Jesus Christ has told us that we ought "always to pray, and not to faint," that is, not to grow weary of so doing. And Saint Paul recommended the first Christians to "pray without ceasing." What kind of prayer must we understand by this precept, or rather, by this counsel? And how is it possible to accomplish it?
It is quite evident, at first sight, that it cannot be a question here of vocal prayer, which can only be engaged in at certain times. Neither can it be always the regular exercise of fixed mental prayer. It is also impossible for us to occupy our mind continually and without interruption with the thought of God or the things of God. An uninterrupted attention to the presence of God is beyond mere human strength, and is incompatible with all the anxieties and occupations of this life.
How then, and by what kind of prayer, can we fulfill the intentions of our Lord and Master? By the prayer of the heart, which consists of an habitual and constant disposition of love to God, of trust in Him, of resignation to His will in all the events of our lives; in a continual attention to the voice of God, speaking to us in the depths of our consciences and unceasingly suggesting to us thoughts and desires of good and perfection. This disposition of heart is that in which all Christians ought to be; it was the disposition of all the saints, and it is in it alone that the interior life consists.
God calls all the world to this disposition of heart, for it is without contradiction to all Christians that Jesus Christ addressed Himself when He said that we must always pray; and it is certain that all would attain to this state if they would faithfully correspond to the attractions of grace. Let the love of God once take entire and absolute possession of a heart, let it become to that heart like a second nature, let that heart suffer nothing that is contrary to it to enter, let it apply itself continually to increase this love of God by seeking to please Him in all things and refusing Him nothing that He asks, let it accept, as from His hand, everything that happens to it, let it have a firm determination never to commit any fault deliberately and knowingly, or if it should have the misfortune to fall into one, to be humbled for it and to rise up again at once such a heart will be in the practice of continual prayer, and this prayer will subsist in the midst of all occupations, all conversations, even of all innocent amusements. The thing is not then so impracticable nor so difficult as we might imagine at first sight. In this state we arc not always absolutely thinking of God, but we never willingly occupy ourselves with a useless thought, still less with a wicked thought. We are not incessantly making direct acts, we are not incessantly pronouncing vocal prayers, but our heart is always turned towards God, always listening for the voice of God, always ready to do His holy will.
We deceive ourselves if we think that there is no real prayer except that which is express, formal, and sensible, and of which we can give an account to ourselves. And it is because of this mistake that so many persons persuade themselves that they are doing nothing in prayer when there is nothing marked about it, nothing that their mind or heart can perceive or feel; and this often induces them to give up their prayer. But they ought to reflect that God "understands" as David says, "the preparation of our hearts; " that He does not need either our words or our thoughts to know the most secret disposition of our souls; that our real prayer is found already in germ and substance, in the very root of our will, before it passes into words or thoughts; in short, that our most spiritual and direct acts precede all reflection, and are neither felt nor perceived unless we are keeping a most careful watch for them. Thus, when some one asked Saint Anthony what was the best method of praying, "It is," said he, "when, in praying, you do not think that you pray." And what renders this way of praying most excellent, is that self-love can find nothing in it to rest upon, and cannot sully the purity of it by its touch.
Continual prayer is therefore not difficult in itself, and nevertheless it is very rare, because there are very few hearts in the right dispositions to make it and courageous and faithful enough to persevere in it. We cannot begin to enter on this way of prayer until we have given ourselves entirely to God. Now, there are very few souls who give themselves to God without reserve; there is almost always in this gift something that is kept back, something that self-love secretly keeps hold of, as is very soon seen in the sequel.
But when this gift is really full and entire, God rewards it at once by the gift of Himself; He establishes Himself in the heart, and forms there that continual prayer which consists in peace, in recollection, in a constant attention to God in the interior of the soul, in the midst of all ordinary occupations. This recollection is at first sensible; we enjoy it, we feel we have it. But afterwards it becomes quite spiritual; we have it, but we feel it no longer. And if we regret the loss of this feeling, that was so sweet and so consoling, if we try to bring it back, we are yielding to the insinuations of self-love. If we think that we are no longer recollected, and that we are no longer practising continual prayer because we feel nothing, we are making a great mistake. If the thought comes to us of giving up our prayer because we are no longer doing anything in it, that is a temptation, and a very dangerous temptation. If we yield to it, if we relax our fidelity, if we seek in creatures and from creatures the consolation we can no longer find in God, we shall lose the gift of continual prayer, we shall fall back, and advance no more, and we shall expose ourselves to the danger of becoming much worse than we were before we gave ourselves to God.
What must we do, then, to keep ourselves in the practice of continual prayer? First, we must be well persuaded that our prayer becomes more excellent and more pleasing to God just in proportion as it becomes less sensible and less perceptible to us. Second, we must give up by degrees all that watching and reflecting upon what is going on in our own souls which we are in the habit of making. This watching is frequent in the beginning, because we are so surprised to see what God is doing in our souls, and self-love also seeks its satisfaction there. But when our power of feeling is taken away, we must no longer permit ourselves this watching of the operations of grace and these reflections upon what God is doing for us; it is a sign that God wishes to draw us out of ourselves, to make us enter into Him and lose ourselves there. Third, we must resist strongly all thoughts which may come to us that we are losing our time, that our prayers, our communions, our spiritual readings are quite fruitless, because we make them without sensible devotion and without consolation to ourselves. It is the devil, it is our self-love, it is our nature, always so eager for consolation, that suggests these thoughts to us; they will not torment us long if we are generous enough to make to God the sacrifice of our own interests, if we are determined to seek only Him and to forget ourselves, and if we are sensible enough not to pretend to be saints in our own way and according to our own ideas as if we could know of ourselves what sanctity really is and the ways that lead to it. Let us then be reasonable enough to believe that sanctity can only be the work of God Himself, let us suffer Him to act as He will, and let us abandon ourselves to Him without allowing ourselves to form one single judgment upon His operations. Fourth, finally, we must be more faithful than ever in never seeking any kind of consolation or support from creatures; in never giving ourselves up to any dissipation, but willingly consenting to be separated at the same time from the joys of heaven and from those of earth, even the most innocent, if grace inspires us to deprive ourselves of them. By observing faithfully what I have just said, we shall pass without danger over the most difficult part of the spiritual life, and we shall be ready for still more purifying trials when God sees fit to send them to us.
The effects of continual prayer, in the beginning, and when there is sensible fervour, are to teach us by experience what the interior of our souls and the reign of God there really are to inspire us with a love for retirement and solitude to disgust us with the world, with its vain conversations and false pleasures to purify our senses, and to communicate to them a certain innocence which raises them above the earthly objects which would otherwise ensnare them.
When this prayer is no longer sensible and perceptible, its effects are to detach us from spiritual consolations, and to make us capable of receiving them with far greater purity when it pleases God to give them to us; to make us die by degrees to self and self-love; to concentrate our attention on the thought of our own nothingness by teaching us that we cannot have any good thought or any good impulse of ourselves; to make us simple, by putting a stop to all our considerations and reflections about ourselves; to annihilate gradually our own judgment, our own spirit, and to dispose us to judge of everything by the Spirit of God; finally, to establish our soul in a certain disposition of disinterestedness with regard to God and His service, in such a manner that we begin to forget ourselves entirely, and to be content to be nothing provided only that God may be all. Then God will draw the soul to make a real sacrifice of herself, and to offer herself willingly to receive all kinds of crosses, both exterior and interior, so that she may become a sweet-smelling holocaust in His sight. God may apparently stain that soul by temptations of all kinds: she may think herself guilty, she may see nothing but sin in all her actions; it may seem to her that God rejects her prayer, that He forsakes her, that He is angry with her, and that she has nothing to expect in this life and in the other but the effects of His just vengeance. Sometimes all men may turn against her; and whilst in her secret soul she thinks herself hopelessly lost, outside she is calumniated, condemned, and persecuted. Notwithstanding all this, she keeps herself always resigned and abandoned to the will of God, always under the hand of His good pleasure: provided He can derive glory from her and her sufferings in any way whatever, she is content.
This trial lasts as long as is necessary until she is completely lost in God, and until she is dead to self-love in all its forms. And after this mystical death she rises again, and enters, even in this life, upon the enjoyment of a foretaste of the life of beatitude in heaven. This is where continual prayer will lead us, if it is well understood and well practised.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou