Confraternity of Penitents Newsletter -- July 2018

NO GREATER LOVE: ARIDITY IN PRAYER
 

When we pray, we may initially feel a closeness to the Lord and even obtain insights from Him which thrill us. However, this does not go on forever. There will soon be times of aridity when we feel no enthusiasm or excitement about our being present to the Lord. Theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, in his book, Prayer, discusses this issue which we encounter in our prayer. "Aridity", therefore, should not be thought of in terms of penance or of some tragic visitation. It is the normal, "everyday" face of all love. Love usually begins with its exceptional forms and arrives at its normal state by this detour. There is thus nothing frightening, alarming about aridity in contemplation; on the contrary, it confirms it. But just as love is not overcome by the everyday routine, but uses its imagination in a thousand ways to transfigure it, fashioning each day anew in small details, so it is with contemplation. Every day I am privileged to appear before the God who is eternally young, who never ages; God's meadows bloom as brightly and in as many colors as ever, and man's inner receptivity is renewed every day, provided that he makes use of it. His tiredness, ennui, discouragement and bitterness are his alone, and he cannot complain about anything, since God has everything ready to refresh him, bowed down as he is under his burdens. He only has to pull himself together and shake off whatever is oppressing him and dragging him down. All he has to do is give it over and begin again. We always need to recall that God is infinite, but we are finite creatures who constantly run up against our own limitations. Yet, the Lord will give us what we need if we seek it.

Next, theologian Von Balthasar discusses the role of penance in prayer. Of course, prayer is not itself penance, but it certainly is related to penance. Von Balthasar tells us about this relationship. It is this self-discipline on the part of a faith which retains its integrity and logic, which is prayer's proper, divinely appointed element of penance. For love, with its inherent laws, is never something to be accepted reluctantly, "in penance"-although, on the other hand, everything in us that hinders us from exercising love must be overcome and discarded in and through penance. And love itself will evince such a power of attraction that even this kind of penance will acquire the quality of grace, even of hidden joy. Penance is of two kinds: there is this preparatory, aspiring penance, and there is the penance which love gives and entrusts to us out of love, and which, willy-nilly, with seeing or unseeing eyes, is performed in love to fulfill love's aims and needs. These two are intertwined from the very outset. In his economy of salvation God needs faith which feels nothing, self-surrender which sees nothing, blind hope which seems to stretch out its hand into the void. Where will he find such acts of faith, if not among the contemplatives, whose very state of life, so to speak, calls for this kind of response to the word of God? In order to pray, we need to do penance to pull us away from attractions of the world. However, God still has to mold us into what He wants us to be. This will also involve penance, which is the penance of love and is given to us by God for us.

Sometimes the aridity of prayer can be so extreme that it appears to be the “dark night of the soul”. However, Von Balthasar warns us that we should not assume that we are in this state. It needs to be confirmed by the Church. God himself can make contemplative love difficult, he can stamp it with the imprint of the "dark night", render it almost impossible; but this is something we should rarely presuppose. Rather, we should always start by attributing it to our own lukewarmness and leave it to our spiritual director to show us if it be God's doing. Only if this is confirmed is it safe for us to know that we have been chosen for the spiritual "night". The "night" has its own mode of protection; there, if a person "stumbles", he does not fall, for he is upheld by the God who has led him thither. Normally, however, this mantle of the "dark night" enveloping the contemplative should be clearly seen to have an ecclesial dimension: it is precisely because the Holy Spirit is exercising his guidance in a special way that the contemplative needs the guidance of the Church. Covenant love is more evident than ever in the mystery of the "dark night"; consequently, the Lord of the Covenant watches over it all the more jealously, and almost always sets his accredited watchman at the door.

As theologian Von Balthasar tells us, only specially chosen souls experience the spectacular “dark night” of Divine abandonment. He describes the ordinary way of aridity where we are not completely abandoned by God. But no one can seek out these paths on his own initiative; they are, and will remain, for those chosen for special missions. The paths of love's "purification" are open and necessary for all, although they do not need to assume the aspect of the night of the cross. God can purge a believer's hope of its self-seeking without depriving him of all hope whatsoever, without leading him to the amour pur of the crucified soul which no longer expects anything for itself. There is also the quiet, slow path of everyday things, the "little way" of Therese of Lisieux. Who can tell whether its demands are smaller, or just as great? Its characteristic is the "smile", that is-with regard to contemplative prayer-the presupposition of love on the part of the man of prayer. It means that he is ready to hasten to meet the word of God, be he refreshed in spirit or weary. To show the same interest and attentiveness to the word of God, the same joy in it, whether he "feels like it" or not. It means not attaching any objective significance, in prayer, to one's fortuitous, subjective moods. It means that, if today, subjectively speaking, I have not enough joy at my disposal, I supplement what I have from the storehouse of faith, from the Church's joy and God's joy. Where it comes from is not important, nor does it need to be mentioned in my conversation with God. (The guest does not want to know in which shop the maid or the housewife bought the food he is enjoying.) This is what Therese's "smile" means: it is very close to what used to be called "good manners" and "good breeding" in days gone by-something, perhaps, that only has to be mentioned explicitly in the Church because it is fast disappearing from human society. The nobility and the middle classes used to cultivate this kind of behavior, which was regarded as a matter of propriety and "good form", rather than of virtue. Accordingly, guests were treated with equal civility, received with equal courtesy; one's own moods were not imposed on others; people were adept at making conversation even if they did not feel like it, or if the other person was not forthcoming; one showed (and not merely "feigned") interest, even if, for the moment, one's inclinations tended in another direction. Naturally, like everything that is valuable and precious on the purely human plane, these things are liable to formalism and fossilization. Not, however, on the spiritual plane, because proper conduct in the relationship with God is learned and practiced under the guidance of the Holy Spirit of love. In human affairs such rules of conduct may (but need not) lead to a lack of freedom, as for instance in some stilted court ceremony, whereas in spiritual matters, on the contrary, the rule of freedom prevails. This rule shows us how, in the apparent monotony of everyday faith, the seemingly restrictive framework of faithfulness in contemplation - and nowhere else-the sovereign, free fullness of the divine word can take shape in our life, leading us beyond the straitened conditions of earth, out into the panorama of God's wonders. Just as in married life where faithfulness is demanded even when there is no longer the thrill of young love, also in prayer faithfulness is demanded from us, and this faithfulness will be rewarded. -- Jim Nugent, CFP