By Veronica A. Arntz
“But when you pray,
go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret;
and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt 6:6, RSV-2CE).
These words from our Lord direct
us how to pray. The prayer that is most pleasing to our Lord is not that which
is loud, ostentatious, or even “visible” through spoken words. Rather, it is
the prayer that we make from our hearts, the silent prayer that comes directly
from our souls. Our Lord desires that we give ourselves to Him through our
interior prayer. While vocal and mental prayer that comes right from our heart,
the highest prayer, which is meant to be normative for all, is contemplative
prayer—a union between beloved and Lover, a prayer in which the soul simply
“is” with the One she loves the most.
How can we enter into the kind of
prayer in which we are simply being with our Lord? The world does everything it
can to distract us from this kind of prayer, because the devil knows that it
brings us closest to our God, the One who loves us infinitely. The devil fills
our days with busyness, distraction, and noise so that, when we make a movement
toward prayer, we cannot settle our minds down from the constant cacophony
within our head. The minute we try to pray, the devil fills our minds with
thoughts about our tasks, what yet must be done, the little annoyances of the
day, and the list could go on and on. The devil despises silence, because he
knows that, through silence, the soul encounters her Lover, who speaks in a
still, small voice.
Cultivating a life that is
oriented toward silence and contemplation is the way that we can enter into the
“secret room” of our soul and dwell with our Lord. This indeed is also very
difficult, given the many distractions that those living in the secular world
face on a day-to-day basis. Thus, the consecrated, contemplative life is the
highest calling, and the surest path to Heaven, because the soul is devoted
wholly to God with an undivided heart, spending her entire day in prayer (1 Cor
7:34b).
While it may seem obvious, to learn to pray, we must actually pray. We
can read many books about prayer, the spiritual life, and theology, and still
not be praying or have a robust spiritual life. Only when we completely enter
into prayer and abandon ourselves to God can we truly encounter the One who
loves us completely. He is waiting for us in the Tabernacle; He is waiting for
us to come dwell with Him in silence. To cultivate a contemplative life while
still living in the world, to the best of our ability and through God’s grace,
we must enter into prayer throughout the day, even if we cannot kneel before
the Tabernacle each time. In this way, longer periods of prayer will not seem
so difficult; perhaps we will even look forward to and anticipate those times
that we can pray for a longer amount of time.
If we think that we can pray only
a little bit each day, and then spend an hour or more in prayer at one time,
then we are sadly mistaken. Prayer must be a habit, one given through the grace
of God, which means that we ought to pray throughout the day and for a longer
time when we have the opportunity.
Developing our interior,
spiritual life cannot be separated from the Sacred Liturgy of the Church. Even
though the Liturgy is the Church’s public worship of God, it can still teach us
how to pray and help us to cultivate the interior life. Thus, when the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass is celebrated in a banal, anthropocentric way, with unnecessary
noise and distractions, this not only affects how the faithful understand the
Eucharist, but also how they pray. The liturgy should not be marked by
babblings, like the pagans, but should be filled with reverential silence (Matt
6:7). A liturgy that does not offer true silence cannot teach the faithful how
to pray.
These silences ought not be contrived or arbitrary, but intrinsic to
the liturgical rite itself, which one sees very clearly in the 1962 Roman
liturgy. It should be noted that, in St. Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on Matthew
6:6, he writes that our Lord is not referring to public prayer, but only
private prayer (no. 757). Nonetheless, we can still learn how to exercise our
private prayer because of the influence of the Sacred Liturgy. If the public
prayer of the Church is filled with constant noise, then how can the faithful
not model their spiritual lives from that same kind of prayer?
As we read in In Sinu Jesu, “When I instituted the
Sacrament of My Body and Blood, I did so not only to unite all the members of
My Body more intimately to Me who am their Head; I did it not only to feed them
and to give them to drink for life everlasting; I did it also so as to remain
present, close, and ever available to those who would seek My divine friendship
by adoring Me truly present in the Sacrament of My love” (p. 58). We are
invited into friendship with our Lord in the Eucharist, which we experience in
the Sacred Liturgy. This friendship is carried into our lives of private
prayer, especially Eucharistic Adoration. When we adore our Lord in silence, we
have the opportunity to enter into contemplative prayer and thus intimate union
with Him. This is what He most desires, that we should adore His Eucharistic
Heart and linger with Him in response to His graces.
This deep, contemplative,
interior life is what our Lord desires most, but what the world understands the
least. When we cultivate the interior life through silent prayer, Eucharistic
Adoration, and dwelling in the silence of the Sacred Liturgy, we are truly
living counter-culturally. As we enter this season after Pentecost, let us
renew ourselves in the pursuit of the interior life, asking our Lord for the
graces to dwell with Him in silent contemplation and adoration, entering into
our “inner rooms” to hear His still, small voice (1 Kings 19:11-13).
