PRAYER AND SPIRITUALITY

Lesson 2: The Stages of Prayer

School of Faith

Dr. Troy Hinkel, PhD

All right. We're on Lesson Two for our Prayer and Spirituality Class. Today
we're going to look at The Stages of Prayer, but more specifically, at
Contemplation. To study contemplation we need to do so in the Spirit, so let's
begin with prayer by placing ourselves in the presence of Almighty God in whom
we live and move and have our being, as we call upon him in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

O, Most Holy Spirit, pour forth on us your grace from the wounded side of
Jesus in the sacraments, through your Church, that we may receive you in
abundance. You've come to dwell in our soul, bringing your fruits and your
gifts so that as these get activated, you may pray in, with, and through us, in
Jesus to the Father.
Come and enkindle, our time together with your fire, with your love, come to
us through Mary, that she may dispose us to your will, that this time may be
blessed, that we may learn about this most beautiful and mystical form of
prayer so that we can practice our daily meditation with greater fervor.
Knowing that when you see fit, you will give us the grace of contemplation.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. Our Lady, Help of the
Christians, pray for us. Saint Joseph, patron of the interior life, pray for us. In
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today's lesson in Prayer and Spirituality, we're looking at contemplation. Saint

Teresa of Avila was asked by her spiritual director to write out as a kind of roadmap
for other Christians, the growth of prayer that she experienced in her spiritual life.
She called it “The Grades of Prayer.” In fact, this became a book called The
Interior Castle, which I encourage you to read. It's not easy. It's deep, but it's
beautiful. When I first read it, I was a graduate student and I thought, I have no idea
what I just read. I couldn't relate to it at all. But since then, I have read sections of it
and it has made a little more sense. . .nevertheless it is beautiful.

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Then, she in turn, had St. John of the Cross write his own, I guess you could say,
spiritual memoirs, because she was his spiritual director and their writings together
make up the Church’s understanding of what has been called “The Grades or
Stages of Prayer.” Those two are Doctors of the Church, which means that their
writings are so necessary and helpful for the church to understand prayer in the
spiritual life, that they've been given the title of Doctor, which is Latin for teacher.
They're considered the teachers of the spiritual life. So, they're the two main
sources, along with St Francis de Sales, another Doctor of the Church, for our
lesson today. So, three sources, mostly Teresa and John, but also Saint Francis de
Sales.

What is contemplation? That's our topic for today. Last lesson we talked about
meditation and for those of you who've had spiritual direction and been with
School of Faith for some time, you know that we're always talking about meditation
and the need for daily meditation. We'll talk a little bit more about that in today's
lesson, but the focus today is on contemplation - for what these great saints and
what our catechism teaches is, if we practice daily meditation well, we will be
prepared by the Holy Spirit for a particular gift, and this gift is what's known as
“Infused Contemplation.”

Whenever you hear that word "infused", think. . . “gift from God.” Something he
gives me; I don't acquire it through my effort. It's something he gives me like
Faith, Hope, and Love are the infused virtues and contemplation is infused
prayer. It's a kind of prayer that the Holy Spirit gives where we become more
passive and it's the Holy Spirit that becomes the actor and he begins to pray through
us and draws us to God and Jesus the Son. That's contemplation.

We're all called to this. This is a beautiful gift. It's a gift of great Faith and wonder,
but we will not receive it if:
• we do not practice daily meditation.
• If we do not receive the sacraments worthily
• and really grow in our devotion.
• And if we don't work on rooting out sin by growing in virtue.

When we begin doing those things, those are all our efforts. The Holy Spirit will
lead us through that phase of our spiritual life. And it is a phase. And once he
deems that we're ready, he'll infuse contemplation in us and we'll begin
experiencing this form of prayer.
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So, let's look at #2709 from the Catechism.

What is contemplative prayer?

Saint Teresa, meaning Saint Teresa of Avila, answers:

“Contemplative prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than a close sharing between

friends. It means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves
us.”

And then it goes on to explain various aspects of contemplation.

CCC #2713 mentioning that it's a gift. CCC #2714, mentioning that it's this intense
time of prayer where the Father strengthens our inner being and so as Christ begins
to dwell in our souls, does so in a new dimension through the power of the Holy
Spirit. And then, CCC # 2715 mentions it as this gaze.

So, think of times when you're with a loved one - could be a spouse, a child, a baby,
a grandchild, a best friend - someone where you are spending time together and
you're not necessarily saying anything vocal. You're just being together. And in that
being together, you're enjoying that time and that time is very intense because
there's an intense sharing of being - my being with your being - and we're together
sitting on that porch swing or whatever on that Saturday evening in the cool breeze,
whatever the experience may be. Those are powerful experiences. Or when we're
holding a baby and the baby's asleep in our arms and our love is just pouring forth
into that baby who's obviously receiving it as the baby nestles into us. These are
human experiences we have where we have a very profound connection in our
being with another person. God wants that same connection with us.

That's contemplation, a deep personal connection. Whereas with us it is personal,

physical contact with one another, sitting close together, nuzzling the child, holding
hands, whatever. With God, he already dwells in our soul. So, St. Teresa calls it this
"interior gaze". I mentioned to you the name of her book, “Interior Castle”, interior
is the operative word here because the Holy Spirit already dwells within us.

It's a moving within ourselves and discovering God there and then our being
already being united with his being; we're being opened up to this new experience
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that's infused and given. So, our notes say that “Contemplation is a real awareness
of God, desiring him and loving him.”

We do not produce this experience but rather receive it when we're ready for it.
And here I have a quote from Psalm 36:8. This comes from the Vulgate. By the
way, do you know what the Vulgate is? You heard of that? The Vulgate? The
Vulgate is the name given to the translation of the Greek scriptures and the Hebrew
scriptures into Latin. St Jerome did this in the fourth century. He moved to the
Holy Land. He studied Hebrew and he already knew Latin. And so what he did is,
he translated the scriptures into Latin because that language was the language of the
day. Then that Latin translation of the scriptures was eventually translated into
English, and we call it the Vulgate.

And so, this is the Vulgate translation of Psalm 36:8. We read,

"They shall be inebriated with the riches of thy house and you shall give them to
drink from the torrent of thy pleasure".

Isn't that beautiful? “They shall be in inebriated with the riches of thy house and
you shall give them to drink from the torrent of thy pleasure”. In today's Mass
we're reading from John's Gospel and Jesus was talking about how he's going to
give us his joy so that our joy may be complete. He gives us his joy in us. So, the
sign that God, now through Christ, has bequeathed to us, all that the Lord has to
give so we can receive all that Jesus has to offer us. And what do we want? Him.

That's really what we want, Him. And when he gives himself to us, look at these
words - inebriated. What do you think of when you hear the word inebriated?
Drunk? He's going to make us drunk with the riches of his house and what are we
drinking? The torrent. It's a torrent. It's a fire hydrant shooting out at us. And what
is it? His own pleasure, his own joy. So we begin to experience infinite joy.

In this life, we experience joy and pleasure and happiness through various created
means. . . you know, birth of children, family get togethers, vacations, coming
together, you know, for school of faith classes. We receive all kinds of joy from
these things. These are but mere exposures and expressions in this created world of
what the Lord wants to give us in an infinite way. We begin enjoying this infinite
pleasure in contemplation. That's what this prayer is. That's why we want to work
towards it.
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So, it is a gift from God. So, how do we get this beautiful gift then? Because if it's
infused, if it's given, it's not something we're going to acquire. We acquire a taste
for prayer and an ability to meditate by practicing daily meditation. That's what we
acquire. When the Holy Spirit sees we're ready, he gives us this gift. So how do we
get it? Well, persevering through daily meditation.

And next, by rooting out as best we can, our own sinful habits and replacing those
with virtues and thus striving to live a more generous life and the virtuous life. As
we begin really working on our spiritual life that's how we receive this gift. This
gift is none other than the gifts of the Holy Spirit that had been put in us already.
We already have the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They're put in us at baptism, but they
remain latent until we activate them. And once we begin growing in holiness, they
slowly get activated and once they're fully activated, we're going to start
experiencing contemplation because the Holy Spirit is now active in us.

His movements become our movements. His thoughts become our thoughts. His
prayer becomes our prayer. The Holy Spirit begins moving through us and yet, not
to the point where we lose our own freedom, not to the point where our own
personality is abolished. That's Buddhism. That's their goal. That's not our goal. Our
personality becomes fully what it's created to be. Jesus says, “I come that you may
have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). This full life comes in, with and
through him. So as the Holy Spirit gets activated and starts moving in, with, and
through us, we actually become more of what we're created to be. We become
actually the person we are created to be.

We find our self by losing ourselves. Isn't this what Jesus says? “He who seeks to
save his life will lose it. He who loses his life for my sake will save it and find it”
(Matthew 10:39). So, this is given to us. It's not the result of human effort.
Although we do need to put in the effort for meditation and then the Lord will give
us this prayer. One of the analogies that St. Thomas Aquinas uses, and I think St.
Teresa of Avila used it too, is the analogy of rowing a boat to get from destination
A to destination B on the sea. You can row. That's meditation. We're putting in our
effort versus sailing - where all we do is hoist the sail and the wind blows us there.
That's contemplation. Meditation - we're the ones doing the rowing. Contemplation
- the sail is up and the spirit is blowing and moving us from point A to point B.

So the Lord wants to lead all souls to this beautiful gift. This is the universal call to
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sanctity. This means that all of us are called to this prayer. This is not just for
priests, monks, nuns, cloistered people, people who live alone in a cave. Yes, it's for
them too. But it's for you and me to gain this. This is for us. Jesus bequeathed this
prayer to his whole church and we can all experience it. For a lay person it's going
to come differently than from a cloistered person obviously. For us, it comes by
doing our duties in our state in life, well. So being a mom, being a wife, being a
teacher, being a lawyer, being a doctor, whatever you're called to be and doing that
well, doing all the details of our state in life well; and offering that up to the Lord.

That is how we live our life generously in virtue. Daily meditation, receiving the
sacraments frequently and devotionally. This is how then we begin to taste this
prayer. Our Lord said to Blessed Angela of Foligno - and you can hear the parallel
between this quote and Psalm 36 - he said to her, "Make of yourself a capacity and I
will make of myself a torrent." Make of yourself a capacity and I will make of
myself a torrent. Let's reread psalm 36:8. "They shall be inebriated with the richess
of thy house and you shall give them to drink from the torrent of thy pleasure".

Hopefully we're excited about this. So what we're going to do now is look at how
do we progress towards this? What does it look like if we could describe it? And
one thing on this, Teresa is describing it metaphorically and she's made it very clear
that as we progress in prayer, it isn't like we know it - like I've taken my spiritual
temperature and today I'm experiencing contemplation. Yesterday was just
meditation, today now I'm in contemplation. It's not like that. It's very fluid. And
obviously she was looking back on her life and thinking about the progress. It's not
something she noticed while it was happening. Look at our own growth. How we
move from adolescence into young adulthood and from young adulthood for most
of you, into adulthood. I'm still in my young adulthood, in my immaturity. It has its
advantages. Haha.

But we don't realize that, we don't notice the growth until we look back on it. And
then we can see, yes, I can see stages. Yeah, there might be the physical stage of
puberty, but when it comes to our internal maturity it's not something we
necessarily notice while we're growing through it. It's something we look back on
and realize. It's kind of like that as we're going through these various grades or
stages.

This first one is one identified by St. Francis de Sales. He calls it Affective Prayer,
I think, of affective as in terms of our affections. What does it mean to have
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affection for somebody? What does that mean? It means to have feelings for them.
So this stage of prayer is where the will predominates over the intellect. All right, so
for a meditation, how does it work? Well, with the lessons that we've given you,
we're applying our imagination. So let's say you're meditating on the rosary or the
stations of the cross (2 ancient forms of meditation).

We're using our imagination to put ourselves there with Jesus. So, in the Stations of
the Cross, you imagine him picking up his cross and stumbling with it and you're
there and what would you feel and what would it look like? What would you wish
to do? How would you want to help him? That's using our mind and that's very
good. That's where we begin with our meditation. Eventually that will give way to
what St. Theresa called “the surge of the heart” in CCC #2709.

And this close feeling between friends and knowing that you love that person and
that person loves you. Well, it begins in what St. Francis called the stage of
Affective prayer. This is not yet contemplation. This is still part of our meditation
and we can begin experiencing this. Maybe one day your mind is really working in
a very vivid imagination. Then the next day you suddenly feel this sense of just sit
and be more still. And you just have these feelings of love that are really bubbling
up in you for Jesus. That's Affective prayer. Like I said, I'm reiterating this. It isn't
like these are fixed grades and once you move through one, you don't experience it
again. It's more fluid where you're going to experience all of these simultaneously
or you can move through them or you'll experience this and you go back to
experiencing that, et cetera.

Just like our growing up is more fluid, you know, you can't really say at this
moment I'm matured and I never went back to those feelings again. You know? It's
more fluid than that and so too, with our growing in prayer. In this phase, the mind
may even find itself in distractions, but not lose this repose with God. We're also
going to deal with how to remedy distractions in today's lesson. We'll get there in
just a second.

So this is one level of prayer that St. Francis de Sales identified - Affective prayer.
Where he noticed in his daily meditation where suddenly his affections for the Lord
began to be more predominant than the mental component of the prayer. And
there'd be times where he could sit still for long moments, but just feel this
overwhelming love of God and this union with him.

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Next is Acquired Recollection. And some spiritual writers refer to this as natural
contemplation. St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross said, this level of prayer is the
highest level we can attain before the Holy Spirit infuses contemplation. So this
acquired recollection, what is it? The person is still the actor here, but experiences a
deep posture of repose, meaning that the interior faculties- imagination, feelings,
memory, vocalized conversation - are all directed toward a loving gaze without the
need for words. So it's a more intensified version of what we just said of Affective
Prayer where our affections are more intense and we're beginning to feel perhaps a
more magnetic draw to God at this stage. And now we're getting ready to
experience contemplation.

Once we are ready, the Holy Spirit is going to do something very profound. It's a
bridge. St. John of the Cross called it a bridge. He calls it the Dark Night of the
Senses. What other spiritual writers call the Passive Purgation of the Senses. What
does purgation mean? Cleansing, a burning away, a purification. It is also passive.
What does that mean? Not active. It's not us. So now we're beginning contemplation
once this begins to happen.

The Passive Purgation. What is it? This is an infused experience where we begin to
be seriously purified by the Holy Spirit of all of sensual attachments. Thus this is
prolonged. Now what do we mean by sensual attachments? Well, we don't realize,
when we like things, anything from food to drink to friendships to our car, our
comforts, our favorite pillow, our kitty, our music, our favorite TV station, our
sports, whatever - whatever we gain affection for in this life and its many things -
we don't realize how we can start to cling to them. We don't even notice it.

This clinging though means, if I'm clinging to it - like my fist is clenched - then I
can't grasp the Lord. . . if I'm clinging to something else. I've got to be willing to let
go of that, to grasp him with both hands, to have my heart open for him. Well, we
can't purify ourselves from these attachments. We're not even aware of them half
the time. He's aware and he purifies and so it begins with this phase. It's a way of
him fixing our excessive disordered attachments to created things that we cling to
without knowing. So here's some characteristics. It's a period of prolonged dryness
in prayer, much more intense and more difficult than typical dry periods that
everyone experiences along the way.

We all are going to experience dryness. I hear this all the time from people who
meet with me. “Well, I've been praying lately, but I feel like I'm priming a dry
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pump. I'm pumping and there's nothing coming out.” That's typical. The Israelites,
they leave Egypt, they go through the Red Sea, and then they wander for 40 years in
a desert, in a wilderness, where it's dry, desolate, they're hungry, they're lost, they
feel forsaken. That experience is put in the scriptures for a reason - to teach us about
our spiritual life, to teach us about our life on earth.

We pass through the Red Sea of Baptism. We're now being prepared for the
Promised Land, Heaven and we're going to experience the desert. So let's not be
surprised, but that is different than this. We're going to have our desert experiences
from time to time. St. Ignatius of Loyola pointed out, we move constantly from
what he called consolation to desolation, and from desolation to consolation. We're
always going to experience that, so don't be surprised at that. That's why we need to
persevere. However, this stage is a more pronounced and more profound dryness.
This is a purification whereby we're not the generator of this. We're not. This isn't a
result of our own mediocrity like the other dryness that we experience. This is
something that's infused from the Holy Spirit. God is testing our willingness to
persevere.

We can be tempted with sins that we thought we'd overcome years ago. Maybe
adolescent sins that suddenly begin re-presenting themselves after years of
dormancy. We think we're backsliding, but it's a time of testing. The Hebrew word
was "nasah" and it appears a lot in the book of Exodus and Numbers where the
Lord nasah, tests, the Israelites. What is he testing? Their perseverance. How
committed are they to him? How sure are they in their desire to walk their journey
to the promised land?

Well, he's going to test us and this occurs in a profound way in this phase. The soul
however knows that this is not generated by self - yet it is possible to withdraw
from this phase willfully by preferring consolations. So what do we do? Trust God.
. . knowing about this stage is going to help us.

And this is why we're going to need spiritual direction eventually. And as we
receive spiritual direction or mentorship, the person is going to help guide us
through this phase because we can get confused. Knowledge of this stage is going
to help us, but we're going to need another person to walk us through this because it
is hard and because this is a bridge phase and God is doing it for our own benefit
and we need to remember that.

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St. John doesn't give us a definitive timeframe. He doesn’t say, for example, “This
will last six months” or “This will last two weeks” or “This will last 10 years.”
He doesn't say that. So, I'm taking from that, that it depends on each soul. Each soul
is different. So, don't worry about it. I'm also going to say that we might be in this
phase for long time, but we will experience times of consolation, sort of a break in
the clouds before the clouds regather again, while we're in this phase. That will
happen too.

But we need it. We need it. And we're going to begin to see our need for it as we
grow in holiness. As we grow, we're going to see how our defects, our sins, our
will, evil inclinations, are tripping us up and we're going to get sick of it and we're
going to be ready. We're going to be ready for it. We're going to be ready to be
beyond it. And so that's what this phase does.

Once we begin moving through this phase then, then we began experiencing what's
called Infused Contemplation. Another name is “Mystical Prayer.” Do you know
what the term mystical means? Mystical. What does it mean? It means
supernatural, a power beyond our own realm or ability.

So this is a kind of prayer that only Christians achieve. And to my knowledge, only
Catholics, because we have the Eucharist. We have all the means at our disposal
that can help us get here. I'm not saying non-Catholic Christians don't experience it,
I just don't know. I know Catholics do. The saints, all the saints, experienced this
and all the saints made use of Confession and Eucharist and the spiritual tradition of
the church. The Lord has given us all we need. I'm not saying non-Catholic
Christians never get here. I just don't know. I do know that Catholics can, if we do it
right, we can get here.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit begin to be more operative here. And the gift of
Wisdom of the Holy Spirit begins to perfect the virtue of Charity. So as we begin
experiencing contemplation, the one true sign is we begin showing an ability of
charity (agape love – sacrificial love) that starts to go beyond the natural.

A person is able to love in situations where anyone else in that situation would not
respond in such a loving way. And we realize that and we see that in that person.
We say that's a holy person, right? That's a person that's being moved into a new
area, a mystical area of supernatural reality that's not normal for humans to
experience. This is pure gift, a pure sign of God and his dwelling among his
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people. St. John of the Cross called it “an invasion of the soul by the supernatural”.
And he says, we begin having divine insights, but these are not necessarily ordered.
So we have this new knowledge of God we begin to experience, but we can't really
put it into words.

Perhaps you've heard a piece of music or you've gone to see something and you say,
“I can't even begin to describe it for you, you just have to experience it for
yourself.” Maybe some of you have experienced that on your CRHP weekend or
something, you try to describe it but in the end, you realize, your words doesn't
really grasp what you experienced. Well, now imagine that with relationship to God
as he's revealing himself in this new way. And because of this, St. John said,
spiritual writers (particularly him) use metaphors to describe what they're
experiencing.

By the way, I don't know if you know this, St. John of the Cross is considered one
of the best Spanish poets of all time. He was a gifted poet in his own right, whether
he became a saint or not. Well, you can see why the Lord gave him that gift because
his writings do such a beautiful job of describing these mystical encounters with
God that otherwise would be inexplicable. And so like Jesus used parables, he uses
metaphors. But he said that the insights that we gain are not ordered and structured,
so it's even hard to do that. It's even hard to use metaphors.

All right, so this is Contemplation. And now from here on, what we're going to talk
about are grades that are different, that are slight nuances, than separate the
categories. Like I said, we want to be careful not to think in those terms. It's more
fluid than that. These are gentle nuances, differences in intensity.

The next grade or level of intensity, St. Theresa called the Prayer of Quiet. At this
stage, the awareness of God's presence captivates the will, although intellect
remains free. So the mind might still be thinking about other things, but while
you're in prayer, you sense that your will is engaged - your affections, your
freedom, your liberty - and is aimed towards the Lord in a union. . .you're
experiencing a deeper union.

St. John referred to these experiences as inebriations of love or burning delight. A

burning delight, so they're very delightful, there is a pleasure, there's an intensity of
affection that one experiences. And I'm sure if we think back to our own dating time
when we were first falling in love with our spouse, those burning delights that we
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had when we were with them, now we begin to start to experience this kind of love
for God, this inebriation of love (going back to Psalm 36).

Then we move into what's called the Passive Purgation of the Spirit, or the Dark
Night of the Soul. This is the second passive purgation, the second dark night. So,
the first one was aimed at purifying our sensual attachments. Then afterwards we
began to experience contemplation and then the prayer of quiet. Then when we're
ready, the Holy Spirit moves us through the second dark night, more intense and
more difficult than the first, called the dark night of the soul or the passive
purgation of the spirit.

So what happens here? Well, just like in the first purification where we're purified
from our sensual attachments, in this one we're purified from our spiritual
attachments and our involuntary distractions in prayer - like dullness, moments
of impatience, excessive zeal, excessive penances, even distractions - are perfected.
And here humility becomes the predominant virtue because we realize “I'm in God's
hands; he's big and I'm small. He is increasing and I am decreasing” like St. John
the Baptist realized.

And we begin to experience some real victories over pride. So if you've ever known
a holy person, I think that's the first two things you'll notice about them: 1. They're
truly humble and 2. they're very loving. That's a sign that they're experiencing
contemplation.

Our staff had the privilege for a week to have one on one time with the late Fr.
Thomas Dubay, who I think is a saint and will be canonized someday. He was a
profound spiritual writer, and in February of 2003 or 2004, I can't remember which
year it was, he spent a whole week with the staff at the St Lawrence Center. He
gave a mission in the evenings to the faculty and the parents of the community at
the St Lawrence Center. But, in the daytime, he gave a spiritual workshop to us and
we each got to spend an hour with him in spiritual direction that week. It was
fantastic! And one thing I noticed about him was, first, that he glistened. I don't
know how else to put it. He was old then, but he really just glistened like a young
person. He just had beautiful skin.

Second, he was very loving and compassionate. And third, very humble and very
austere. For lunch and dinner all he wanted was only a can of tuna. He'd dump it out
on a plate and cut it in half. He'd eat one half for lunch and the other half for dinner.
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That's all he wanted. Yeah. No wonder he glistened, he's filled with all that fish oil
and it was coming through the skin and see fish oil has its benefits for holy people
(LOL).

But he was a holy man and, and really that's when things began to change for us at
the St. Lawrence Center because it was soon after that that “The Apostles of the
Interior Life” came. Those two events coincided. That was in February. Then in
March the Apostles came and visited and then that by the end of March we knew
they were coming that fall and it just happened like that, a very beautiful spiritual
time. It changed my life personally, but also our ministry. And I guess you could
say that became the beginning of School of Faith because that's when the Lord
began moving us in this direction; we can trace this back to that time with Father
Dubay.

Alright, so humility reigns. And again, this is the bridge now, moving from what's
called contemplation into the phases of Unitive Prayer; and from here on, from the
Dark Night of the Senses, through Contemplation, Dark Night of the Soul, all the
way, the Holy Spirit is moving and we're just along for the ride.

All right, so what's this first Prayer of Union? It's called Prayer of Union. The
first in the Unitive Phase. This is a Mystical Prayer where the internal faculties are
captivated and occupied by God's presence. The internal faculties are the intellect,
will, memory, imagination and in this prayer of union they are captivated by God.
We see the fruit of this when we read the writings of the saints with their gushy,
ooey gooey love prayers that they write. There's one in here from St. John Vianney.
You read it and you might think, “Okay, I can't relate to that. That doesn't make
sense to me. How could someone be so gushy with their talk of God?”

Well, it's because they've been captivated by him at this phase and are now
experiencing love in such a way that we can't even begin to understand. Okay, here
it is. This is from CCC #2658. It is a prayer from St John Vianney. He says,

"I love you, oh my God, and my only desire is to love you until the last breath of
my life. I love you, oh my infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving you
than live without loving you. I love you Lord, and the only grace I ask is to love
you eternally. My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love you, I
want my heart to repeat it to you as often as I draw breath."

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Well, that's gushy and from a man. And yet, that's the kind of prayer that the saints
pray and that tells us they're experiencing something whereas their memory,
intellect, imagination, will are starting to be captivated by God. They're being
captivated by Divine Love itself because that's who and what God is - divine love
itself. They are becoming a “torrent of love.”

Supposedly, when Pope St. John Paul II would come out in front of crowds, his
reaction was to run out and embrace as many people as he could in one fell swoop
and his cardinals and people with him had to hold him back because after he got
shot, he was making it easy for another assassin. But he was impelled, he couldn't
help himself, he wanted to embrace and love everyon because it was overflowing in
his heart. This is a man who is experiencing these unitive phases of contemplative
prayer.

The writers mentioned an absence of weariness or tedium that sometimes

accompanies other grades of prayer. So, don't be surprised if sometimes you feel
very weary in your prayer and it's just tedious and burdensome to get through. That
is expected. That's typical. That's a common experience. We're not going to be free
from that until we get to this phase here.

So, this is it, we're talking about advanced stages of prayer. All right, so until then,
persevere. St. John of the Cross refers to these experiences as “fiery darts of divine
love.” He said you just feel like this dart hits your heart and sets your heart on fire.

The next phase is called Prayer of Conforming Union. Here's when even our
external senses are absorbed. Here we begin physically experiencing pleasures.
This is where ecstasy comes in. What is ecstasy? ECSTASIS is “to be called out
of,” to be outside of and in ecstasy. This is where a saint experiences a kind of out
of body experience. They feel drawn out of their body and suspended between
heaven and earth in this loving embrace of God. And the reason why this happens is
that their body is not yet incorporated into this prayer because the weakness of the
flesh has not yet been perfected. That comes at the last stage of prayer.

It can be very pleasurable, but even St. John of the Cross does say, that it can
sometimes be kind of painful because we're experiencing God in ways that are
overwhelming. He talks about feeling crushed in his marrow and the depth of his
bones. I guess it might be like that aunt who would hug you when you were a child

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and crack your back when she gave you that big hug and you thought “Oh great,
here comes Aunt Gladys again, to squeeze the crud out of me.”

The Lord is doing that to us as he draws us ever deeper into him. Our faculties are
becoming absorbed by God. That doesn't mean that we lose our freedom. It means
we actually gain it. We're actually experiencing the glorious release of true liberty
– the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:21). If you've ever broken
a bad habit, for example, if you were ever a smoker or a drinker or a gambler, that's
probably about all of you in here, right? Just kidding. Smoking, drinking,
gambling, fighting and cussing, and then you broke free. You know the feeling to
be free. Or if you've ever been in a, God forbid, a bad relationship, even a bad job
that you hated and then you break free, you're done and you move on. That great
feeling.

I remember when I got out of the army, I was driving away and looked at Fort
Bragg in my rearview mirror for about three seconds, and then I looked at the road
ahead and it was a feeling of exhilaration as I was finally free of that four years of
experience and felt great. Alright, well we're beginning to experience the liberty
from sin and a unity with God that is completely beyond this world. So you can
imagine the profound expressions of delight that can be experienced because the
operations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are now so active they no longer feel the
resistance of the will.

We've been so purified that God can live and move and desire, in, with, and through
us, with complete docility. Think of the Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was
utterly docile to the Holy Spirit, so she could accept watching her son be tortured on
the cross without losing faith. I don't know that I could have done that. But she was
able to do that because the Holy Spirit was able to move through her without any
resistance.

Then this last phase is called Transforming Union. St. John of the Cross calls this
nothing less than a transformation into God. He said, this is the most intimate
participation a soul can have in God, this side of death, and you lose all fear of
death because now you're experiencing God in such a powerful way. All you want
is to be with him. St. Paul says this, “Hey for me, I wish I were dead.” I'm
paraphrasing here, “But the Lord wants me to be alive on earth. I'll be alive on earth
until he says so, but for me, I'd rather be with him in heaven. That's my desire.”

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Well, that's an experience of this kind of prayer. The body, the weakness of the
body is replaced with greater strength. Thus there is now an absence of ecstasies.
The body itself begins to experience glory. So this is as glorious as we can become
short of our own resurrection, the height of sanctity.

As I said, these grades are not fixed; they are processes as we grow and mature in
them. St. Teresa was asked to write them down by her spiritual director to give us
kind of a roadmap. Will it look exactly like this for each of us in our own way?
Exactly? I don't know. It will look something like this. We may not recognize it as
such. It may be one of those things we'll have to look back on it and say, oh yeah,
okay, now I can see it. Certainly we're going to experience delights and
desolations in our prayer that will become more intensified as we grow in holiness
so that we can be strengthened and purified.

So any questions then on these experiences, these grades of contemplation and how
we progress through them?

Okay, then we'll look at distractions. Well, as I said, we're never going to get here
unless we practice daily meditation and one of the most common problems we
have is dealing with distractions. By the way, before I talk about that, something
popped in my head. We've got to be careful not to presume too quickly that we're in
contemplation. Be careful of spiritual pride. That's why we need a mentor, where
we might walk in and say “You know, I'm convinced I'm in the dark night of the
senses right now and I'm experiencing Contemplation.” The mentor might say, “No,
I'm not seeing that growth in virtue in your life. Maybe this is just a dryness due to
your own mediocrity.” Then we might be tempted to be disappointed. Well that's a
sign that our pride is starting to get inflated and we need that pinprick to deflate us.
So don't be too quick to presume.

When I was at the St. Lawrence Center, our students at KU would take these
classes, and some would come meet with me for spiritual direction and invariably
two, three weeks after class would come in and say: “I think I'm experiencing
contemplation.” I would respond, “Oh, are you now?” It's our natural desire. We
want to progress. We want it to be easy. Let's not be too quick to presume. We'll get
there, but we've got to put our nose to the grinding wheel and persevere.

Question from the class: You were saying that in each stage your will is still
involved. Is there a particular stage in which maybe your awareness of what's going
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on around you is subdued or you know where you're just taken up into prayer?

Answer from Troy: Yes. Where you're kind of impervious to what is going on
around you. Once we get into these unitive phases, that's where you'll read about
saints who floated or were sensibly impervious. I think of Blessed Pier Giorgio
Frassati who'd be lost in prayer. He'd be praying beneath the altar in Italy and
candle wax would pour on him and of course that's hot. It would get on his face and
on his hands, while he was praying beneath it and he wouldn't feel it. He'd wake up
with all this dried candle wax on him.

Or I think of Saint Catherine of Sienna where her sisters would stick her with a pin
to see if she was faking it and she wouldn't feel it. Or other such cases where the
saints would not be aware. Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, she'd go into prayer
and the the Indians, the Pottawatomie’s, would put corn kernels on the hem of her
skirt, of her habit and then they'd go to bed. Then they'd come back the next
morning before she'd awakened to see if she'd moved a muscle, because if she had,
the corn would be moved and it would still be there just as they placed it. So they
called her “she who prays always.” That's a person who's lost and absorbed in
prayer.

A lot of saints would get absorbed in prayer and, at times, that would replace sleep.
The prayer would be a kind of repose. It was better than sleep for them. That would
be the best kind of repose. And they would come out totally refreshed. I'm ready for
that being an insomniac. I can dig it. I'm ready for it. LOL.

So yes, that begins to happen as we start progressing through contemplation,

especially in those unitive phases where our own senses become impervious to our
surroundings and we can lose all track of time. We can be in prayer for hours and
not realize it. And this was a common thing for the saints too.

Distractions

Well, how are we going to get there? We need to know how to get there. So we
need to deal with distractions in our meditation. So let's see how we deal with this.
This is a common difficulty and we shouldn't be surprised or discouraged at our
distractions. So don't get down on yourself and beat yourself up and think “Oh, I'm
doing it again. I'm thinking about my bills to pay. I'm thinking about my kids. I'm

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thinking about school or I'm thinking about this Saturday or that thing or my car
needs the oil changed or whatever…”

This is going to happen. When we discover it – just say, “Okay Lord, I did it again”
and gently bring your mind back and just pick back up again where you left off.
That's why we teach this method of meditation called the Four R’s which stand for:
Read. Rest. Relate. Resolution. You read, then you put the book down, you kind of
rest in it, you soak in it a little bit. Then when you start getting overcome with
distractions, pick it back up again and reread the same section, or if you need to
move on and read the next section. That's why we do that because we know we're
going to get distracted. So don't worry. Just gently call your mind back. Go back to
the point that struck you or move on and read another passage, but do so peaceably.
Don't get on yourself. Don't be all upset.

To recap the 4 R's.

It was Read. So read whatever spiritual reading you choose - the Gospels or a
spiritual meditation book. Whatever you're reading. A great one is “In Conversation
with God” by Frances Fernandez. You read a little bit until something strikes you,
then you Rest. You put the book down, you soak in it, you rest in it. Then you
Relate that to God. For example, saying “Lord, what are you telling me here? Why
did that strike me? What are you saying to me? Oh, I see something in myself that I
never saw before or I see something in myself that I've always known. But if you're
calling it to mind, hmm, must be that I need to hear this.” That's what it means to
relate it back to God.

Then Resolve (make a resolution). When you're all done with your meditation
time you make a concrete, specific resolution. For example, “Well today I'm not
going to gossip. Instead I'm going to say nothing but charitable things about my
school of faith teacher, because I just tend to be critical of all of his flaws that are
right up there for everyone to gaze at. And today I'm going to say nice things.” So
that's my resolution. A resolution is concrete. Something I can do to root out some
predominant fault and overcome it by working on its opposite virtue. So read, rest
relate, resolve.

Okay, so what else do we do? Don't presume that if you had a prayer time that's
filled with distractions, that it was poor time of prayer. Don't ever presume that
because the Lord may have allowed that because he wants to test your
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perseverance. It could have been very good, even better than when you're feeling
these sensible consolations, sort of like spiritual candy, that you would want more
of. We want to be careful of that because just like with our relationship with our
spouse, we need to move beyond the, “you make me feel good” phase into “I'm
sacrificing for your good” phase. That's when love really starts to grow.

We need to do that in our spiritual life too and so don't be mistaken and conclude
that if you're filled with distractions that that meant that your prayer wasn't any
good. Distractions do not prevent God from doing his work in our soul.

The other thing you can do, just for a helpful hint:
1. Keep a notepad near you, to keep track of what your distractions are. This is
a good way to know what our disordered attachments are. If you find you're
constantly distracted about money or about your children or about your spouse
or about your car or about your house or about your body or about some
relationship with someone else and you're constantly distracted. For example,
some friend is always under your skin and annoying you. You need to write it
down, because now you're discovering something in yourself. You're fixated
on this and that's why it's under your skin or why you're always worried about
it or maybe even having anxiety about it. Now you write it down because you
realize this, and when you realize it, you abandon it, you give it to the Lord.

It's good to write it down and physically give it to him, maybe rip it out or write it
on a separate sheet of paper, fold it up and put it under a statue, the sacred heart,
under statue of Our Lady or some saint or under your crucifix or something. Some
way to physically give it to him. And then move on. And then, you know, be aware.
I'm constantly worried about bills so I've got to do more work on abandoning my
finances to the Lord and then do so.

I've got a quote in here from 1 Peter 5:6 - “Humble yourselves therefore under the
mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you,” which is kind of what
we've been talking about today with contemplation.

Verse 7, “Cast all your anxieties on him for he cares about you” and Jesus says,
“Come to me… for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29). Cast all our
anxieties on God for he cares.

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Jesus said St. Catherine of Sienna, "I am He who is; you are she who is not." Isn't
this true? Part of our worries are we think we're in control and we recognize, but I'm
not in control of this situation and we fret about it. We've got an idea in our mind of
how we want that situation to be and it's not coming to fruition the way that I want
it to so we fret about it. That is a control issue. We’ve got to let go.

Perfectionism is a control issue. We've got to let go. Jesus says: “I am He who is,
you are she who is not. Get used to that fact. It is not going to change. You're not
going to be me. I'll invite you into me as close as you can come, but that pride has
to die before you get there.”

All right, well let's look at some tips for building the habit of daily meditation and
then I'll take questions. All right. What do we need to do to get in the daily habit of
meditation? As I said, we're not going to get to contemplation if we're not practicing
daily meditation, so what do we do?

1. We need to pick a specific time to pray each day and stick to it. Being
general is useless for example, “I'll pray today.” No, it would be better to say,
“I'll pray today from 9 until 9:30,” or “from 9 until 10 I'll be praying.” It's best
if we can have the same time every day. I realize that may not be possible due
to your schedules, but for me it's the first thing I do when I get up in the
morning; same for my wife also. I begin praying even while I'm eating my
breakfast, drinking my coffee, and then I'll go and move over to my prayer
chair and continue it and the kids know that's what mom and dad are doing so
they know not to get up and interrupt us.

My wife and I will be praying and sometimes I'll interrupt and I'll say, let me read
this to you and or my wife would do the same and it's nice to know that we're both
doing it at the same time and sharing that prayer moment together. She in her way
and me in mine. My favorite material is “In Conversation with God.” I use that and
go back to it over and over again.

I've also recommended to you the books by Father Jacques Philippe. They are
awesome. If you don't want to do that, you've got the Gospels, you've got the
Psalms, use those. All right, so we want to pick a particular time.

When?

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Early in the morning, as I said, because if we leave it to the end of the day, we're
going to get distracted. The devil's going to set traps for us and it's going to be hard.
Try to do it first thing.

Where?

We need to pray somewhere where there is some silence. As we get better I have
known many people who can pray on the bus or waiting at the airport or something.
I suppose it's possible even in the mall. I don't know why you do that, but I suppose
it would be possible as you start getting better at prayer. But what we really want to
do is pray where it's quiet. If you can come up to Church for a holy hour, fantastic,
or in the church at all, great, but if you can't, have a room in your house that's silent
where you have religious images and pray there.

How long should we pray?

Well we want this intimate, loving conversation, so we want to give ourselves

enough time to make sure that that happens. I recommend we start at 15 minutes.
The real goal is half an hour. But if I said you're going to do a half an hour, you
might think that was too much at first. Or, you'd say, okay, and the first time you try
it and it failed, you'd be like, this isn't ever going to work and you'd give up
entirely. So start at 15 minutes because once it becomes a habit, then you can
expand it. But that is our goal - a half an hour. But, if you've never done it before,
then start at 15 minutes; get that to be a habit and then you can expand it.

The Rosary is very helpful because in the rosary we're using vocal prayer, but we're
also meditating on the mysteries. Our mind is putting us there with Jesus, with our
lady, learning from her about our Lord. The Holy Father Pope St. John Paul II said
this in article 15 of his apostolic letter, Rosarium: “The Rosary mystically
transports us to Mary's side as she is busy watching over the human growth of
Christ in her home in Nazareth.” This enables her to train us and to mold us with
the same care until Christ is fully formed in us.

We want to spend time reading, reflecting and resting in the Lord and making a
resolution out of our prayer to make it fruitful. That's how we're going to be ready
for the infused gift of prayer called contemplation.

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What are your questions, comments?

Question: What are some good books for kids to use for meditation?

Answer from Troy: This is something that I'm starting to experience and is good
even within my own family where my kids want to do daily meditation and there's
not a lot out there. My son, Thomas began using “In conversation with God” at like
age 11 or 12. Now not every kid's going to take to that. My son Nicholas uses a
book from Fr. John Bartunek, and it's called “Hidden Treasure.” It's a meditation
book on the Gospels, basically it's just reflections on the gospels.

The rosary is always good and you can buy children's books on the rosary. They
have pictures and things and good little meditations. Same with Stations of the
Cross. I'm just not aware of any good meditation book for kids. Maybe Magnificat
for kids? Magnifikids. I know it has material for Mass, I'm not sure about
meditations.

Even good children's Bible stories for when they're really young and get them used
to reading Bible stories and thinking about it. You can talk about it with them and
you can help them by asking them questions that are leading them to meditation
without them even realizing it. For example, “What do you think Jesus felt, you
know, when he was experiencing this?” or ‘What was Moses thinking, do you think
when the Lord gave him the 10 commandments? and “what do you think he looked
like? Or “what would you have done if you'd heard the voice of the Lord from a
burning Bush? You know, ask questions to get them to think and then we can begin
leading them. That's what meditation is. That's how it begins. We begin kind of
interrogating the text ourselves and asking ourselves these questions to put
ourselves there and that's where it begins. You read the story, which character
would you be?

It's also good to give them a verse to memorize. Memorization of biblical verses.
Kids are very absorbent and are very open to spiritual life. Let's not forget that. This
is a good time for us to start in on them when they're, young and they're able, and
we can begin encouraging them to practice daily meditation in the Rosary, in the
family rosary. And if that's too much for you, then do a decade. But start having
family prayer.

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In our household 8:30 PM is prayer time and everybody knows it. So whatever
you're doing, it's time for family prayer. And sometimes some of the neighborhood
kids stay. Usually we scare the heck out of them and they run, but sometimes they
stay, but they know if the kids are out playing, like when the sun is still up and it's
warm, we yell out prayer time, and the whole neighborhood knows. I don't care.
This is what we're doing. And you know, they should be doing the same thing quite
frankly. We do the rosary, but we also do evening prayer sometimes from the
Magnificat. Sometimes we'll read a passage from the gospels. Sometimes it's just a
decade. Sometimes it's chaplet of divine mercy. Sometimes it's just some vocal
prayer, especially if we had company and the kids are tired and they left late. You
don't have time for a lot. We'll just go through Our Father, Hail Mary and offer
some petitions. But it's a habit now. Our kids won't go to bed until they prayed,
which, you know, when you're really tired it's kind of a hassle. But it's good
because we've put them in that habit.

Question: How can I go about getting my husband to lead family prayer?

Answer by Troy: Pray for him and let him know that that's what you're expecting.
And if you've done that, and prayed and offered penance and you do it. That's
always a hard one. I'm a man, I understand men are sticks in the mud. We kinda
need men really to challenge us, I realize that. But when the Lord has put us in that
situation, there's a reason why he's put us in that situation.. .we've got to discern it
and see what is he calling me to? And maybe it's perseverance. . . maybe years'
worth of praying for the husband and trying to get him to that point because men
are, well, what can I say? Men are pigs. We can be; we can be hardheaded and
selfish and stubborn. And I'm talking about myself here.

Let's close with prayer.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. All glory be to
the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is now
and ever shall be world without end. Amen. St Joseph, pray for us. In the name of
the Father, Son. Holy Spirit. Amen.

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