Praying with Your Whole Heart E-Book

Saint Augustine

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 199

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

This is a collection of four distinct but united voices on the subject of how to pray, and how to reach a deeper level of intimacy with God in your prayer life. In these pages, you will meet some of the most passionate Christians in the history of our faith: St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Catherine of Siena, an anonymous English monk of the fourteenth century, and Thomas à Kempis.

Leseprobe

PRAYING WITH YOUR WHOLE HEART

Praying with your Whole Heart

ST. AUGUSTINE

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA

AN ANONYMOUS MONK

OF FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

THOMAS À KEMPIS

PARACLETE PRESS

BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS

2014 First printing

Praying with Your Whole Heart

The portions of this text taken from the Confessions of St. Augustine and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, including biographical material and notes, are copyright © 2014 by The Community of Jesus, Inc.

The portions of this text taken from the writings of St. Catherine of Siena, plus biographical material about her, are copyright © 2014 by Paraclete Press, Inc.

The portions of this text taken from The Cloud of Unknowing by an anonymous monk of the fourteenth century, plus biographical material about this author, are copyright © 2014 by Bernard Bangley.

ISBN 978-1-61261-507-3

Consists of excerpts from material previously published by Paraclete Press, Inc.

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete PressBrewster, Massachusettswww.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ST. AUGUSTINE

“Starting from a Restless Heart”

From The Confessions, book I, 1–4

“Moving from Inquiry to Praise”

From The Confessions, book XIII, 1, 3, 8

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA

“Arriving at Pure and Generous Love”

From Little Talks with God, book III

ANONYMOUS

“Seeking God in Contemplation”

From The Cloud of Unknowing, chapters 3–12

THOMAS À KEMPIS

“Committing to the Inner Life”

From The Confessions, book I, ch. 25, i-v; book II

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF THE CONTRIBUTORS

St. Augustine, 354–430

St. Catherine of Siena, 1347–1380

The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, fourteenth century

Thomas à Kempis, ca. 1380–1471

Notes

FOREWORD

This is a deceptively simple book, written by four experts on the Christian spiritual life. Each of them writes with clarity and from a great depth of personal experience, and yet what each describes is something that is ultimately beyond description. That’s what we mean by the book being deceptively simple: you cannot obtain what they describe by simply reading.

This is a collection of four distinct but united voices on the subject of how to pray, and how to reach a new level in your prayer life. In these pages, you will meet some of the most passionate Christians in the history of our faith: St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Catherine of Siena, an anonymous English monk of the fourteenth century, and Thomas à Kempis. Their viewpoints are presented chronologically, and short biographies of each may be found at the conclusion of the book.

ST. AUGUSTINE

From The Confessions

  “STARTING FROM A RESTLESS HEART”  

From The Confessions, book XIII, 1, 3, 8

BOOK IInfancy to Age Fifteen

ONE

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised. Great isyourpower,andyourwisdomisinfinite.1 And man would praise you; man, who is but a small particle of your creation; yes, man, though he carries with him his mortality, the evidence of his sin, the evidence that you resist the proud; yet man, but a particle of your creation, would praise you.2

You awake us to delight in your praise; for you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which of these is most important, to call on you or to praise you. And again, to know you or to call on you. For who can call on you without knowing you? For he who does not know you may call on you as other than you are. Or perhaps we call on you that we may know you? But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher? And they who seek the Lord shall praise him. For they that seek shall find him, and those who find shall praise him. Let me seek you, Lord, by calling on you, and call on you believing in you, for you have been preached to us. My faith calls on you, Lord, the faith you have given me, the faith you have breathed into me through the incarnation of your Son, through the ministry of the preacher.3

TWO

But how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord? For when I call on him, I ask him to come into myself. And what room is there in me, where my God can come—God who made heaven and earth? Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, that can contain you? Indeed, do heaven and earth which you have made, and in which you made me, contain you? Or, since nothing could exist without you, does every existing thing contain you? Why, then, do I ask that you come into me, since I, too, exist—I who could not exist if you were not in me? Why do I say this? Because even if I were in hell, yet you would be there also. For if I go down into hell, you are there. I could not exist then, O my God, could not exist at all, unless you were in me. Or should I not rather say, I could not exist unless I were in you, from whom are all things, by whom are all things, andin whom are all things.

Even so, Lord, even so. Where do I call you to come, since I am in you? Or whence can you enter into me? For where beyond heaven and earth could I go that my God might come there into me, who has said, I fill the heaven and the earth?

THREE

Do the heaven and earth then contain you, since you fill them? Or do you fill them and yet overflow, since they cannot contain you? And where, when the heaven and earth are filled, do you pour forth that which remains of yourself? Or indeed, is there no need that you who contain all things should be contained by anything, since those things you fill, you fill by containing them? For the vessels that you fill do not sustain you, since even if they were broken, you would not be poured out. And when you are poured out on us, you are not cast down, but we are uplifted. You are not dissipated, but we are drawn together. But as you fill all things, do you fill them with your whole self, or, since all things cannot contain you wholly, do they contain part of you? Do they all contain the same part at once, or has each its own proper part—the greater more, the smaller less? If this is so, then is one part of you greater, another less? Or are you wholly everywhere, while nothing altogether contains you?

FOUR

What are you then, my God—what, but the Lord God? Forwho is Lord but the Lord? Or who is God save our God? Most high, most excellent, most powerful, most almighty, most merciful, and most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, and most strong; stable, yet mysterious; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new and bringing age upon the proud, though they know it not; ever working, yet ever at rest; still gathering, yet lacking nothing; sustaining, filling and protecting; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet possessing all things. You love without passion; you are jealous without anxiety; you repent, yet have no sorrow; you are angry, yet serene; change your ways, yet your plans are unchanged; recover what you find, having never lost it; never in need, yet rejoicing in gain; never covetous, yet requiring interest. You receive over and above, that you may owe—yet who has anything that is not yours? You pay debts, owing nothing; remit debts, losing nothing. And what have I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy—what is this I have said? Or what do any say when they speak of you? Yet woe to those who keep silence, since those who say most are as the dumb!

  “MOVING FROM INQUIRY TO PRAISE”  

From The Confessions, book XIII, 1, 3, 8

BOOK XIIIFrom Inquiry to Praise

ONE

I call upon you, O my God, my Mercy, who made me and who did not forget me, though I forgot you. I call you into my soul, which you prepare for your reception by the longing you inspire in it. Do not forsake me now as I call on you who anticipated me before I called, and urged me with many kinds of repeated calls, that I should hear you from afar, be converted, and call upon you, who called me.

Lord, you blotted out all my evil desserts, not recompensing the work of my hands, by which I have acted rebelliously against you. And you have anticipated all my good desserts, so as to repay the work of your hands by which you made me, because before I came to be, you were, and I was not anything to which you might grant being. And yet, behold, I am—out of your goodness, anticipating all that you made me to be, and all out of which you made me. For you had no need of me, nor am I such a good one as to be helpful to you, my Lord and God; not in serving you, as though you were fatigued in working, or lest your power might be less if it lacked my assistance. Nor is my service to you like the cultivation of land, that you should go uncultivated if I did not cultivate you. But it is that I may serve and worship you to the end that I may have well-being from you, from whom I am one capable of well-being.

THREE

That you said in the beginning of the creation, Let there be light, and there was light, I understand to be the spiritual creation, because there was already a sort of life which you might illuminate. But just as it had no claim on you for a life that could be illuminated, so neither, when it already existed, had it any claim to be enlightened. For its formless condition could not be pleasing to you until it became light. And it became light not merely by existing, but by beholding the illuminating light and cleaving to it. It follows that it owes its living, and its living happily, to nothing but your grace, being turned by a change for the better toward that which cannot be changed for better or worse. That, you alone are, because you alone simply are. To you it is not one thing to live, another to live happily, because you, yourself, are your own blessedness.

EIGHT

Angels fell, the soul of man fell, and by this they have pointed out the abyss in that dark depth. That abyss was ready for the whole spiritual creation, if you had not said from the beginning, Let there be light, and there was light, and if every obedient intelligence of your heavenly City had not clung to you and rested in your Spirit—moving unchangeably over everything changeable. Otherwise, even the heaven of heavens would have been in itself a dark abyss; but now it is light in the Lord. For even in that miserable restlessness of the spirits who fell away, and when stripped of the garments of your light, discovered their own darkness, you sufficiently reveal how noble you made the rational creation, to which nothing less than you will suffice to produce a happy rest. It is not a rest even to itself. For you, O God, shall lighten our darkness. From you shall come our garments of light; and then our darkness shall be as the noonday.

Give yourself to me, O my God. Restore yourself to me. Behold I love you, and if it be too little, let me love you more strongly. I cannot measure my love, so that I may know how much love there is yet lacking in me before my life can run to your embrace and not be turned away, until it is hidden in the secret place of your Presence. This only I know: that woe is me except in you—not only outwardly, but also within myself. And all plenty that is not my God is poverty to me.

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA

From Little Talks with God

  “ARRIVING AT PURE AND GENEROUS LOVE”  

From Little Talks with God, book III

A TREATISE OF PRAYER

Of the means that the soul takes to arrive at pure and generous love; here begins the Treatise of Prayer.

“When the soul has passed through the doctrine of Christ crucified, with true love of virtue and hatred of vice, and has arrived at the house of self-knowledge and entered into it, it remains, with its door barred, in watching and constant prayer, separated entirely from the consolations of the world. Why does it shut itself in this manner? It does so out of fear, knowing its own imperfections, and also from the desire of arriving at pure and generous love.

“And because the soul sees and knows well that in no other way can it arrive at pure love, with a lively faith it waits for my arrival, through the increase of grace in it.

“How is a lively faith to be recognized? By perseverance in virtue, and by the fact that the soul never turns back for anything, whatever it may be, nor rises from holy prayer for any reason except (note well) for obedience or charity’s sake. For no other reason ought the soul to leave off prayer.

“For, during the time ordained for prayer, the devil is apt to arrive in the soul, causing much more conflict and trouble than when the soul is not occupied in prayer. This he does so that holy prayer may become tedious to the soul. He tempts the soul often with these words: ‘This prayer avails you nothing, for you need attend to nothing except your vocal prayers.’ He does this so that, becoming wearied and confused in mind, the soul may abandon the practice of prayer. For prayer is a weapon with which the soul can defend itself from every adversary, if it is grasped with the hand of love, by the arm of free choice in the light of the holy faith.”

Here, concerning the sacrament of the body of Christ, the complete doctrine is given; and how the soul proceeds from vocal to mental prayer, and a vision is related that this devout servant of God once received.

Know, dearest daughter, how, by humble, continual, and faithful prayer, with time and perseverance, the soul acquires every virtue. It should persevere and never abandon prayer, either through the illusion of the devil or its own fragility. That is, it should never abandon prayer either on account of any thought or movement coming from its own body, or on account of the words of any creature. The devil often places himself upon the tongues of creatures, causing them to chatter nonsensically, with the purpose of preventing the prayer of the soul. All of this the soul should pass by, by means of the virtue of perseverance.

“Oh, how sweet and pleasant to that soul and to me is holy prayer, made in the house of knowledge of self and of me. It opens the eye of the intellect to the light of faith and the affections to the abundance of my charity. And my charity was made visible to you through my visible, only-begotten Son, who showed it to you with his blood! This blood intoxicates the soul and clothes it with the fire of divine charity, giving it the food of the sacrament that is placed in the inn of the mystical body of the holy church. That is, the food of the body and blood of my Son, wholly God and wholly man, is administered to you by the hand of my vicar, who holds the key of the blood.

“This is the inn that I mentioned to you, the inn that stands on the bridge to provide food and comfort for the travelers and the pilgrims who pass by the way of the doctrine of my Truth, so they should not faint through weakness.

“This food strengthens little or much according to the desire of the recipient, whether he receives the food sacramentally or virtually. He receives the food sacramentally when he actually communicates with the blessed sacrament. He receives it virtually when he communicates, both by desire for communion and by contemplation of the blood of Christ crucified. It is as if he communicated sacramentally, with the affection of love. For love is to be tasted in the blood, which, as the soul sees, was shed through love. On seeing this the soul becomes intoxicated, and blazes with holy desire and satisfies itself, becoming full of love for me and for its neighbor.

“Where can this love be acquired? In the house of self-knowledge with holy prayer. There, imperfections are lost, even as Peter and the disciples, while they remained in watching and prayer, lost their imperfection and acquired perfection. By what means is this love acquired? By perseverance seasoned with the most holy faith.

“But do not think that the soul receives such ardor and nourishment from prayer if it prays only vocally, as do many souls whose prayers are words rather than love. Such as these give heed to nothing except to completing psalms and saying many Our Fathers. And once they have completed their appointed tale, they do not appear to think of anything further, but seem to place devout attention and love in mere vocal recitation. But the soul is not required to do this, for, in doing only this, it bears but little fruit, which pleases me but little.

“But if you asked me whether the soul should abandon vocal prayer, since it does not seem to everyone that they are called to mental prayer, I would reply ‘No.’ The soul should advance by degrees, and I know well that, just as the soul is at first imperfect and afterward perfect, so also is it with its prayer. It should nevertheless continue in vocal prayer, while it is yet imperfect, so as not to fall into idleness.

“But the soul should not say its vocal prayers without joining them to mental prayer. That is, while the soul is reciting vocal prayers, it should endeavor to elevate its mind in my love, with the consideration of its own defects and of the blood of my only-begotten Son. For in the Blood, it finds the breadth of my charity and the remission of its sins.

“And this the soul should do, so that self-knowledge and the consideration of its own defects should make it recognize my goodness in itself and continue its practices with true humility. I do not wish defects to be considered in particular, but in general, so that the mind may not be contaminated by the remembrance of particular and hideous sins.

“But I do not wish the soul to consider its sins, either in general or in particular, without also remembering the blood and the broadness of my mercy, for fear that otherwise it should be brought to confusion. And together with confusion would come the devil, who has caused it, under the banner of contrition and displeasure of sin. And so it would arrive at eternal damnation, not only because of its confusion, but also through the despair that would come to it, because it did not seize the arm of my mercy. This is one of the subtle devices with which the devil deludes my servants.

“In order to escape from the devil’s deceit and to be pleasing to me, you must enlarge your hearts and affections in my boundless mercy, with true humility. You know that the pride of the devil cannot resist the humble mind, nor can any confusion of spirit be greater than the broadness of my good mercy, if the soul will only truly hope in my mercy.

“Once, if you remember rightly, when the devil wished to overthrow you by confusion, wishing to prove to you that your life had been deluded and that you had not followed my will, you did your duty, which my goodness (which is never withheld from one who will receive it) gave you strength to do. You rose, humbly trusting in my mercy, and said, ‘I confess to my Creator that my life has indeed been passed in darkness. But I will hide myself in the wounds of Christ crucified, and bathe myself in his blood. And so shall my iniquities be consumed, and with desire will I rejoice in my creator.’

“You remember that then the devil fled. And, turning round to the opposite side, he endeavored to inflate you with pride, saying: ‘You are perfect and pleasing to God, and there is no more need for you to afflict yourself or to lament your sins.’ And once more I gave you the light to see your true path, namely, humiliation of yourself.

“And you answered the devil with these words: ‘Wretch that I am, John the Baptist never sinned and was sanctified in his mother’s womb. And I have committed so many sins, and have hardly begun to know them with grief and true contrition. For I see who God is, who is offended by me, and who I am, who offend him.’

“Then the devil, not being able to resist your humble hope in my goodness, said to you: ‘Cursed that you are, for I can find no way to take you. If I put you down through confusion, you rise to heaven on the wings of mercy, and if I raise you on high, you humble yourself down to hell. And when I go into hell you persecute me, so that I will return to you no more, because you strike me with the stick of charity.’

“The soul, therefore, should season the knowledge of itself with the knowledge of my goodness, and then vocal prayer will be of use to the soul who prays it, and pleasing to me. And from the vocal imperfect prayer, practiced with perseverance, the soul will arrive at perfect mental prayer. But if it simply aims at completing its tale, and, preferring vocal prayer it abandons mental prayer, it will never arrive at it.

“Sometimes the soul will be so ignorant that, having resolved to say so many prayers vocally in order to complete its tale, it will abandon my visitation that it feels by conscience, rather than abandon what it had begun. For I visit its mind sometimes in one way, and sometimes in another. Sometimes I visit it in a flash of self-knowledge or of contrition for sin, sometimes in the broadness of my charity. Sometimes I place before its mind, in various ways, according to my pleasure and the desire of the soul, the presence of my Truth.