About prayer

A priest recently summed up prayer for a child: Thank you-So sorry-Please. Behind this simplistic appearance, we can nevertheless distinguish the highest spiritual values. Of course, we’re going to talk about them in this order, but it seems to us that the ultimate state of prayer brings them all together in a single, now silent, permanent gesture.

Thank you.

To say thank you – to Him or, at the very least, within ourselves – is, at the deepest level, to acknowledge the gift of being that we have received. The Gospel says, “What do you have that you have not received” (1 Cor. IV, 7), starting with the fact of being. Thus, recognizing that we are not our own cause, that we come “from elsewhere”, is an essential component of a state of prayer. I am “nothing”, nothing other than this being received and who realizes it. To realize this is to know that there is a gift, a donation and a Giver.

And God doesn’t just give being, he also gives Love and Freedom – inseparable! Already, we can say that being and love are one and the same. Centuries before Christianity, Plato already identified God as the “sovereign Good”, and “God is Love” (1 Jn IV, 16) will be taught by the religion of love: Christianity. To give truly is to give out of love; to give is the act of love par excellence, it is love in action. In fact, all giving is essentially that of love; it is love itself. Being is relational, and love is relationship par excellence. In the Trinity, it is the Holy Spirit who bears both names: gift and love,” says S. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas, is that the Holy Spirit is the Gift in person because He is the relationship of Love that unites the Father and the Son, making Him the third Person of the Trinity (S. Augustine)¹. The fact that Rûach haqqòdesh in Hebrew is feminine (as is Shekhinàh) adds a feminine, maternal dimension.

From then on, to recognize this gift in gratitude – the “thank you” of prayer – is to participate in the Holy Spirit, to enter into love². But it’s not just that: following in Christ’s footsteps, we participate in the Son, in the filiation offered by the Father to the Son and to the creatures created through Him.

If God gives freedom at the same time, it’s because love is a union, a reciprocal relationship. Love can never be forced, unless it is no longer love. The being given is therefore both love and freedom. With the being received, love is discovered; the essential freedom authorizes responding to it. If there is a response, it’s because the Spirit is blowing.

It’s up to the man at prayer to become this nothingness of being and love; it’s up to his freedom to let a loving relationship blossom; it’s up to the Holy Spirit – Who blows where He wills (Jn III, 8) – to make it blossom, Deo volente.

So sorry.

This “Sorry” – this request for forgiveness – is ultimately not very different from the previous “Thank you”. As they grow up, children quickly understand that it’s not a question of having taken too much jam, to the detriment of their brother or sister, but that it’s never a question of anything other than a lack of love. Every “sin”, every inadequacy is a lack of love, a miss of love.

To realize the gift of being and of love is to acknowledge one’s inadequacy, to apologize for it, and to want love to invade everything. To lament a lack of love, with contrition, is to commit one’s freedom, one’s free choice, to the establishment of a perfect relationship of love, to invite the Spirit to breathe if He wills, to accept to become a son through the only Son of the Father.

In this state of prayer, man is contrite of his imperfection, reduced to his “nothingness” of being and love. There, he freely surrenders himself to divine mercy.

Please.

“Ask, and it shall be given you. Whoever asks, receives”, says the Gospel (Mt VII, 8). We’re all familiar with children’s requests: a horse, a Christmas present, a moped… But there’s nothing ridiculous about them at the age they’re made. More often than not, they refer to things that are impossible in the child’s family context, but in so doing, they acknowledge that nothing is impossible for God. There’s a world beyond! Having grown up, man knows that the world is full of impossible things. But he also knows that there is a hierarchy of values: between Love and everything else, between God and this world, and that divine Love is capable of fulfilling all hope. He also knows that beyond requests for small, earthly things (the body, material things, long life, health, wealth, honors), there are above all requests for goods for the soul, spiritual goods resting exclusively on God’s grace³.

Isn’t acknowledging one’s inadequacy the same thing as wishing for it to be fulfilled. Isn’t discovering Love the same thing as entering into hope?

In this state of prayer, every specific request – be it for someone else (intercessory prayer⁴) – is entrusted to God, to His will. In so doing, it’s no longer a question of hope – in the sense of hoping for something. There’s only a background of hope⁵. We rely on God. And isn’t that what “please” (“if you please) means? namely, “Thy will be done!”

Beyond words.

It’s best to stay away from words. Thus, says St. John Climacus: “Do not use learned words in (your) prayers, for very often the simple, unadorned chatter of children has satisfied their heavenly Father”⁶.

It is even appropriate to go beyond words, for “silence is better than speech”, says Isaac the Syrian⁷. This is because, in this state of prayer, “we do not know what to ask for in our prayers. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with ineffable groanings” (Rm VIII, 26). The Gospel also says: “When you pray, do not multiply vain words, like the pagans, who imagine that by dint of words they will be heard. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Mt VI, 7-8).

So, advises S. Evagrius Ponticus Evagrius the Pontic: “Strive to deafen your intellect, to render it speechless, at the moment of prayer. Then you will be able to pray”⁸.

And Isaac the Syrian can say: “Pure prayer is neither knowledge nor words, but the emptiness of the intelligence and a calm, collected intellect, brought to peace by the silence of movements and senses”⁹ “Prayer, beyond purity, is stability of the intellect, calmness of heart, rest of mind, tranquility of thoughts, contemplation of the new world, hidden consolation, peace of mind. Prayer, beyond purity, is stability of intellect, calm of heart, rest of mind, tranquility of thoughts, contemplation of the new world, hidden consolation, relationship with God and intelligence in communion with God through the revelation of His mysteries” (ibid.).

Conclusion.

If we sum up these profound states of prayer in this way: to be a “nothing” of being and love received and freely surrendered to the breath of the Spirit, we have reached the end of prayer. There, once the gift has been recognized, “in a heart that is limpid and simple”¹⁰, the human work is accomplished of opening ourselves to the Giver¹¹; free to Him as the Spirit blows, “Gift of sanctification”¹² and “Don excellentissime”¹³.

This state of silent prayer, held in the depths of the heart, can then become permanent. It seems to us, then, that it responds to the Gospel injunction: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. V, 17).

O Lord, I’m nothing, I’m worthless, I deserve nothing; My only dignity, is to be created by love from the Father through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

O Lord, I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything about anything, I don’t understand anything; I only know that you gave me being, love and the freedom to accept.

Thy will be done, I am no other than a zest of being fragrant with hope.

Footnotes

1. “The Spirit is properly called Gift only because of love”, De Trinitate XV, xviii, 32.[↩]
2. “The Gift that unites men to God and to each other in grace is the mutual Love of the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit in person”, says Gilles Emery, op, following S. Augustine, Nova et Vetera, XCVI^e year – Jan.Feb.Mar. 2021.[↩]
3. Origen distinguishes between two types of request in his Treatise on Prayer. See Origen, Questions sur la prière, Saint-Léger éditions, 2018.[↩]
4. One of Origen’s four kinds of prayer.[↩]
5. we would need here something like “hopiness” to render the French “espérance” versus “espoir” (hope).[↩]
6. St. John Climacus, Scala Paradisi, Step 28, PG 88 1132 A. Reference et seq. in Bar Hebraeus, Ethicon, Memra I (trans. Herman G. B. Teule), Louvain: Peeters, 1993.[↩]
7. Issac the Syrian, 2^e Part, Section XIII, in S. Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life, Cistersian Studies Series 101, Kalamazoo (Mi), 1987.[↩]
8. St. Evagrius the pontic, De Oratione, ch. XI, ed. Hausherr, p. 13.[↩]
9. See Symeon of Taibouteh, cf. Bar Hebraeus, op.cit., ch. I, p. 17.[↩]
10. S. Evagrius the Pontic, Institutio ad monachos, ed. J. Suarez, PG 79, 1235C.[↩]
11. “For prayer is truly void and supplication useless, if one does not speak with God in awe and fear, in sincerity and vigilance”, S. Evagre le Pontique, Rerum monachalium rationes, ed. J. Cotelier, PG 40 1264 C, ch. XI. On the “fear of God”, see Théologie pour tous (L’Harmattan, 2024), p. 119.[↩]
12. S. Théol, I, q. 43, a. 6, resp.: whereas, in his visible mission (his incarnation), the Son is sent as the “Author of sanctification” (sanctificationis Auctor), the Holy Spirit is sent as the sanctifying Gift itself (sanctificationis Donum); Gilles Emery op, ibid.[↩]
13. “Donum autem est excellentissimum“, In Ioannem 14, lect. 4 (ed. Marietti, no. 1915), Gilles Emery op, ibid.[↩]