MYSTICAL PRAYER -

KEY TO SURVIVAL IN A SECULARISED INSTITUTE

By Father George Duggan SM.

(Father Duggan, a priest of the Marist Order is a theologian, teacher and spiritual director of long-standing repute both in his native New Zealand and internationally. He is the author of several books and many articles on topics related to Philosophy, Theology, Scripture, Apologetics and Consecrated Life. Father currently resides at St. Patrick's College, Silverstream, N.Z.)

Survival, perseverance in the religious life, is more difficult now in many religious institutes, because the life of the community has been greatly weakened by the ravages of secularisation. This is the process by which the features which have always differentiated religious life from Christian life in the world, have become so blurred as to be almost non-existent.

The process by which this has come about has been described, and justified, by Sister Sandra Schneiders, I.H.M., in her book New Wineskins, published in 1986. "Perhaps the symbolic linch pin of the entire movement", she wrote, "was the rapid, but wrenching surrender of the habit, which was both the symbol of an implied superiority and uniqueness, and the most effective barrier to the assimilation of the religious to the surrounding culture. The breakdown of cloister in local convents, the widespread repudiation of large-scale group living, the questioning of exclusively institutional congregational commitments, the development of relationships across congregational boundaries and witH lay people, the resumption by religious as individuals and as local groups of certain exercises of personal financial responsibility that had for centuries been exercised exclusively by superiors, and the movement towards more representative and collegial forms of government, were only a few of the obvious and and radical lifestyle adaptations made by contemporary women religious." (p.26)

Ann Carey, in her book Sisters in Crisis, has told the story, based on the minutes in various archives, of how a cabal of about ten major superiors in 1970-71 engineered this revolution. They changed the name and satatues of the Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious, set up officially in 1962, as an American body "to deal with the Holy See on the spiritual welfare of the women religious of the Unites States of America". With the change of name to the "Leadership Conference of Women Religious" (LCWR), came a raft of changes in the lifestyle of religious as set out by Sister Sandra Schneiders in New Wineskins.

The results of this revolution have been catastrophic. In 1965, there were 185,000 women religious in the U.S. Now they are fewer than 90,000. The average age has risen sharply and religious in formation are few and far between. Of the 90,000 who remain, about 75,000 belong to the Leadership Conference. The remainder belong to an organisation called the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR). In each of the congregations belonging to the latter, the sisters wear a religious habit, and, if it is an apostolic Order, they are engaged in a corporate apostolate, maintaining the structures and life-styles of earlier times, modified, naturally, in some details. Some years ago, the sisters in formation in thiS organisation, numbered about 10% of the whole, and the average age has not notably increased..

Any religious who is a member of a secularised institute and strives to live according to the more traditional pattern is bound to be unpopular and may have to exercise heroic virtue to persevere in the observance of vows and rule. He or she will be like the "speckled bird" of which Jeremiah spoke (12:9) and which, as the prophet has told us, will be surrounded and attacked by the other birds of the flock. There may be no verbal criticism, but their fellow religious will be thinking "there goes So-and-so, living in the past and out of touch with the new and exciting developments of religious life in the Church". The superiors, too, may be unsympathetic.

If religious are to survive in these circumstances, they will need the help of a life of fervent interior prayer, and it is probably not too much to say, of a prayer that is truly mystical in character. That statement will surprise only those who regard mystical prayer as something extraordinary. It is indeed, less common than could have been expected. But it is the teaching of Father Garrigou-Langrange O.P. that it is a normal development of the life of sanctifying grace, and is quite different from such extraordinary favours as visions, interior locutions or ecstasy. It has been remarked that the Fathers of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great, in their sermons to the ordinary, take it for granted that manay of them have enjoyed a prayer that was truly mystical.

In the masterly text-book The Theology of Christian Perfection by Fr. Antonio Royo O.P., which has been translated and adapted by Fr. Jordan Aumann, O.P., the mystical state has been described by writers on the spiritual life, basing their account on the testimony of the saints. This is followed by a theological explanation of the experience. It is brought about by an actuation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially those of wisdom and understanding. When the former is actuated, the soul experiences an inner appreciation of the goodness of God, and, as it were, tastes his sweetness. The actuation of the gift of understanding, St. Thomas explains, enables the soul, in a certain manner, to see the truth of the divine mysteries, such as the Passion of Christ, as being the expression in human terms of the Trinitarian mystery, expressed in the words of St. John (1 John 4:8)

Just as we cannot by ourselves, with the help of ordinary actual grace, cause a gift to come into play, so mystical union is a free gift of God, which cannot be merited. It is brought about by a divine "touch" which causes the soul to be aware that God, her Divine Lover, is present to her in a manner not hitherto experienced, entering the inner sanctuary of the soul that, as we read in the Apocalypse (3:20), she may sup with Him and He with her. This "touch" is an invitation to surrender herself wholly to Him. When the soul, accepting the invitation of her Divine Lover surrenders, she enters the mystical state, in which her prayer will be mystical - but only sometimes. Often it will not, and she will have to make use of ordinary affective prayer.

Why, you may ask, is mystical prayer so valuable? It is so valuable because it is in this form of prayer, that the soul exercises most perfectly, the theological virtue of charity - the essential ingredient in the complexus of virtues that constitute Christian holiness. With the help of ordinary grace, we can turn to God with an act of love whenever we wish. But in this, there is a certain imperfection, for then we are exercising the virtue of charity as a habit in the soul, in the same way as we can, if we know French, exercise the habit of speaking the language whenever we wish. When the virtue of divine love, on the other hand, is actuated by the Holy Spirit as He actuates one of His gifts, the act is wholly with the human will completely subordinate to the will of God, her Sanctifier.

This mystical or infused love, is the "pure love" of which St. John of the Cross wrote in the Spiritual Canticle "A very little of this pure love is more precious in the sight of God and the soul, and of greater profit to the Church, even though the soul appear to be doing nothing, than all other works together."

Obviously it is perfectly proper to seek humbly to obtain this grace of mystical union from God. The disposition that is mainly needed for our prayer to be heard is humility. This implies the recognition of our total dependence on God, without whom we can do nothing, and the admission of our sinfulness. To use St. Teresa's striking imagery, we are like "malodorous worms", who would not dare to seek this intimate union with the all-holy God, had He not encouraged us to do so.

St. Teresa tells us that most of the nuns in the monasteries she had founded had received this grace. A few, for some inscrutable reason, had not. I suspect that the cause may have been an overactive temperament, making it difficult for them to maintain the stillness, interior and exterior, that is an essential condition for the exercise of contemplative prayer.

Commonly this grace is given after one has, for some time, been engaged in mental prayer, and after a long apprenticeship in the practice of mental prayer. But St. John of the Cross knew of a fervent soul who received it after living a truly interior life for six months. The Spirit blows where and when He wills. Sometimes it is granted outside of prayer, when the soul is relaxed - eg in performing some menial task. At first it does not usually last long - at most fifteen minutes, and for often a shorter time. Often it comes suddenly, after the soul has persevered faithfully in aridity, thereby strengthening the virtue of divine charity.

This union is a source of great joy, and the soul must be careful, without worrying too much about its purity of intention, that, in seeking it, the main end is to return God's love in such a way as to be more useful to souls. In her "Mansions" St. Teresa has left us the most perfect account of the soul in the ways of prayer, and in the opinion of E.W. Trueman Dicken, her picture of the journey is less frightening than that of St. John of the Cross - perhaps because, being a woman, her psyche was more affective.

To end on a practical note, the time for daily mental prayer in the life of a religious, should probably never be less than an hour. St. Peter of Alcantara said that one begins to really pray only when one has spent two hours in prayer. His standard was very high! But the Holy Father, addressing a group of American nuns in 1978, stressed the need of fidelity in observing the evangelical counsels, and the need to devote "a sufficiently long period" in each day to spending time, standing before the Lord.