Tag Archives: Beatific Vision

On the Necessity of Mental Prayer

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In the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Our Lord gives us the Parable of the Sower.  He speaks of a farmer who indiscriminately spreads seeds over a variety of soil types.  Despite the farmer’s prodigality, the seed only produces a yield in the rich soil.  The implication is obvious: to produce the great yield of holiness, we must become rich soil.  What is not immediately obvious, however, is how one becomes the rich soil. 

One might be tempted to think that the solution is to be a “good” person.  When you are nice to other people and try not to sin, you become rich soil.  The problem with this viewpoint however is that soil cannot make itself rich.  It must be made rich by having things added to it.  Clearly then, the answer is to receive the Sacraments.  The Sacraments are like a strong fertilizer producing rich, dark soil.  But this interpretation is problematic as well.  While the Sacraments are, at least objectively speaking, like spiritual fertilizer, their effect depends upon the subjective disposition of the soil in which they land.  Even the Sacraments will have no effect upon a hardened heart.  Instead, the Fathers of the Church all thought the key to becoming rich soil was to become men and women of prayer.

But prayer is anything but a simple solution, especially living in the grasp of a ubiquitous technocracy.  Within its grasp, we have grown accustomed to thinking that all of reality can be controlled and manipulated by technique, our spiritual lives not excepted.   The technocratic mindset has led modern men and women to search for human techniques, usually repurposed from Eastern Religions, to solve the problem of prayer.  Rather than solving the problem, these techniques often lead us away from God because they are not in accord with human nature itself.

The Myth of Technique

Let’s suppose that we want to pray, but St. Paul is right when he says that “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26).  It is normal to then think we must investigate various techniques to find out which one works best for us.  The problem with this mindset is that it is a subtle form of Gnosticism.  The knowledge of how to pray becomes some secret knowledge that we must discover.  The conclusion, one that a lot of people draw, is that a life of true prayer is not open to everyone and is reserved for a select few who somehow figure it out. 

We must hear St. Paul out.  While it is true that “we do not know how to pray as we ought ,” the Apostle reminds us that “the Spirit Himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26).  Prayer is, first a foremost a gift.  It is a gift, but it is a gift that we are naturally inclined to receive.  As St. Thomas repeatedly says, whatever is given is received according to the mode of the receiver.  There is a natural way then to receive the gift of prayer.

Why it is Necessary

St. Alphonsus Liguori in his treatise on prayer said that “all the saints have become saints by mental prayer.”  The saint is telling us that in order to become rich soil, we must practice mental prayer.  He is not alone in this assessment as all of the saints say something similar.  Understanding why mental prayer is the entry point into a life of holiness will enable us to rely more fully on this method.

Our supernatural destiny is the Beatific Vision by which we will see God face to face.  What this means is that we will know Him directly and this knowledge will lead to an eternity of loving Him.  Prayer ought to in some way mimic this. In this life we can only know Him by way of intermediaries, “in a mirror darkly” if you will.  But this knowledge is still real knowledge even if it is only by way of reflection.  We can know the sun directly by looking at it, but even a man who has only seen the moon still knows the sun.  Mental prayer is the means, in this life, by which we come to knowledge of God through discursive reasoning upon both Revelation and Creation.  But in order to be a true preparation for our eternal destiny, it must not just be intellectual musings, but must consist in acts of the will as well.  In fact true prayer must always find its terminus in movements of love.

St. John of the Cross demonstrates these movements in his Spiritual Canticle. He begins by meditating upon creation:

O woods and thickets, planted by the hand of my Beloved! O green meadow, coated, bright, with flowers, tell me, has he passed by you?”

Pouring out a thousand graces, he passed these groves in haste; and having looked at them, with his image alone, clothed them in beauty.

Ah, who has the power to heal me? now wholly surrender yourself!   Do not send me any more messengers, they cannot tell me what I must hear.

Spiritual Canticle 4-6

Seeing God’s presence in a simple meadow that has been clothed with beauty, He is moved to wonder and then pleads for God to heal him and surrender Himself to John.  His musings have moved from the intellect to the will, from the head to the heart.

Mental prayer is the entry point to deeper level of infused prayer because it is the only truly human way of praying.  Because it is in accord with human nature, it is also the means by which prayer purifies us.  Through the power of abstraction, we can say that the “thing known is in the knower.”  This means that the thing known becomes a part of the knower.  When the thing known, is the One Thing that Needs to Be Known, then He necessarily becomes a part of the knower.  This is why those who truly pray are never heretics.  But it is also why not only our thoughts are purified, but our desires too.

Setting Our Expectations

If God wills all men to be saved and prayer, as we have shown, is absolutely necessary for salvation, then all men are given the grace to pray.  God not only wills our salvation but also provides all that is needed to make that happen.  What this means is that we should expect the grace of prayer because God has promised it.  God desires that we pray and if we remain open to it, He will provide us with all the necessary graces to reach levels of prayer that we thought only possible for great mystics.  This is for everyone.  We need only to beg Him for the grace of perseverance and then show up day after day.

At the outset we said that there are few among us that are immune to the effects of living in a technocracy.  Those few, if St. Alphonsus is to be believed, are the future saints who practice mental prayer.  Rather than trying to manipulate God through technique, they set themselves up to receive the gift of prayer and God delivers by raising up saints so desperately needed in our times.

Beginning at the End

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In the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the novel’s protagonist Arthur Dent journeys to a distant planet and meets an alien race.  He finds that this race has built a supercomputer that successfully calculated the meaning of life as the number 42.  Despite the absurdity of the response, a deep truth emerges.  The truth is that there is an objective answer to the question of what the meaning of life is and it is happiness.  In recognition of this fact, the Catechism quotes St. Augustine’s state that we “all want to live happily; in the whole human race there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated.”  

To see the truth of this, we must begin by examining the nature of man himself.  We begin with the simple definition of Aristotle that man is a rational animal.  Like all animals, man acts with a purpose.  However, because man is also rational, truly human acts are not only done for a purpose but also proceed from deliberation and are freely chosen.  In other words, everything we do is oriented toward the attainment of some freely chosen end. 

Upon examination of human acts, one finds that man acts for the attainment of a myriad of ends.  However, to say that there is a single meaning or purpose to life is to say that there is a single end behind everything that man does.  How can one say this without contradiction?

St. Thomas addresses this question in the Summa Theologiae.  He proves that man has an ultimate end that motivates everything he does and that all men have the same end. 

He begins by proving that man has a last end in a manner that is parallel to his argument for the existence of God as the first cause.  He argues that there cannot be an infinite regress of ends without a final end.

Next, St. Thomas shows why this final end is that which motivates all of man’s actions.  This ultimate end must fulfill all our desires.  Everything man desires is desired in terms of this final end even though we may only be subconsciously aware of it.  Each and every good that is pursued derives it goodness from its relation to the ultimate good.  

Finally, St. Thomas argues that because all men have the same nature (i.e. the same human essence that equips them for human operations) all men must have the same goal.  This goal is complete human fulfillment which is referred to as happiness or beatitude.

Happiness is the ultimate end of life because it fits each of the criteria.  Everyone desires to be happy and it is desired only as an end in itself.  Nobody desires happiness for the sake of something else.  Happiness is the motivation behind every decision and action.

Even though it seems that everyone agrees on the idea that happiness is the meaning of life, nearly everyone disagrees as to what is the ultimate cause of this happiness.  So the question of what this happiness consists in must now be addressed.

The Contenders

To address this question, the Angelic Doctor looks at eight possibilities.  By looking empirically at human nature, he comes to a single, final end through the process of elimination.

He begins by looking at riches and finds that wealth is merely a means to an end.  It is “sought for the sake of something else, namely as a support of human nature (natural wealth)” or as “means to exchange those natural goods.”  Like other bodily goods, it also cannot be used to obtain spiritual goods and thus cannot fulfill man in his totality.  The goods of the body are subordinate to the goods of the soul and therefore cannot be the supreme good.

St. Thomas then looks at honor, fame and power.  We must be in possession of happiness and we do not possess honor but receive it from without.  With fame we find that the controlling source is outside us while power is no more than the capacity to do something.  Happiness is a state.

St. Thomas then looks at pleasure but notes that it always accompanies something else.  Thus, pleasure is an accident to happiness and not the source of happiness.  Likewise he looks at the goods of the soul such as the intellectual and moral virtues. Although happiness resides in the human soul, its source is outside of it.

And the Winner Is…

What this means concretely is that happiness cannot be found in the will because it remains the goal of the will to desire the good and unite man to it.  It is not the power through which goods outside the soul are experienced.  This can only happen in the intellect.

Man, through his power of abstraction, is able to unite to the essence of a thing through knowledge.  The thing known becomes united to the knower, it literally becomes a part of him.  This is why the Bible often uses knowledge as an analogy or euphemism for the marital embrace.  When the intellect comes to know God in the Beatific vision, that is to “see Him as He really is” it is fully satisfied because it knows God and all things through Him.  Faith is a preview of this, but ultimately passes away when vision is granted.

All of this “dry” philosophy would be little more than an intellectual exercise unless it didn’t also change our view of the world. After all, St. Thomas is only demonstrating what the Faith already teaches. We were made for God. But by showing the reasonableness of the Faith, it makes it very practical. This ought to teach us to put first things first. As free creatures, everything we do either moves us closer to God or away from Him. We need to examine each and every one of our actions against this measuring stick. It was St. Ignatius, in his Principle and Foundation who put the practical aspects of this proof most succinctly:

For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things as much as we are able, so that we do not necessarily want health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long rather than a short life, and so in all the rest, so that we ultimately desire and choose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which God created us

In conclusion, thanks to reason enlightened by faith, we are able to come to the conclusion that all men seek the vision of God as their ultimate end.  Like the Angelic Doctor, we pray that our rational justification match his answer to the voice asking him what he wanted as his reward: “Only Yourself Lord.”