Salesian Literature

Chapter 2  :  How different degrees of union achieved in prayer

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Occasionally union is achieved without any corresponding effort on our part; we merely go along unresistingly, allowing God, in his goodness, to unite us with him.  This is what a baby does: it longs to be nursed by its mother but is too weak to lift itself up to her embrace, or cling to her once she is holding it; it is only too happy to be picked up, cradled in its mother’s arms, clasped to her breast.

 

Sometimes, when God attracts us, we actually lend our own efforts.  We do this if, when he draws us (cf. Cant. 1:3), we hasten eagerly to act in concert with the gentle strength of his goodness as it allures us, clasps us to his embrace in love.

 

Sometimes we appear to begin to unite ourselves closely with God before he joins himself to us; that is because we are conscious of what we are adding to achieve union, but unaware of God’s part in the process.  No question, however, but that it is always done to his prompting, even though we are not always conscious of his inspirations.  Never should we become one with God, unless he first united himself with us.  He anticipates our choice and possession of him by his choice and possession of us.  Once let us follow his imperceptible attraction, once let us begin to unite ourselves to him … then he frequently furthers our attempts at union, coming to the aid of our weakness, giving us an awareness of his closeness, so that we actually feel him making his way into our hearts – an experience, in its enchantment, beyond compare.

 

Sometimes too, after attracting us to union without our being aware of it, he continues to help us, continues to promote union, while we remain unconscious of his efforts.  We have no idea how such close union results; we know only that it is beyond our own unaided strength.  This leads us to conclude that some mysterious power is secretly at work in us.  When we experience an ever closer union of our souls with God in spite of only tiny efforts on the will’s part, we come to the conclusion that the lover of our souls is attracting us by the invisible influence of his grace.  He means that influence to be imperceptible, for us to find it more wonderful; he wants us to be unconcerned about feeling his attractions, to busy ourselves purely and simply with being united to his divine goodness.

 

Sometimes union is so insensible that we neither feel God at work in us, nor our co-operation.  In fact we find union achieved without noticing it.  At other times we are aware of the binding process taking place by activity – on God’s part and ours – of which we are conscious.

 

Sometimes union is achieved in and by means of the will alone.  Occasionally too the intellect plays its part; the will draws it after it, directing its attention to what the will is engrossed in, affording it a special pleasure in its concentration.  After all, we often find love concentrating the gaze of our eyes, fixing them on what we love.

 

Sometimes the union is achieved by all the soul’s faculties gathering round the will, not to unite themselves to God – they are quite incapable of that – but to make it easier for the will to achieve union.  If those other faculties were each engrossed in their own functions, the soul would be unable to undertake as perfectly the activity by which union with God is achieved.

 

Such are the various kinds of union.

 

Remember St. Martial – said to be the favoured child referred to in St. Mark, chapter 9 (35); our Lord took him, picked him up and held him for a time in his arms.  Bonny little Martial, how fortunate you were in being held up and clasped close to our Lord’s sacred breast, kissed by his holy lips, doing nothing towards all this yourself but offer no resistance!  Once it was the other way round: St. Simeon embraced and clasped the infant Lord to his breast (cf. Lk. 2:28), and there was no apparent activity towards union on the Saviour’s part; although, as the Church sings[1], “the old man was holding the Child, the Child was upholding the old man.”

 

With us, Christ’s love is a compelling motive (e Cor. 5:14).  A wonderful example of perfect union he offers us, heaven knows!  He united himself with our human nature from the first, engrafting it on to his, so that to some extent it might share his life.  When Adam’s sin ruptured that union, God provided a closer, stronger union in the Incarnation, in which our human nature found itself for ever wedded to the personality of the godhead.

 

Then, so that all men individually might be intimately united to his goodness – not merely human nature as such – he instituted the sacrament of the holy eucharist, which each can share and so achieve personal union with the Saviour, in reality and by way of food.  It is this sacramental union, Theotimus, which impels us towards and promotes that union of soul with God I am now discussing.

 

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[1]  Matins of the Purification.

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