Praying is Conversation

No one learns to speak without others. Praying is conversation. The first meaning of the word "pray" in English is not worship. It simply means to address earnestly. But most especially to earnestly address God.

Someone must teach us to pray in at least a rudimentary way. When we address or ask someone, we hope for a response. We are engaging in conversation. We pray to others in the old English phrase "pray, tell". We pray to or address earnestly the saints and angels. To the holy souls in Purgatory. Even, as is tradition from the ancient Church, to those we have loved in life and are confident they will hear and respond. All as members of the Body of Christ- remembering Jesus' answer to the Sadducees about the resurrection - He is the God of the living, not of the dead (Mark 12:24-27).

Prayer is sacred conversation. What is important in good conversation? Listening attentively and speaking sincerely. Good conversation has more listening than speaking since God has given us two ears and only one mouth. Remember the gospel story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Putting all else aside, Mary listens to Jesus. Our Lord says this is the best "portion". Does God listen to us? Does our Blessed Mother Mary listen to us? The saints and angels? When as babbling children we run to them, they listen. Even the souls in Purgatory, are they not learning to listen better? Think of someone who stops what they are doing and listens intently to a child.

We are lifted up in prayer. God begins our desire to pray and sustains us in prayer. And as a child lifts his hands to be picked up, when we lift our hands in prayer we are lifted up. We may realize that actually God has lifted our hands and picked us up. Our cooperation with grace in prayer is to hold on. When we are lifted up, God speaks to us. Have you never heard God speak to you? Did you compose the Our Father and the Hail Mary? The Bible? Does not the Holy Spirit give us the original urge to pray? And as we pray, poorly, tearfully, in anger and sorrow and joy, does not God deign to sustain us in existence? Even when we just cry "God help me", it is God who originates this movement in our minds.

Prayer Life

Praying and a prayer life are distinct. As one healthful meal is distinct from following a healthful diet. Thank God, all of us sinners can go to our Father and pray for ourselves and others. We can address the angels, saints and holy souls in Purgatory with faith. However a "life" denotes a continuous living growth. To have the continuous growth in a prayer life in response to grace requires the same kind of self-discipline that any aspect of life needs - physical, social, intellectual, work, and family life. They must be part of our lives in an orderly, regular and consistent manner.

Often we do not do the most obvious and simple things that are good for us because they are so obvious and simple. Or we can have another good reason: what is obvious to another is not to us. Developing a disciplined habit of praying can be one of those things. First, we must make a place for prayer in our daily routine. Do we not ask our Father to give us our daily bread? Religious orders who should seek perfection have a Rule. We can voluntarily make our own rule and adjust it to ourselves and adjust our lives to it. Begin by writing down an outline of the most basic, regular and customary things you do each day of the week. Start with Sunday and note the broad schedule of what you do. After you make yourself write down what may seem unnecessary and unimportant, you will receive wonderful benefits. You will have greater focus and control of your life. You will be empowered to achieve much more in your living. Do you have time each morning to greet God? To make a morning offering before you leave the side of your bed? Do you have time at midday to close your eyes and pray a Hail Mary? Do you have time after dinner or at the end of your work day to pray? Are there one or two days a week you can schedule fifteen minutes of spiritual reading? You have scheduled Sunday Eucharist? You do go to Confession on a regular basis? Take the empowering step of actually writing this down. Again, you are the author of your Rule of Life and can make future changes carefully. But write it down.

What is on your Rule of work, duties, prayer and rest? May I suggest that the place of honor for devotional prayer go to the Rosary? There are those who think people can outgrow the Rosary. The Rosary is our meditation with our Blessed Mother Mary on the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Exactly how does a Christian stop pondering these things in their heart with Mary? Read the Forty-Eighth Rose in St. Louis De Montfort's book The Secret of the Rosary. He warns us against many subtle ways some may persuade us to lessen our Rosary devotion. Providentially it is a help toward keeping not just the Rosary but all our devotional life.

One of the fruits that some great saints experience in prayer is rapture -an interior transport or going out of themselves to be close to our Lord in Heaven. We can all have a slight taste of this in a consoling feeling God may occasionally grant us. Yet, who is in Heaven with God? Our Blessed Mother Mary, the angels and the saints. Simply sitting somewhere quietly and praying to Mary and some of our favorite angels and saints gradually can leave us with a sense that we have been in their heavenly presence.

The Cross

A life of prayer will weaken without embracing the Cross. The self-discipline already described can give our prayer life a strong start but it can only bring us so far. To develop an everlasting life of prayer requires more. Now let me remind us of truths that I have always neglected. At best I have given them a complacent nod or, most often, let them in one ear and out the other. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." (Mark 4 :9)

Jesus said "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me". (Mark 8:34) We must remember penance for our sins and mortification to avoid sin. Self-discipline and even self-denial, yes. But what happens with a cross? You are crucified. We will be tempted to throw down the cross and flee when faced with crucifixion - if in our heart we have not embraced suffering for Christ.

Suffering for Christ? Is it not Christ who suffered to redeem us? Why embrace suffering? St Paul says in Philippians 1 :29: "For you have been given the favor on Christ's behalf- not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him". Later in chapter 3 St. Paul repeats these sentiments in speaking about the "power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings". He goes on to warn against those who are the enemies of the cross. Yes, we must not only humbly accept the suffering that comes into every life, we should actively seek the Cross in acts of self-sacrifice especially acts of charity.

Embracing the Cross is why the Divine Liturgy or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the true source and summit of prayer. This is Jesus Christ lifting us up in His holy Life, Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and His Second Glorious Coming in Holy Communion.

Fall and Get Up

There are difficulties in praying. Our infirm hearts and minds want to do something else. We find our own prayers to be dry and mechanical. We are distracted by stress, worries or the attractions of this stage of life. St. Teresa of Avila in her life story sees our souls as having three active functions - willing, understanding and imagining. She says that while "understanding" and "imagination" are good, they must be under the will. We should focus on our intention to pray, our wanting to pray and to gently push aside attempts by our imagination or understanding to take over. I was startled recently to see a quote in my Sunday church bulletin that expresses it well. St. Evagrius of Pontus wrote: "Prayer means rejecting pleasures and banishing anger ... During your prayer, try to keep your mind deaf and dumb. Only so will you be able to pray."

Finally, persevering in prayer means everything. St. Teresa says " ... what great blessings God grants to a soul when He prepares it to love the practice of prayer, though it may not be as well prepared already as it should be; and how, if that soul perseveres, notwithstanding the sins, temptations and falls of a thousand kinds into which the devil leads it, the Lord, I am certain, will bring it to the harbour of salvation, just as, so far as can at present be told, He has brought me. May His Majesty grant that I may never again be lost." (The Life of Teresa of Jesus, p. 110; Trans. By E. Allison Peers)

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2010

Exploring Our Understanding of the Resurrected Life

The “our” in the title refers to two themes in this article: the Church's understanding and our own personal comprehension. As the Church meditates on the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and develops a deeper understanding of the mysteries, we in turn listen to this developed doctrine and deepen our spiritual life.

Christology and Eschatology

You can have an intimate knowledge of the heart and mind of a person you love but still find it difficult to describe him to someone else. The Church during the first centuries would struggle to find the words to describe Jesus, especially to refute false statements about her Beloved. Today this is called "development of doctrine". Not that doctrine "evolves" into something different but rather the Church's understanding grows as a seed grows with genetic integrity. We see a summary of this growth in understanding in the ancient Apostle's Creed and the Christian-defining Nicene Creed. Jesus is true God and true Man. It is of first importance that we accept true doctrine about Christ, Christology. There is also no reason I know that our understanding of true doctrine about the last things, Eschatology, cannot grow as well.

Early Christians were instinctively moved by faith to reject opinions about Christ that belittled or impinged his true humanity or divinity. A similar theological situation in my opinion may exist today concerning our Christian belief in the nature of the resurrected life. We know that the people of God under the Old Testament grew in their understanding of life after death – from a vague image of a shadow in Sheol (hell) to the resurrection of the flesh. This later understanding is especially made clear in the scene of Jesus with Martha and Mary at the raising of Lazarus. We also see from St. Paul's letters to his churches that people were caught up in imagining what the resurrected life would be like. We Christians have continued to meditate on this life. The struggle is between exaggerating either the physical or spiritual condition of the resurrected ones.

Yet, today, while there is a great body of Sacred Tradition and Scripture concerning the resurrection, most Christians must rely on the creedal formulae “I believe in...the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” (Apostle's) and “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” (Nicene). Again, in my personal opinion the Church would benefit today from a definitive expression on the true physical condition of the resurrected body and the true dominion of the resurrected soul. Real human flesh under the power of a real human soul in heavenly union with God. Aside from this Catholic development I also think our personal spiritual progress is indicated by our idea of the “life of the world to come”.

Heaven

First, and above all, heaven is the result of God's love. We are in heaven when every stain of selfish sin is removed and we are completely in love with God and all his holy ones. Pope John Paul II affirmed this when he issued a very short ( a few small paragraphs) teaching about “heaven”. He stated simply that heaven is not a place but a state of being. It is the state of being in complete union with God. We, of course, should fully assent to this teaching. When a pope teaches that there is no salvation outside of the Church, we should also fully assent to that teaching as well. But both teachings must be received in the full context of all of Sacred Tradition and Scripture. True, to be “in heaven” is to be in union with God. However, our notion of a “state of being”, pardon the pun, can be amorphous. Being alive, being human, being Christian are states of being but ones that take place and need moment. It is not that the Holy Spirit, providing for the indefectibility of the Church, did not prevent an erroneous teaching by these Popes. It is that these statements can only be understood correctly surrounded by all of Catholic Tradition. In other words, they would be perhaps inadequate and misleading if taken out of that context. If I were there with Pope John Paul II, I might simply have remarked to him, “And the Resurrection?”.

Turning to John Paul II's great project, “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, we learn that it is essential that Man has a body and the dignity of the body (#364 – 366). We learn of the reality of Christ's risen body (#643 – 647). But we also learn that the risen body is “not limited by space and time” (645) and “beyond time and space” (646). The risen share, though as creatures always, the sovereignty of God over the world or universe. This clearly is shown in #645 when declaring that our Lord may appear at any time and in any guise. The point is that any state of being for a creature with a dimensional body will always require “place” even when that time and place is at the will of the gloriously risen one. We will not rise from the dead and our bodies evaporate or “ghostify” as we enter a catatonic ecstatic eternal state of being. Jesus did not ascend to the Father never to appear again. We not only believe in his resurrection and ascension but in “his coming again in glory”.

The Resurrection of Body and Soul

Do you think the Holy Spirit inspired the gospel words of Jesus in Luke 24:36-43 only as a teaching story? Jesus demonstrated that he was not just a spirit. Even earlier than this post-Resurrection appearance our Lord gave the starting knowledge of what the resurrected life would be like. The synoptic accounts in Mt. 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27 and Luke 20:27-36 detail his response to the Sadducees' rejection of resurrection of the body.

We can picture the Sadducee group. Barely able to suppress their grins, they approach this country “rabbi” with a delicious satire of the popular belief in the resurrection of the flesh. Surely he will make us laugh at his bumbling attempt to reconcile the ridiculous!

With calm authority Jesus wipes the smirk from their faces. You err, he tells them. Your very question is an error because you know neither the power of God nor the Scripture. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the living. Those who rise will not marry because they live like the angels.
Their life is founded on the abilities or law of the Spirit and is not dependent on the physical. They will not die, they are sons of the resurrection.

If we think about this passage carefully we will hear our Lord not only rebuke the Sadducees' sophisicated increduality about the resurrection of the dead but also his rebuttal of a naïve literalism about the event. We also err if we believe that the resurrection is simply a glorious resuscitation of the life in the Garden of Eden. We will not be running around sorting out spouses and third cousins.

It will be important to return frequently, however, to the Luke 24 passage I mentioned briefly at the start of this section. Jesus ate food. ( And perhaps also in John 21 though that is not perfectly clear – he certainly is protrayed by the inspired evangelist as cooking!) Jesus, risen and no longer dependent on food, eats. Is this done just to prove his bodily resurrection or is it an action that hints at the life of the resurrected? We will return again to this subject.

Our Spiritual Stage of Growth

A person's concept of life after our mortal death seems to be indicative of their spiritual development. Let me give two real descriptions of “heaven” I've heard from two people who may represent opposite ends of the spectrum. One good fellow is very religious in his conversation and is constantly available to others for concrete advice and prayer. When he speaks about heaven he describes becoming so united to God that we become God. He imagines a total union of love that we never achieve with God or neighbor in this life. When asked about our Catholic faith in the resurrection he is really not interested. For this person, body and place are simply besides the point. We will be united to God, the source of all good. Nothing else has value. Toward the other end of the spectrum, another friend describes a lovely cottage in a cozy country setting. In that cottage he can be a master carpenter building beautiful furniture. He is imagining the peace, personal serenity and skill that we want in this life but, again, never achieve.

Both pictures of heaven ssek the fulfillment of the heart. So, is the spiritual focus on the Beatific Vision much closer to the mark? Perhaps – but the second one includes the created universe and the neighbor that the furniture is being built for. What happens to our Lord's risen Body in the first vision? To our blessed Mother and the angels and saints? To the “new heavens” and “new earth” spoken of in Revelation? As it is necessary to keep in balance our Christological beliefs in the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, such a balance is necessary for our view of the resurrected life. We must acknowledge, in our idea of this life to come, God as center and also the real goodness of creation and the dignity of our intellect, free will and body. Again, it is vital to remember that Jesus Christ is True God and True Man. We must also keep in mind both the spiritual and physical victory of the Resurrection. Personally I go along with another friend who says every time he imagines our heavenly life, his ideas soon deflate or “go squish”. We simply do not have the ability to see the resurrected life.

A Suggested Comparison

An effective way to proportion the relationship between our lives now and our resurrected life is to compare the unborn child to the adult man or woman. Look at the developing of the unborn but especially at the point where soon they will be born into the world. They are comfortable and seemingly secure in their mother's womb. Yet they are unseeing in an environment of extreme limits. While warmly enveloped they may feel the satisfaction of sucking their thumb. We may imagine them knowing something of “the other than self” by awareness of the bodily processes of the mother – heart beat, blood circulation, digestion, outside sounds and bumps and voices.

Yet what do these unborn children really know of the “born” world? Compare a healthy unborn baby to the fully grown healthy adult. The adult lives in a world that is almost literally infinitely larger. The adult has light versus constant shadow. He has the vision of others. His movement is again infinitely greater – just think of the vast difference between a young athlete and the same person in the womb. Beyond the physical, an adult has a mental and emotional world that defies the comparison. From others he has learned language, community, skills, love. Further, as adults we “sense” the spiritual mysteries as an unborn child would have a vague, undefined perception of the greater outside world. We who believe in the life that comes after the death of this body should realize that we are like an unborn child. The resurrected world will indeed be seeded from this one but more gloriously expanded. As St. Paul remeinds us, faith does not hope in what is seen. Again, we truly have no adequate idea of the glory of our risen life.

While it is true that we cannot know the glory of the risen world, something of the full growth can really be seen in the seed just as we relate the newly conceived baby to the born adult. We can catch perhaps a glimpse of our resurrected life in the Alpha of our Lord's resurrection – Jesus rose from the dead in a glorified body and ascended to the Father in that glorified body. But that body did not then evaporate. Remember that the Church teaches that even in his natural span of life Jesus had what we call the beatific vision. Yet the Scripture clearly shows us that Jesus lived like us in all things except sin. The Godly vision of the risen Just will not make the redeemed physical universe disappear – our world will end by transformation as, caterpiller to butterfly, the child is transformed into the adult, as Mary's body was transformed at the Assumption. We will not be left lying down on a blank planetary sphere in a physical catatonic state while our spirits enjoy a solely spiritual communion of the angels and saints. We will move, see, communicate and love God and neighbor in a way beyond what we can now. When we strain to imagine it, we use our limited womb-like experience and fail. But this unborn baby expecting merely a larger womb-world of warm comfortable bath water will be wonderfully surprised.

St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles

In the last book, book 4, of the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas examines questions concerning the resurrection. In chapter 83 he denies eating and sexual union for the resurrected life. As far as I personally can understand the subject, I find his explanation of our Lord's statement about marriage and the resurrection to be reasonable. On the other hand, Thomas has an “awkward” (the way Aquinas himself describes ideas that are incomplete, inadequate or self-contradictory) stance on why Christ ate after the Resurrection. St. Thomas starts with the premise: “For, when the corruptible life is taken away, those things must be taken away which serve the corruptible life.” (SCG 83:2) Eating and marriage serve only to preserve human life. Since we will be immortal, no such activity would be necessary. St. Thomas says that even in their innocence the first humans, “Adam” and “Eve”, were imperfect because the human race was not yet multiplied as God commanded. Aquinas certainly seems to imply that God intended a specific number of people – when achieved marriage ceases to have any point. I think it is spiritually wise to accept our Lord's words and see that a union of two people, that ends in death, with the purpose of producing the fruit of increased charity and, hopefully, children will pass away as obsolete. But eating? Why “must” all the seemingly unnecessary disappear? Will conversation disappear? Will play disappear? Will art disapear? Music? And how about my friend who wants to make beautiful tables and chairs at which to share this “unnecessary” physical act of communal eating?

As mentioned, Thomas likes to speak of concepts as “awkward”. While Thomas acknowledges that Jesus ate after his Resurrection (Luke 24), he goes on to say that Christ was only doing this to prove the reality of his resurrection: “Hence, that food of His was not changed into flesh, but returned to the prior material state. But there will be no such reason for eating in the general resurrection.” (SCG 83:19)

Yes, The One who can enter a locked room and offer his wounds to the Apostle Thomas demonstrates that the Risen body is in control of the physical. Yes, and we will not have to prove to others that we are truly risen. What is not mentioned, however, is communion. Both meals and the marital act have a supreme value for humans above “the brutes” of being the occasion of possible growth in community. (The difference is that many can share in a meal for mutual physical, social and even spiritual nourishment while the marital act specificly joins husband and wife for a limited union directed at the possible fruit of that union – emotional and spiritual growth and children.) St. Thomas Aquinas states “only the occupation of the contemplative life will persist in the resurrection”. (SCG 83:24) As I have opined, Aquinas' vision of the heavenly or resurrected life relects his own spiritual life – granted, a very advanced spiritual condition. Yet I must ask, does the risen contemplative have a mouth and talk? Have legs and walk with his brothers and sisters? Does he have eyes and admire the awe-inspiring beauty of the redeemed and now transformed universe? No marriage, no eating, only contemplation – a super monastery? I liken such a view of our risen relationship to God to those who realize the sun is the center of the planets and the fuel of life yet would await the consumption of all in a super-nova. Like Jesus showing his Wounds and eating, it was all a pretense.

Here is the basic question. The soul is perfected in heavenly union with God, the ultimate act of contemplation. But why have a risen, glorified body? As a mere static platform for that contemplation floating in a pre-Copernican ether? In defense of Aquinas his following chapter 84 is a strong confirmation of the reality of the risen body and our Lord's words in Luke 24: 39 - “...for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see me to have”.

It is clear from Genesis, from our Lord's Baptism in the Jordan, and from the groaning of creation cited by St. Paul (Rom 8:18-25) that the physical universe is good, made sacred by the Incarnation and awaiting final transformation. Think again about our Catholic teaching not only on the Resurrection of Christ but also the Assumption body and soul of Mary. Ultimately, the greatest case against an excessively spiritualistic view of our experience of the heavenly life is simply love of neighbor. “...one who has no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20) Jesus is clear that the love of neighbor and self are simultaneous with the love of God. But, someone may object, in heaven we will have direct spiritual communion between God, our self and our neighbor. I repeat the response, why have a risen body? No, in the risen life the “planets” will not be absorbed into the sun. Again to be fair to Aquinas, his subsequent chapters declare that the body will be perfected by the blessed soul and share in the sovereignty of God. To repeat myself, as was said in the comparison to the unborn child, we cannot imagine our resurrected life but we can live in hope.

In the end, the greatest weight must be given this consideration: the Flesh of Christ that suffered scourging and crucifixion must in justice share in his Victory.

Suggested Readings in Scripture about the Resurrected Life

All Scripture and Tradition can only be understood within the Church, the Body of Christ.

Psalm 16:10-11
Daniel 12
Mt. 22:23-33
Mark !2: 18-27
Luke 20:27-38; 24:36-43
John 20:19-29; 21: 1-14
Rom. 8:18-25
1 Cor. 15:35-58 (Body transformed: “Not all of us shall fall asleep, but all of us are to be changed...”
1 Thess. 4:13-18 (Unlike Protestant rapture fantasies, this re-affirms 1 Cor. 15)
Phil. 3:17-21
Rev. 21:1-3