Prayer

Christian mysticism comes to us in the writings of the saints. It is the achievement of union with Almighty God, and its fruit is prayer and the manifestation of God to the World through His saints.

…Presently the window opened, and Brother Matthew looked out between the bars, with his clear eyes and graying beard.
“Hullo Brother,” I said.
He recognized me, glanced at the suitcase, and said, “This time you are here to stay?”
“Yes, Brother, if you will pray for me,” I said.
Brother nodded and raised his hand to close the window. “That’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, “praying for you.”…
…Father Joachim, the guest master, came out of the door of the monastery and crossed the garden with his hands under his scapular and his eyes fixed on the cement walk. He only raised them when he was near me, and then he grinned.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said.
I did not give him the chance to ask if I had come to stay. I said: “Yes, Father, this time I want to be a novice – if I can.”
-Thomas Merton, Seven Story Mountain.

I could not stop laughing as I read about Thomas Merton’s experience entering the monastery and his novitiate. He felt a sense of victory over having met the end of conversation. He described the silence as something that pervades everything, including the stones that make up the buildings. Merton described a year in which a tremendously large number of vocations flooded the novitiate. One of the questions that occurred to him regarding some of the novices was whether they had experienced the spiritual desert too soon and too intensely, whether or not they would have stayed in the monastery had they been better prepared to go through the desert?

There was a quote I heard which I was always opposed to until I was able to put it in context with the spiritual desert. “Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth.” What Merton called the spiritual desert has also been called the dark night by St. John of the Cross. It is an emptiness, almost like a sadness or a desolation, but it is a movement of the soul rather than an emotion. It is also a natural progression in everyone’s spiritual life. God seduces us. He entices us with the things we love and yearn for. We are sent consolation, joy and elation, again as movements of the soul rather than emotions. In my own life it has been in solitude, silence and prayer that joy and elation has been experienced, as well as in the active life, during liturgical practice (which I consider semi-active, semi-contemplative), in bringing Holy Communion to shut-ins and the incarcerated, in speaking with the wounded, in silence with the wounded and in the company of the dying and their families. After the seduction comes the let-down, the desert, the dark night. The desert may come upon us at our invitation or at God’s command.

St. John divides the dark night of the soul into three groups, the dark nights of the senses, of faith, and of the will/memory. The night of the senses is the onset of spiritual growth. It is the purification of the soul by the deprivation of worldly things for the pursuit of Divine union. St. John described our senses as the windows the soul uses to peer out at the world. When we empty ourselves of the desires of the senses we are able to tread the path towards union with God.

Within the night of the senses we are able to enter further into the night of faith. This night is darker than the night of the senses. It is an emptying, or a resignation and detachment of our understanding, perception, feelings and imaginings for the sake of Divine union. This complete resignation and detachment allows God free reign within the soul and He illuminates it with faith. The result of the dark night of faith results in the purging, or putting to death, the understanding, the abandonment of the intellect, and the grounding of the soul in faith. Our memory is our knowledge formed by the senses. As we reduce our memory, God is able to perfect our nature and transform it. A will transformed for the sake of charity is able to perform works of faith which gain great merit. The verse that struck me was, “Love covers a multitude of sins.”

This all seems like a grand plan when one invites it, but sometimes it catches us unaware. I went for about two and a half months in the desert one time. It seemed as though the only pleasure I could find was in choir practice for two hours every Thursday night. Even Mass on Sunday morning left me feeling empty. It wasn’t the first time I had been through the desert. I was well aware of the writings of St. John and Merton. That brought no consolation though. I felt abandoned by God. I knew I wasn’t. The movements of my soul deceived my emotions and all I could do was struggle through to the end. There is only one time in my whole life I ever remember inviting the dark night. It didn’t come, not when I wanted it to anyway.

The point of it is that I was properly prepared for the dark night. When it came, my soul was grounded in faith. Intellectually, I knew what my emotions told me was a lie, but that did not diminish the feelings of isolation from God. If I were any less prepared, it would have been easy to harden my heart and move towards a position of unbelief. Could I end up as an atheist or agnostic? Is that how people lose their faith?