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::01 :: To Pray Without Ceasing
Pr1
If we want to have a spirit of prayer, we need to set about it in a very specific way. We need to penetrate ourselves with the desire which we all have to ’pray without ceasing’, as St Paul puts it (1 Thess. 5:17) when he repeats one of Our Lord’s precepts. This appears quite extraordinary and impossible. It must be said, too, that anything we do with the intention of carrying out God’s will is a prayer. Any achievement we offer to God with a pure intention, convinced of our own powerlessness and turned towards God so that he might help us is a prayer.
There are some words of Our Lord which we should meditate on from time to time in order to develop a true spirit of prayer. Here are two such sayings : ’Apart from me you can do nothing’ [1] and ’If the branch is not attached to the vine it produces nothing. It is good for nothing except to be cut off and thrown into the fire’.
We cannot achieve anything supernatural by our own efforts. When we rely on our own strength we are like the branch which is still green and lithe, but which is cut off from the vine : it is on its way to death and withers little by little because it is no longer receiving life. When we live by God’s supernatural life, on the other hand, by means of our union with Our Lord and our dependence on him, and when we draw our thoughts and feelings from him, we are on our way to life and can achieve good and useful things.
This is the foundation of the life of prayer. It is a life wherein one’s sights are constantly set towards heaven ; where one strips oneself more and more of all that is personal, and above all of this egocentricity which is so strong force within us : ’Oh ! I am like this, I feel this, I act like this, etc.’
But to pay no heed to all that concerns self, to forget this in order to focus on higher and greater things ; to look to Our Lord for strength, light and love : this is the life of prayer. It is to look to Our Lord for that which he is able and willing to give us - his feelings, his thoughts, his words, his conduct, his examples, his wisdom - and then, through prayer, to try to make it one’s own. This is certainly what Our Lady did during Advent. She possessed Our Lord Jesus Christ in her inmost being. She lived with him with marvellous love and perfect humility.
If even the tiniest portion of grace enters our souls it is worth more than the greatest of natural wonders. A single impulse of the heart towards Our Lord, a single one of the abundant graces which you receive every day, just one step in the life of prayer : each is infinitely more precious within us than all the hearts’ riches, than all the qualities of the most gifted soul you can imagine, and than every one of nature’s perfections.
Each one of us, even the least who has no great natural gifts, even if we have quite ordinary dispositions and are of mediocre courage, if we are faithful to grace and have a humble opinion of ourselves, and if we keep close to Our Lord and are careful to be the branch planted on the vine that remains united to it, each one of us is greater, richer, more exalted, more filled with light than the most perfect creatures of the natural order will ever be.
Saint Marie Eugenie,
Chapter of 28 January 1875
Remonter