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Brookline Carmel Bulletin
April 9, 1961
Cogitatio Sancta
(Holy
Meditation)
In the way of beginners,
it is necessary that a man give himself seriously and perseveringly to certain
indispensable exercises: examination of
conscience, sacramental confession, penance and mortification. Otherwise he can never hope to achieve the
goal of the first stage of his spiritual journey: complete and permanent withdrawal from sin. He is not required to give himself so
assiduously to prayer, the characteristic exercise of the more advanced stages,
it is true, but neither can he afford to neglect it. For, in the words of Our
Lord, we need to ‘pray always’. In
fact, there is incumbent upon him a very special obligation to pray, one that
is imposed by the very psychological consequences of abandoning sin.
After a sinner has made a
complete break with sin, he cannot help feeling that the bottom has dropped out
of his world. In pretty much the same
way as the man who has had his legs kicked out from under him, he experiences a
terrible let-down; he has nothing to support him; there is nothing for him to
cling to. A sinner is a man who either
knowingly or unknowingly seeks to find the fulfillment of his profound and
legitimate longings exclusively in creatures and creature comforts. These he has made the sole support of his
soul, and upon them he pours out all the affections of his heart. When he gives up sin, therefore, it is
inevitable that a feeling of emptiness and loneliness begins to dawn within
him, and he begins to yearn for his old, familiar way of life. It had become like old wine to which his
palate had become accustomed, and in which he used to take great delight. Our Lord referred to this phenomenon when He
said, “And no man, after drinking old wine, immediately desires new; for
he says, ‘The old is better’.” (Luke 5,
39). Thus, as pointed out when speaking
of mortification, a man in this state of soul is in great danger of lapsing
back to his former habits. If he does,
it will be almost impossible for him to overcome them again. This explains why, at the very outset of the
spiritual life, God is accustomed to grant spiritual sweetness and
consolation. They compensate for the
lack of corporal delights until such time as one has become habituated to
living without his sins, and the possibility of turning back has become
correspondingly slimmer. But
eventually, even these disappear and long periods of desolation return. It is then that he must turn to prayer as
the only adequate remedy.
When he becomes acutely
aware of his need for support, and for someone or something upon which to
center his affections, then there is no recourse open but to turn to God and
direct his longings and affections towards Him. For he has already been convinced that creatures cannot give him
the fulfillment he craves. This may be
the least he is able to do in the midst of his struggles, but it is enough, for
the mere turning toward God and reaching out to Him with the desires is the
essential element of all forms of prayer.
The best way to escape the
occasions of former sins is to make a complete break with one’s
environment. If a man cannot enter upon
a new way of life or go to live far from his former haunts, then his need for
prayer is even greater. In that case he
would have to detach his heart from his erstwhile sins while still obliged to
continue frequenting the persons, places and things that occasioned them. This is especially true when his sins
consist of disorderly love for necessary creatures and usages, even though they
are not as heinous as attachment to unnecessary ones. So he has to pray and pray explicitly for the light and strength
he needs to keep his affections from getting tangled up in them all over
again. He has to beseech God earnestly
and persistently for the grace to win a complete victory over sin.
These considerations help
us to understand St. John Damascene’s classic definition of Prayer: An ascent of the mind to God, or, asking
of God seemly (fitting) things. When we raise
our minds to God we are acknowledging Him as the unique source and fountainhead
of all that is good and lovable. When
we ask Him for seemly things we implicitly profess Him to be the Lord and
Master of our destiny, the One Who holds supreme dominion over us, upon Whom
we are dependent for all our needs. It
tells us, in other words, that prayer is an act of worship. As such, it is diametrically opposed to sin,
which is a kind of idolatry. It is
idolatry to ascribe to a mere creature a perfection or attribute that is found
in God alone, or to expect to obtain from a creature what God alone can give.
That is exactly what every mortal sin does.
The man who abandons sin has to pray because that is the only way he
can open his empty heart to God.
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