An important principle in the spirituality of St. John of the Cross is that we should not be overly concerned about the feelings that are stirred up when we pray. To the person struggling to pray, who is fighting distractions and harried by unwelcome thoughts, this can be a hard principle to embrace. It is indeed very sweet to find prayer relaxing and peaceful. We might start to believe that pleasant feelings are a natural accompaniment to prayer and a sign that it is going well. This expectation can lead to disappointment, when prayer feels more like a battle.
Well-formed Christians know that love is not a feeling. To love is to will the good of the other, as other. It’s important to understand this because love is in the will. Yes, love can be attended by wonderful feelings, and a chorus of joyful and exuberant inner voices, and praise God for that. But real love persists, even when the chorus falls silent, and the cost of love is dire.
Prayer, like love, is sometimes glorious, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes ordinary, sometimes shot through with fire.
In our time and culture, the pattern of courtship usually follows the impulses and excitement of romantic love. The truer term is eros, which comes into English as “erotic.” Unfortunately, our wounded culture has so deformed the meaning of that term that it seems unsavory: It isn’t something that should be a feature of a healthy courtship, still less of a pious religious faith. But, surprisingly perhaps, this reticence about eros is an impediment to holiness, as any pious reader of “The Song of Songs” will quickly realize. More on that, much more, at another time.
We are made for this kind of love, though life doesn’t always make it accessible. In a poignant and memorable scene from the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye the dairyman is up in the morning, getting ready for another day of not-very-rewarding labor. He and his wife Golde are troubled: one of their daughters wants to marry a man who is considered not suitable. But she loves him. Ruminating on this idea, Tevye turns and poses the question. “Golde: Do you love me?”
Golde and Tevye did not marry for love. They met on their wedding day, in an arranged marriage. Her answer to the question is complicated. She begins with a rather testy recitation of some of the labors and sorrows she has endured in her marriage to the faithful but hapless Tevye. Clearly, any tender feelings she has for her husband are not close to the surface. Tevye persists, she balks, and they eventually end their back-and-forth musical conversation when they realize they do love each other, in a way. They have taken care of each other through everything life has thrown at them. “If that isn’t love,” Golde asks, “what is?”
No one listening to their reflection on love and marriage would describe it as joyful–faithful, certainly, and that is something. But there also is something missing.
This is the challenge for anyone earnestly pursuing a life of holiness: Not to be satisfied only with a pattern of pious and worthy practices, like Golde, arising with a sigh each morning to boil the breakfast, wash the clothes, and sweep the house. The chores must be done. But we must somehow remember that we are not working in a hovel but in the palace of a King.
In The Ascent of Mount Carmel, St. John of the Cross teaches us that progress in prayer requires that we take up the duties and, yes, the burdens of love. He is famous for his admonitions that we must wean ourselves from attachment to the consolations that make prayer seem easy, just as infants must be weaned from sweet milk, so they can grow strong on solid food. The stripping away of these attachments is essential for progress. In practical terms, this means remaining faithful even when, like Golde, we don’t have much of a heart for it.
Likewise, the difficult work of separating from attachments must be undertaken. But make no mistake: St. John does not want merely to bring me close to a true understanding of my flawed and broken self. He also is bringing me close to the fire, to the “living flame of love, that tenderly wounds my soul in the deepest center.”
Prayer of course takes diligence. Dan Burke commented recently that, if someone asked him what is the one secret to progress in prayer, he would say: Just show up, every day. It’s so true, but it’s not very poetic. It is an admonition to be faithful. It takes determination, even stubbornness. St. John of the Cross would heartily agree. Yet we must remember that we are not only developing a good habit. We are entering into a relationship with the Holy Spirit, Who wants to light in us a “flame of love. … And this flame the soul feels … as a fire that has consumed and transformed it in sweet love, but also as a fire which burns within it and sends out flame … and that flame bathes the soul in glory. …” Living Flame of Love, Stanza I, paragraph 3.
It might make sense to think of the life of prayer as the work of preparing the sacrifice, like Elijah on Mount Carmel. I only prepare, by readying my heart, through penances and mortifications and the slow, hard work of conversion. God sends the fire.
________________________________________________________________
Image: Unsplash
