Prayer article #7

“Do that which best stirs you to love …”

by Sister Kathleen McDonagh, IWBS

When we come to pray, the Catechism tells us, “the Holy Spirit is the living water ‘welling up to eternal life’ in the heart that prays. It is the Spirit who teaches us to accept it at its source: Christ” (#2652). Sometimes, when we accept Christ and surrender to him, God calls us to a new kind of prayer in which he himself takes the initiative. When this happens, the one called “senses a gentle drawing inward” and in an effort to describe this experience, Teresa uses the simple images of “a hedgehog curling up or a turtle drawing into its shell” (Interior Castle, “Fourth Dwelling Place,” Ch. 3, #3). She tells us that “He calls such persons especially so that they might be attentive to interior matters.” But for this to happen, “love must be already awakened.”

Teresa is insistent that this kind of prayer is a gift from God. When we go to pray, we do what we can to pray well. We do not, however, have to pour out our thoughts in words. If God gives us such recollection that we are content simply to be with him and to love him, then we should follow those inclinations and remain quietly in his presence. “The important thing,” Teresa tells us, “ is not to think much but to love much, and so do that which best stirs you to love” (Interior Castle, “Fourth Dwelling Place,” Ch. 1, #7).

“Do that which best stirs you to love…” Even as we say this, we think of the Great Commandment which tells us that there are two parts to love: love of God and love of neighbor (cf. Mt. 22:34-40). We can never separate these, and so, even as we feel drawn to act like the hedgehog or the turtle and curl up in God’s love, Teresa reminds us: “It is in the effects and deeds following afterward that one discerns the true value of prayer; there is no better crucible for testing prayer” (Interior Castle, “Fourth Dwelling Place,” Ch. 2, #8). In similar vein, Father Shaun McCarty, Servant of the Trinity, says repeatedly: “Is my life as I live it a validation of my prayer as I pray it?”

The two – prayer and lived ministry - cannot be separated. That is what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, Ch. 13:

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing (1 Cor. 13: 1-3).

Love calls me to go out to others and help them in practical charity. Only when I do this does my prayer pass the test in Teresa’s “crucible for testing prayer.”

Love also calls me to “take time frequently to be alone with him who, we know, loves us” (Teresa of Avila, Book of her Life, quoted in The Catechism, #2709). And if I do not do this, my actions will not be borne of “their source: Christ.”

The Great Commandment calls us unfailingly to both: love of God and love of neighbor. It is to our own peril to neglect either one.

For reflection and prayer

1. “Do that which best stirs you to love …” What is it that best stirs me to love of God and love of neighbor? What is it that leads me away from love? Let me ask God to help me grow in the way of greater love, to avoid those things which make me less loving. Pray with: 1 Cor. 13: 1- 13; the Teresian quotes in this article.

2. How, concretely, is my life as I live it a validation of my prayer as I pray it? How do I show my love for God by ministering to my neighbor? Pray with Mt. 22:34-40; Lk. 10:29-37; Lk. 10: 38 – 42. Why does Luke place the account of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet immediately after the Parable of the Good Samaritan?