Editor’s note: This is part 30 of a series, “The Kingdom of Grace.” Part 29 can be found here.
The supernatural and divine life of grace is an amazing gift. Like a seed from the gardens of heaven planted in our souls, the life of grace is meant to grow gradually as we walk the pathways of metanoia. The principal cause of growth is the Eucharist. Nothing nourishes the life of grace like The Heavenly Bread. Yet, Works of Love also increase the life of grace in us. Prayer, too, serves the same purpose.
It is now time in our series to take up the topic of prayer.
When people think of prayer, they tend to think first of vocal prayer, petitionary prayer, or outward prayer. Prayer, however, is first of all an interior activity – an activity of the heart flowing from The Life of Grace. Prayer is the interior quest of The Friends of God. Prayer is what goes on in the The Temple of the Holy Trinity. Prayer is essentially a response of the heart to the God who first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19).
The heart’s whole response to the love of God is called the life of prayer. The “life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice-holy God and in communion with him” (CCC 2565). Prayer is not so much a matter of doing, but more a way of being. True prayer consists of living your life before God. “Inner prayer means standing with the mind in the heart before God, either simply living in his presence, or expressing supplication, thanksgiving, and glorification,” said Saint Theophane the Recluse. [1] Thus he distinguished two key factors in prayer. One is standing before God – simply living in his presence. The other is pronouncing various prayers such as petitionary prayers, words of thanksgiving, or various expressions of praise. The former – living in the presence of God – we can call prayerfulness. The latter – the various prayers we send up to God in words and gestures – we can call acts of prayer.
Prayerfulness is a form of awareness. It is the loving awareness of the presence of God. Now, awareness generally falls on a spectrum. At one end, there is focal awareness or actual attention, e.g. someone actually looking at a sunset has a focal awareness of it. At the other end, there is mere background awareness, e.g. shoppers have a background awareness of the music playing in the store while they have a focal awareness on the items they are seeking. Later, if asked whether music was playing in the store, they might say yes even though they were not paying attention to the music when they were shopping. The quality of one’s awareness might fall anywhere on the spectrum between focal and background awareness. Husbands and wives are often not actually considering each other throughout the day, but they have a background awareness of each other. Their awareness of each other is hopefully not far from the surface of their conscious attention. A shift of attention from the task at hand to their beloved spouse happens easily and often throughout the day. Even when physically separated from each other, every little thing can be an occasion to think again on one another with fondness.
So, too, with the loving awareness of the presence of God. Such awareness falls on a spectrum. Sometimes, in certain lovely moments of prayer, our awareness of God is focal. We actually pay attention to him or strive to do so. At other times, however, our awareness of God is more of a background awareness. Just as in stores music is playing in the background, so at every moment of our lives the song of God is playing in the background of the universe. It is a song of eternal Wisdom and Love. Rarely do fallen human beings turn their attention to God, rarely do they listen to the divine music playing in the middle of everything, but the song of God keeps playing nonetheless. It secretly inspires all things but sin. A prayerful mind is aware of the song of God always playing in the world. In the lovely moments of prayer, moments of true leisure, our awareness of the divine song is focal. At other moments, though, the song recedes into the background of our awareness. For prayerful minds, though, focal attention on the song of God is not far from the surface. The song of God easily breaks through the surface of conscious attention.
Every little thing throughout the day becomes an occasion to think again on Him with fondness.
To remain in the state of prayerfulness, to abide in the loving awareness of the presence of God, is the dream of every contemplative soul. “Pray always,” scripture tells us (1 Thess. 5:17). The words are a summons to develop a prayerful mind. You and I cannot always be making acts of prayer, or always have God as the explicit theme of our focal awareness, but a certain loving awareness of his Presence can permeate the depths of our minds nonetheless. Prayerfulness can come to influence everything in our conscious life – our vision, our thoughts, our choices. By developing a prayerful mind, we can learn to live our lives according to the song of God playing in the background of the universe even when various tasks at hand call for our attention. We might even learn to see every task at hand for what it is – a movement in the song of eternal Wisdom and Love.
The question is how to grow in prayerfulness. The answer is through many acts of prayer, and there are many kinds of them. We hear of petitionary prayer, lectio divina, meditation, contemplation, the Rosary, various devotions, the practice of the presence of God, and the prayer of one word, e.g. the Jesus Prayer. We also hear how fasting, silence, and vigilance serve the formation of a prayerful mind. We will discuss all of these in articles to come. One important point worth noting, though, is that the liturgy of the Church contains what is good in all the various forms of prayer. The Eucharist is the center of the spiritual life, and the liturgy is the school of prayer. The Mass, for example, is where we learn to Behold the Lamb of God. At Mass, we learn to stand before the living God and give him everything. We grow in prayerfulness when we learn to stand before the living God and give him everything all day long.
Prayerfulness is a wonderful thing, but it takes time to acquire a prayerful mind. The process has a humble beginning in petitionary prayer. Petitionary prayer, in fact, has a special role in the spiritual life – a role often forgotten. So, we will consider the special place of petitionary prayer in the next article.
[1] Saint Theophane the Recluse in The Art of Prayer An Orthodox Anthology. Translated by E. Kadloubovsky. Edited by Timothy Ware. (New York; Farrar, Staus, Giroux, 1997): p.70-1
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Father James Dominic Brent, O.P. is a Dominican Friar who lives and teaches at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Father’s House: Discovering Our Home in the Trinity. His podcast is called Contemplata — a podcast for contemplative souls. He posts select homilies, spiritual conferences, interviews, and radio spots on on his personal Soundcloud site. He frequently lectures for the Thomistic Institute, and appears on Aquinas 101.
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