Holiness of Life by St. Bonaventure

[Stone]

CHAPTER V: THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER

The religious whose heart is cold and tepid leads a wretched and useless life; nay, the tepid religious, the religious who does not pray fervently and assiduously, scarcely lives at all. His body lives, but in the sight of God it harbors a dead soul. It follows then that prayerful habits are essential if the spouse of Christ is to achieve her desires and advance towards perfection. The practice of prayer is a virtue of such efficacy that of itself it can completely subdue all the cunning devices of its implacable enemy, the devil. It is the devil and the devil alone who prevents the servant of God from soaring above herself even unto the heavens. There is, then, no reason for surprise that the religious who is not devoted to the practice of constant prayer succumbs frequently to temptation.

St. Isidore realised this truth, for he says: “Prayer is the remedy when temptations to sin rage in the heart. Whenever you are tempted to sin, pray, and pray earnestly. Frequent prayer renders powerless the assaults of vice” (S. Isid. III Sent, viii, I.) Our Lord gives similar advice in the Gospel: “Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation” (Matt xxvi, 41.)

Devout prayer is so powerful that it enables a man to win whatever he wants. Winter and summer, when times are stormy, when times are fair, night and day, Sunday and Monday, in days of health, in the hour of illness, in youth and old age, standing, sitting and walking, in choir and out of choir: in a word, never need the efficacy of prayer fail. Indeed, at times, more than the very world itself its worth may be gained by one hour of prayer. By one little devout prayer it is possible for a man to gain Heaven.

I shall now discuss the nature of prayer. Probably, in this matter I am more in need of information than you are! Still, insofar as the Lord inspires me, I shall tell you in what way and manner you should pray.

I would have you know, O worthy handmaid of God, that three conditions are requisite for perfect prayer. When you settle down to pray, close your senses to every sensation, and with your body and soul absolutely intent on what you are doing, ponder in silence with a sorrowful and contrite heart on all your past, present, and possible wretched efforts. Reflect seriously, in the first place, on the many grave sins you have committed from day to day. Call to mind how you have neglected so many opportunities for doing good—opportunities that came your way since your entrance into religion, and opportunities that were given you before you took the veil. Think of the many and wonderful graces you have lost (Cf. St. Bonaventure, The Threefold Way, II, 2.) Once you were near to God; realise how today sin keeps you far from Him. Bring home to yourself the fact that you have become unlike to God, yet there was a day when you were conformed to His very image and likeness. Your soul was once beautiful; today it is ugly and foul. Think on these facts.

Now turn your thoughts on what the future has in store for you. Whither will sin eventually “lead you”? “To the very gates of hell!” Remember that there is “a day of “dreadful “judgment.” What is likely to befall you? Do not forget “the eternal fires of hell” (S. Bern. Medit.) How will your sins be punished?

Your reflection should move you to strike your breast with the humble publican (Cf. Luke xviii, 13.) “Groaning in heart, you should cry out your sorrow” (Cf. Ps xxxvii, 9) with the Prophet David, and in company with Mary Magdalene you should “wash the feet” of the Lord “with your tears” (Cf. Luke vii, 38.) There should be no end to your tears, for beyond all bounds have you offended your sweet Jesus by your sins.

St. Isidore gives similar advice. “When we pray to God, we should pray with groaning and weeping. This is possible if, when at prayer, we remember the sins we have committed, their exceptional gravity, and the awful torments we have deserved to suffer on account of our sins. Fear of those dread torments will enable us to pray with genuine sorrow” (S. Isidore, III Sent, vii, 5.)

In this way we should begin our prayer. We should start our prayer with tears that spring from sincere regret and earnest fear.

Thanksgiving is the second requisite. Blessings received from God should call forth the humble thanks of the spouse of Christ. So too, should she thank God in all humility for the benefits yet to accrue to her. In his epistle to the Colossians St. Paul lays stress on this part of prayer: “Be instant,” he says, “in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving” (Col. iv, 2.) Nothing makes a man so worthy of God’s gifts as the constant offering of thanks to God for gifts received.

Writing to Aurelius, St. Augustine touches on this matter. “What better thoughts,” he asks, “can we have in our minds, what better sentiments in our hearts than those of thanksgiving to God? What better words are given us to utter or to write than Deo Gratias? The idea of due thanksgiving could not be expressed in fewer words. What other words could give greater pleasure? No other two words are so full of meaning. What more profitable than their use?” (S. Aug. Ep. xli.)

You must meditate, you must pray with a grateful heart. Thank God because He made you. Thank Him because He raised you to the Christian state. Thank God because He has forgiven you so many sins. Thank Him because, had He not taken care of you, you would have fallen much lower (Cf. S. Bern. Serm. ii in 6 Sund. after Pent.) Thanksgiving is due from you because God has taken you out of the world; thanks to Him you will die in religion. You should thank God because He has chosen you to live the life of a religious in the highest and most perfect religious state. You have no worry, nor any anxiety. He keeps you from harm, comforts you, and gives you all that you need.

Further motives for continual thanksgiving on your part arise from the fact that God took to Himself a human nature and became man for your sake. It was for you that He was circumcised and baptized. For you He lived His poor life. For you He went poorly clothed, was humbled and despised. All His fastings, hungers, thirst, labours, and fatigues He endured for your sake. For you He wept. Love for you prompted Him to give you His Most Holy Body to eat and His Most Precious Blood to drink. In anguish for you He bled from His very pores in the Garden. For you He was struck in the face, spat upon, mocked and scourged. For love of you He was fastened to the cross. He was wounded for your sake. He was done to death by the most cruel and agonizing crucifixion because of His love for you.

It was because He so loved you that He paid such a price for your redemption. He was buried, He rose from the dead, He ascended into Heaven, and He sent the Holy Spirit into the world simply because of His promise to give you and His chosen ones the Kingdom of Heaven. Such motives should be sufficient inducement to you to make your prayer an act of thanksgiving. Remember too, that while acts of gratitude render prayer immeasurably efficacious, all prayer is valueless without the element of thanksgiving. “Ingratitude,” says St. Bernard, “is a parching wind which dries up the sources of piety, the dew of mercy, and the streams of grace” (S. Bern. Serm. li on the Canticle of Cant.)

This brings me to the third requisite of perfect prayer. You must in the act of prayer occupy yourself with and think of nothing else but what you are doing. It ill becomes a man to speak to God with his lips while in heart and mind he is far away from God. To pray half-heartedly—giving, say, half one’s attention to what one is doing and the remaining half to some business matter or other—is no prayer at all. Prayers made in such a way as this never reach the ear of God. In the 118th Psalm there occurs the following line: “I cried with my whole heart: hear me, O Lord” (Ps. cxviii, 145.) St. Augustine discovers in this passage the implication that “a heart divided obtains nothing” (S. Aug. on same verse, Serm. xxix.)

When at prayer, the servant of God should recollect herself and, taking her heart to herself, banish from it all solicitude for things of earth. Earthly desires should be put aside and all love of friends and family forgotten. All her thoughts and affections should be turned inwards and she should give herself up wholly to the God to whom she prays.

Your spouse, Our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, gave this counsel in the Holy Gospel: “But thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber and, having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret” (Matt, vi, 6.) “To enter into your chamber” means to recall and gather into the very inmost recesses of your heart all your thoughts, all your desires, and all your affections. You have “shut the door” when you have your heart so well under control that no thought or wandering fantasy can thwart you in your devotions.

St. Augustine’s definition of prayer makes all this evident. “Prayer,” he says, “is the raising or turning of the mind to God by means of loving and humble acts of affection” (S. Aug., The Holy Spirit and the Soul, 50.)

Let me exhort you, most good Mother and handmaid of Jesus Christ, to “incline your ear to the words of my mouth.” (Cf. Ps. xliv, ii; Ps. lxxvii, I.) Do not be misled. Do not be deceived in any way. Do not allow the sure and great fruits of prayer to slip from your grasp; do not throw away and so destroy the sweets of prayer. Let not the delights you may drink to the full in prayer be drunk to no purpose. Prayer is the well out of which sanctifying grace is drawn from the spring of the overflowing sweetness of the Most Blessed Trinity.

The Holy Prophet David, who knew all about this, said, “I opened my mouth, and panted” (Ps. cxviii, 131.) “David meant,” says St. Augustine, “I opened my mouth in prayer, I begged by prayer. With reiterated prayers I knocked at the door of Heaven, and thirsting for the grace of God I panted and drew in that heavenly grace” (S. Aug. on the same Psalm.)

I have already told you what prayer is, but I will tell it to you again. “Prayer is the raising or turning of the mind to God.” Pay attention to what I am about to say if you wish to learn how to raise or turn your mind to God.

When you give yourself to prayer, you must recollect yourself and with your Beloved enter into your secret heart and there occupy yourself with Him alone. Forget everything else and with all your mind, heart, affections and desires, with all the devotion possible, lift yourself out of and above yourself (Cf. Lamentations, iii, 28.) Take care not to allow your mind to become remiss, but endeavour constantly, by the burning ardour of devotion, to mount upwards till you enter “into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God” (Ps. xli, 5.)

There, when with the eye of your soul you have caught sight of your Beloved, you should in one way and another “taste that the Lord is sweet” (Ps. xxxiii, 9), and learn how great is “the multitude of His sweetness” (Ps. xxx, 20.) You should rush to your Lover’s embrace, and kiss Him with the lips of tenderest love. Then, indeed, will you be lifted out of yourself. You will be rapt even up to Heaven. You will be transformed wholly into Christ. At last, unable to restrain the raptures of your soul, you will exclaim with David, “My soul refused to be comforted. I remembered God and I was delighted” (Ps. lxxvi, 3, 4.)

There are three ways in which the soul may be transported out of herself and elevated even unto God. In order then, dear mother, that you may learn how the heart may be lifted up higher and higher, and how prayer may inflame our love for God still more, I shall discuss these three methods.

A surpassing intensity or excess of devotion is one. Deeply rooted, ever-increasing, admiring love is another. The third is exceeding great, exulting joy.

As for the first, it happens at times that owing to excess of devotion “the soul cannot contain herself. She is lifted up, rapt out of herself and finally becomes transformed. When we are set alight by so great a fire of heavenly desire that everything of earth is changed into bitterness and becomes distasteful to us, and at the same time the fires of the love of our inmost heart increase in intensity beyond measure, the soul melts as though she were wax. She in some way becomes dissolved, and like the fumes of fragrant incense she mounts high, until at length she gains her freedom away on the topmost summits of Heaven” (Richard of St. Victor.) When this happens we are compelled to exclaim with the Prophet David: “My flesh and my heart have fainted away. Thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion forever” (Ps. lxxii, 26.)

Secondly, elevation of soul may also be brought about as follows: “An ever-increasing, admiring love frequently brings to the mind such floods of Divine Light and overwhelms the soul with such a realisation of the Divine Loveliness that she becomes bewildered. Struck to her very foundations she loses hold of the body. Just as the deeper a streak of lightning strikes the quicker it mounts, so is it with the soul in the condition just described. The more such a soul discounts herself and sinks in self-abasement at the presence of God’s most admirable loveliness, so much the higher and quicker does she rise. The greater the ardour of her loving, admiring desires, the higher does she ascend. She is carried out of herself until she is elevated even to the topmost heights” (Richard of St. Victor.) There, like another Esther, she bursts forth into a paean of praise. “I saw Thee, My Lord,” she exclaims, “as an Angel of God; and my heart was troubled for fear of Thy Majesty, for Thou, My Lord, art very admirable; and Thy Face is full of graces” (Esth. xv, 16, 17.)

Finally, a similar transport occurs when exceeding, exulting joy takes possession of the soul. “When the soul has drunk of an abundance of interior sweetness and is completely inebriated with delight, she forgets altogether what she is and what she was. There and then she is transformed. She is thrown into a state of supernatural love, and is rapt into a marvelous, bliss-producing ecstasy” (Richard of St. Victor.) With the Psalmist in transport she sings: “How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts. My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God” (Ps. lxxxiii, 23.)

Thus is it that the servant of God should train herself in the practice of fervent prayer. Frequent prayer, the frequent use of prayer will teach her and render her fit to contemplate things divine. The eye of a heart purified and washed by prayer can see the things above. Purified by frequent prayer the soul comes to taste and to enjoy the sweets of God.

It is not becoming for a soul fashioned after and stamped with God’s image to fritter away her time busying herself with earthly cares. A soul redeemed by Christ’s Precious Blood and made for eternal happiness ought “to ascend even above the Cherubim and fly upon the wings of the wind” (Cf. Ps. xvii, ii), that is, the wings of the Angels. She ought to ascend high and contemplate the Most Holy Trinity and Christ’s Sacred Humanity. She should meditate on the glory of the citizens of the city above, and ponder on the happiness of the Angels and Saints.

Tell me, who today explores into the regions of heavenly glory? Who are they that in heart and soul pass their time thinking on the things above? They are the few. We may today with truth say even of many religious what St. Bernard said: “Many who should have been devoutly penetrating the heavens, viewing there the many mansions, holding converse with the apostles and the prophets and assisting in wonder at the triumphs of the martyrs, instead find themselves as base slaves to the body, serving the flesh and pampering its gluttonous desires” (S. Bern. Serm. xxxv on the Canticle of Cant., 3.)