Jesus taught and practiced prayer. He taught his disciples that prayer is to be practiced in private (Matthew 6:6). Jesus himself would often withdraw into solitude to pray (Luke 5:16). Sometimes he would do this very early in the morning (Mark 1:35). He was praying at the time of the transfiguration (Luke 9:29), and he would spend all night in prayer before important events (e.g. Luke 6:12, Luke 22:39-45). He may have regarded one hour as a reasonable minimum for prayer (Matthew 26:40). His vocal prayers have a strong petitionary and intercessory theme (Matthew 6:9-13, John 17). However, he did not regard the use of many words as important (Matthew 6:7).
Guigo II a Carthusian monk and prior of Grande Chartreuse in the 12th century described how reading the Bible is related to prayer in four stages. He called the four steps lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio.
The Cloud of Unknowing (1) was written in England in the 14th century by an anonymous author. It is a concise and practical primer on contemplative prayer. The author’s premise is that God can be known only with the heart. The practice of simply loving God without images or thoughts about God is sometimes called apophatic prayer.
St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) practiced silent prayer for periods of one hour at a time. In her Life she recounts that she found it very difficult for the first several years. She had no one to teach her and taught herself from the instructions given in a book, The Third Spiritual Alphabet by Francisco de Osuna. Her starting point was the practice of “recollection.” Recollection means an effort of the will to keep the senses and the intellect in check and not allow them to stray hither and thither. One restricts the attention to a single subject, principally the love of God. “It is called recollection because the soul collects together all the faculties and enters within itself to be with God,” she says in The Way of Perfection. Because St Teresa found it difficult to concentrate, she would use devices such as short readings from an inspiring book, a scene of natural beauty, or a religious statue or picture to remind her of her intended focus. In due course the mind becomes effortlessly still. The initial practice St Teresa viewed as the voluntary effort of the individual, while the subsequent stillness and joy she saw as gifts from God.
Brother Lawrence (c. 1605-1691) was a lay brother in a Carmelite community in Paris, where he worked in the kitchen. He developed a spirituality of being aware of God in the midst of everyday activities. His writings were collected together to form a book titled The practice of the presence of God.
Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717). French mystic and writer. As a 19-year-old she was greatly influenced by an encounter with a Franciscan priest who had just emerged from a five-year retreat. She asked him why she was having such difficulties with prayer, and he replied: “It is, Madame, because you seek without what you have within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and there you will find Him.” In her mid-thirties Madame Guyon wrote her Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison, which in English is titled A short and very easy method of prayer. It is an exceptionally clear, vivid and concise primer on how to pray. (Note that the book Experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ, which poses as a translation, is in fact an interpretive revision.)
Dom Vital Lehodey (1857-1948) was a Cistercian monk and abbot of Notre Dame de Grace near Bricquebec, France. He wrote in The Ways of Mental Prayer (1907): “As time goes on, and we make progress, we shall feel drawn to a more simple form of prayer in which the mind begins to be silent in order to let the heart speak.” This is sometimes called affective prayer.
St Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio)’s American friend Mary Pyle reported that the Capuchin friar (1887-1968) prayed the Rosary up to 35 times a day. A legend that first appears about 1470 has it that the practice of the Rosary began in 1214 when the Blessed Virgin appeared to St Dominic in a cave and told him to say the prayer, “Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, [Jesus]” i.e. an adaptation of Luke 1:28 and 1:42. The extra line in today’s “Hail Mary” was authorized by Pope Pius V in 1568.
Dom John Main (1926-1982) learned mantra meditation from Swami Satyananda in Malaya. Swami Satyananda told him he must do “Christian meditation” and so John Main used the mantra “Maranatha,” which is Aramaic for “Come, Lord,” as in I Corinthians 16:22 and Revelation 22:20. Dom John Main later found parallels with John Cassian’s (4th century) mention of the repetition of a short verse as a focus for prayer. Fr Laurence Freeman continues Dom John Main’s work.
Fr Thomas Keating and Fr Basil Pennington teach a contemplative form of prayer named “Centering Prayer.” Here a sacred word is used only to express the intention to be in God’s presence. The other part of the practice is a progressive letting go of the individual’s psychological baggage. Centering Prayer draws on The Cloud of Unknowing and was developed from that work by Fr William Meninger.
HH John Paul II noted (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 2000) that people in traditionally-Christian countries are now being attracted to other religions for the prayer and meditation practices they offer. Taking a fresh look at the Rosary (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 2002) is part of the church’s response to this.
Threads: Spiritual Practice