How do I know if God is talking to me in prayer?

Q: Dear Father John, I keep hearing (and reading) that Christian prayer is a conversation with God. But, to be totally honest, when I pray I don’t really hear God speaking to me. At least, how do I know it’s God and not just my own thoughts? Am I doing something wrong?

A: You are right: the phrase “conversation with God” describes Christian prayer beautifully. Christ has revealed that God is a real person, and that he is interested – passionately interested – in our lives, our friendship, our closeness. For Christians then, prayer, as Pope Benedict explained when he visited Yonkers, NY in 2007, is an expression of our “personal relationship with God.” And that relationship, the Holy Father went on to say, “is what matters most.”

Parameters of Faith

When we pray, God speaks to us in three ways. But to understand these three ways, we need a reminder. Our relationship with God is based on faith. Faith gives us access to knowledge that goes beyond what we can perceive by our senses. By faith, for example, we know that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, even though our senses only perceive the appearances of bread and wine. Whenever a Christian prays, the prayer takes place within this atmosphere of faith. When I address God in vocal prayer, I know that he is listening to me, even if I don’t feel his presence with my senses or emotions. When I praise him, ask things of him, adore him, thank him, tell him I am sorry… In all these expressions of prayer, I know by faith (not necessarily by my senses or my feelings) that God is listening, interested, and that he cares. If we try to understand Christian prayer outside of this atmosphere of faith, we will get nowhere.

Keeping that in mind, we can look briefly at the three ways God speaks to us in prayer.

The Gift of Consolation

In the first place, God can speak to us by giving us what spiritual writers call consolation. Through consolation, he touches the soul and allows it to be comforted and strengthened by a felt awareness of his love, his presence, his goodness, his power, his beauty…

This consolation can flow directly from the meaning of the words of a vocal prayer. For instance, when I pray Blessed Cardinal Newman’s famous “Lead, Kindly Light..” prayer, God may boost my hope and my confidence, simply because the meaning of the words nourish and revitalize my awareness of God’s power and goodness.

The consolation can also flow from the reflection and pondering involved in mental prayer. As I read and reflect slowly, prayerfully on the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, I can feel my soul being comforted by that picture of the Father embracing the repentant younger brother. That picture of God’s love comes to my mind, and gives me a renewed awareness of God’s mercy and his goodness: “God is so merciful!” I think to myself, and I feel the warmth of his mercy in my heart. That image and those ideas are mine, insofar as they arise in my mind, but they are from God, insofar as they arose in response to my consideration of God’s revelation, in an atmosphere of faith. Or, on another occasion, I could meditate on the same biblical passage and be moved to a deep experience of sorrow for my own sins: in the ungrateful rebellion of the Prodigal Son, I see an image of my own sins and rebellions, and I am repelled by them. Again, the idea of the ugliness of sin and the feeling of sorrow for my personal sins are my own ideas and feelings, but they are a response to God’s action in my mind as he guides my mind’s eye to perceive certain aspects of his truth while I listen to him speaking through his revealed Word in the Bible.

In any of these cases, my soul is touched anew, and thus nourished and consoled, by the truth of who God is for me, and who I am for him – a truth which God speaks to my soul. But the distinction between God’s speaking and my own ideas is not so clear as we would sometimes like. He actually speaks through the ideas that come as I turn my attention towards him in prayer. He speaks within my heart, within the words that form in my heart as I gaze at the Word.

Nourishing the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

In the second place, God can respond to us in prayer by increasing in our souls the gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, knowledge, understanding, piety, fear of the Lord, fortitude, and counsel. Each of these gifts nourishes our spiritual muscles, so to speak; they build up our spiritual faculties. They make it easier for us to discover God’s will in our lives, to appreciate and want his will, and to carry out that will.  In short, they enhance our ability to believe, to hope, and to love God and neighbor. During a time of prayer, then, when I am addressing God in vocal prayer, or seeking to know him more deeply through mental prayer, or adoring him through liturgical prayer, God’s grace touches my soul, nourishing it through increasing the power of these gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Since these gifts are spiritual, and not material, and since God’s grace is spiritual, I will not always feel the nourishing take place. I may spend fifteen minutes reading and reflecting on the parable of the God Shepherd, and no consoling ideas or feelings are stirred up; my prayer feels dry. But that doesn’t mean that God’s grace is not nourishing my soul, that he is not strengthening within me the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

When I take vitamins (or eat broccoli), I don’t feel my muscles grow, but I know that those vitamins are indeed enabling that growth. Likewise, when we pray, we know we are entering into contact with God’s grace, with a God who loves us and is making us holy. When I don’t experience consolation, I can be certain that God is still working in my soul, strengthening it with his gifts by means of the spiritual vitamins that my soul takes in whenever I have faith-filled contact with God. But I only know this by faith, because God doesn’t always send sensible consolation with this spiritual nourishment. This is why spiritual growth depends so significantly on our perseverance in prayer, regardless of whether we feel consolation.

Direct Inspirations

Thirdly, God can speak to our souls through words, ideas, or inspirations that we recognize clearly as coming right from him. Personally, I have a vivid memory of the first time the thought of the priesthood came into my mind. I wasn’t even Catholic yet. No one had told me that I should become a priest. And yet, in the aftermath of a powerful spiritual experience, the thought simply appeared in my mind, fully formed, with compelling clarity. I knew without any doubt that the thought had come directly from God, that he had spoken to me directly, giving me an inspiration.

Most of us have had some, even if only a few, experiences like this, when we knew God was saying something specific to us, even though we heard the words only in our hearts, and not with our physical ears. God can speak in this way even when we are not at prayer. But a mature prayer life will make our souls more sensitive to these direct inspirations, and create more room for God to speak directly more often, if he wishes to do so.

Jesus assured us that any effort we make in prayer will bring grace into our souls, whether we feel it or not: “Seek, and you shall find; ask, and it shall be given to you; knock, and the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8). But at the same time, we have to always remember that we must live our entire lives, including our prayer lives, in the light of our faith, not only in accordance with what we perceive and with what we feel. As St. Paul said so powerfully, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

How can we mature through the first few rooms of the Interior Castle?

Q: Dear Sister Carmen, in your last post you provided a really helpful summary of the first few mansions. You mentioned that they are “rooms of humility.” I would be grateful if you could help me understand the kinds of prayer that help us mature through these first few rooms. I have been advised to practice meditation for which Fr. John’s Better Part is a wonderful resource. Is this also consistent with Carmelite spirituality in these areas?

A: Dear Friend, thank you for your question! If we recall the words of a song made popular by Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…”, it would seem quite obvious in the natural learning order that we move from what is simple to what is more complex. Counting leads us into the world of mathematics, the A, B, C’s into the world of reading, do, re mi into the world of music, etc. Likewise in prayer there is a growth process.

When the disciples witnessed the relationship of Jesus to His Father, they besought Him, “Teach us how to pray.” And where did He begin? He began where children usually begin. He taught them by means of a vocal prayer, what we now call the Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father.  St. Teresa says, “I tell you that it is very possible that while you are reciting the Our Father or some other vocal prayer, the Lord may raise you to perfect contemplation” (Way of Perfection, Chapter 25).  Surely Teresa understood that for this to happen there needed to be a genuine attentiveness to prayer.

Teresa also shows  us that vocal prayer can become mental prayer when we understand to whom we are speaking, listen with our hearts to His response and remain at His side. We tend to think of vocal prayer as voicing words and mental prayer as being silent. Teresa explains however in Chapter 22 of the Way of Perfection that even in vocal prayer the mind must be used and we can mentally recite prayers with our lips closed. “Realize, daughters, that the nature of mental prayer isn’t determined by whether or not the mouth is closed.”

A particular form of mental prayer is meditation in which one makes a thoughtful reflection, through thinking on some truth or imagining some scene in Our Lord’s life,  in order to draw resolutions for one’s own life. Teresa herself admits that her mind did not do well with either thinking or imagining. Rather she called her prayer a Prayer of Recollection. She used whatever means would help her become aware of God’s presence in order to enter into conversation with Him or simply be quiet before Him.  Thus Teresa strove to picture Christ within her especially in those times when He would have been alone.

Both Teresa and St. John of the Cross turned to creation through which was aroused a sense of reverence and awe leading them into a deeper love for the Creator. John was drawn particularly to flowers and often took his friars on a “nature walk”. At night he would look out his window, resting his elbows on the window sill, to gaze at the stars which sight made him ecstatic. Flowers also drew Teresa but in a more special way she was drawn to water as we see in her writings. Teresa advised her nuns to use whatever helped them to recall the presence of Christ and enable them to communicate with Him, be it the beauties of creation, a good book, an image or painting.

The first movement toward prayer always comes from God who called us into life. He who first loved us begins the process. Thus He continues to call and our response is to listen and to respond. This listening and responding shapes the form of prayer which is most adapted to our particular nature. Teresa realized that God calls us all in different ways. However, our growth and perseverance in prayer is meant to open us up to the Mystery of God. Meditation enables us to discern what is necessary to bring our wills into conformity with God’s will. Cooperation with God’s grace and determination enable us to overcome the obstacles both within ourselves and without. There will be obstacles because when we enter prayer we enter the realm of the supernatural. Growth in prayer is measured by growth in the virtues. Thus for many the period of time in which meditation becomes our main form of prayer can be a lengthy phase. Growth is often slow.

Our holy mother St. Teresa teaches us that we must become very generous in living the Gospel. This generosity, which goes beyond the commandments, is a condition for a deep prayer life. “He will see that whoever loves Him much will be able to suffer much for Him” (Way of Perfection, Chapter 32).

You asked if meditation is consistent with Carmelite spirituality. Because Carmelite Spirituality does not have a structured form of prayer than these types that I described are all ways of prayer by which we strive to deepen the intimate relationship that we desire to have with God. The more that we grow in prayer the greater will be our thirst for the “living God”. This growth in intimacy rests on the sense of God’s Presence in our lives. It is likewise a preparation for contemplation should God desire to give this gift to us.

PS from Dan: To answer your question about Fr. Bartunek’s approach to meditation Fr. Bartunek’s approach is more Ignatian than Carmelite. That said, his helpful summary of traditional meditation is not contradictory, nor would it provide any impediment to growth in prayer in the Carmelite tradition. St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross were both well aware of methods similar to those described by Fr. John (which were popular in their time) but were more concerned with progress in the way rather than specific ways of progress (methods). Simply put, meditation or mental prayer is a necessary means to growing in and through the first mansions regardless of the specific tradition one prefers. Methods like Fr. John’s are particularly helpful to those who are just beginning the practice of mental prayer or who are having difficulty progressing more deeply in prayer during the early phases of spiritual growth.

PS 2: To learn more about the Carmelite Sisters visit our web site: www.carmelitesistersocd.com and for more information please contact the sisters at contact@carmelitesistersocd.com, or 626-289-1353 Ext. 246, 920 East Alhambra Road, Alhambra, California 91801.

What is going on with my prayer life? Should I really just be sitting in silence?

Q: I am struggling with my prayer life. I go to my 30-minute prayer time and nothing happens. But I stick it out anyway, as best I can. It seems like sheer willpower (and invisible grace) against everything else. “Well, I have nothing better to do for the next 47 years, Lord. I’ll wait it out like this, if that’s what you want.” I am frustrated.

A: This is a great question, but it’s hard to answer without a bit more context. Let me give some short answers pointed towards some hypothetical contexts.

Let’s say you are a normal lay person, or even a young religious, who has recently discovered the reality of God’s love for you, maybe through a retreat or a parish Bible study that set your heart on fire. You now desire to develop a deeper prayer life. You start by setting aside time on a daily basis to spend just with God – your daily God-time. But when you go there, you find it hard to concentrate. It’s not so easy as when you were on retreat, for some reason. And even when you do concentrate, you don’t seem to hear God speaking to you – nothing seems to happen. What’s the deal?

The Liberation of Structure

In this case, the best thing you can do is to give structure to your daily God-time. Structure, in general, actually frees us for more meaningful activity, contrary to much of popular opinion. We can only be free to play a Mozart sonata once we have disciplined ourselves regarding certain structures of music. In personal prayer, having a structure frees you to allow the Holy Spirit to work in your soul however he wishes. You are not just looking and waiting for dramatic manifestations of the Spirit, which you may have had on retreat or at the parish activities. Rather, you use your mind, heart, and imagination to search for a deeper knowledge and experience of God. And Jesus made a promise regarding that: “Search, and you shall find…” (Matthew 7:7).

What structure should you use? Here no hard and fast rules apply. You can make up your own, get ideas from someone you respect or from your spiritual director, use structures, materials, and recommendations from other sources… The important thing is always to remember that no structure is perfect, and no structure will actually do your prayer for you. But by having a structure, you take the pressure off yourself, and free yourself to be open to whatever God may want from you. I highly recommend the structure explained and embodied in The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal Prayer. But other structures abound. The important thing is to start using one. You can adjust as you go. In any event, a key element for mental prayer, even for religious, is having some material that you can use to spark your reflection and conversation with Christ. I often recommend simply taking a good, solid, spiritual book (like This Tremendous Lover or I Believe in Love) and using the following structure for your daily God-time:

1. Recall that you are in God’s presence and ask him to bless your time together.
2. Read a short passage from the book.
3. Reflect on the passage: What does this really mean? What does it mean for me?
4. Respond to the ideas that struck you by speaking to God in your own words: thanking him, praising him, questioning him, asking him for grace…
5. Reflect on another passage…
6. Respond again…
7. Resolve, at the end of your daily God-time, to live out in during the day to come the insights that the Holy Spirit gave to your mind and heart during the prayer. Thank God for his blessings, and launch into the activities of the day.

If you begin following a structure in your daily God-time, and you still experience that “nothing happens,” then you need simply to persevere, and maybe experiment with other structures. Clearly, your soul needs to be disciplined and purified by ascesis (our own spiritual effort) in order for you to hear what God is saying to you. This ascesis may also necessitate some alterations in the habits of your daily life – use of mass media, rooting out of sinful habits, building in periods of silence… In such a situation, a spiritual director is of invaluable help.

The Case of Passive Purgation

A different case is someone who has been engaged in structured, daily mental prayer for many years, and how has no habits of sin or sinful attachments. This may be a lay person or a religious, and they have been traveling along the journey to spiritual maturity for many years, receiving plenty of guidance from competent spiritual directors. If someone in this situation goes to their daily period of mental prayer and “nothing happens,” it is most like a spiritual trial being sent by God. This trial requires the soul to throw itself into God’s arms, abandon the hopes of sensible consolation, and persevere in humble acts of faith, hope, and love, in spite of the seeming lack of reward. These trials are a preparation of the soul for greater intimacy with God, what’s called a “passive purification.” The Divine Doctor is operating on your soul while you are experiencing a kind of spiritual anesthesia. Take comfort from the example of the saints, keep doing your part, and trust that God knows what he’s up to – “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28).

In any case, we all can use the reminder our Lord gave to his followers many centuries ago: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up…” (Luke 18:1).

Struggling with suffering… Part II of II

Q: Dear Father John, I really want to think of God as good but lately I have been struggling with all the suffering I see around me and in my own life. Where is God in all of this?

In our first post in this two part series we reflected on suffering from a number of conceptual angles to try to orient our hearts in the right direction. Now we will discuss a few practical matters.

Our faith is weak, and so the weight of life’s pain and suffering often obscures the light of hope.  What can we do to strengthen our faith? What can we do to learn to carry our crosses, and help others carry theirs, with elegance, with love, even with joy? There is a lot we can do. I would just like to mention three things.

Eliminate the Blind Side

First, we have to contemplate frequently Christ on the cross. We need to have crucifixes in our lives – on the bedroom wall, on the desk in the office, on the screen saver, and the smart-phone’s wallpaper… We have to pray the Stations of the Cross more often than just on Good Friday. In other words, we have to prepare ourselves on a regular basis to be soldiers of Christ’s cross.

As a priest, it is agonizing to see people blind-sided by suffering – because it is so unnecessary! We shouldn’t be surprised by suffering. Jesus made it clear, in his words and example, that no one is exempt from suffering. The Church makes it clear, year after year through the liturgical seasons and celebrations, that the cross is central to life in a fallen world and to our growth in holiness. And yet, so many people, in the face of an untimely death, a painful sickness, or some other real tragedy, are still blind-sided. Their initial reaction is surprise and anger at God. But did God promise us that we wouldn’t have to face suffering in life? We must regularly contemplate Christ on the cross, so that we prepare ourselves in times of consolation for the times of desolation that will surely come.

Taking the Initiative

Second, we must consciously, purposefully, and humbly help others carry their crosses. There is no better way to become soldiers of the cross and co-redeemers with Christ than to “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). This is the most potent antidote to the self-absorption and self-centeredness that make us vulnerable to temptation during our own sufferings. Reach out to people in need. Take the initiative to bring light to those who are stuck in darkness. Here is where the Church’s traditional works of mercy come in very handy – just looking over the list can give us new ideas of how we can build up the Kingdom of Christ by bearing one another’s burdens.

Never Walk Alone

Third, we have to keep cultivating our life of prayer. In the end, we can only have mature confidence in God’s Providence if we see all things from God’s perspective. For us fallen human beings, learning to see things from God’s perspective happens only through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And the best way to give those gifts more room to maneuver in our hearts and minds is to give God time, every single day, to infuse his light and wisdom into our souls. That’s what mental prayer – Christian meditation – is all about. If you want some help to go deeper in your mental prayer, we recommend highly this book.

God is not distant from our sufferings. This is the message of Christ’s incarnation: he is with us all the time. This is the message of the Eucharist: he himself wants to be our strength in the midst of life’s troubles. So, remember, discouragement never comes from the Holy Spirit! It only comes when we try to save the world all by ourselves – a very bad idea: “The world will give you trouble, but take courage! I have overcome the world!” (John 14:1).

Struggling with suffering… Part I of II

Q: Dear Father John, I really want to think of God as good but lately I have been struggling with all the suffering I see around me and in my own life. Where is God in all of this?

A: Suffering and sorrow challenge our faith in God. They push us out of our spiritual comfort zone as we find ourselves asking: If God is all-powerful and all good, why doesn’t he just fix everything, why does he let so many bad and painful things happen – why doesn’t he just get rid of all the world’s evil and injustice? This was Job’s dilemma in the Old Testament. It was even a challenge faced by Jesus himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Blessed Virgin Mary had to grapple with it as she watched her only Son being humiliated, unjustly condemned, tortured, and crucified on Calvary. So you are in good company. Every human person, in fact, has to face this question at some point or another. But we never have to face it alone. Although at times God seems distant in the midst of suffering and sorrow, he is not. He is right by our side, carrying us and supporting us and enlightening us, if we let him. Two reflections, one doctrinal and one practical, may help you find him and lean on him as you navigate these treacherous waters.

God’s Answer to Evil

The Catechism – the systematic explanatory summary of God’s revelation in Christ – puts a spotlight on this question, and boldly gives us the doctrinal answer. Because this issue is so central to Christ’s message, and to our daily lives, I will quote the whole paragraph (#309 – the underlinings are mine):

If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.

You may have to read that paragraph more than once for it to sink in. Basically, God did not create evil and the suffering that evil causes, directly or indirectly. God created the world good, but he gave angels and humans free will. When the devil abused this freedom by rebelling against God, evil entered the universe. When the devil tempted Adam and Eve, and when they decided to follow him instead of God, that evil entered the human realm as well. Evil is not something positive, but negative. Just as cold is not something positive, but negative – it is the lack of heat. And darkness is not something positive, but negative – the lack of light. Just so, evil is the absence of some good that was part of God’s original design. When a free creature (an angel or a human) deviates from God’s plan, suffering is the logical result. And since we are all connected – we were created to be God’s family; the human race was created to be one human family, in which the actions of one person affect others, for good or ill – the sin of Adam had repercussions for all of us, just as the sin of an abusive dad or an over-possessive mom has repercussions for their children.

God Didn’t Create Robots

If God had created angels and humans without free will, he could have avoided all evil. But then you and I would be nothing more than robots. We would not be capable of love, which involves the free gift of self to another person. And if we were incapable of love, we would not be created in God’s image and likeness. And without that likeness, we would not be able to enter into heaven, the communion of life and love with God. So God took the risk.

Of course, in his omnipotence and omniscience, he is able to repair the damage done by sin and rebellion against his plan. The story of salvation, from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane to the New Jerusalem at the end of history, is the story of that reparation, the “redemption” of fallen humanity. In the life of every person who repents and returns to God, God shows his merciful and transforming love by mysteriously bringing forth good out of evil. This is hard for us to understand. But we get a glimpse of it by contemplating how God was able to work the most marvelous miracle in history, Christ’s resurrection, in the wake of the most horrific sin in history, the deicide of Christ’s crucifixion. This is the warp and woof of Christian life: Good Fridays followed by Easter Sundays.

Keeping the Whole Story in Mind

If we didn’t know this plan of redemption, there would be no option but despair in the face of the immense suffering and injustice of the world. But we do know the plan. We know the last scene of the story; we know that in the end “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

The core Christian virtue of hope is what keeps this truth on our radar screen, so that we never allow ourselves to be drowned by frustration, discouragement, or cynicism. This why Pope Benedict XVI calls suffering a “setting for learning hope” in his Encyclical Letter In Hope We Are Saved (see #s 35-40 for a wild, shocking meditation on the meaning of suffering). This is also why he calls God’s Last Judgment a “setting for learning and practicing hope” (see #s 41-48). Our lives here on earth, in the flow of human history, are not the whole story. We are pilgrimages, and God has promised that if we trust and follow him, all the suffering and pain of this life will be transformed into glory: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28).

In our next post on this topic (next Monday) we will talk about a practical approach to living in this reality.