Part 6: Exploring Prayer of the Heart (Based on Chapter 31) Way of Perfection
Sister Donna does such a thorough job in Part 6 of explaining Chapter 31 that there is really nothing left of the chapter for me to highlight! I love her own comparison of this prayer of quiet to a baby totally surrendering to sleep in the arms of a trusted parent.
Perhaps I will just re-emphasize one point in the chapter that Sister Donna has also covered in her video, that of the desire one feels to prolong this state, because I think it is something many of us have experienced, especially early on. Teresa writes: “The will is the one that is captive here. If there is some sorrow that can be experienced while in this state, that sorrow comes from a realization that the will must return to the state of being free.”A little further in the chapter, where Sister Donna speaks of some peoples’ fear of even taking a breath lest the prayer of quiet disappear, Teresa says,“This is foolish, for just as there’s nothing we can do to make the sun rise, there’s little we can do to keep it from setting. This prayer is no longer our work, for it’s something very supernatural and something very much beyond our power to acquire by ourselves. The best way to hold on to this favor is to understand clearly that we can neither bring it about nor remove it; we can only receive it with gratitude, as most unworthy of it…”
I would like to thank Sister Donna once again for her work in putting together this series and sharing both St. Teresa of Avila’s insights with us, as well as her own. God bless and protect you in your continued evangelization and in your life of prayer, Sister Donna, and know that we are inspired and grateful for you living out your vocation in such a way that we all may benefit from it.
Part 5: Exploring Prayer of the Heart (Based on Chapter 30) Way of Perfection
…it may seem to anyone who doesn’t know about the matter that vocal prayer doesn’t go with contemplation; but I know that it does. Pardon me, but I want to say this: I know there are many persons who while praying vocally, as has already been mentioned, are raised by God to sublime contemplation [without their striving for anything or understanding how. It's because of this that I insist so much, daughters, upon your reciting vocal prayer well.]
…and in her fiesty, no-nonsense way that we’ve come to love:
…those of you who are the enemies of contemplatives should not think that you are free from being a contemplative if you recite your vocal prayers as they should be recited, with a pure conscience. [And so I will speak of this again. Whoever doesn't want to hear it may pass on.]
Part 4: Exploring Prayer of the Heart (Based on Chapter 29) Way of Perfection
Chapter 29 continues with the prayer of recollection, and as Sr. Donna points out and as St. Teresa writes, “…this recollection is not a silence of the faculties; it is an enclosure of the faculties within the soul.” St. Teresa is teaching us in this chapter “how vocal prayer should be recited well”, and that even if repetition is involved, “we should see and be present to the One with whom we speak without turning our backs on Him, for I don’t think speaking with God while thinking of a thousand other vanities would amount to anything else but turning our backs on Him.”
Our holy desires and our wills are very active and important in this prayer of recollection, for it is not infused prayer. St. Teresa is teaching us here of how to “disengage ourselves from everything so as to approach God interiorly and even in the midst of occupations withdraw within ourselves.” This is something we can “desire and achieve ourselves with the help of God”, and she writes words of encouragement, knowing that in the midst of our busy days and exterior distractions there may be times when we have to “force ourselves to be close to this Lord”, but that He will “understand us as if through sign language” and that “He is very fond of taking away our difficulty.”
For those who have difficulty recollecting themselves, St. Teresa recommends saying the Our Father even if “no more than once in an hour”, telling us that this is a manner of praying that the soul gets used to quickly, that “everything involves struggle before the habit is acquired” and that it involves “a gradual increase of self-control.”
Part 3: Exploring Prayer of the Heart (Based on Chapter 28) The Prayer of Recollection
“…wherever God is, there is heaven.”
“Do you think it matters little for a soul with a wandering mind to understand this truth and see that there is no need to go to heaven in order to speak with one’s Eternal Father or find delight in Him? Nor is there any need to shout. However softly we speak, He is near enough to hear us.”
“All one need do is go into solitude and look at Him within oneself, and not turn away from so good a Guest but with great humility speak to Him as to a father.”
“This prayer is called “recollection,” because the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself to be with its God.
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Sister Donna makes another great connection between prayer of the heart and Mass in this segment. When she is describing how St. Teresa of Avila says that God does not come alone into our hearts when we pray, but with all of His courtiers (the angels, the saints and those who have gone before us), she connects this to the Introductory Dialogue (just after the Prayer Over the Gifts): ”Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord”. We then proceed to the Eucharistic Prayer, where we pray in union with the whole Church and in communion with the saints.
I like very much Sister Donna’s insight that Lectio Divina and prayer of the heart go hand-in-hand; that we immerse ourselves in sacred reading and then offer ourselves to God and He to us, exactly in the same way as when we participate in the two parts of the Mass, first through the Liturgy of the Word and then through the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I have never heard anyone make this particular comparison before.
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There are some souls and minds so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop. Now they’re running here, now there, always restless…. This restlessness is either caused by the soul’s nature or permitted by God. I pity these souls greatly, for they seem to be like very thirsty persons who see water in the distance, but when they want to go there, they meet someone who prevents their passing from the beginning through the middle to the end.
[The Way of Perfection, Chapter 19, Paragraph 2]
O Sisters, those of you who cannot engage in much discursive reflection with the intellect or keep your mind from distraction, get used to this practice! Get used to it! See, I know that you can do this; for I suffered many years from the trial – and it is a very great one – of not being able to quiet the mind in anything. But I know that the Lord does not leave us so abandoned; for if we humbly ask Him for this friendship, He will not deny it to us. And if we cannot succeed in one year, we will succeed later. Let’s not regret the time that is so well spent. Who’s making us hurry? I am speaking of acquiring this habit and of striving to walk alongside this true Master.
I spent nearly twenty years on that stormy sea, often falling in this way and each time rising again, but to little purpose, as I would only fall once more. My life was so far from perfection that I took hardly any notice of venial sins; as to mortal sins, although afraid of them, I was not so much so as I ought to have been; for I did not keep free from danger of falling into them. I can testify that this is one of the most grievous kinds of life which I think can be imagined, for I had neither any joy in God nor any pleasure in the world. When I was in the midst of worldly pleasures, I was distressed by the remembrance of what I owed to God; when I was with God, I grew restless because of worldly affections.
From: Selected Writings of St. Teresa of Avila, Revised, Adapted and Modernized by Monsignor Wm. J. Doheny, C.S.C., pgs. 220-221. [This particular quotation was taken from St. Teresa of Avila's "Life", Vol. 1, pgs. 48-49]
In Chapter XI of Contemplative Prayer (by Thomas Merton, with an Introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh), Merton writes:
What is the purpose of meditation in the sense of “the prayer of the heart”?
In the “prayer of the heart” we seek first of all the deepest ground of our identity in God. We do not reason about dogmas of faith, or “the mysteries.” We seek rather to gain a direct existential grasp, a personal experience of the deepest truths of life and faith, finding ourselves in God’s truth….
We wish to gain a true evaluation of ourselves and of the world so as to understand the meaning of our life as children of God redeemed from sin and death. We wish to gain a true loving knowledge of God, our Father and Redeemer. We wish to lose ourselves in his love and rest in him. We wish to hear his word and respond to it with our whole being. We wish to know his merciful will and submit to it in its totality.
Sister Donna has recently discovered prayer of the heart, and her joy and enthusiasm is contagious, as you will see in this video. She has put together a 6-part YouTube series (the introduction to which is the second video in this post), based on St. Teresa of Avila’s The Way of Perfection. [Note: Although she mentions St. Therese of Lisieux's 'little way' in the first video here, her series is actually based on St. Teresa of Avila's writing.] So we will be taking a little journey here at Contemplative Haven with Sister Donna! If you would like to read the chapters that Sister Donna is highlighting in her videos but do not have a copy of The Way of Perfection, you can read it online at Catholic First.
