How we pray

The uniqueness of Christian spiritual experience

The Latin term spiritualitas [spirituality] was first used to ‘designate all the activities of life according to the Holy Spirit’.  (Leclercq). Therefore, spirituality is the whole of Christian life touched and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, that is, life in the Spirit as brothers and sisters of Jesus and daughters and sons of the Father.  (Principe).

As St Paul puts it:

‘For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.  When we cry, "Abba!  Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him’. (Romans 8:14-17).

Two things are necessary for a spirituality that is truly and fully Christian – knowledge of the objective reality of God’s revelation that we find in the Bible and the acceptance of dogma safeguarded and explained by the teaching authority of the Church, most particularly the Pope, that we find expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The Bible

The Bible is the rule and standard of all authentic spirituality, which cannot be reduced to the measure of man ‘because its aim is to fashion us in the image of God’ (Aumann).

‘For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life’ (Dei Verbum 21; cf. CCC, 103-104).

Furthermore, the historical fact that God has given Himself to us in His Word is the unique source of the ‘eminently personal, inter-personal character of the Christian spiritual life’.  (Bouyer).

Our spiritual life will be Catholic to the extent that our personal relationship with God is developed in the Church, because we cannot truly receive the Word of God except it is communicated through the liturgy of the Church:

‘The Holy Spirit first recalls the meaning of the salvation event to the liturgical assembly by giving life to the Word of God, which is proclaimed so that it may be received and lived…The Holy Spirit gives a spiritual understanding of the Word of God to those who read or hear it, according to the dispositions of their hearts. (CCC, 1100-1101)’.

 
Dogmas of the Church

Dogmas are divinely revealed truths, proclaimed as such by the infallible teaching authority of the church and hence binding now and forever on all the faithful. 

Dogmas are not abstract, dry-as-dust, theological definitions but divinely revealed truths that put us in touch with the personal reality, truth, beauty and goodness of God.

‘There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas.  Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure.  Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith.  (CCC, 89).

The uniqueness of Christian spiritual experience, derives from three divinely revealed truths –the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, the dogma of the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the dogma of the Mission of the Holy Spirit.

The Most Holy Trinity

Jesus Christ’s revelation of the mystery of Triune love is the most fundamental component for the spiritual life.  Through the sacrament of Baptism, ‘the children of God are invited to share in the perfection of the Father by imitating the incarnate Son through the power of the Holy Spirit’ (Bernard).

The dogma of the indwelling Trinity is a cornerstone of Christian spirituality, because it constitutes that ‘kingdom of God within us’, where mystical experience and union are brought to their full perfection on earth.  (Aumann).

‘The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity.  But even now we are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity: "If a man loves me", says the Lord, "he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him":

O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmoveable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery!  Grant my soul peace.  Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest.  May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action.  (Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity).  (CCC, 260).

However, the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity in the hearts of those who keep Jesus’ commands is not merely a private, individual experience, but the primary agent, as well as the ultimate goal, of the whole life of the Church.  As Fr Louis Bouyer observes, Catholic spirituality is always ecclesial, because Christ reveals the trinitarian life of the divine Persons to mankind, ‘only as it extends this love to all men, as, in the Church, it opens out, so to say, the holy society of the Trinity to all mankind’.  Catholic spirituality is always, without exception, an expression of love of neighbour.

The Incarnation of the Son of God

The uniqueness of Christian spirituality derives from faith in the historical event of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity.  Through the Incarnation, the history of humanity, and the universe, definitively enters the divine sphere.

‘In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4).  (Dei Verbum 2)’.

The hidden purpose of God that was gradually revealed in the Old Testament, and made manifest and realised in the New Testament, is that through the Incarnation of His only begotten Son, God invites each one of us to participate, and be personally transformed by, the life and love of the Most Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Spirituality is the development of ‘that personal relationship which God wishes to establish with us in speaking to us in Christ’ (Bouyer).  Consequently, our incorporation in Christ is the basis of our sanctification and the very substance of Christian spiritual life.

The Mission of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, is the principal agent of our spiritual life, and caritas [self-giving love] is the immediate principle of spiritual life, because the Spirit is love (Rom 5:5).

‘The Holy Spirit is the living water "welling up to eternal life" in the heart that prays. It is he who teaches us to accept it at its source: Christ.  Indeed in the Christian life there are several wellsprings where Christ awaits us to enable us to drink of the Holy Spirit.’  (CCC, 2652).

As such, the Holy Spirit is also the source of the threefold rhythm of the spiritual life –

purgation of sins, illumination by grace , and union with God.  This threefold rhythm is the influence on our inner lives of the ‘tidal movements’ of the Mission of the Holy Spirit that seeks to draw us into deeper union with God.  (Robert Hughes).

‘Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ.  This union is called "mystical" because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments - "the holy mysteries" - and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all.  (CCC, 2014)’.

Life in the Spirit produces a rich variety of virtues, gifts and fruits of the Spirit, orientated to sanctity [holiness] as its goal.

Sanctity is a divine gift and is a participation in the sanctity of God (Isaiah 6:3), to the measure that the individual resembles Him through a moral and spiritual transformation (Eph 1:4).  Through sanctifying grace – the indwelling of the Trinity – Christians are ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4).

The roots of Catholic spirituality in the Old Testament

From the very first there existed in Israel the sense that it is ‘impossible to speak of actually seeing God’, because the Lord is ‘Entirely Other’.  (Eichrodt).  Consequently, God’s transcendence was conveyed in two ways:

The holiness of God – the Old Testament emphasis on the holiness of God – that conveys His moral perfection, His ineffable mysteriousness, and His absolute inaccessibility:

‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.  Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.  And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."  The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

And I said: "Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out."

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  And I said, "Here am I; send me”’.  (Isaiah 6: 1-8).

The unknowability of God – the Old Testament also conveys the ‘otherness’ of God in various ways that stress the impossibility of direct knowledge of God.  For example, the absolute prohibition of artistic representations of YHWH is a way of asserting the otherness of His spiritual nature:

‘Since you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure…’ (Deuteronomy 4:15-16).

The Old Testament also stresses the omnipresence of the LORD, from the heart of man to the dust of the underworld, while also emphasising his absolute transcendence above the world in heaven, a paradox that further communicates the unknowable otherness of God:

 Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,"

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12).

The unknowability of God in the life of the Christian

Old Testament spirituality is incorporated in the work of two figures that have had a profound influence on Catholic spirituality – St. Gregory of Nyssa, and Denys the Areopagite:

St. Gregory took events in God’s relationship with Moses to describe the threefold progress in the spiritual life (Louth):

The Way of Light, referring to God’s revelation to Moses through the Burning Bush, is when we turn from false reality to God.

The Way of Cloud, referring to Moses first ascent of Sinai, is when we learn to leave behind the vanity of created reality.

The Way of Darkness, referring to Moses second ascent of Mount Sinai, is our increasing awareness of the incomprehensibility of God.

Denys the Areopagite developed the central metaphors of the spiritual life through reflecting on the account of the Exodus, emphasising the contrasts between ‘light’ and ‘darkness’, and ‘ascent’ and ‘descent’. As Deny Turner puts it:

‘Light is darkness, knowing is unknowing, a cloud, and the pain of contemplating it, is pain of contemplating more reality than can be borne: ‘man may not see me and live’ (Exodus 33:20).

Denys the Areopagite introduced a profound paradox that remains at the heart of Christian spirituality, conveyed by the metaphor of the ‘dazzling darkness’, which we find in the work of English mysticism Cloud of Unknowing and the work of St John of the Cross.

This tradition of Christian spirituality has been particularly developed by Carmelite Spirituality, with its roots in the ‘desert experience’, associated with its origins in the emulation of Elijah on Mount Carmel, and exemplified by St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila.

‘In the communion of saints, many and varied spiritualities have been developed throughout the history of the churches. The personal charism of some witnesses to God's love for men has been handed on, like "the spirit" of Elijah to Elisha and John the Baptist, so that their followers may have a share in this spirit. A distinct spirituality can also arise at the point of convergence of liturgical and theological currents, bearing witness to the integration of the faith into a particular human environment and its history.  The different schools of Christian spirituality share in the living tradition of prayer and are essential guides for the faithful.  In their rich diversity they are refractions of the one pure light of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is truly the dwelling of the saints and the saints are for the Spirit a place where he dwells as in his own home since they offer themselves as a dwelling place for God and are called his temple.’ (CCC, 2684).

The flowering of Christian spirituality in the New Testament

Jesus sees the spiritual life in terms of the nearness of the Kingdom of God, and entrance into the Kingdom (Mk 1:15).  The Kingdom of God is interior (Lk 17:21), and capable of growth.  Christ identified Himself with the Kingdom [autobasileia] (Lk 11:20; 22:29-30), and therefore, membership of the Kingdom is life in Christ, with whom the Father and Holy Spirit are present (Jn 14:23). (Aumann).

To inherit eternal life in the Kingdom, the Christian’s ‘present conduct must reflect the conduct of God Himself’, exemplified by ‘be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Mt 5:48; cf. Lk 6:36).  This is why the disciple is exhorted to emulate the universal compassion of God by likewise loving one’s enemies, and by being merciful as God is merciful (Mt 6:6; Lk 11:4).

There is no limit set to the call to perfection taught by Christ, explaining the emphasis on conversion and repentance in Gospel spirituality.

‘From the Sermon on the Mount onwards, Jesus insists on conversion of heart: reconciliation with one's brother before presenting an offering on the altar, love of enemies, and prayer for persecutors, prayer to the Father in secret, not heaping up empty phrases, prayerful forgiveness from the depths of the heart, purity of heart, and seeking the Kingdom before all else.  This filial conversion is entirely directed to the Father.  (CCC, 2608).’

The call to God-like perfection attains its greatest expression in self-sacrificial love [agape or caritas] which occupies the central place in Christian spirituality, exemplified by the self-renouncing imitation of Christ’s sacrificial death (Jn 15:13; Lk 9:23; Mt 10:38-39; Mk 8:34-38) and expressed sacramentally through the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

The early Christian community saw the spiritual life – the call to perfection – as a participation in the ‘mystery of Christ’. Our participation in the mystery of Christ occurs through our new life in Christ and through our life in the Holy Spirit.

New Life in Christ – The New Testament frequently speaks of the new life which is given to us through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:12; 3:14; Col 2:13; Eph 4:23; Tit 3:14; Rom 5:19; 1 Cor 1:21; 2 Pet 1:4).  Jesus, as the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, has elevated and regenerated human nature through uniting in himself his divine nature and human nature, thereby enabling us to participate in the life of God:

‘The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.”  "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”  "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”  (CCC, 460).’

Through the Holy Spirit – St. Paul used the term ‘spiritual’ (1 Cor 2:13-15; 9:11; 14:1) to describe Christian existence because union with Christ was to enter into the realm of the Holy Spirit.

‘And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.  The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because the are spiritually discerned.  The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ’. (I Cor 2:13-15).

The gift of the Spirit is the defining mark of the Christian (Rom 8:9-10), it is having the Spirit that makes us ‘spiritual’ (1 Cor 2:11-14).  The Spirit is at the heart of Christian worship (1 Cor 12-14), the defining reality of the being part of the Body of Christ.

The mission of the Holy Spirit is to enable Christians to become more and more Christ-like through being the ‘living memory’ of the Church. ‘The Spirit and the Church cooperate to manifest Christ and his work of salvation’.  (CCC, 1099).  St John’s Gospel sees the gift of the Spirit [pneuma] as the power that leads to the knowledge of Christ, through remembrance (Jn 14:26) and imitation (Jn 16:13).

‘But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you’. (John 14:26)

‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you’.  (John 16:13-14).

The imitation of Christ in the life of the Christian

The New Testament understanding of spirituality as participating in the mystery of Christ through our new life in Christ and through our life in the Holy Spirit has resulted in a diversity of spiritual practices that express our physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual and sensual union with the incarnate humanity of the Son of God, through them action of the Holy Spirit.

Over the past 2,000 years the Christian mind deploying all the resources of its verbal and non verbal vocabulary to express something about God revealed through the person of Jesus Christ, ranging from the richness of metaphorical imagery of Julian of Norwich and St. Bernard, to sacramental and liturgical actions, music, architecture, dance and gesture.

Meditation on Scripture and dogmas is at the heart of the imitation of Christ in the life of the Christian.  Unlike eastern religions understanding of meditation as being the emptying of one’s mind of all images and thoughts, Christian meditation is the filling of one’s mind and heart with Christ.

‘Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire.  This mobilisation of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him. (CCC, 2708).

As St Teresa of Avila says, ‘meditation is not so much thinking a great deal, as loving a great deal!’, exemplified by St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius of Loyola:

Meditation of Christ was at the heart of Francis’ spirituality seen in his living the Gospel teaching according to the letter and the spirit, seeing the Gospel was the ‘school’ of virtues, and living out the Gospel as the best way of preaching the Gospel.

St Ignatius of Loyola, through his work, The Spiritual Exercises, encourages the meditator to engage with the emotional mood and setting of a Gospel scene, and to stay with the thoughts, images and feelings and to share them with Christ, thereby deepening the faith relationship.

Finally, the Church has always seen Our Lady as the exemplar of meditative and contemplative prayer, because she ‘treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.’  (Luke 2:19).

‘Mary is the perfect Orans (pray-er), a figure of the Church. When we pray to her, we are adhering with her to the plan of the Father, who sends his Son to save all men. Like the beloved disciple we welcome Jesus' mother into our homes, for she has become the mother of all the living. We can pray with and to her. The prayer of the Church is sustained by the prayer of Mary and united with it in hope.’ (CCC, 2679).

If you would like to learn more about the faith of the Catholic Church, we invite you to enrol on the Diocese of Lancaster's online Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies, which uses the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a key text.

http://vle.dles.lancsngfl.ac.uk/

Contact the Education Centre to get details about how to enrol.  01524 841190 or email: educationservice@lancasterrcdiocese.org.uk 

 Written by Deacon Nick Donnelly