Stages of Prayer
Two Ultimate Destinations
Prayer is friendship with God: it is talking, listening and just being with God. This corresponds to the three major expressions of prayer:
· Vocal prayer - speaking to God;
· Meditation – listening to God;
· Contemplation – just being with the One who loves us
The goal of this friendship with God we call prayer is Heaven. Heaven is a transforming union with God. The journey to heaven does not begin at death. The journey or pilgrimage to heaven is supposed to begin now. In fact, you are traveling either closer to heaven or closer to hell at each moment. Time is dynamic. There is no standing still and there are only two ultimate destinations: heaven and union with God or hell and eternal isolation and loneliness.
Only God
We are indebted to the great Doctor on Prayer, Teresa of Avila, for explaining the different stages in the journey of the soul to Heaven or union with God. The landscape of prayer has been divided into (9) stages:
(1) Vocal prayer
(2) Meditation – 1st Teresian Mansion
(3) Affective prayer – 2nd Mansion
(4) Prayer of simplicity – 3rd Mansion
· The Dark Night of the Senses
(5) Infused contemplation – 4th Mansion
(6) Prayer of quiet,
(7) Prayer of union – 5th Mansion
(8) Prayer of conforming union – 6th Mansion
· The Dark Night of the Spirit
(9) Prayer of transforming union – 7th Mansion
It is a doctrine of the Catholic Church that every person was created by God to reach at least the 5th stage of prayer, infused contemplation, because every person was created for holiness and holiness is the fruit of contemplation. Every one of you praying now has the God given capacity to reach at least the 5th stage in this life – that is if you desire it and persevere in prayer.
St. Faustina describes her experience of contemplation this way:
O Holy Trinity, Eternal God, I thank you for allowing me to know the greatness and the various degrees of glory to which souls attain. Oh, what a great difference of depth in the knowledge of God there is between one degree and another! Oh, if people could only know this! O my God, if I were able to attain one more degree, I would gladly suffer all the torments of the martyrs put together. Truly, all those torments seem as nothing to me compared with the glory that is awaiting us for all eternity. O Lord, immerse my soul in the ocean of Your divinity and grant me the grace of knowing You: for the better I know You, the more I desire You, and the more my love for You grows. I feel in my soul an unfathomable abyss which only God can fill. I lose myself in Him as a drop does in the ocean. Diary of Divine Mercy 605
Prayer of Simplicity and Infused Contemplation
With Stages 3-4
· We begin to desire to spend time with Jesus and Mary
· w/o talking
· w/o trying to figure things (discursive meditation)
· But simply to remain alone with them in quiet
John of the Cross describes this as
“An inclination to remain alone and in quietude…If those in whom this occurs, know how to remain quiet (not talking or trying to figure things out) they will soon in that unconcern and idleness delicately experience the interior nourishment.”
This prepares us for stage 5 (contemplation)
“Contemplation is nothing but a hidden, peaceful and loving inflow of God. If it is given room, it will inflame the spirit with love.” John of the Cross
Purification
The transition from stage 4 to 5 involves
· The Dark Night of the Senses
Which accomplishes 2 things in us
1. Purges the soul of all
a. disordered attachments,
b. misdirected desires,
c. idols and addictions
d. that block God from entering more fully
i. Pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust
2. Prepares the soul to share more fully in His divine life
a. We could not handle His divine life if He didn’t prepare us
b. Like pouring new wine into old wineskins
A Way Forward
Contemplation is an experience of God, drinking of the Living Water which quenches the thirst of the soul which satisfies as nothing else in the world.
How do we prepare to Drink of the Living Water?
Jesus said to St. Angela of Foligno, “Make yourself a capacity and I will make myself a torrent.”
1. Desire, want transforming union with God
2. Receive the Eucharist and Reconciliation Frequently
3. Persevere in a Daily Examination of Conscience with Daily Meditation and a Resolution
4. Pray the Daily Rosary
5. Live a well ordered and balanced life (a Rule of Life)
6. Have a Spiritual Director or at least good Spiritual Friendship to give you
a. Encouragement and Accountability