Prayer of Presence

MY DEAR CHRISTIAN, if you are ever confused or in doubt as to what to do to either begin or to deepen your relationship with God in Jesus Christ, please remember this: Prayer is the beginning and the end of all things. In our prayer, within our hearts, we are like a standing still, we breathe in faith and breathe out hope bearing our minds heavenward and our longings into the deep of the silence where our good Lord fills our hearts with His light, His truth, His grace.

Have a recourse to prayer, my precious friend, and look to God and the rich traditions of Mother Church to teach you your own particular grace in this matter. I am, of course, dear Companion, speaking here of private prayer. Our corporate prayers are important - most especially Holy Mass, but let me speak here to you about private prayer.

For our own good, our Mother Church binds us, under pain of sin, to celebrate Holy Mass with her at least once a week on Sunday, our Lord's Day or our Sabbath. But with regards to private prayer, something I believe to be just as important a source of grace but not as significant as Holy Mass or the sacraments, there is only either our sense of Justice or Charity to bind us. If we should think any of ourselves adequately equipped by either virtue let us remember, Beloved of God, that love and justice are the two essential requirements of a perfect human civilization. Now, let us look at the world around us and realize that it would do us all an immense good to be humble.

Our souls are like a dry sponge and God's grace is like water, we constantly thirst for that drink that would quench our thirst of God's infinite perfections, of God's profound truths, of God's irresistible lovableness, we pine for eternity in a finite universe. Our existence in this world is like a desert, parched and empty. And we are like restless children who have become lost in this dangerous wilderness, a spiritual desolation ruled by a wicked tyrant. Verily, deep inside the hearts and minds of all human beings is a longing to be saved. Through the infinite merits of our Savior's life, Passion, death and resurrection, God has redeemed all of mankind, past, present and future. Grace which is the mysterious participation of God's own life within our own lives have become available to all of us sinners who do not deserve it. There is everliving water to be had by those who are called to one day never be thirsty again.

Prayer is something so easily overlooked by the Laity who live deep in the deserts of the world. Sometimes we get so used to the dust and the ashes all around us that we become insensitive to the inner, spiritual thirst of our immortal selves. We dry up and give in to temptation and face the great spiritual peril of becoming part of the desert altogether; to become a place hostile to life and devoid of love - a dead thing, perceiving neither light of faith nor song of hope, whose body of corruption will very soon return to dust, to be forgotten by heaven and hid under the earth as a prey of worms and whose immortal soul has like Satan, by the descendant gravity of it's own evil and lack of concern for life, turned to ashes from within to become forever the sport of demons.

Now, sacramental grace is like drinking from an eternal body of fresh water but the grace we get from private prayer is like water from a well. If we celebrate Holy Mass only once a week, as most of us Laity do, how sure are we not to dry up during our journeys between Sabbaths?

Saint Francis de Sales, in his book, "Philothea" or "Introduction to the Devout Life", taught me a very useful practice - the practice of the Presence of God. It is a way of recollecting the presence of God in our life right at the beginning of each prayer. The good Saint promised that this practice would prove invaluable if one adheres to it consistently. To help you get started, my precious friend, on the road to the habitual grace we call prayer, let us learn from the good Saint this quite useful practice. Here's how it works:

Spend some time (1-5min) before each prayer to recollect your awareness of God's presence in your life. You can meditate that God is really present in your life in four ways: 1. That God is present everywhere around you. 2. that God is especially present within you - in your heart and mind. 3. That our most loving Jesus is sitting right beside you waiting to listen to your prayer. 4. That our most loving Jesus is watching you from heaven above. Use only one meditation at a time so use the one that suits the dispositions of your heart at the time. The goal of this practice is so that you may adapt the proper inward attitude, to become deeply aware that you are really praying and that you are praying in the presence of the God of all creation; to be able to bow your head as well as your heart to the one, triune Perfection; to the one common Creator of all things seen and unseen.

In my own experience, this practice of the presence of God has led me to a more or less constant awareness of God and the realization of the unity of heaven and earth. It may sound like it, my precious friend, but this is not something esoteric - it is just the rational conclusion of the practice taught to me by Saint Francis de Sales in his book. I am quite sure that anybody who will follow the good Saint's advice will come to this same mystical realization.

What I mean by the unity of heaven and earth is the way one relates to his or her experiences here on earth. Where heaven and earth are one in the heart of the believer, all things are related to God's greater purpose for creation and so there is neither luck nor random events in a world where nothing exists that does not owe their existence from God's own truth. Everything, every motion, every manifest reality within the infinite worlds within and without the common, finite universe of all mankind is governed by Divine Providence. I say God's greater purpose for creation because neither man nor angel can fathom what God's higher intentions are for all things in existence, however, where heaven and earth are one , man become more and not less free to choose the paths towards the good ends that God has destined him or her by His grace to be and in eternity become. Where heaven and earth become one, we become less and less limited by the boundaries of our humanity as our souls ascend to higher purposes greater than the self to look upon vistas of greater and greater truths that lead us toward the one ascendant peace and unity in ourselves, in our one God and harmony in our times.

It has become a prayer of presence. A more or less constant awareness of the participation of God everywhere within our lives and in the real world of precious living, breathing things all around us. Our forgetful souls are led to return to His grace time and time again as the living reality of the Divine stirs us to remembrance of Himself with all things that happen to us, good and/or bad. We begin to see things in a different way - heaven and earth become one and the veil of time become what it really is, an illusion.

Instead of recollecting God's presence, as if the Lord has left us and needs to return to us, where we have become convinced of God's sovereign presence in and around all things seen and unseen, where heaven and earth have become one in our hearts; it is now we ourselves that needs to be retrieved from the darkness and the oblivion that engulf us here in daily lives to return to prayer. Like a standing still in the presence of a God who is immovable motion, a divine Creator that is everywhere creating and recreating anew the subtle miracles behind the unique realities we experience in our souls as the bittersweet landscapes of human life, deep in our prayer, we may dare to ask: "Indeed, there is movement in my standing still but Who is the Mover?" It is the LORD.

So pray, my precious friend, let us pray as we humbly say, "here I am, Lord, here I am": To stand amidst beauty and sing adoration to our God's wondrous perfections, to stand amidst goodness and plenty and sing thanksgiving to our God's unsurpassed generosity, to stand amidst truth and virtue and sing praises to God's awesome glory and brilliant majesty, to stand amidst sin and suffering to become awakened to our need for God being our God and, as Christians, to be indebted to His unfathomable wisdom and infinite mercy forever.

Glory to God in His creation
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to all men of good will.