Transcript of the Recording.

How to Pray in the Night

I know so far it may well have seemed all doom and gloom, but I think it’s far better to arm you with the truth than pretending to you everything is going to be easier or offer you instant ways and instant solutions.

Let me arm you, therefore, with the truth. You don’t help somebody who’s going to the North Pole by talking about the beauty of the glaciers, the wildlife, the scenery, without warning them at the same time that it can go 60 degrees below zero.

Polar bears will attack on sight. Glaciers could mean instant death, so I am trying to prepare a person for the way ahead. Obviously, I’ve given you an awful lot because I’ve had to show the whole journey in its completeness, to go forward to the mystical marriage.

It is to show you that ultimately, our completion is not just to have inner mystical experiences in the head, as it were, but that our whole body, our whole person, is going to be penetrated by the Holy spirit,

As the whole person of Jesus was penetrated by the Holy Spirit in His Resurrection. So that through love, we’re taken up and into Him.

It is a long, lifetime process, this journey, because all vestiges of sin, of selfishness, of all and everything in us that prevent that union must be destroyed by the action of the Holy Spirit.

We have to undergo a second baptism, if you like, and that is a baptism of fire, either now in this life or in the life to come, that this purification may be complete.

Now, with reference to the feast day we’re celebrating today, notice the moment our lady said, “Yes”, gave her fiat, because she was immaculately conceived, the Christ child was instantly conceived within her. Instantly.

We are not immaculately conceived. Therefore, the process is far longer, a lifetime and more, for us to be prepared and purified to receive Christ as she did, to give birth to Christ within us.

Now, what I want to be as practical as I can in this talk by giving you means, methods, techniques of prayer, to help a person, transcend, as it were, the prayer of the adolescent, adolescent prayer, to be led into the beginnings of the mystic way.

Now their endeavour so far of trying to raise their heart to God has made them sensitive to his action so that he begins to draw that heart towards himself.

Now, all the means and methods of prayer that I’m going to suggest you are to do two things, are to help keep the heart focused, as it were, on God,

While at the same time trying to destroy or eliminate all that would distract or take away from what the author of the Cloud of Unknowing calls this work.

It is with the Cloud of Unknowing that I want to begin. St. John of the Cross is the mystical doctor Par excellence, who divides his night into the active night and the passive night. In the active night, it is what we do to cooperate with God. In the passive night, it’s what God does to purify us.

He nevertheless gives us very little by way of practical example of how to journey on at this moment in prayer.

Now, finding oneself in this limbo land, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, says,  “It is as if there is a cloud of unknowing between thee and thy maker.

Now, he said, As there is a cloud of unknowing between thee and thy maker, put a cloud of forgetfulness between yourself and the world from which you have come as you have entered into prayer, and then keep your naked intent upon God.

Using mediaeval symbolism, he said, “Take to yourself a word, and the words he gives are these, like ‘God’, because it is now God you desire more than anything else.

Or the word ‘love’, for you crave for the fullness of love. Or the word ‘sin’, because it is sin from which you want to extricate yourself.

Or ‘lump’, again, his words, not mine, because that’s what we feel like, just a heavy leaden lump.

Now, he says, once you have chosen it, repeat it over and over and over again. Now, this is not a magic formula. It is just a helpful technique to help you to do two things at the same time, to keep this naked intent fixed upon God, while at the same time keeping all distractions under the cloud of forgetfulness.

He uses  mediaeval symbolism saying, “This word must be to you as a spear and a shield”. In other words, the spear is to help you pierce through the cloud of unknowing as the word expresses your cri de coeur,

While it is at the same time a shield to parry the distractions that keep coming to draw your heart’s attention away.

Now, do you see the theory? Merely a man made technique to help us to do these two things at the same time. But using the other Christian mystical writers, going back to the Desert Fathers, I’d like to make the following suggestions to you.

Don’t begin with a single word in the first instance. Take a phrase, a sentence or a phrase from the scriptures, from the Psalms, from the Hymn book, one that sums up how you feel you are relating to God at this particular moment in your spiritual journey.

Remember what I said before, don’t try and soft-soap God who knows how you feel before you open your mouth. So be realistic and honest.

If you feel as if God has now deserted you, as so many do at this time, then take a sentence like, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”? And repeat it over and over again to do these two things at one and the same time.

Or a verse from the Psalm, “Out of the depths, I cry to you, Lord, Lord, hear my voice”.

Or the prayer of Christ himself in Gethsemane, “That this chalice may be taken away from me, but not my will, thy will be done”.

Repeat it again and again and again in this way. Or if you like, from popular devotion, “Jesus, mercy, Mary, help”, or from the hymn, “Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom”.

Or the prayer, most specifically designed for this purpose, that began with Macarius in the desert, and grew out of his prayer, “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, taken in that form from the Philokalia, taken ultimately from the prayer of Bartimaeus in the Gospels.

A similar short prayer that I remember using last time I was here that goes back through John Cassian to Anthony himself, incorporated now into the divine office by St. Benedict. “Deus in adiutorium meum intende,”  “O God, come to my aid. Make haste to help me”.

 

Repeat it over and over again. The time will come when you find you don’t want to use the whole phrase, It’s too much for you. You know when the time comes, and then drop it to “Jesus mercy”, or “Out of the depth”, or just “Lead kindly light”.

 

If you find it helpful, and some of the early fathers did, even before the rosary was designed, they would take beads. Now, it’s not a matter of counting how many times.

You remember the book The Pilgrims Way, talking about one day he said the Jesus prayer a thousand times, then 10,000, then 40,000. It’s not about counting. That is not important.

But sometimes it’s helpful to use the rosary as a means. Counting somehow helps. I don’t know why, but it does. Some people also find, particularly when they’re not in the company of other people, to say the words audibly so you can hear them yourself, though nobody else can.

“Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.

And so on. Keeping your fixed gaze upon God, squashing the distractions that come in from the world that you have just left. Now, in this prayer, you are practising what I called in an earlier talk, the asceticism of the heart.

You are practising Repentance. Remember now on the first Easter day when Saint Peter, in his sermon, explained that Christ now was alive. He’d risen from the dead and that He had now sent out the Holy Spirit that was being poured out now on all. They asked, “How do we receive the Holy spirit”?

Peter said, “Repent to have your sins forgiven and receive the Holy Spirit”. Now in In this prayer, you are practising Repentance in this quarter of an hour, let us say, that you give each day.

It’s not making a misery of the whole of your life or your whole of the day, but at least for this time, at this particular moment, you’re practising turning to God. You’re practising repentance.

As you are doing and giving, you are receiving, though you feel it not at this particular stage. You’re learning selflessness in the Schola Divini Amoris, the ‘School of divine Love’. That’s why it is so important.

In the end, you will find that you only want a single word, as the author of The Cloud suggests. That may be just the word ‘God’ or the word ‘Jesus’. Or perhaps it may be a virtue that you need or you desire, like ‘patience’.

Repeat it over and over again, using beads or not, depending on your own needs, leading to the point when you don’t need to use any words.

If you can then remain still before God without using any words at all, fine. Do so for as long as you can, reverting only when distractions begin to submerge you again. Then turn back again to the word or a phrase or the whole sentence.

But if you can remain still and silent before God, if only for a short time, perfect, perfect. The idea is not to keep rattling off mantras. Remember what I said yet again? This is not prayer in the Christian tradition at all.

I don’t know about Eastern traditions. I do know something about the Christian mystical tradition, and it has been misinterpreted by priests and religious who’ve gone out to India, seen how they use mantras and coming back, reading works like John Cassian and so forth, they say, ‘This is where we all meet’.

It is not correct, unfortunately. I believe them to be wrong, and I say it quite clearly. In fact, you can prevent the purification which is now beginning to take place by endlessly repeating a word or a phrase or the mantra.

‘Say your mantra. Say your mantra’,  is the mantra of the Mantra Men. It actually prevents purification taking place because it turns inward and prevents what is down there in us all coming out to be purified that must all come out under the influence of the Perfect Psychiatrist. as we will see.

As we now journey on in this prayer, we become sensitive now in these moments of stillness to the action of God and begin to experience His presence in, for instance, the Prayer of Recollection that I mentioned earlier, and perhaps the Prayer of Quiet.

When we are absorbed in God, that experience of the love of God not only gives us strength, but begins facilitating the inner purification that must prepare us for union with God.

It does it in this way. Was it not Shakespeare who said, “All the world is a stage, and the men and women, merely players, each playing their part”. And so we are. On that stage, we keep our feet firmly on the trap door because we don’t want anybody to see what is down there within us all.

And so we play our parts. Perhaps occasionally, a Freudian slip takes place. We flare up and we see the muck and the mire that is down there that has to be purified before we can be united with God.

A gigantic Freudian slip took place in my own life many years ago now, going back to the ’60s, when my parents had a letter from my brother, who was a Franciscan missionary in South Africa.

The gist of the letter was that he was going to resign as the parish priest of Piet Retief and give up his vocation. Well, you can imagine the effect that had on my parents.

It was decided that they would go out to talk it over with him. It was decided that I would go, too, and we would meet as a family to discuss his proposal.

When we met, he said, “I suppose you want to know what brought this about and what I intend to do., I not only want to leave the priesthood and the order, I want to get married”.

Now, he’d sent a letter to me, privately, I suppose to prepare me for what he was going to say. I was ready for it, but it was a great shock for my parents. But it was nothing to the shock that came next.

And he said, The person I want to marry is a black African, a Zulu. Well, that was too much for my parents. They blew their top and said all sorts of terrible things that were quite unpolitical. But I sat there, still, in the silent centre of the room, saying nothing.

You see, I had been so often in Trafalgar Square, and I had demonstrated against Apartheid in in South Africa on many occasions and spoke out against it. So I sat there saying nothing.

But what they were saying out loud, I was saying to myself in here. And it was a terrible shock to me. It was a gigantic Freudian slip. And I realised that the great white liberal was a racist. And he kidded himself and other people that he was so liberal.

Quite apart from my brother’s predicament, I tossed and turned, thinking as much of myself as of him that evening and of his decision, because I was saying to myself, if this racism against black Africans had been deep down there, and I’d been deceiving myself,

And it’s been down there for years. What about the other prejudices in me and bigotry? What about that I don’t know of? I’ve seen this. Yes, it’s a Freudian slip. I’ve had to face it and admit it. I tossed and turned many nights worrying about this.

Now, this is true of all of us. Maybe we’ve not got prejudice against black Africans, but maybe against other nationalities, other racial groups, members of other classes, irrational fears, all down there.

They have to be purified before we can be united with a perfect One. That’s what purgatory is all about. That’s what the purification is about in prayer beyond the beginnings.

It’s not a work that takes place in a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It is the work of a lifetime for somebody who is prepared to go on, allowing the Holy Spirit in.

What happens now as the Holy Spirit begins to act? Remember at school, we were asked, what happens when an irresistible force strikes an immovable object? Do you remember the answer? Heat is generated.

Now, this is the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit who begins his work. But what I want to show you is how this happens. In other words, it is precisely because we are so  absorbed into God, that in the Freudian language,

The little sensor or the trap door within us that we try to keep at all times closed – because our will has lost its power over that trap door because it is absorbed in God – Therefore, what is down there begins to float up. So light is followed by darkness in the mystic way.

Saint Teresa used to say, “Oh Lord, what’s coming next”? when she had an experience of Quiet or Full Union or Ecstasy or whatever; she knew there was trouble on the way.

She knew she would have to face more that would arise from within herself. When it was seen, when it comes up, then it has to be expressed. This is the point of confession in the process.

To see and accept what we are, seek confession, absolution, and then journey on. Then more will come up. First of all, we must be purified and seek forgiveness for what comes out.

Then we journey on, and so the process goes on, and on, and on, as the spiritual life unfolds. This is why I said the Holy Spirit is the Perfect Psychiatrist because He is truth.

But it is not enough, as I said to you before, merely to see the truth of what is separating us from God and from each other. We need to see it in the context of Love that will give us the strength to enable the Holy spirit to purify us completely.

Let me explain what I mean by completing the story that I told you about my brother.

He did get married, not in South Africa, not in the era of Apartheid. To be seen together was to be thrown into jail for breaking the Immorality Act. They came to this country. She worked as a nurse in Liverpool, where they married. Now, I found this all very, very difficult.

My first visits to them were awkward, but I persevered. It was my brother after all. Gradually, I got to know my sister-in-law. Gradually, I came to love my sister-in-law. I came to experience her love for me.

The strange thing is, or perhaps it shouldn’t be strange, her love for me affected a cure of the racism that was in me. Not against every race on Earth, but against black Africans.

I don’t know about the others. I can’t answer that. I’ll have to wait for another Freudian slip. I know one or two of them, but I’ve done enough confessing for one afternoon.

So that changed my whole attitude. Later I went to Africa, to Cameroon, to Kenya, Uganda, giving talks to Africans. I felt totally at home and utterly natural, so that they remarked on the ease and the facility with which I met and talked to them.

Even more than missioners who’ve been there for many years because her love had changed me and my attitude towards them.

I don’t believe black Africans are any better than other race, but now I don’t patronise them. I treat them on their merit. Racism has been purified by her love for me.

Now, this is exactly what happens in the spiritual life. In other words, God not only shows us what it is that separates us from Him, but in showing us the truth, he also gives us the love that affects the cure, that purifies us.

So as we journey on now in prayer beyond first beginnings, it always comes to that point when we are there waiting before God in prayer. That’s where it leads, waiting upon God.

The highest teaching in the New Testament is in St. Luke, and it is this, that it is ultimately all in the waiting for him, whether he comes, whether he doesn’t, whether he comes at the third hour, whether he comes at the sixth hour, or whether he comes at the ninth hour. That is God’s business.

Our business is to be waiting with the wise virgins, with our lamps ready, trimmed and lit, waiting for the bridegroom to come. Our heart’s desire, symbolised by that light, always open to receive him.

When he chooses, it’s all in the waiting. This is why time and time again, one sees in the early days of the Church, Mary Magdalene depicted holding on to the cross, waiting at the foot of the cross.

You see this in so many of the great saints, if you go to Florence, San Marco, and places of this sort, you will see St. Dominic there holding on to the cross. St. Francis, similarly, waiting at the foot of the cross for the Pleroma, for the outpouring, when God chooses, not when we do.

And why do we hate waiting? Why is it so testing? Why? Because when we’re waiting, we are not in control. And we love to be in control of ourselves. We hate waiting for a bus, waiting in the queue, waiting for a letter, for a phone call, because we’re not in control.

Now we have to learn to wait on God. It is in waiting, waiting upon God. Alexandre Dumas puts onto the lips of Edmond Dantès  in The Count of Monte Cristo, that the most important words in the whole world are these, “Waiting and Hoping”.

And that’s what we do now, in prayer beyond the beginnings, when using a word, a phrase, or whatever, we learn in our prayer to wait on God for when he chooses to come in his time, not in our time.

T. S. Eliot puts it particularly beautiful in his  Four Quartets, quoting here from East Coker.

 “I said to my soul, Be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love for the wrong thing. There is yet faith, but the faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting”.

Wait without thought, for you are not yet ready for thought.

So the darkness shall be light. Everything leads to this point in prayer, when we, with Mary Magdalene, have to learn to hang on at the foot of the Cross, waiting for God to act in his time, to pour out His love upon us,

So that it will purify and refine us and prepare us for union with himself. See now in prayer beyond beginnings, yet again, I say to you, It is the School of Divine Love where we learn selflessness.

Self-centred children never grow up. It is exactly the same in the spiritual life. This is where selflessness is learned under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit.

So gradually now, we are fitted ever more fully into Christ, in whom we are open to the Father, in whom we receive the only love that will ultimately unite us completely with him,

Drawing us up into the Trinitarian life that endlessly revolves between the Father and the Son to eternity.

As we are changed, we then become the perfect instruments that enables God to use us to channelise his love to other people.