On Sunday we will take the opportunity to chat about “Quiet prayer”. St Francis de Sales had a lot to teach us about this form of being in the presence of God, and so did St Theresa of Avila.
Read their sentiments and come and discuss YOUR experience on Sunday Feb 1st.
St. Francis de Sales wrote in his Treatise on the Love of God:
“You also wish to know if a soul, still very imperfect, can with profit to itself remain in prayer before God, with that simple attention to His divine presence of which I spoke.
I tell you that if God places you there, you can certainly remain there, for it happens not unfrequently that Our Lord gives this repose and tranquillity to souls which are not thoroughly purged. While, however, they still need purgation, they should, outside the time of prayer, occupy themselves with the reflections and considerations necessary for their amendment. Indeed, even if God should keep them always in deep recollection, they still retain sufficient liberty to discourse with the understanding on many indifferent subjects- why, then, should they not be able to ponder and form the resolutions needed for their amendment and the practice of virtues?
There are very perfect persons to whom Our Lord never gives this sweetness and repose, who do all in the higher region of their soul, and who by the sheer force of the higher reason, make their own will die and God’s will live in them. And this death is the death of the cross which is much more excellent and generous than that other, which for the following reason should rather be called a slumber than a death ; namely, because a soul which has embarked in the vessel of God’s Providence, lets itself be carried gently along, like a person who though asleep in a boat upon a quiet sea, is all the time making progress. This manner of death, so gentle and so sweet, is given as by a free gift, the other by merit.”
St. Francis also makes reference to St Teresa of Avila’s opinion in the Treatise, which we share as another way of joining in the Carmelites’ celebration of her birth this year:
“The Blessed Mother (S.) Teresa of Jesus, also, in good truth, a quite angelic virgin, speaking of the prayer of quiet, says these words:—“There are divers souls who come up to this perfection, but those who pass beyond are a very small number: I know not the cause of it, certainly the fault is not on God’s side, for since his divine majesty aids us and gives us the grace to arrive at this point, I believe that he would not fail to give us still more if it were not for our fault, and the impediment which we on our part place.” Let us therefore, Theotimus, be attentive to advance in the love which we owe to God, for that which he bears us will never fail us.”