The following comes from an 1853 book: INSTRUCTIONS IN THE DIVINE LIFE OF THE SOUL FROM THE FRENCH OF FENELON AND MADAME GUYON. Careful!! Don't turn it off because of your unfamiliarity with these dear people. Their insights are Word-grounded and Christ-exalting.
ON PRAYER AND THE PRINCIPAL EXERCISES OF PIETY.
1. True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire—but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays. Let him spend days in reciting prayers, in meditation or in inciting himself to pious exercises, he prays not once truly, if he really desire not the things he pretends to ask.
2. O! how few there are who pray! for how few are they who desire what is truly good! Crosses, external and internal humiliation, renouncement of our own wills, the death of self and the establishment of God’s throne upon the ruins of self love, these are indeed good; not to desire these, is not to pray; to desire them seriously, soberly, constantly, and with reference to all the details of life, this is true prayer; not to desire them, and yet to suppose we pray, is an illusion like that of the wretched who dream themselves happy. Alas! how many souls full of self, and of an imaginary desire for perfection in the midst of hosts of voluntary imperfections, have never yet uttered this true prayer of the heart! It is in reference to this that St. Augustine says: He that loveth little, prayeth little; he that loveth much, prayeth much.
Metcalf, J. W. (1999). Spiritual Progress. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment