One does damage to the process by being impatient and demanding answers from the supposed silence of God. He is no longer handing out sweeties, or speaking clearly, as He has changed the way He is addressing the soul.
The power of the Holy Spirit is Faith, pure and simple.
One waits for infused knowledge. One waits for the complete purification of the senses.
Without that purification, one is not loving in spirit and in truth.
Rote prayer is out, as is the usual meditation. This is the time when one, as when one was young and in love, sits on the park bench waiting for the beloved to show up and just be with one.
Waiting is important, and being silent is absolutely necessary. One can, however, be in the midst of other people and be silent. One must carry a cell in one's soul and decide to go to that cell amidst noise and distractions.
The challenge is staying focussed on God, and not one's self. The self fades away, as love is given from God, Who swallows up all distraction and noise into His Love. One important factor is not to run away from pain. Suffering must be accepted fully as part of the process of the passive purgation. For example, if I am in bed with back pain, I must accept this and not fight against it, nor pray for healing. The suffering is part of the purgation and sheer gift. God allows evil to assail one for the good of the soul. Humility must become a daily, normal way of life. Without humility, one cannot receive God.
What others are doing becomes God's business entirely. One can only concentrate on God alone.
This beginning of infused contemplation united to love is already the eminent exercise of the theological virtues and of the gifts of the Holy Ghost which accompany them. In it there is an infused act of penetrating faith; (7) therein the soul discovers increasingly the spirit of the Gospel, the spirit which vivifies the letter. Thus are verified Christ's words: "The Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you." (8) St. John also wrote to the faithful to whom he directed his first epistle: "And as for you, let the unction, which you have received from Him, abide in you.(9) And you have no need that any man teach you; . . . His unction teacheth you of all things." (10) In the silence of prayer, the soul receives here the profound meaning of what it has often read and meditated on in the Gospel: for example, the intrinsic meaning of the evangelical beatitudes: blessed are the poor, the meek, those who weep for their sins, those who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, those who suffer persecution for justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
In this way, as a rule, begins infused prayer, the spiritual elevation of the soul toward God, above the senses, the imagination, and reasoning; it is adoration "in spirit and in truth," which goes beyond the formulas of faith to penetrate the mysteries which they express and to live by them. The formulas are no longer a term, but a point of departure.
All quotations in this series are from The Three Ages of the Interior Life.
To be continued....
All quotations in this series are from The Three Ages of the Interior Life.
To be continued....