Canonical Hermits, Non-Canonical Hermits, and Humility

[[Dear Sister, do some hermits chose not to become canonical because of their humility? I have read one hermit who chose not to do so because she wished to remain "small" and another because she wished to remain "hidden". Is there an advantage in making such a choice for these reasons?]]

Thanks for your questions. Let me define humility as I understand it and then try to answer your question about smallness from that perspective. Humility is a form of honesty, specifically, a form of loving honesty (both elements are critical here) about who one is (and who others are) in light of the way God sees us. We are humble when and to the extent we regard ourselves (or others) in the same way God regards us, neither disparaging ourselves (or others) nor engaging in self-aggrandizement. I have written here before about this and especially on the distinction between something that is truly humbling and something which is instead, humiliating. Too often in various threads of spirituality, the verb associated with humility has been mistakenly construed as 'humiliate'! But God does not humiliate --- ever! God's love humbles us. It reveals our true dignity. It raises us to the ability to see clearly and lovingly just who we and others are in light of God's own deep regard for and delight in us.

There can be many sources of the notion that canonical vocations are about pride or a lack of humility. Consider, however, that if God calls some to be diocesan hermits under c 603, it is also the case that acceptance of such a vocation might well be a wonderfully humbling experience. Surely it could be argued that God would intend any vocation to be a humbling (or humble-making) experience rooted in God's love for that person and those to whom they are called to minister in this specific way.  No? My own sense is that we tend to associate pride or arrogance with canonical standing because we often neglect to ask ourselves whether or not God calls anyone at all in this way. If a way of life represents a form of divine call, why should we assume that those who seek this specific form of life lack humility or that the way of life lacks sufficient "smallness" where another form of the vocation (non-canonical eremitical life, for instance) does not?

I participated in a couple of conversations this last couple of weeks on a list on "Hermit Vocations" --- a list apparently made up largely (but not exclusively) of self-designated hermits in the lay state. I was saddened to find the degree of judgment I did which is present regarding diocesan (c 603) hermits and the arrogance or pride they were thought to reveal simply in having sought (and been granted!) canonical standing. One opinion was that for those seeking standing in law under c 603 "was all about show" and concern with externals. It is seriously harmful to any form of eremitical life to paint them with such a cynically broad brush and I was surprised to find this response to be so immediate and, in some ways, pervasive. But, to be misunderstood is nothing new with eremitical vocations and I think the question of God's call is critical here: If canonical standing is something God wills for at least some hermits, then how can we automatically conclude that canonical standing and all it brings is something only the arrogant or prideful embrace? (By the way, please note that when folks criticize canonical hermits they tend only to criticize solitary canonical (or diocesan) hermits, not those living eremitical life in canonical communities. I wonder why that is?)

I am not certain what you are asking when you speak of advantages in making decisions in terms of "smallness", for instance, but I believe one's personal discernment can certainly benefit from being concerned with one's own personal and spiritual strengths and weaknesses and how the grace of God is working in the Church and one's own life to make the very best of these. If this means realizing that one sees diocesan eremitical life as lacking in "smallness" or "hiddenness", then it can certainly be of benefit to work through all of this with one's spiritual director. Similarly, if one is looking for a "higher" or "purer" form of eremitical life, perhaps one needs to spend some time working through this aim and all that motivates it. At the same time, if one is unable to see the real value in non-canonical eremitical life, the dignity and worth of such life, then one needs to work through whatever it is that causes one to see this form of eremitical life in this way. Whenever we get into competitive ways of seeing that accent "better", "superior" or "lower", "meaner", "purer," "less pure," etc, it is time to take real care regarding what is going on in our own hearts.

That said, it is important to also ask if there are ways each form of eremitical life challenges the other to greater authenticity. For instance, canonical standing calls hermits to understand that the eremitical vocation belongs to God and the Church, not to the individual. It calls hermits to find ways to embrace, live, and express the truth that eremitical life serves others from within the Church --- whether or not the vocation is technically an "ecclesial" vocation or not. Canonical standing emphasizes the place of mutual discernment and formation, both initial and ongoing, and the necessity for regular spiritual direction and participation in the sacramental life of the church. It does not allow one to substitute license for genuine freedom. It stresses the need for a Rule, a vision of how one is to live the life and a commitment which binds in conscience and as well as in law, and which affirms what is foundational and what is not. Lay (non-canonical) eremitical life reminds hermits of the roots of eremitical vocations in the life of the Church, the profound prophetic character of hermit vocations as typified by the Desert Abbas and Ammas, and others throughout the history of the Western church. These two forms of solitary eremitical existence should be in conversation with one another, NOT in competition.

 There are temptations associated with each form of eremitical life. For instance, it is true that canonical standing can lead to the temptation to consider canonical hermits as "better" hermits than non-canonical hermits. This particular temptation needs to be assiduously eschewed and that may require one learning to see oneself merely as called to one valid form of eremitical life rather than another equally valid form. If one has a problem with pride, for example, then perhaps that is a good reason for one's diocese to require one to live as a hermit without the benefit of canonical standing until one appreciates the way God works in and through lay or non-canonical hermits. Even so, the conversations I have recently had remind me that non-canonical hermits can easily fall into the same trap -- that is, they can easily believe they are "better" hermits than canonical hermits because, for instance, they are more like the Desert Abbas and Ammas who did not have (and of course could not have had!!) canonical standing (institutional standing and support in law), or are (supposedly)  "smaller," or "more humble," or more "hidden."

But to get back to your questions and what I began this post with, namely, an understanding of humility, in all of this we need to recognize that real humility does not engage in such a competitive way of characterization and discourse. Real humility recognizes that both canonical and non-canonical eremitical life can be rooted in the call of God;  though they differ in their relative canonical rights and obligations, both have all the dignity and importance of true vocations of God and both can reveal the tremendous diversity and freedom of eremitical life.

From Humiliation to Humility: Resting in the Gaze of God (Reprise)

I had a brief conversation this weekend with Sister Susan Blomstad, my co-Director on the difficulties of the language of unworthiness when we speak of God. Sister Susan and I talked a lot about a number of things as we caught up with each other, and didn't get a chance to follow up on this specific topic, but it reminded me of a piece I had written several years ago I will send on to her. It is appropriate for Lent (I may have first written it during Lent), especially in light of what I wrote regarding transfiguration and authentic humanity so I am posting it again today.

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I was intrigued by something you said in your post on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, namely, that our senses of worthiness and unworthiness are not even present until after shame enters the picture. If that is so then what are we to make of all the writing in spirituality that stresses our unworthiness of God's love or the extensive literature on humility that associates it with the sense of being "nothing" or with practices of humiliation? A lot of this was written by saints and spiritually gifted people. Is your observation about worthiness and unworthiness based on the readings from Genesis alone or does it comes from other places too?]]

Several really great questions! Let me give them a shot and then perhaps you can help me follow up on them or clarify what I say with further questions, comments, and so forth. Because shame is such a central experience it truly stands at the center of sinful existence (the life of the false self) and is critical to understanding redeemed existence (the life of the true self). It colors the way we see all of reality and that means our spirituality as well. In fact, this way of seeing and relating to God lies at the heart of all religious thinking and behavior.

But the texts from Genesis tell us that this is not the way we are meant to see ourselves or reality. It is not the way we are meant to relate to God or to others. Instead, we are reminded that "originally" there was a kind of innocence where we knew ourselves ONLY as God himself sees us. We acted naturally in gratitude to and friendship with God. After the Fall human beings came to see themselves differently. It is the vision of estrangement and shame. This new way of seeing is the real blindness we hear of in the New Testament --- the blindness that causes us to lead one another into the pit without ever being aware we are doing so. Especially then, it is the blindness that allows religious leaders whose lives are often dominated by and lived in terms of categories like worthiness and unworthiness to do this.

Religious Language as Shame-Based and Problematical

The language of worthiness and unworthiness has been enshrined in our religious language and praxis. This only makes sense, especially in cultures that find it difficult to deal with paradox. We are each of us sinners who have rejected God's gratuitous love. Doesn't this make us unworthy of it? In human terms which sees everything as either/or, yes, it does. This is also one of the significant ways we stress the fact that God's love is given as unmerited gift. But at the same time, this language is theologically incoherent. It falls short when used to speak of our relationship with God precisely because it is the language associated with the state of sin. It causes us to ask the wrong questions (self-centered questions!) and, even worse, to answer them in terms of our own shame. We think, "surely a just God cannot simply disregard our sinfulness" and the conclusion we come to ordinarily plays Divine justice off against Divine mercy. We just can't easily think or speak of a justice that is done in mercy, a mercy that does justice. The same thing happens with God's love. Aware that we are sinners we think we must be unworthy of God's love --- forgetting that it is by loving that God does justice and sets all things right. At the same time, we know God's love (or any authentic love!) is not something we are worthy of. Love is not earned or merited. It is a free gift, the very essence of grace.

Our usual ways of thinking and speaking are singularly inadequate here and cause us to believe, "If not worthy then unworthy; if not unworthy then worthy". These ways of thinking and speaking work for many things but not for God or our relationship with God. God is incommensurate with our non-paradoxical categories of thought and speech. He is especially incommensurate with the categories of a fallen humanity pervaded by guilt and shame; yet, these are the categories with and within which we mainly perceive, reflect on, and speak about reality. In some ways, then, it is our religious language which is most especially problematic. And this is truest when we try to accept the complete gratuitousness and justice-creating nature of God's love.

The Cross and the Revelation of the Paradox that Redeems

It is this entire way of seeing and speaking of reality, this life of the false self, that the cross of Christ first confuses with its paradoxes, then disallows with its judgment, and finally frees us from by the remaking of our minds and hearts. The cross opens the way of faith to us and frees us from our tendencies to religiosity; it proclaims we can trust God's unconditional love and know ourselves once again ONLY in light of his love and delight in us. It is entirely antithetical to the language of worthiness and unworthiness. In fact, it reveals these to be absurd when dealing with the love of God. Instead, we must come to rest in paradox, the paradox which left Paul speechless with its apparent consequences: "Am I saying we should sin all the more so that grace may abound all the more? Heaven forbid!" But Paul could not and never did answer the question in the either/or terms given. That only led to absurdity. The only alternative for Paul or for us is the paradoxical reality revealed on the cross.
On the cross the worst shame imaginable is revealed to be the greatest dignity, the most apparent godlessness is revealed to be the human face and glory of Divinity. These are made to be the place God's love is most fully revealed. In light of all this, the categories of worthiness or unworthiness must be relinquished for the categories of paradox and especially for the language of gratitude or ingratitude --- ways of thinking and speaking that not only reflect the inadequacy of the language they replace, but which can assess guilt without so easily leading to shame. Gratitude, what Bro David Steindl-Rast identifies as the heart of prayer, can be cultivated as we learn to respond to God's grace, as, that is, we learn to trust an entirely new way of seeing ourselves and all others and else in light of a Divine gaze that does nothing but delight in us.

This means that, while the tendency to speak in terms of us as nothing and God as ALL is motivated by an admirable need to do justice to God's majesty and love, it is, tragically, also tainted by the sin, guilt, and shame we also know so intimately. It is ironic but true that in spite of our sin we do not do justice to God's greatness by diminishing ourselves even or especially in self-judgment. That is the way of the false self and we do not magnify God by speaking in this way. Saying we are nothing merely reaffirms an untruth --- the untruth which is a reflection of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is the same "truth" that leads to shame and all the consequences of a shame-based life and is less about humility than it is about humiliation. God is ineffably great and he has created us with an equally inconceivable dignity. We may and do act against that dignity and betray the love of our Creator, but the truth remains that we are the image of God, the ones he loves with an everlasting love, the ones he delights in nonetheless. God's love includes us; God takes us up in his own life and invites us to stand in (his) love in a way that transcends either worthiness or unworthiness. Humility means knowing ourselves in this way, not as "nothing" or in comparison with God or with anyone else.

Contemplative prayer and the Gaze of God:

My own sense of all this comes from several places. The first is the texts from Genesis, especially the importance given in those to the gaze of God or to being looked on by God vs being ashamed and hiding from God's gaze. That helps me understand the difference between the true and false selves. The focus on shame and the symptoms of shame (or the defensive attempts to avoid or mitigate these) helps me understand the development of the false self --- the self we are asked to die to in last Friday's Gospel lection. The second and more theologically fundamental source is the theology of the cross. The cross is clear that what we see and judge as shameful is not, that what we call humility means being lifted up by God even in the midst of degradation, and moreover, that even in the midst of the worst we do to one another God loves and forgives us. I'll need to fill this out in future posts. The third and most personal source is my own experience of contemplative prayer where, in spite of my sinfulness (my alienation from self and God), I rest in the gaze of God and know myself to be loved and entirely delighted in. While not every prayer period involves an explicit experience of God gazing at and delighting in me (most do not), the most seminal of these do or have involved such an experience. I have written about one of these here in the past and continue to find it an amazing source of revelation.

In that prayer, I experienced God looking at me in great delight as I "heard" how glad he was that I was "finally" here. I had absolutely no sense of worthiness or unworthiness, simply that of being a delight to God and loved in an exhaustive way. The entire focus of that prayer was on God and the kind of experience prayer (time with me in this case) was for him. At another point, I experienced Christ gazing at me with delight and love as we danced. I was aware at the same time that every person was loved in the same way; I have noted this here before but without reflecting specifically on the place of the Divine gaze in raising me to humility. In more usual prayer periods I simply rest in God's presence and sight. I allow him, as best I am able, access to my heart, including those places of darkness and distortion caused by my own sin, guilt, woundedness, and shame. Ordinarily, I think in terms of letting God touch and heal those places, but because of that seminal prayer experience, I also use the image of being gazed at by God and being seen for who I truly am. That "seeing", like God's speech is an effective, real-making, creative act. As I entrust myself to God I become more and more the one God knows me truly to be.

What continues to be most important about that prayer experience is the focus on God and what God "experiences", sees, and communicates. In all of that, there was simply no room for my own feelings of worthiness or unworthiness. These were simply irrelevant to the relationship and intimacy we shared. Similarly important was the sense that God loved every person in the very same way. There was no room for elitism or arrogance nor for the shame in which these and so many other things are rooted. I could not think of my own sinfulness or brokenness; I did not come with armfuls of academic achievements, published articles, or professional successes nor was this a concern. I came with myself alone and my entire awareness was filled with a sense of God's love for me and every other person existing; there was simply no room for anything else.

Over time a commitment to contemplative prayer allows God's gaze to conform me to the truth I am most deeply, most really. Especially it is God's loving gaze which heals me of any shame or sense of inadequacy that might hold me in bondage and allows my true self to emerge. Over time I relinquish the vision of reality belonging to the false self and embrace that of the true self. I let go of my tendency to judge "good and evil". Over time God heals my blindness and, in contrast to what happened after the eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, my eyes are truly opened! This means not only being raised from humiliation to humility but being converted from self-consciousness to genuine self-awareness. In the remaking of my mind and heart, these changes are a portrait of what it means to move from guilt and shame to grace.

So, again, the sources of my conviction about the calculus of worthiness and unworthiness and the transformative and healing power of God's gaze come from several places including 1) Scripture (OT and NT), Theology (especially Jesus' own teaching and the theologies of the cross of Paul and Mark as well as the paradoxical theology of glorification in shame of John's gospel), 2) the work of sociologists and psychologists on shame as the "master emotion", and 3) contemplative prayer. I suspect that another source is my Franciscanism (especially St Clare's reflections on the mirror of the self God's gaze represents) but this is something I will have to look at further.

It is Only With the Heart that One Sees Rightly

Recently a parishioner sent a postcard to the daily Mass folks. Buzz and his wife, Diana, are doing The Way (El Camino de Santiago) and are on their way to St James de Compostela. The postcard quoted St Exupery's Little Prince: "It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." Certainly on such a pilgrimage we come to see people in more profound ways than we do when we look at them superficially. In the best cases pilgrims begin to see one another in ways which make them more whole and takes delight in them --- warts and all. It reminded me of a reflection I did one Friday just two or three weeks ago regarding the beam in one person's eye and the splinter in another!

Also recently I read the story of someone who, as a result of some sort of 'private revelation', apparently "fled Mass in horror" because she had supposedly seen "through the masks" of people attending Mass, perhaps most especially the priest presiding there. She wrote of seeing various persons' flaws, seeing raw, unfiltered truth, and she is trying to make sense of this way of seeing that happens to her at Mass. In light of this deeply disturbing experience (for the person writing about it has written about also being profoundly troubled by it in the past) there is some monastic wisdom which is critical to keep in mind, namely, we only see a person truly when we see them as God sees them. Keeping this in mind will help us hear what is being said again and again in the Gospel readings throughout this whole week.

It is one thing to see a person's flaws. That is certainly part of the truth of who we each are. But it is not the deepest truth and it is the deepest truth which the grace of God empowers us to see and work towards.  The less profound "truth" we may also see can become literally diabolical, that is, it can divide, throw, or tear apart (diabolos comes from the Greek, dia for apart and balein, to throw). It divides the see-er from her own heart, it tears apart the one seen in this way by treating a part of them as the whole or most important truth, and it can result in ripping apart the community in which such things occur. Such truth is meant to be filtered, filtered through hearts that see as God sees, that love as God loves --- with a mercy that does justice, a love that makes whole. Otherwise, the result is true misery for all involved. In light of all this I wanted to repost this piece I put up several years ago:

It is Only With the Heart that We See Rightly.

In one of the best selling books of all time, The Little Prince, there is a dialogue between a fox and the Little Prince. It occurs over a period of time. The Fox begins by explaining about what it means to be "tamed,"  and he notes that it involves forming ties with others. He begs the Prince to "tame him" and over time (the prince agrees to "waste time" in this way!) the Little Prince does so while the Fox allows himself to be tamed; in other words the Prince works to become the Fox's friend and the Fox becomes his. As a result the most mundane parts of reality are also transformed. Golden fields of wheat which hold no interest for the Fox ordinarily (he eats only chickens!) now remind the Fox of his friend's golden hair and occasion joy. When the time comes for the Little Prince to leave the Fox is sad, and then he gives the Little Prince his most precious secret, a secret he says most men have forgotten: [[It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.]]

In last Friday's Gospel story Jesus knows that there is more than one way of "seeing" and he equates one of these with a destructive blindness which will lead everyone into the pit together. He warns that an untrained person is apt to harm someone and needs to get proper training before trying to act as a teacher. And he reminds us via this story that we ourselves are often afflicted with a beam in our own eye but that we are equally often one who blindly criticizes and offers to extract a splinter from another's eye. We hear one of Jesus' most damning judgments as he says: "You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your own eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from in your brother's eye!"

Jesus clearly understands several things; he knows what the fox reminds us most "men have forgotten": First, that seeing rightly (compassion) is something we do with our hearts and this requires a kind of training. It is the kind of training one does when, over time, one helps (trains) a child to grow in a certain way. It takes years to "train" a child's ability to stand upright, to help them become persons who love themselves and others, who are capable of giving themselves to the world in a way which makes it better, richer, more holy. It takes years to help a child become responsible for their own hearts as we ourselves are called to be responsible for our own hearts Our hearts are, as I have said here a number of times, the places where we meet and respond to God, but they are also those places within us where obstacles to this meeting reside; for this reason they need to be "trained"  (formed, healed, nurtured, strengthened, aided) to see rightly. The responsibility for forming our hearts, for taming them (what Christians call growing in holiness), is a lifelong process of being made capable of compassionate seeing by living with and from Christ.

Secondly then, he knew that the way our attention is avidly drawn to the splinter in another's eye SHOULD lead us to suspect the beam in our own; that is, we should suspect the real obstacles to accurate vision, to compassion, exist in our own hearts. They represent ways of seeing we have made our own whether they have come from our culture, from peer pressure, from our own needs, successes or failures, from the hurts of childhood, or wherever. Because of this I think Jesus understood very well that we ordinarily operate from habitual ways of seeing and behaving which are less than Christian; we operate from characteristic attitudes of the false self that serve as lenses which distort our own vision and prevent us from seeing rightly or compassionately with the heart. In terms of the Gospel, and the story of the Little Prince, they are the lenses which prevent us from making neighbors of those we meet or know, the lenses which prevent us from loving others, from letting others "tame us," and therefore from becoming friends.

 Two pieces of monastic truth:

Monastic life encapsulated Jesus' teaching in a number of ways, but there are two pieces which are especially important here. The first is the monastic teaching on what are called "the passions."  The passions are obstacles to humility, that is, they are barriers to recognizing and celebrating the truth about who we are in regard to God and others. Thus they are also obstacles to compassion, to seeing others with the same kind of loving truthfulness. They are most often the beams in our own eyes and hearts which cause us to overreact to the splinters in our brother's or sister's eyes. They are the symptoms of woundedness and disease in our own hearts which cause us to project onto others and fail to love them as we ought and as they deserve. As Roberta Bondi reminds us, "a passion has as its chief characteristics perversion of vision and the destruction of love." (To Love as God Loves)

Common passions we are all too familiar with include perfectionism, a kind of habitual irritation with someone or some situation, anger, envy, depression, apathy or sloth, gluttony (which often has more to do, Bondi points out, with requiring novelty than it does with eating), irritable or anxious restlessness, impatience, selfishness, etc. In each, if we consider their effects, we will notice these habitual ways of relating to ourselves and our world cause us to see reality in a distorted way (this is one of the reasons we think of seeing reality through the green haze of envy, the red film of anger, or the black wall of depression, and so forth). Further, they get in the way of being open to or nurturing the truth of others --- that is, they are obstacles to love.

Similarly they are destructive of sight and love because they cause us to transfer onto others our own flawed expectations, values, failings and woundedness.  We know this by its psychological term: projection. It is a serious disordering of our hearts and minds that Jesus apparently understood well; it is a result of our own brokenness and sinfulness, and it assures not only that the person being projected onto CANNOT be heard or seen for who they are, but also that the one doing the projecting becomes more and more locked into their own blindness and inability to love the other as neighbor. The wisdom of Jesus' admonition, "Remove the beam from your own eye before you attempt to remove the splinter from your brother's," as well as the appropriateness of his anger in calling others on their hypocrisy is profound.

The second piece of monastic wisdom here we should remember, and one which is closely related to the importance of dealing with these passions has to do with the nature of really seeing another truly. In our own time we are very used to acting as though we only know someone really well when we see their flaws. We approach people and things "critically," searching out their failings and weaknesses and when we have discovered them, we believe we have discovered their deepest truth. How often have we heard someone say something like: "I thought I knew him, but the other day, he acted to betray me. Now I really know who he is!"

But monastic wisdom is just the opposite of this notion of knowing. It is strikingly countercultural and counterintuitive. In monastic life we only really know someone when we see them as God sees them: precious, sacred, whole, and beautiful. We only see them rightly when we look past the flaws **to the deep or true person at the core. We only see them truly when we see them with the eyes and humility of love. As we were reminded by Saint-Exupery and as tomorrow's Gospel implies strongly, "It is only with the heart that one sees rightly," --- and only once we have removed those distorting lenses monks call passions, that is, only once we have removed the beams from our own eyes will we be able to do this!

** N.B., I do not mean looking past these flaws in the sense of ignoring them completely (it may or may not be loving to do so) but rather looking past them so they may be seen within the context of the deeper truth and relatedness to God as ground and source. These flaws are tragic but they are tragic precisely because of the deeper truth of every person. Secondly, we must see the deeper truth not only as reality but as the person's profoundest potential. Looking past the flaws means loving the person in a way which summons them to realize their potential by healing and transcending the flaws. Only seeing with the eyes of the heart make this possible.

On the Problem with Long-Winded Prayers

[[Dear Sister, why would Jesus prohibit long prayers with many words? And if God knows what we need before we pray, why do we pray at all? Do you have a favorite prayer you use every day?]]

I think you are referring to Matthew's instruction on prayer, no? The answer, I think has several aspects. The first is a matter of history and especially of the concern with idolatry. You see when Matthew's gospel was written belief in the power of prayer was tenuous. Folks did believe if they called on God by name God would be forced to answer but this was a far cry from turning oneself over to God in trusting submission. As a result however, people developed lists of all of the names of gods (or God) known. These "magic papyri" were then taken and someone would stand on the equivalent of the street corner and read off all the names believing that a prayer would be answered of the correct name was used; to know and call upon one's name indicated power over that person. This long-winded usage is more that of incantation than it is one of genuine invocation because one was not really calling upon God by name in trust and intimacy! In any case, the first reason for Matthew-Jesus' instructions was a way of weaning folks from this magical or superstitious and idolatrous approach to prayer and the use of God's name. (And of course this was buttressed by the invocation of the prayer which allowed us to call upon God as Abba --- the name of God Jesus used in a unique sense.)

The second reason has to do with distraction and focus. When we go on and on in our prayers, when, that is, we talk and talk it is a good deal harder to stay in touch with our deepest feelings and sense of neediness. (Partly this is because these may well be beyond words. Partly it is because naming specific aspects of this neediness can cause other aspects to be excluded from consciousness and our prayer.) Moreover, we may simply become enamored of hearing our own prayer and in a related vein, we may be more focused on our own piety, etc., than we actually are on God. If you pay attention to yourself and your own inner situation in prayer sometime, note how reading a long rote prayer or waxing on with your own prayer becomes less about God and more about yourself, your concerns with whether you have said it all, said it well enough, impressed God with your need or your devotion or your eloquence, etc. Note also how diffused or weakened your sense of profound need has become, how other things take the place of the one overarching concern that caused you to turn to God in the first place.

I used the picture of the Prodigal Son and Father above here because one thing that is really striking to me in light of this conversation is how the Father cuts off the son's long and rehearsed speech of "repentance". It is not that the Father does not listen, but that he really accepts the son more fully and profoundly than the son's proposal would have allowed for. You see when I read the proposed speech I hear the Son distancing himself further and further from the deep and complete sense of sorrow, contrition, and unworthiness he feels (or felt initially!).

He begins to propose solutions in that speech, mitigations, equivocations, compromises, and a final surrendering of his actual identity and dignity. He says he can be a servant rather than a son and heir, and though there is a statement of unworthiness included, the chances that he might be raised to the dignity of true humility rather than admitted to a kind of softened and tolerable humiliation is taken out of his Father's hands. But in prayer the point is to put our whole selves into our Father's hands and allow him to dispose of us as he will. After all, God knows what we truly need! The purpose of prayer is to allow God to do what only God can do, to raise us to a genuine humility --- to the truth of who we are in light of God's love --- not to propose a tolerable but punishing shamefulness in its place. Again and again this is the message of Jesus' encounter with sinners and the larger culture. I guess that generally I see long-winded prayers as following the pattern of the prodigal son's speech; more often than not they involve our own attempt to control things, our own tendency to substitute human wisdom and justice for divine, and thus, our failure to radically trust the depth of God's love or the scope and wisdom of his mercy. By the way, it may well be that one of the real mercies of God, one of the ways God demonstrates knowing what we really need long before we do --- much less long before we put this into words --- is precisely in cutting off our long-winded, often well-rehearsed prayers!

In any case, generally speaking, if one can go on and on in a relatively eloquent prayer, one has distracted oneself from the starkness of one's concerns and need for God. One has ceased to be a poor person seeking only what God desires to give. One has also distracted oneself from the difficult work of waiting on God and discerning the way God is working. The really classic example of a prayer that "says it all" and allows for our entire submission of self to God's creative and redemptive love without distraction or attenuation is the Jesus Prayer, "O God (Lord Jesus Christ), have mercy on me a sinner!" God is praised in the very giving of ourselves and in our allowing him to gift us as he will. To my mind there is no greater praise of God than this. Meanwhile, to answer your second question, we pray in order to pose the question we are so that God might be the answer he is, the answer we need, the answer we cannot supply or be on our own. We are not giving God information when we pray; we are giving God ourselves in an attitude or posture of openness and vulnerability. God has already given himself to us. Our prayer lets that gift be accepted and received.

Personally my own favorite brief prayer, and the one I use all the time is "O God come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me!" It stresses the urgency of my prayer, and it helps me be patient. It also reflects my own certainty that God knows what I need and will assist as is best; thus, for me it combines need with faith. Nor does it distance me from the deep feelings involved here. For both praise and plea I tend to go back to my Franciscan roots, My God and my all! This also articulates my greatest needs and aspirations, the goal and ground of any eremitical life. When, we stay in touch with the deep feelings associated with our prayer, we are ready to receive the answer to our prayer whenever and how ever that comes to us. It is essential to "hearing" the answer God's presence will be for us. We can only receive God to the extent we pose the question we are. If we have distracted ourselves from the depths and keenness of our feelings, we have made it impossible for God to be the answer we need to the extent we need him to be that.

Besides the prayer, "O Lord make haste . . ." my favorite prayer is the "Lord's Prayer". While I say it at Mass, Communion services, and during Office, I don't usually recite it otherwise. Instead I tend to break it up into individual focuses, petitions, or thought units, and meditate on those --- usually for a number of days or weeks. My favorite prayer at night is the "nunc dimittis" but for a short prayer I like and use, "Protect us as we stay awake, watch over us as we sleep" either with or without the continuing "that awake we may keep watch with Christ and asleep rest in his peace." Both of these are from the office of Night Prayer. The latter is something I find especially helpful when I am unwell.

On Being Counterparts and Collaborators: I Call you Friends, Not Servants

Throughout this Easter Season the Church gives us a chance to come to terms in a more exhaustive way than we might have until this point with the fact that in light of the Cross, the world in which we live is not the one that existed before Jesus' death and resurrection. In the world in which we live in light of the Cross, while death and sin are still realities, they are not dominant; they do not have the last word or create a final silence. Instead, the grace of God, God's powerful presence is dominant and sin and death have been defeated in a way which promises that life in abundance is the true hope and promise of this world. The prayer we say daily, "May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (That is, may your love be real for us here and now in space and time just as it is real within your own eternal life; may you be sovereign here and now in space and time just as you are in eternity), is something we see not merely as possibility but as promise which is already realized in a partial way in our own lives and communities.

Similarly, these fifty days give us the chance to grasp and claim more fully the fact that we baptized human beings are not the same either. We are a new creation, not just created by God but recreated by his life within us and by our baptism into the death and resurrection of God's own Christ. If sin and death have lost their dominion in our world more generally, God's love has been poured into us in a way which allows our hearts and lives to truly transcend sin and death more specifically. The petition that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven is also the promise we claim that God's love will be sovereign in our own hearts just as it is sovereign in the life of the Trinity. We were originally made to be counterparts of God in our world; we were made to walk and talk with God in the cool of the evening, to be friends and partners with God in all we were and did in our world. That friendship was realized most fully and exhaustively in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is that friendship which baptism into his death reestablishes and reclaims --- not as a mere metaphor for a life without serious sin, but as a literal description of who we are and how God regards us. "I call you friends," is the NT's highest formulation of the love and delight with which God regards us.

It is also something which marks an identity far beyond that defined by law or measured by the necessary legal categories of worthiness or unworthiness. I wrote a couple of months ago that Christian humility was the result of being lifted up by God so we could see ourselves in light of his own gaze. Here we have the confession of the truly humble: I am called "Friend" by God; it is my identity and my destiny. From the face-in-the-dirt humiliation we often visit upon ourselves and upon others --- or they us, God lifts us up to our knees. It is the place of inestimable dignity his love carves out for me and the role it empowers. Beyond any thoughts of worthiness or unworthiness God delights in me and calls me friend. Beyond failure or success, guilt, shame, humiliation, or pride, God delights in me and calls me friend. Beyond law to the empowerment of grace, the whole purpose of my (or any Christian's) spirituality is that we allow that to be true here and now in space and time just as it is on God's eternal side of things so that one day God will be all in all.

But it is not easy to let go of law to accept grace. It is not easy to let go of self-judgment, blame, lack of self-esteem or its opposite in narcissism to receive the pure gift of friendship and the esteem and dignity which is part of that. It is not easy to treat the Good News of what God has done in Christ as something which stands on its own and is not to be added onto our own performance under the Law. It is not easy to let the scales drop from our own eyes and see ourselves as God sees us, or to let His Word pierce and clear away the blockages of our own ears, minds, and hearts so that we can truly receive the message of today's Gospel pericope:

[["I call you friends!" --- that is how I regard you, you to whom I have revealed my own heart and will, my own plans for the world and the cosmos, my own deepest desires and most profound dreams and delight. You are no longer merely servants; in my Christ you are my counterparts and collaborators in making these things real in space and time --- on earth as it is in heaven. Love one another as I have loved you. As I have loved you in Christ so let others know that same love in and through your own life. As you have known my delight, let others know my delight in them. See them as I see them --- beyond any thoughts of worthiness or unworthiness, success or failure, guilt or innocence, shame or honor, beyond even sin and death --- reveal the ground of your own new-found dignity and identity, the world-shattering vocation you share with them: "I call you friends!" It is thus that My Reign is established.]]