More and more I see the urgency of ordinary Christians — laity, not just the clergy and religious — returning to the ancient practice of contemplative prayer.
A loaded sentence, yes. Let me unpack it a bit for you. Anciently, as part of their pre- and immediate post-baptismal formation, initiates into the faith were taught how to contemplate: to pray in such a way as to be open to the Holy Spirit to bring cleansing from sin, vice, and defects; strengthening for the interior battles ahead; increases of love so that Christians could love Christ and each other more and better every day; and impulse and inspiration to spread the Good News that God is Love and that peace with God, with one’s own self, and with others is not only possible but promised to those who enter into the Way and persevere in it.
These days David Torkington writes about this matter extensively and persuasively; almost anything of his you can pick up will be of great help. One of the most important insights I’ve gained from him: anciently, at the very outset, there were no Desert Fathers and Mothers, no religious orders, no elaborated and structured devotions for vocal prayer. There was, rather, holy reminiscence about the Person and Work of Our Lord Jesus Christ, passed down orally from those who knew him personally during his earthly ministry and then, slowly, written down and persevered for reading at Mass and when Christians might gather commonly for prayer.
None of this is to take away from the importance of spiritual and religious practices as they developed throughout the centuries. The memorization and praying of the New Testament and Psalms by the Desert Fathers; the development of the cycle of daily prayer; Lectio Divina as first presented by the Benedictines; the affective love of the Cistercians; the intellectual charism of the Dominicans; the fire of Franciscan love; the love for evangelization of the Jesuits: all these forms of prayer remain relevant for the entire Church, and the laity are invited into those spiritualities and their devotions — most especially, devotion to Our Lady through the recitation of the Holy Rosary. But it was the practice of Christians praying by themselves or in small groups throughout the day recollected on the major events of the Lord’s Passion and Death (which Francis captures in the Way of the Cross) that powered the conversion of souls leading in turn to the Faith’s rapid expansion throughout the whole world. It’s not so much that we want to cut down the limbs and trunk of the Church to get back to the most primitive practices; rather, we want to return to those practices so that the sap the gives life to the tree begins to flow again, the other, later practices revivifying in new freshness and fruitfulness.
The old and known saying goes, if you want to change the world, start with yourself. And yes, Ryan Holiday does a great job promoting Stoicism, acceptance of difficulties, growth in virtue and all, but here’s the thing: if prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude were enough, we would not have needed a Savior with his gifts of faith, hope, and love bestowed upon us by the Holy Spirit. Stoicism appears akin to the Faith in that both focus upon the cultivation of virtue for the answers to life’s challenges. The difference lies in the virtues each seeks to cultivate primarily. A tendency to focus on the natural virtues can lead us to think that we are the protagonists of our own salvation. This can lead to self-satisfaction and pride — look at all I’m doing, Lord! ; or it can lead to despair — how can you ask so much of me when I can’t even do as well as I should the good that lies before me? These two extremes are death to the soul, and all their lesser gradations are simply forms of soul-sickness and death in slow motion.
The fact is we all have deep wounds in dark and hidden places that we hide. We fear what may happen if others know of them. We fear what may happen if in the exposing of them, even to ourselves, we risk them taking control of our lives. These are precisely the wounds that only God can heal — and He can heal them only if we allow ourselves to open ourselves to them. It’s not that God doesn’t see them — He does; nor that He doesn’t want to heal them: He does. It’s that out of respect for our freedom, He does not heal them until we give Him permission to do so; and the permission we give him, we give gradually, over time, in the practice of prayer until, at its highest stage, God takes over the prayer and infuses us experientially not with grace, nor with healing or lights, but with Himself, bringing grace, healing, and lights in tow.
We used to know all this. All the religious orders had as their goal the raising of contemplative souls according to the charism of their Founders and the teachings of disciples who had come to understand, and by mastered by, the Gospel through their Founder’s lens, but mostly through their Founder’s heart. It all came to a crash with the advent of the heresy of Quietism, which preached both a passivity in prayer that was not proper to the true life of prayer and an indifference to serious sin while the sinner awaited cleansing. Torkington writes about this well, and he draws on Knox’s great work, Enthusiasm as well as on Fr. Philip Hughes’ work. So widespread was this heresy, and the errors that it promulgated about mental prayer, contemplation, and sin, that the Church essentially shut the door on contemplative prayer and shifted the main focus of her attention to apostolic and pastoral action that later devolves into a passion for social justice. And here we note that apostolic and pastoral action, and social justice, as well as all of justice’s other forms, are perennially important for the Church and her children: but not first. First, we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and only then, having received from Him His Love with which to love ourselves can we love our neighbors as ourselves and do the things that need doing.
The crises of our times are beyond human mending. The only solution lies in a return to the Lord, but not principally in “doing things” or “doing more things.” Such action leads us right back into the Pelagian trap of thinking “if it is to be, it is up to me.” No, the return to the Lord occurs first in the prayer, in a return to the sacraments or to a more regular and deeper reception of them and in contemplative prayer, considering the price paid for our salvation and that of the world, such that we open ourselves in prayer to receive all that God wants to give us. He wants to work through us, yes: but first, and most of all, He wants us to know that He loves us, for it is in the knowledge of His personal love for us that we find the strength and wisdom first to love Him back and then to put that love into action by doing the things we come to see Him asking of us in the prayer.
This love we discover, and rediscover, every time we “waste time” in prayer, considering the marvels of the Lord, moving into conversation with Him until He does all the speaking and then finally, the wordlessness of the Word fills us with the fullness of God.
There is nothing to prove. We need only pray and receive all that God wants to give us. Then we do; and then the world is changed, one soul, one family, one community, one nation at a time. But this prayer is work, make no mistake about that. This prayer requires us to still ourselves, focus on God, turn over our distractions, worries, and preconceived notions so that we let God be God and let Him do for us what only He can do and what He wants to do so much. Only then are things set aright, for He never compels our obedience, he awaits it, and when He receives it, He acts. When we bring all thoughts captive to Christ, Christ moves in to set us free.
The next move is yours.
This is an essential idea, very important to the healing of Christians and the Church, for all the reasons you cite. I know of only one group in the Church that practices what you preach. It is called Apostoli Viae, or Apostles on the Way. (https://apostoliviae.org). I strongly recommend checking it out, because this is a path we can't walk alone. Community is necessary.