the thing being observed. For example, is it natural for a fish to swim? Of course it is. By observing the nature of the fish, the conclusion is easily reached that swimming is natural to the fish, for that is in accordance with its nature. A fish that doesn’t swim quickly dies. A bird that doesn’t fly falls to its death. A man that doesn’t pray is crushed under the weight of the world, for he is not made for the world in both his and its present state.

What, then, is man’s nature? The answer is both simple and profound -- man is an image of God. The image must tell us something of that which it reflects, and if the image is a reflection of the eternal, then to reflect eternity for all eternity is what is natural to it. This is confirmed by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his Catechetical Orations in which he writes:

If humanity is called to life in order to share in the divine nature, it must have been suitably constituted for the purpose…That is why humanity was given life, intelligence, wisdom, and all the qualities worthy of the godhead, so that each one of them should cause it to desire the godhead, so that each one of them should cause it to desire what is akin to it. And since eternity is inherent in the godhead, it was absolutely imperative that our nature should not lack it but should have in itself the principle of immortality. By virtue of this inborn faculty it could always be drawn towards what is superior to it and retain the desire for eternity.

God is all good, and order is good. Therefore, God is Order itself. We see a reflection of the face of God in His creation. The Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement in his book The Roots of Christian Mysticism writes:

Each being manifests the creative word which gives it its identity and attracts it. Each being manifests a dynamic idea, something willed by God. Ultimately each thing is a created name of him who cannot be named.

There is order in creation, for its Creator is Order itself, and Order begets order. Man is an image of God; therefore, he is made in the image of Order. Order is part of man’s nature as an image of God; therefore, disorder is unnatural to man.

In God, all of His attributes are one. Because he is eternal and infinite, He cannot be made of parts, nor does He possess parts. He is one is His essence. This has infinite implications, a few being that His order is His love, His love is His justice, His justice is His love, His love is His order, etc. God is all these good things, and man being an image of God finds in them his natural habitat. It is natural for man to have order both in the world and in his mind, will, and body. It is natural for man to love, to seek justice, etc. It is unnatural for man to do anything else. In saying that it is unnatural to man, although man seems tends towards these, I mean to say that it goes against his nature as an image of God. Yet more often than not, we do that which is unnatural to us and claim that it is simply human nature. This couldn’t be farther from the truth! To do anything but love, seek justice, obey God, etc. is to introduce disorder into our minds, wills, and bodies. Disorder in the human soul is manifested in many and various ways, all of which are hideous to the ordered soul.

Who is the man that embraces disorder? He is the one that is confused, addicted, angry, materialistic, yet all the while convincing himself that he has found happiness and contentment. Of course, the conclusions of a disordered mind will almost always be disordered.

How must a disordered system be overcome? By introducing order into the system. When it comes to the human soul made in the image and likeness of Order, Order must be brought into the disordered soul. By an opening up of the soul to the influence of Order through the indwelling of Order can the human soul begin to banish from it the darkness of disorder. This opening up of the soul is called prayer, which is as natural to man as barking is to a dog, as flying is to a bird, as swimming is to a fish. Yet we are like dogs that do not know how to bark and fish that cannot swim. We are dominated by the world which was created to be dominated by us. How absolutely unnatural!

Prayer is our best bet for happiness as happiness can only be found in order. In fact, order is happiness. The purpose of prayer is to turn outside of ourselves, to empty the image in order to be filled with the reality. It is our nature to empty ourselves to both God and neighbor, that in emptying ourselves we may be filled. Fulfillment in emptiness! Yet another of those wonderful Christian paradoxes.

How can we know that our calling is to turn and open to others? If we were created to turn in on ourselves, then our eyes would be facing the opposite direction. We would be created to look inward. But according to nature that is not so. We look outward. It is in looking outward that we can empty ourselves just as the greatest Man, the God-man, did: “Who though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped; Rather, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave…”

Through prayer, we look outward to the Source of all order and happiness. Through prayer, we empty ourselves of our worldly accretions, placing ourselves under the direct influence of a Perfect Order. As Order begins to reign in our souls, so, too, does love, truth, joy, peace, and all other attributes of God.

We pray in order that the unnatural might be overcome by the natural, that darkness might become light, and that disorder be crushed under the liberating weight of Order.

"We do not know how we are to pray."

"We do not know how we are to pray, but the Spirit himself pleads for us with inexpressible longings." - Romans 8:26

Many of the readings in the Office of Readings for the Lenten season offer beautiful reflections on prayer. This Lent, I have returned several times to one reading in particular: a homily by St. John Chrysostom, in the office for the Friday after Ash Wednesday. "As the eyes of the body are enlightened when they see light, so our spirit, when it is intent on God, is illumined by his infinite light," St. John says. Prayer, he explains, is "the light of the spirit, true knowledge of God, mediating between God and man."

Beautiful thoughts, to be sure - but St. John is quick to clarify what he means by "prayer," and the challenge he presents is directed not towards people who don't ever pray, but rather towards those of us who pray often, who like to think that we know how to pray. He says:

"I do not mean the prayer of outward observance, but prayer from the heart, not confined to fixed times or periods but continuous throughout the day and night... I speak of prayer, not words. It is the longing for God, love too deep for words, a gift not given by man but by God's grace."

Prayer, St. John reminds us, is not a practice; it is a way of life. Prayer is not merely part of our daily schedule; it should be part of all that we do. Prayer is not - as we like to think it is - an act within our power; it is made possibly for us only by God's grace. Prayer is not our gift to God; it is His gift to us. How many of us can say that our prayer springs from a "love too deep for words," or that we do not feel the need to use words when we pray?

St. John goes on to quote St. Paul, who says in Romans 8:26: "We do not know how we are to pray, but the Spirit himself pleads for us with inexpressible longings." If we want to be honest with ourselves and with God, we must admit as St. Paul does that we do not know how to pray. We cannot venture such a claim. Too often we forget that even the desire to pray is not our doing. Even the desire to pray is the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

We would do well to keep this truth in mind as we enter into our Lenten observances more deeply and prepare to celebrate the Easter Triduum.

St. John Chrysostom, pray for us.

Praying with the Church: The Liturgy of the Hours

From www.liturgy.co.nz/ofthehours/resources.html

"O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit..."

The Liturgy of the Hours - also called the Divine Office, the Canonical Hours, or the Breviary - like so many Catholic practices, is drawn from Jewish tradition. In the Psalms, we find references to the practice of praying at different hours of the day and night: "In the morning my prayer comes before you" (Ps 88:13); "May the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice" (Ps 141:2); "At night His song is with me - a prayer to the God of my life" (Ps 42:8); "Evening, morning, and noon I cry out..." (Ps 55:17). The Psalms, the most ancient prayers of the Church, remain a central element of the Liturgy of the Hours to this day.

Traditionally, the Divine Office consisted of eight fixed "hours" of prayer: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. It was composed in the fifth century, and it development was more or less completed by the end of the sixth. The Church has of course made changes and additions to the Office over time, but its character remains largely unchanged. It is one of the most treasured prayers of the Church, and each day it gives hundreds of thousands of the faithful the opportunity to pray together in one voice.

Perhaps the reform of the Divine Office best known to us is the revision promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970 with his Apostolic Constitution Laudis Canticum. In this document, the Holy Father explains the reasons behind the reform, which were twofold: first, to encourage its use by more of the faithful, and second, to give the canonical hours a more logical relationship to the chronological hours to which they are assigned:

"The office has been drawn up and arranged in such a way that not only clergy but also religious and indeed laity may participate in it, since it is the prayer of the whole people of God. People of different callings and circumstances, with their individual needs, were kept in mind and a variety of ways of celebrating the office has been provided, by means of which the prayer can be adapted to suit the way of life and vocation of different groups dedicated to the liturgy of the hours.

"Since the liturgy of the hours is the means of sanctifying the day, the order of this prayer was revised so that in the circumstances of contemporary life the canonical hours could be more easily related to the chronological hours of the day."

Today, the Liturgy of the Hours consists of the recitation of the following prayers: the Office of Readings (formerly Matins), Morning Prayer (Lauds), Daytime Prayer - which consists of one or all of Midmorning, Midday, and Midafternoon Prayer (Terce, Sext, and None), Evening Prayer (Vespers), and Night Prayer (Compline). The "major hours" are the Office of Readings, Morning and Evening prayer. The recitation of Prime was eliminated by the Second Vatican Council, and in Laudis Canticum Pope Paul VI attributes this change to the aforementioned aim of making the canonical hours correspond more closely to the times at which they are prayed.

The great beauty of the Office lies in the unity that it makes tangible. As Pope Paul IV wrote so beautifully:

"Everyone shares in this prayer, which is proper to the one Body as it offers prayers that give expression to the voice of Christ's beloved Bride, to the hopes and desires of the whole Christian people, to supplications and petitions for the needs of all humanity.

"This prayer takes its unity from the heart of Christ, for our Redeemer desired 'that the life he had entered upon in his mortal body with supplications and with his sacrifice should continue without interruption through the ages in his Mystical Body, which is the Church.' Because of this, the prayer of the Church is at the same time 'the very prayer that Christ himself, together with his Body, addresses to the Father.' As we celebrate the office, therefore, we must recognize our own voices echoing in Christ, his voice echoing in us."

If you're interested in praying the Liturgy of the Hours, you can find guides to praying it online, or use the guide provided with your breviary, should you choose to purchase one. The four-volume set is expensive ($145), but it contains all the canonical hours, while the single volume, Christian Prayer ($36), contains only Morning and Evening Prayer for the year. My four-volume set was a gift from two friends of mine, and now I can't imagine living without it!

If you don't have money for a breviary, or you're still waiting for yours to come in the mail (or if you've misplaced your breviary, as I often do), you can find the Hours for each day online (free!) at Universalis.

"May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen."

The Silence of God, the God of Silence

It would seem that speaking about the silence of God would be counter-intuitive and maybe even counter-productive, but being that our human natures tend most easily towards counter-productivity, I’ll give it my best shot.

The God who spoke all things into existence and the God who continues to speak to us through Divine Revelation is the very same God who subsists in absolute silence. Silence is simplicity and God is absolute simplicity due to His eternal and completely independent subsistence. Could this be why God is most clearly heard in the silence of prayer? Is it any wonder that we expend our greatest efforts at escaping silence as much as possible? To be baptized into silence is to make ourselves vulnerable to Truth, for it is in silence that we come to know God. As the very creator of our human nature, He revealed to us the invaluable role silence plays when He tells us, “Be still, and know that I am God.” The stillness of silence aids our intellects in knowledge of Him. Greater knowledge of Him should naturally lead to a corresponding change in the will. This is the essence of conversion, and this is why prayer cannot be neglected. Is it that our human nature abhors silence because of its purgative effects? It seems as though there is something in our nature that tips us off to the fact that if we welcome the silence, we must also be willing to welcome change, thus, we see the corresponding effects of the fear of silence upon a culture in fear of change. We value access to hundreds of channels on the television. In this way, we are assured that we never have to turn off the television due to previously seen programs. If we do happen to pull ourselves away from the television and get into our cars, we have the radio to break the silence. Not only do we get to listen to poor excuses for music in our cars, we also get to listen to the trash being spewed out of other people’s cars.

I mentioned the connection of prayer and silence in the above paragraph as silence is the best environment for prayer. The reason for this is that the ultimate goal of prayer must be conversion and enlightenment (not in the Eastern sense). St. John Cassian, who lived from the mid-300’s to the early 400’s, recognized this in speaking about the effect upon the human soul by God as light both perceivable and communicated with through silence in prayer:

"The suddenness of the light stupefies it and robs it of speech. All its senses remai withdrawn in its inmost depths or completely suspended. And it is by inarticulate groans that it tells God of its desire."

The necessity of silence for communication with God is also according to our natures as images of Him Who is Silence, for if in His eternal simplicity He is silent, then by what better means can we who are images of Him reach out to Him? It is as though the silence is more expressive of ourselves to God than all the words we manage to mount up in oral prayer. St. Paul reassures us of the efficacy of our prayer even in the silence when he writes: “For we do not know how to prayer as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words (Rom 8:26).”

It is an unfortunate situation that our present cultural state is one characterized by a pathological obsession with noise which should serve as symptomatic enough to make a valid diagnosis: fear of silence is a fear of God, though not in the virtuous sense. It is ultimately a fear of Truth which explains the naïve and childish acceptance of the self-contradictory philosophy of relativism that thrives today. If we can just convince ourselves that Truth is determined by our perception of it, then we no longer have to listen to anyone or anything else. Without the need or appreciation for listening, there need not be silence. And if we hate the silence, then how can we love God?

Speaking the Truth in Love, Part Four

"You need interior life and doctrinal formation. Be demanding on yourself! As a Christian man or woman, you have to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, for you are obliged to give good example with holy shamelessness. The charity of Christ should compel you. Feeling and knowing yourself to be another Christ from the moment you told him that you would follow him, you must not separate yourself from your equals - your relatives, friends and colleagues - any more than you would separate salt from the food it is seasoning. Your interior life and your formation include the piety and the principles a child of God must have in order to give flavour to everything by his active presence there. Ask the Lord that you may always be that good seasoning in the lives of others." ~ Saint Josemaría Escriva, The Forge, 450

Truth is not something merely recited, and love is not a fleeting feeling expressed by the overwhelmed amorous. Love is a choice which requires constant reaffirmation; likewise, it is a choice for all of us who still gaze through the glass darkly to gather our ability to focus so that we may live a life conformed to the truth of Christ's love. To avoid hypocrisy and bear the real fruitfulness of the life of grace, the interior life must be cultivated rather than the exterior presentation of love or truth.

To see the unity of truth and love is a work of grace. A mere exterior presentation will ultimately divide the two. One may err with a presentation built on a faulty concept of love that ignores truth, but I imagine the person who has thought the matter out this far would be more apt to succumb to an intellectual pride. His or her presentation of truth would be built on ego, or worse, self-righteousness, which may be read by sinners quite rightfully as a lack of humility or an anger against their person. Such anger is never holy anger.

But development of the interior life is the development of full communion with Christ and conformity to his image. It allows us to become "another Christ" to those we come in contact with. Likewise, doctrinal formation allows us to more freely live as Christ lived. It is right thinking which begets right action, orthodoxy begetting orthopraxy. It is for this reason that many spiritual directors urge people to pray the catechism.

We cannot speak what we do not know, and our knowing is ultimately of the Person of Christ. For this reason, the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar urged Catholic thinkers to develop la théologie a genoux, a theology on one's knees. A prayerful life dedicated to the study of God's truth has its place in every Catholic's life, be it in the halls of the Vatican by clergy, an ivory tower office of a professor, or some rural adoration chapel in South Louisiana by a layman keeping watch by night. It is a necessity for all who would practice the new evangelization.

Does this mean that we hold our tongues until we learn enough? No. We will never learn enough and Christ has called us to reach those near us. We must speak, but with humility. Does this mean we cave to cliché and not talk the talk until we walk the walk? No. Such is a concern about exterior presentation rather than a genuine love for the souls of others who need the same grace offered to sinners like us. Again, we speak the truth in love, but with the humility to acknowledge our own frailty. And with dilligence, we seek interior growth knowing any good thing we may do must be rooted in Christ's deep work in us. "The charity of Christ should compel you."

The motto of the Parousians is Veritas in Caritate. Humilitas in Excellentia. Pray for us as we pursue a life of truth in love and humility in excellence. If it happens, be certain, it will have to be a work of grace.