If we take a bird’s-eye view of the march along the path of life with God, from vocal prayer to more profound communication, we will have the following general outline. In the first stages, God leaves the initiative to the individual, who functions according to the norms of psychology. God’s participation is rare. He leaves it to the individual to find the means and supports, as if the individual were the only carpenter in the house. And although it is true that, in these first stages, divine consolations may abound, prayer appears to be an edifice exclusively supported by human scaffolding.
As we advance toward higher levels, God slowly and gradually takes the initiative and directly intervenes, by means of special supports. We begin to feel that the psychological supports, which helped us so much before, are now useless crutches. God, with ever greater decisiveness, takes the initiative from us; He places us in submission and surrender, to the point where another subject, the Spirit, comes on the scene and remains as the only architect, to transform us into a “child” of Cod, a living image of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness, for, when we do not know how to pray properly, then the Spirit personally makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words; and he who can see into all hearts knows what the Spirit means because the prayers that the Spirit makes for God’s holy people are always in accord with the mind of God. (Rom 8:26-28)
The first steps are complicated. All of us, like children learning to walk, need psychological supports, methods of concentration, ways of relaxing, and points of reflection.
But when God enters the scene, we, in such close proximity to Him, sense the contrast between our “face” and the “Face” of God, and we are then dragged along through successive purifications by means of a general detachment. Having gained purity, liberty, and peace, nothing stands in our way, and we speedily advance with open sails under God’s direction toward a transforming union. In the meantime, we are completely sculpted into the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, full of maturity, humility, grandeur, love, and service.
Writing about prayer in his book, Quiero Ver a Dios, Father Eugenio del NiÒo Jesus says that “these interior transformations have an echo that reverberates in the psychological consciousness. Independent of any extraordinary favors which cause true shocks in the consciousness and leave a healthy scar upon it, grace grows in the individual, silently and slowly, through the passing joys, through violent suffering, and with these, to a region of peace: a refuge where sound or storm rarely come, an oasis of springs of strength and joy.”
Extracted from the book “Sensing your hidden presence” by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga
