Sunday Night Prime - 2016-07-24 - Stages Of Prayer And Spiritual Growth

hello welcome to Sunday night crime my father Andrew Apostoli a member of the Franciscan friars of the renewal and it's my pleasure to be your host for today's program before we get into that let me remind you that if you have any suggestions any ideas for programs any questions that you would like to you know have presented on the program or try to answer please send your emails to Sunday night prime at ewtn.com that's Sunday night prime at ewtn.com well may the Lord give you this piece the little greeting of st. Francis well today I'm sure the program is going to be an interesting one because it's about a topic people have great interest in and that's prayer the title of our program today is the stages of prayer and spiritual growth we have a letter an email came in this is from Gina it's a very short one but it hits the point here can you talk about the three levels of prayer especially contemplative prayer thank you Father I enjoy the program please keep me in your prayers and it's signed Gina all right Gina we'll keep you in our prayers and I ask all them the viewing audience to do the same but Gina would you keep all of us in your prayers - okay we need each other the help of each other's prayers well a very important topic Gina that you bring up and I when I present this I do teach a course I should share a little bit about my my work as a friar one of the things I do is I teach a course on prayer to our young postulants now postulants is the first stage when you come you know from the outside world you're entering into the beginning of religious life you're not a novice yet you're not invested you spend a year kind of transitioning from the world and its ways and attitudes and getting used to living in community praying together and daily daily schedule of mass and so on the other things that we would be doing as part of religious life and we do give instruction to the postulants in my course for the postions both are men postulants for the Friars and our sister postulants for the Franciscan Sisters of renewal my courses on prayer for them and I follow the teaching of st. Teresa of Avila when she wrote what she wrote about in her book entitled the interior castle see she was a great teacher of Prayer and she experienced a great deal of Prayer - she used to say this three graces you can receive first of all you can receive various graces of the spiritual life now a lot of people receive them but not everybody understands what they're receiving God may give her grace and the person may you know not know or understand what it is specially in the beginning maybe with time they'll come to know someone will explain it to them or and so on so the first grace you receive is the grace of an experience of the spiritual life second grace you receive is to understand what you are experiencing now obviously Saint Teresa had to have that because she understood so clearly what God was doing leading her in her life and finally the third gift that Saint Teresa says is the ability to teach others about what you are experiencing and st. Teresa of Avila or as the Carmen lates also called her Saint Teresa of Jesus you know she certainly had all three graces she experienced great things in the spiritual life in prayer particularly then she understood you know these stages of prayer and finally was able to communicate them so beautifully in her writings to others you know it's a little story about Saint Teresa when you know when she had begun her conversion she had a great conversion in the religious life and really began to live her life in depth and with great zeal and love for God and she was on a staircase in the Carmel air in Avila and Jesus appeared to her and he said to her who are you and she said I'm Teresa of Jesus and she said to our Lord when who are you he said I am Jesus of Teresa so a beautiful way to remember her name her official title is st. Teresa of Jesus this is the big sages this is not the little flower that's saying to Reza bliss ooh or the little flower as we call her okay now to understand and appreciate prayer you have to see it as part of your spiritual growth see God gives the gift of prayer as a means to help us grow closer to him right you have to come to a conversion in your life where you realize I've got to turn more fully to God or perhaps I'm living a very sinful life I've got to give up my sins and I got to you know begin to serve the Lord earnestly and that's very important that's conversion okay that's the the beginning without a conversion you know you won't be set on the the the journey of prayer because it's exactly what she described she she had a vision of a soul in the state of grace and she saw seven grades of light leading to the interior of the soul where Christ was dwelling and she realized that there are seven stages we go through in the spiritual life and that's what she wrote her book of the interior castle describing this journey of seven stages okay we call the mansions but there it's really one castle with connected dwelling places okay seven of them and now what's important to realize is that not only does your prayer have to grow but so does your motivation to love God now a lot of people start off with fear of God his punishment you know a lot of people turn away from sin because they're afraid of being punished they don't want to go to hell obviously they don't want to spend extra time in purgatory either so fear can begin to turn them to God but you got to move beyond that huh then another stage of motivation that people come to as they begin to love God more because they know they need his help they need his blessings where do we turn when we are in the we turn to prayer and and is it wrong to go to God when we need him no he wants us to but if that's the only time you go to God well then you're kind of using his friendship aren't you so but he wants us to come to him in our needs and there's a lot of people who love God at the level of needing him but you kind of go beyond that and there's a third stage there of love and that is to love God for his sake to love him really or who he is he's all good he's worthy of all our love and therefore he's my heavenly Father he sent His divine son Jesus is my brother who became man into God the God the second divine person who became man's becoming incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary who gave him birth okay so I want to love Jesus too because he's so good he died for me on the cross and then wasn't love the Holy Spirit because he's been given to me through especially through our Baptism Confirmation we received the grace of the Holy Spirit who really guides us in this journey okay the spiritual journey but we need prayer so the first thing we have to remember is we have to have a good motivation in loving God because the the greater our motivation the more focused on God for his own sake you know the more our printer will become intense the more it will grow them faster it will grow it will become less self focused and more God focused and that's important so yeah in the journey you know it's very important to remember then that we have to have good motivation a motivation that focuses on the love of God not just being afraid that he will punish me for my sins you know we got to get beyond that okay that can be important for some people that may be the only thing that I would turn them around but you even want to go beyond just running to God when they need them see because then if you do that your spiritual life will be very inconsistent you'll go to him when you need them when you don't need them you know God one see and that's what happens is um today I'm on tomorrow you know no no God wants us to learn to love him all the time because he's all good and he's worthy of all our love okay another thing to keep in mind is that as you grow in prayer then you also have to grow in virtue the example I use when I teach the brothers and sisters is I tell them take a ladder you know with the two-legged ladder you lean against the wall okay the two legs are important one represents in the spiritual life you know your prayer so I have to climb the ladder of prayer but the other represents virtue okay so that means I have to be growing in the love of God again just like I said you know to love him more and more for his own sake okay but I also have to learn to love my neighbor as I love myself and that's important now you really can't make true progress in prayer without making progress in virtue and you know otherwise you'll just be learning methods of prayer and going through the motions of prayer no your prayer has to affect the way you live your Christian life and that's your virtue am i living a virtuous life as a Christian am i living after the example of Christ am I truly loving God with all my mind my heart my soul my strength and loving my neighbor as I love myself okay those are very important things in your spiritual life so you have to have virtue all right growing along with prayer okay so that brings us then to with that as a kind of background I should mention one more thing there are also purposes of prayer which I'll touch on more at the toward the end of our program today and that is we can pray to adorn God if you take the word acts like the Acts of the Apostles a c TS a would stand for adoration so a very important part of our prayer motive no purpose of our prayers to adore God we show him we recognize him as God of our life our Creator our Lord we're going to end to him someday we hope to be with him forever in heaven so we adore him because he is divine he's all good he's worthy of all our love second C is contrition the sorrow for our sins so sometimes our prayers will focus on expressing the sorrow for the wrongs we've done maybe like when we get ready to go to confession we stir up sorrow in our heart for the sins that we become aware of and then of course we we say our act of contrition in confession or at least say it before confession make sure you have it in your heart how you was asking people to say their act of contrition in confession right at the moment I'm granting them absolution as a priest or to take away their sins third the letter T Thanksgiving that's a very important motive of Prayer remember when our Lord he cured ten lepers only one came back to give thanks to God Jesus said that where are the other nine he said hmm we don't want to take again the gifts of God for granted we want to be grateful and gratitude in the spiritual life can really help you grow okay it fosters one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit called the fear of the Lord this is not the fear of the punishment that's called servile fear like a punishment of a slave being beaten by the master or something like that oh no the fear of the Lord is a sense of such gratitude to God I love him so much he's worthy of my love so much that I am afraid to let him down I might offend him that's a good fear because that'll keep you from offending God help you grow in holiness and finally the letter T the letter S is the word for supplication or we also call it the prayer of petition this is when you make known your needs to God and you offer to him all the requests for prayer you know again you know so maybe you need a job maybe you know we you need to make a journey and you want to ask God to protect you though or you want to pray for someone the prayer of intercession that's part of the prayer of petition so you're offering these requests to God because you know that he loves you and that he provides for you in all your needs you know one of the things that Jesus stressed when he taught us the Our Father and we'll mention a little bit of this later he said you don't have to multiply your words he says a lot of the Gentiles those the pagan peoples they figured well if they say an awful lot of words God will have to hear them eventually you know but jesus said your heavenly father he knows what you need even before you ask him he does want us to ask the prayer of petition or supplication is a real form of Prayer you know and we should be asking our Heavenly Father you know both for our own personal needs and don't forget that I've met people who said they don't pray for themselves because they feel that selfish now you pray for yourself pray for the graces you need to live a good and holy Christian life that's important or live a life whatever faith you may have that's very very important it's not wrong to pray for yourself you have to love yourself Jesus said love your neighbor as you love yourself so that it assumes he's going to love yourself and praying for yourself is part of that love then pray for others don't limit your lab just to yourself okay that would not be good alright but don't be afraid to pray for you for your own personal needs the needs of all your loved ones you bring them to God okay so we've kind of set the stage now we're going to take a little break when we come back we're gonna go through these stages that Saint Teresa outlines for us in the spiritual life our growth but their stages also a prayer we'll be right back welcome back to Sunday night cream power ranger pasta your host for today's program which is entitled the stages of Prayer and spiritual growth now when a person begins after a kind of conversion either from a life of sin or just even something comes over them and they become very aware of God in their life and they really want to live their life more intensely okay that begins the journey of virtue growth in virtue as we said as well as the growth in prayer prayer is a means to help virtue grow and that's very very important now if you go the whole distance so to speak from the first what Theresa call say the you know in her interior castle called the mansions or the dwelling places we go from the first to the seventh okay the seventh is at least that we know in this life is as far as you can go the only thing beyond the seventh mansion we believe is the beatific vision in heaven if you get there you're a saint you're in heaven you're going to see God for all eternity in the most glorious joyful profoundly fulfilling way that you were made for it now he's made for it and our hearts will rejoice for all eternity okay know if you're gonna get there that far some make it no I don't think that many actually make it that a seventh mansion in this life that's why there's Purgatory's that make up or all you didn't do in this life you know to be ready you know you're going to pass a certain point after the third dwelling place okay you're going to pass that that a point there where you're going to go through what st. John of the Cross called the dark night of the senses say he says in our spiritual journey we're going to go through two dark nights the first one is the one if that third dwelling place he calls it the dark night of the senses in which you will experience things like dryness almost a feeling that God has abandoned you you can't pray anymore like you used to pray all right now this is one of the reasons your prayer is going to change if you get through that that the dark night okay because in the beginning your prayer is more what we call active okay we'll see that in the first three stages we take more of the initiative at least we sense our initiative where we're going to the way we're going to pray after that you become more aware of God in your life you become more aware aware of the Holy Spirit working in you and you know a sense that he's guiding you and you want to respond so spiritual writers will often speak of the first three stages of prayer as active stages we are doing the acting weird the main we seem to think with you know I'm doing it all by myself but sometimes I think but remember the grace of God is always assisting us God has to inspire a simple says even to want to pray even the one to practice an act of virtue God has to put that inspiration in us and then he has to give us the grace to carry it out mmm see that's why st. Paul says God works in us both to desire to do good to pray and to accomplish to actually carry that out we can't do it without the grace and inspirations of God know the first three stages as I said it seemed like we're doing it all by itself wouldn't you get beyond that you enter into the beginning of what this writer here Gina had called contemplative prayer okay where you become much more aware of God especially the Holy Spirit present in your soul his inspirations you know come to you and you know you you you you kind of follow him more and the the early church the Fathers of the Church when they wrote about these things this is the the way they distinguish the two if you're in those first three stages of prayer okay you're like a person in a rowboat no it can be really nice in a rowboat but there's a lot of work isn't there you know you got to pull keep rowing the boat you don't go that fast then unless you're going downstream but then the stream is carrying you okay you don't go that far you have to keep keep at it yeah and it's a lot of effort why because you you seem to be doing it all by yourself but if you get into that fourth dwelling place or stage of prayer and even beyond that all of a sudden you become aware of the Holy Spirit he's working in you and you begin to realize you know what I seem to be making a little more progress you know it seems a little bit I feel drawn to it and the the fathers of the church described that as putting up a sail on your boat sea so that you don't have to do all the rowing by yourself like that now you got the sail the wind gets in the sail you go much faster you go much further and certainly with a lot less effort and you'll see there's some of the saints used to say if you get to the sixth and seventh mansion now you're talking about canonize abaut people you get that far all right there's they say you don't do anything the Holy Spirit does it all and it's true in terms of the love that he inspires in the heart okay but I know I'm jumping ahead here but it's good to distinguish active prayer and they call this other passive or something in the beginning something I acquire through my effort okay you know I'm working at it I'm learning how to pray because if they're all the more you pray that the more comfortable you come become with it the more you are aware the ups and downs the times when you have consolation and joy other times when you may have some dryness there and you have to deal with that okay you know but when you you know so you're learning about these things in those first stages so you're requiring the art of praying well okay on the other hand when you come under that influence of the Holy Spirit you know that's infused okay and see most will see most religions organized religions will have the first three stages of prayer which we're going to go into right now the active prayer beyond that unless they have an idea of God as a person like we as Christians we believe in one God in three divine persons the Father the Son the Holy Spirit we become aware of them dwelling in us if they're all that's the gift we received through our baptism it's the gift of God living within us this is we call it sanctifying grace or the divine indwelling of the Blessed Trinity this is our dignity to be through baptism children of God in that sense every you might say every creature is a child of God a real man creature is a child of God okay but through baptism you not only are you a child of God but you enter into that deeper union with the three divine persons and you share in the priesthood of Christ through baptism leaves you with a Lisa quality indelible mark st. Thomas described the st. Thomas Aquinas described it as a share in the priestly power of Christ and that's why a person cannot receive Holy Communion until they've been baptized not supposed to receive all you mean unless you've been baptized why because receiving Communion is a part of the priestly worship of God but you know Christ's offering his sacrifice in the mass once again not in bloody way not in suffering just the the merits of his passion and death he offers that gift of the Father and then we receive him in Holy Communion that's part of a priestly worship of God the sacraments the master mass is the high point of our liturgy as Catholics okay you know the council call that the Eucharist st. John and Saint John Paul the great also referred to it always as the Eucharist as the source and the summit of the Christian life okay so because you are baptized you share in the priestly role of Christ and that's why you can receive other sacraments and that's important but if you're not baptized you can't receive the other sacraments I mean pressings go off to receive Communion receive a host but they're not receiving the grace in the same way because they've not been they've not been brought into that divine dwelling okay that's why very important baptism is such a sacred sacra they ask Pope John Paul the great huh that's hope what was the most important event in your life and he had so many to choose from right he said it's my baptism because that made me a child of God and joined me to Christ in a very special way so let's go on now what are the first three stages of Prayer okay the simplest way to remember it is the way they talked about it in the Eastern Church they speak about the prayer of the lips then move to the prayer of the mind then you go to the prayer of the heart so the lips the mind the heart what do we mean by that well the first stages of you know of a person's spiritual growth this might include someone who's come off a big conversion or even little children if they're all they have to begin at the beginning they don't know God that well so what do they need to do in order to pray they have to use the prayers of other people okay we call these formal prayers prayers that we we memorize that we learn okay so that by saying them over and over again especially as we grow in holiness those prayers have an inner meaning that becomes more and more meaningful to us more and more beautiful because they're expressing things that you know we didn't know how to say it to God in the Old Testament God inspired a hundred and fifty prayers but which his people could pray to him and we even used them now we call him the Psalms those are prayers in songs they were probably some some of them to ancient guitars or you know the lyre and the harp and everything okay but God inspired those 150 prayers and you know Thomas Merton who wrote a lot on mystical prayer and so on he said that the Psalms contain almost every kind of human emotion every kind of situation we could want to express you know that we might be in we can identify again Thanksgiving joy repentance sorrow in anguish and all these emotions are incorporating those beautiful press but for us as Cathy let's take a look at some of the prayers that formal prayers the our Father you know in the gospel it says that Jesus was praying one day and the Apostles were watching him and when he got done he said to them one of them said to him Lord teach us also how to pray you know and he taught them a formal prayer he said when you pray say our Father who art in heaven okay and when he was give me the Sermon on the Mount he taught that same prayer so that's the Lord's Prayer that's the most beautiful prayer and the it so it seems doing incorporating contained everything we need isn't it time and you know as you grow in you spiritually like that prayer becomes more and more meaningful you know why because your relationship to the Father grows then you're calling him father Abba member st. Paul said we didn't receive a spirit of slavery and fear we received the spirit of sonship we are children of God sons and daughters so we call God Abba Father daddy actually it's with the words more affectionate to being daddy so the our Father the Hail Mary beautiful prayer to our lady in the first half of that prayer is really based on Scripture the angel speaking to Our Lady at the Annunciation and later when our lady went on the visitation Elizabeth's words to her incorporated in the first half of that prayer and the second half of that prayer of the church adds for us to ask Mary to pray for us now and at the hour of our death how important that is to pray for the hour of your death do you receive the graces you need to you know come to salvation another prayer the glory be to the Father the Apostles Creed the acts of faith of hope and of love those are beautiful prayers to say and then we have little prism maybe you know the Angelus prayer okay these prayers help us do you know to get into a prayerful mood we may not always be ready to speak to God in our own words but we use these present and you know where we learn to say those prayers especially the rosary someone once said most Catholics learned to pray through the rosary alright we'll see okay why because you got all those formal prayers are right there you know we're speaking to the Lord you know at Fatima you know my love for our Lady of Fatima and is that great 100th anniversary comes closer you know the we need to use those prayers that our lady taught us we even used one of them at the Rosary you know at the end of each decade of the Rosary we pray Oh My Jesus forgive us our sins save us from the fires of hell lead all souls to heaven especially those most in need of thy mercy so in the Rosary we use many formal prayers the prayer of the lips okay and so Mary gave us I think the Rosary to help us grow in prayer which helps us to grow in our spiritual life now we're going to go to the next step of prayer which is the prayer of the mind okay and we're going to be looking at that we're going to have to take a break right now so don't leave us we'll be right back we've got an awful lot more to go through here welcome back for Sunday night I'm your father Andrew apostille your host for today's program which is entitled the stages of prayer and spiritual growth this was response to a an email from Gena who asked that we talk about the levels of Prayer okay we talked about the first level of prayer which was the prayer of the lips those are the prayers of beginners children we teach children to memorize their prayers don't be afraid to teach your child to memorize a prayer I you know I heard people say years ago you know don't teach a child anything they don't understand don't let them memorize anything they don't understand if you don't do that when they get old enough to understand they're not going to know what to say so it's very important teach them their prayers as little children very important now you go from the prayer of the lips what to the prayer of the mind okay and what are you doing the rosary hmm you begin to meditate on the mysteries of the rosary we got the Joyful Mysteries which deal with the the birth and the childhood of Jesus is infancy and so on young childhood we begin to look at Mary how she responded to the Angels request I am the handmaid of the Lord let it be done to me according to your word and then visiting her aged cousin Elizabeth who was in need you know assisted her we're prior to the birth of st. John the Baptist and the birth of Jesus in the home humility and poverty of the stable the poor and humble came the shepherds and the wise men who in this mission machine said it in all their wisdom they knew they didn't know everything that's why they came then later on the presentation in the temple and Mary here's you know that her son would be a sign of contradiction for the destined for the rising up salvation and falling away unfortunately many would reject him and fall away from the faith he had come to save them but unfortunately they would not accept him and then he also remember the holy man Simeon told our lady that you know your own heart would be pierced by a sword of sorrow and we know the Seven Sorrows of a lady and finally another sorrow of our lady which we enjoy and that was the loss of Jesus in the temple and uh Jesus begins to reveal to his mother more deeply you know calling God his father you know remember that's a very important part of that story then you got the the sorrowful mystery you got the luminous mistress through that first you know Jesus beginning his public life with his baptism John okay Mary interceding at the wedding feast of Cana Jesus works his first miracle then you know Jesus proclaiming the kingdom and calling people to conversion then the Transfiguration how beautiful that must have been huh a little glimpse of the glory that awaits us in heaven and finally the fifth luminous mystery where Jesus Institute's the Eucharist at the Last Supper then there are the sorrowful mysteries remember we have to remember that in life we're going to have our crosses we have to bear that cross with Jesus and so you have the sorrowful mystery Jesus in his agony in the garden he foresaw his sufferings our sins but probably what hurt him the most added to his agony at least this comes to us in the diary of st. Faustina that he saw those for whom he would suffer and died who would reject his call to mercy at the end of their lives so we need to pray for them that they would be open to God's mercy so the agony in the garden the scourging at the pillar perhaps to atone especially for sins of impurity in the world then the crowning Jesus crowned with thorns mockery and humiliation spitting on him imagine that huh and he was the son of God then forth carrying the cross reminding us to carry our cross with him and finally he died on that cross he gave his life for our salvation and then the Glorious Mysteries there's always hope Jesus rose from the dead and that's the most important part of our faith st. Paul said if Christ be not risen our faith is useless but because He is risen he will raise us up on the last day you send it into heaven to prepare a place for us in heaven he sent the Holy Spirit and then he took his mother body and soul and and he wouldn't mind the body of his mother to corrupt after all she was the most beautiful creature you know formed by the holy spirit in her holiness and the Immaculate Conception the fullness of grace that she had and she carried Jesus in her womb for nine months and he took his very flesh and blood from her so Jesus was not going to let the body of his mother be corrupted he took her body and soul into heaven and you know the the crowning with glory which we see reflected in Our Lady's apparition so when you pray the rosary huh you know you're you're reflecting on so much of Scripture and you can meditate on other things too and it could be even apart from the rosary you know when you meditate on the truths of our faith when you meditate for example on Jesus in the Eucharist might be praying before him in a chapel of a church there's so many things you might be reading some some good spiritual book or theology and you're reflecting on the the importance of these truths of our faith all of that is part of meditation and that helps you grow you know we want to know more we want to go more deeply see I forget which Saint it was right off the I think was Saint Anselm who said faith seeks understanding in other words I believe already but I want to understand it more saying and then the you come so in that the stage at which you're meditating learning to meditate you know you're going through many times trials resisting evil temptation Devils always trying to pull you back and he sees that if you you're advancing he'll try very hard at that time in your spiritual life to get your discourage bring you back into sinful ways because if you get free you're gonna run to God he's gonna be like a huge magnet and you're that little piece of metal and he drawing you okay so meditation is important you know sometimes you can just spend time meditating the Alexio Divina where you read something you know that inspires you scripture or again the writings of saints and so on and then you begin to reflect on that and try to put your self into that and you know what does it stir up within you and then maybe making some kind of little resolution the two today I'm you know meditated on patience maybe I'm getting impatient with a lot of people okay I got to work on that that's going to be my resolution all right you take something away from your meditating and you help it as a little inspiration for the day then when you come to the third stage of Prayer so you go from the prayer of the lips formal prayers that you recite to the prayer of the mind that you begin to reflect and meditate that moves your heart say and this is where your love is starting to grow more and more and it's reaching that love that you want to get to mmm and that's why it's so important you know that when you pray you you you stir that love within you and what happens is you come to a third level of Prayer which we call effective prayer the prayer of the heart I can speak heart-to-heart with God in fact st. Teresa of Avila injury of Jesus she said that prayer is nothing but a heart-to-heart conversation with God by whom we know we are loved remember that before you even go to pray God is waiting for you he loves you and he's calling you to love him more to know him better to serve him more fully to be more ardent wanting to respond to his love because he has so much to give you but he can only give you and me to the degree were open to receive it and that's where prayer comes in helps you to do this so the prayer of the heart now as you grow in your virtues your virtues are growing very much so lean you are by this time you are experiencing loving God for his own sake rather than loving him for your sake for what you need okay there's not that much fear left you know still some but you know furious punishment by them what's really important now is that fear of the Lord I spoke about I don't want to let them down I know he loves me I'm beginning to experience that love more and more now what happens is you almost naturally want to be aware of God through the day we call that recollection active recollection because I make an effort to try to be aware of the presence of God as I go through my day you know whether I'm doing my job or I mean doing my responsibilities in the home I'm at school studying or whatever I may be doing I am doing God's will as far as I know that he wants me to do this and that's important to live in union with God's will okay and so you try to be aware of God we call that an active recollection all right now you will from time to time go through periods of dryness one of the things God often gives to encourage people to go on is what we call consolation is a kind of a sweetness in prayer and makes pretty very beautiful and very attractive and we want to persevere and do more and more okay we got to be careful we don't pray just for consolation st. John of the Cross had a little caution about that he said we must love the god of consolation and not simply the consolation of God in other words we don't love the gifts he gives us we want to love him more but he will give you that consolation to help you but times you'll take it away we have a little letter here email from Mary Ann from Brooklyn she writes this father please do a program on times when we don't feel God in our hearts sometimes it's like someone turns the light off in my heart and I can't can't feel him there then I fall into disbelief please talk about how to fight through this thank you Mary Ann from Brooklyn Mary Ann that's a very important statement that you made there you know you're exactly describing this dryness which can also appear like darkness because what are some of the things this is the beginning of that dark night of the senses I talked about what st. John of the Cross speaks about that happens between the third dwelling-place and the beginning of the forest okay of course your spiritual life is B meaning to change or beginning to enter into a contemplative prayer you say going from active where I was in doing everything I was praying the prayer of the lips and I was meditating and I was making these acts of love in my heart so all of a sudden I can't do that it seems like I I don't know how to pray I don't feel anything I don't know if God is there does he love me all those kinds of things are going to go through your mind and heart persevere don't be afraid it'll all come back to you okay in a different more beautiful way all right but what you do become aware of eventually is the Holy Spirit moving you to love more see what he does is he binds up our mind from working we can't meditate it's why you can't minute that's one of the signs of the the dark night of the of the census there's two dark nights the first one is dark night of the census and three signs of that are number one I can't meditate the way I used to I used to have these beautiful beautiful meditations and you know and they just kept going and going and thinking and it was no oh so nice and everything I can't do that you're making a couple of efforts in it just like it stops okay don't be afraid that happens all right Jesus has not left you that's a big temptation of the devil st. Faustina went through that do you know she actually went through that and Jesus had to tell her she used to become so afraid that when she had no feelings you know that Jesus had abandoned her and Jesus told her one day says look he's almost as if it's the way I want to say it it's almost like he said to her look let me make this straight get this straight I never leave a soul unless they commit a mortal sin that's the only way Jesus will ever leave you because a mortal sin is like evicting Christ from living in your heart he doesn't leave you you can throw him out by committing a mortal sin that's mortal means deadly what's but dies when you commit this and you die as a person no you're still alive okay what dyes that life of God in your soul that's what dies it's like you've evicted Christ then he's not there as long as you're in that state of mortal sin you got to get him back by repentance going to confession you know you got to have perfect sorrow perfect love to remove that mortal sin Venus sins in perfect love acts of kindness and all can help all right take away venial sin but mortal sin gotta have very perfect love pure love to be sorry because I've offended God who's worthy of all my love you know deserving of all of it okay so Jesus is always there even in the midst of storms how many times with the Apostles experience you know there were bit Jesus on the boat there in the middle of a storm and they think you're gonna drowned you know or they see our Lord coming you look like you're ghost walking on the water remember that they were panicking so don't panic Jesus is still with you as long as you have not committed any mortal sin he's still with you and if you have get the confession get back into that state of grace have Jesus living in you that's very important okay so the first thing is you can't meditate second there's no feelings of God nor are you going back to the world you know one in a life of sin but thirdly and this is strange despite the fact that I don't feel God you know with those feelings of consolation I love him very much and I want to be with him okay that's a very important sign despite the fact I don't have any feelings of consolation I want Jesus more than anything okay you're going through that dark night now once you get to the other side of that dark night something very important happens you know the Holy Spirit becomes more active remember we said this is passive prayer you put up those sails on the sailboat you're going to the wind of the Holy Spirit it's going to push you much faster much further without very much effort on your part you'll be aware of the Holy Spirit you know as you never were aware of him before you'll become aware of Jesus to see what happening now you the gifts that of the holy spirit that you received on the day of your baptism remember there are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and they are the gifts of fear the Lord which we've been talking about you know makes you want to not offend God become very sensitive to that secondly there's Pyatt piety where you begin to look at God more and more as a loving father and there's fortitude which strengthens you know your will to love God you know even in trials and temptations and difficulties then those three gifts affect your your your will but your mind is also affected by the gifts of wisdom that's the highest gift by which you love God in a very powerful way okay that's the highest of all the gifts of the holy spirit then there's the gift of understanding that leads you to go deeper and deeper and to appreciate your faith to love it more and more then there's the gift of knowledge by which you begin to look at the world and in a way different than maybe if you were living a sinful life you looked at the world just as a source of pleasure and materialism and everything else now know this world you know I'm here to love God and serve Him faithfully and then finally there's the gift of counsel okay which helps you make good decisions so these gifts that the Holy Spirit operate okay the gifts of wisdom knowledge counsel understanding help your mind to grasp the mysteries of faith and that affects your prayer you begin to know Jesus more deeply let me give you an example okay the death of Jesus on the cross was like you know a dark night for the apostles right Jesus was taken away they figured it's all over you know he's gone all right and what happens three days later he rises from the dead and you remember the story of the disciples walking along the road to Emmaus and Jesus appears I remember their talking to him they don't recognize him but they're talking to him and finally they invite him in to stay with them and that he takes the bread and he says what he did at the Last Supper this is my body this is my blood okay they recognized him there through the Eucharist okay very very important but what did they say we're not our hearts burning inside us as he spoke to us you know as he explaining the scriptures didn't we recognize him in the breaking of the bread see they recognized it was the same Jesus but now he was risen they recognized him more beautifully and that's what happens in your prayer life okay that's the beginning of contemplation all right and there are different stages of contemplation depending on how you know how deeply one enters into those how advanced they get is that an infused recollection okay which is this these inspirations of the Holy Spirit into the mind they're subtle you know we don't see them all clearly but all of a sudden we begin to realize I'm seeing Jesus differently than I knew him before that's what those disciples on the road to Emmaus were saying as they understood him then later on the prayer of quiet where the will is touched deeply with a very powerful love of God and finally comes the prayer of Union and that has three stages you know which is a very intense form of love for God and finally come to the what they call the the prayer of ecstatic union or spiritual betrothal espousal to Christ and finally spiritual marriage in the seventh mansion is the prayer of transforming union where the soul becomes one with Christ so there are many very beautiful stages of Prayer and always helping us to grow spiritually I hope Gina and all of you have gained something from that usually those first three stages are the most important to focus on let us pray now Oh Heavenly Father we thank you for the gift of Prayer maybe we all grow through the different stages to come to know you more and love you more faithfully we ask this blessing in Jesus name and I bless all of you in the name of the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit well let's take this moment now to make our appeal for the support for ewtn you know so many good and wonderful things come through the the network that Mother Angelica founded she certainly was faithful to God's grace wasn't she how to create this you know means of proclaiming the gospel to throughout the whole world and so many many people you know benefit from this I hear from many of you please support it with your prayers but especially your financial contributions they're very important you're supporting the work of the new evangelization well God love you all peace be with you

Channel: EWTN

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Id: ESRg1gfCC40

Length: 52min 22sec (3142 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2016