Salesian Literature

Chapter 1  :  How love unites the soul with God in prayer

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Here, I am not going to discuss habitual union of soul with God, but those special actions, impulses, which are the prayers of a recollected soul – its efforts to become more and more united or joined to God’s goodness.

 

We have no call to drop the analogy of a babe’s love for its mother; there is such an atmosphere of innocence and purity about it.  So picture, then, if you will, a nursing mother sitting down to suckle her child.  The sweet little babe eagerly lets itself be gathered into her outstretched arms, curling itself up to be cuddled at her breast.  The mother clasps it – glues it, so to speak – to her bosom, kisses it.  Her little darling, won by her caresses, concurs in this union.  It clings to her, presses as hard as it can against her breast, against her face, as though it meant to bury, to hide itself in the one who gave it birth.

 

There, Theotimus, you have perfect union – a state to which mother and child each contribute.  The mother is the cause of it, of course, since she picked the child up, clasped it in her arms, pressed it to her breast; the babe lacks strength enough to squeeze itself so tightly to its mother.  For all that, however, the little one does what it can, tries hard to join itself to her.  It not merely consents to the union its mother achieves, but wholeheartedly adds its own tiny efforts.  If I use the expression “tiny efforts”, it is because they are so weak that they seem to be attempts at union on the baby’s part, rather than union itself.

 

Our Saviour, in the same way, shows the love of his divine heart to a devoted soul.  He attracts the soul, picks it up and, as it were, enfolds all its powers in the bosom of his loving-kindness, which is greater than any mother’s could ever be.  Burning with love, he clasps the soul, joins it to himself, holds it tight, close to the lips of his delicate charms, locked in his delightful embrace – a kiss from those lips!  Wine cannot ravish the senses like that embrace (Cant. 1:1).

 

The soul, captivated by the delights of these favours, not only assents, not only yields to the union God affords; striving to join itself with and cling ever closer to the divine goodness.  All the same, the soul is well aware that union – the bond between itself and that supreme loving-kindness – is entirely God’s doing; that without his intervention it would be unable to make even the faintest attempts at union.

 

When people gaze with deep emotion at some exquisite scene, or listen with rapt attention to a beautiful melody, or hang eagerly on every syllable of an exceptional speaker – the eyes of the spectators are said to be glued to the scene, the ears of the audience captivated by the music, their hearts stirred by the speech.  What do these expressions mean, except that the senses and faculties referred to are united with, intimately joined to, their several objects?

 

The human soul, to be sure, cleaves to or presses against its object, when it has intense liking for it; such cleaving, after all, is simply the improvement or intensification of union, of connection.  We often use exactly the same expression when we refer to certain moral issues: “he pressed me to do this or that”; “he pressed me to stay”.  In other words, he not only used persuasion or entreaty, but he used it eagerly, earnestly – like the pilgrims at Emmaus (cf. Lk. 24:29), who not only asked our Lord, but pressed him strongly, compelling him with loving violence, to go in and stay with them.

 

Union with God in prayer is often achieved by tiny but frequent transports or movements of the soul towards God.  At other times, however, union is not achieved by repeated impulses, but by a continuous unconscious stirring or movement of the heart towards God.

 

The human heart, once it is joined to God, sinks ever deeper into union with him, as long as it is not turned aside.  Charity makes it tend ever closer to the supreme goodness, by an imperceptible growth in union, until the heart is wholly at rest in God.  “Love,” as the apostle of France[1] says, “is a unitive virtue”; in other words, a virtue that makes us perfectly at one with God, our supreme good.  Unquestionably charity is something active in this life, or at least a habit that leads to activity; so that, even when it has achieved perfect union, it still remains alive – however imperceptibly – in order to deepen and cement that union still further.

 

If the heart of man – transplanted from this world into God by charity – spends itself in prayer, it will surely continue to spread, to permeate the godhead, uniting itself ever closer to God’s goodness.  So hidden is this development, its progress is scarcely visible until it is completed.

 

Blessed, indeed, is the man who lovingly preserves the awareness of God’s presence in the stillness of his heart; he will be drawing ever closer to God – imperceptible though it may seem – his whole soul filled with the infinite charm of it.  By the awareness of God’s presence, in this context, I do not mean a sense awareness, but one which has its place in the apex, the highest point of the soul, where the love of God is supreme, where it is chiefly practised.

 

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[1]  St. Denis: The Divine Names 4.

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