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Prayer
Spirit of God, give me a discerning heart, to discern what is of you and not of you, both in others and myself. May I place devotion to Truth above all else, that I might prove to be your disciple and bring blessings to those seeking Truth. Amen.
Comments
A parishioner had a very impressive personality and had enjoyed marked success in the public sphere. Spiritual discernment, over time, demonstrated that her enthusiasm and natural giftedness had misled many persons. One of the first signs of lack of spiritual depth was the hollowness of her prayer and, also, leadership of worship. The enthusiasm was present, but depth was lacking. The sound was of someone seeking to sound powerfully spiritual.
But, the person praying in the Spirit and living in the Same does not have to push to appear or sound spiritual. He or she is spiritual. This natural and simple life and prayer is a mark of the contemplative.
Of course, many did not discern this lack of depth in the parishioner, for they were taken in by the impressiveness of personality and lacked the spiritual perception to discern spiritual depth:
14The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
(I Corinthians 2, ESV).
This lack of spiritual depth and discernment was evidenced by the disarray in the community of faith:
1My friends, you are acting like the people of this world. That's why I could not speak to you as spiritual people. You are like babies as far as your faith in Christ is concerned. 2So I had to treat you like babies and feed you milk. You could not take solid food, and you still cannot, 3because you are not yet spiritual. You are jealous and argue with each other. This proves that you are not spiritual and that you are acting like the people of this world.
(I Corinthians 3, CEV)
For a faith community, then, to discern spiritual persons and the matters of the Spirit, the community must be spiritual persons. Otherwise, the community will not be capable of discerning what is and is not of the Spirit of Life, as in the case presented above.
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Thomas Merton, in Contemplative Prayer, refers to St. John of the Cross' Dark Night, in speaking to this matter of spiritual depth:
The more spiritual a thing is the more wearisome they find it, for as they seek to go about spiritual matters with complete freedom and according to the inclination of their will, it causes them sorrow and repugnance to enter upon the narrow way, which, says Christ, is the way of life.
Merton proceeds to clarify his reading of St. John of the Cross:
Here St. John supposes a complete contradiction between what is authentically spiritual (therefore simple and obscure) and what appears to these men to be spiritual because it excites and stimulates them psychologically.
St. John of the Cross and Merton's words on contemplation are applicable to the entire spiritual Journey. We can easily read a person as spiritual due to that person's natural or trumped up enthusiasm. Likewise, we can mistake our own enthusiasm for being in the Spirit.
The path of contemplation leads us to the painful surrender of our own feelings to absolute and pure faith. In pure faith we no longer discern another person or ourself as being in the Spirit simply due to religious or spiritual feelings or a natural or pumped up enthusiasm. Rather, over time, we are weaned off reliance on such feelings. We begin to discern more wisely, from a Truth underneath emotion. No one can teach this; this discernment is learned in the School of Prayer, but in no School of Prayer lacking extensive practice in silent contemplation.
What is the difference between enthusiasm, as we commonly understand it, and spirituality? How does contemplation lead a person to a deeper depth than feelings? What does it mean to pray naturally, rather than trying to pray sounding spiritual?
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