Last
week I shared some of my Protestant Christian upbringing, and my desire to
share with you more of the spiritual riches of the Catholic Christian Faith. We
begin with prayer.
As
a child I was taught to pray by saying grace at meals, memorizing the Lord’s
Prayer (the “Our Father”), by how we prayed at church, by reading prayers, and
just speaking my own words to God. I don’t remember any teaching in either my
Christian home or at Christian colleges, on how to pray, kinds of prayer,
stages of prayer, or growth in prayer.
That’s
sad. Because from the Jewish tradition before us, and after 2000 years of
Christian experience, Christianity has a vast knowledge and experience of
prayer.
Prayer
is friendship with God. Sharing between us and God – Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. Intimately sharing as friends. Is that your daily experience of prayer?
We
all know in human relationships that friendships develop over time, and that
there are different levels of friendships. No wise person intimately shares
from his or her heart with a newly-met stranger. It takes time to develop a
friendship wherein intimate sharing is welcome. First we begin with societal
greetings and social exchanges, then we get to know the person more, learning
where the mutual connections of thoughts and feelings are, and learning what
the person can be trusted with. Then if we find that we can open ourselves to
this other person, growth in the intimate sharing, and stages of that growth
and sharing, will naturally occur as the relationship develops.
Something
very similar occurs with God in prayer. If our idea of prayer is basically
asking God for what we want, we haven’t begun to know this God of love who
wants an intimate friendship with us. St. John’s Gospel calls it “abiding” with
us, and us “abiding” in Him.
St.
Teresa has written much on the stages of development of a friendship with God.
That is, the stages of growth in prayer. In writing her “Spiritual
Autobiography” or “Book of Her Life” (Ch. 11-21), she speaks of four degrees or
stages of prayer. In preparing to address the first stage, she begins to speak
“of those who are beginning to be servants of love. This doesn’t seem to me,”
St. Teresa says, “to mean anything else than to follow resolutely, by means of
this path of prayer, Him who has loved us so much. To be a servant of love is a
dignity so great that it delights me in a wonderful way to think about it. For
servile fear soon passes away if in this first state we proceed as we ought.” –
As we ought: with prayer.
Servile
fear, she says. Yes, there is appropriate “fear of the Lord.” It can be an
appropriate fear out of respect. But even “servile fear” – when we are afraid
of God, afraid of the consequences of our sin, of righteous punishment due to
us – is appropriate fear when we are in sin. It leads us to repentance.
But
the God who is love does not want to leave us there. So hopefully we soon
travel from mere servile fear to repentance, to desire for God, to conversion,
and to efforts to live a good Christian life. We begin to see and know that God
is not only just and righteous, but also loving kindness. We begin to cultivate
the virtues, and to learn to love others.
St.
Teresa says that then we start to become His “servant of love.” And hopefully
we then come to a decision “to follow resolutely” along the path of prayer.
It’s a post-conversion, resolute decision to follow the Lord, the live the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, to change our life from living in vices to living in
virtues – and specifically to come to know God in prayer. To learn to pray. To
take the path of prayer leading to growth in this friendship with God.
Before speaking of growth in prayer, of different stages in prayer – which we will explore over the coming weeks – one must first have made the resolution, the commitment, to pray.
Dibby Allan Green