In the Mass tomorrow we have, mainly I don't want to explain it, you know, I mean word by word, but in connection with things that are still alive in my mind from the retreat of the priests this last week, I thought we could take the topic of prayer as it is and touched upon in this mass. And you have, I just call your attention to it, for example, in the epistle, the first epistle of St. Peter tomorrow, that we have this beautiful sentence, Onnes unanimes in oratione estote. Be all of one mind, unanimes, in prayer, in oratione. Then there is, in a similar vein, shall we say, in the Gospeltum, Si ergo offerstum ad altare, if therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother has anything against thee,

[01:24]

Leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first and be reconciled to thy brother, and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift. So there we see one of the essential features of Christian prayer, that it extends beyond the limits of the individual person. We cannot pray without being members of something transcendent, something that reaches out into the universal range, the infinite range of God's charity. That's one way in which Christian prayer transcends the individual person. We pray essentially as members of Christ's mystical body. And there is another one in the operatory. When it decomptomical, quit favor with me, intellectual.

[02:27]

I will bless the Lord who has given me understanding. The praise, our praise, our prayer is something which transcends our understanding. The understanding God gives. That's very evident when you remember how the apostles, turning to our Lord, asked him and said, O Lord, teach us how to pray. And then he said, When you pray, pray ye thus, Our Father who art in heaven. Or think of the church receiving a Psalter. Psalter is the word. That is the understanding. Think of the word of St. Paul. We, man, out of himself, does not know how to pray. The Spirit prays in him. So again, there is one of these ways in which prayer transcends our personal limitations.

[03:37]

Let us just dwell a little on this aspect of prayer. It is characteristic, I would say, of the prayer of the New Testament. We live as we, and I think we, you understand that what I mean when I say, we live in the Messianic age. We do not live anymore in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was a time of preparation. That is something of looking forward, a time of longing, a time of great desire, of promise. But because only longing, because only desire, because only promise, therefore also to a certain extent what we call empty, impure. The messianic time is the last time. The messianic age is the age of fullness.

[04:41]

What has been hoped for, what has been expected, What the Old Testament was waiting for, now it has come. What is that reality that has come? It's the reality of the Holy Spirit. What is the reality of the Holy Spirit? That is God's activity entering our lives. and changing. It's a dynamis, it's a power. And that has come, that has been poured out over us in these last days. And that, of course, is first of all evident in the activity which in man is most immediately and essentially concerned with God as God. and in which our love of God for his own sake is most purely expressed.

[05:43]

And that is prayer. Prayer is activity in the infinite. That is New Testament. That is Christian prayer. Remember the word of St. Paul that he says in the first epistle to the Romans. When they knew God... intellectually, psychologically, mentally, they have not glorified him as God. They had, for that matter, they had the idea, but not the action which corresponds to the idea. Because having the idea without having the being does not result, for that matter, into the adequate response or action. Therefore, when they knew God, I mean as we know God from these created visible things, they have not glorified him as God. That's the action.

[06:45]

That is the activity of the Holy Spirit. O given thanks. But because became vain in their thoughts, they became empty in their thoughts. not transcending, not entering the divine reality, but remaining shut up, limited in their own small little human circle. Therefore they became vain in their thoughts and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of men. That is the essence of what man does, as long as his mind left to himself is also the only source and direction of his actions.

[07:47]

He will not glorify God, but Draw God down to his own emptiness. And instead of rising to him, he will lower God to his own level. That means, think about God in the image of men, as it is said here. Not only of men, but pride, missing the mark, will always become lower and lower and lower. Therefore, likeness of men, even of birds, even of beasts, and of creeping things. You must always think that St. Paul had these things around him and saw them day after day in the temples of the pagans. Who changed the truth of God into a lie? and worship the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.

[08:50]

Amen. So the prayer, therefore, the glorification of God, is, in the messianic age, is essentially the fruit, the activity of the Holy Spirit itself. The Spirit, St. Paul says in that same epistle to the Romans, the Spirit helps our weakness, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself pleads for us with unutterable moanings, and he who searches the heart knows what the Spirit desires. So we, therefore, in the New Testament, adore the Father in the Spirit and in truth. That is not a psychological sentence and truth, but that is a theological, in the Spirit and in truth.

[10:02]

The spirit is the end of the divine processions. The father is the invisible. He is the silence. He dwells in an inaccessible light. But then he is the beginning without beginning. But then the son, the son is the formate. He is, as we call it, the glory of God, the manifestation the divine idea, forming the macrocosmos, this universe, and the microcosm, man, in absolute harmony as his expression, as his likeness. But then we The song, this glory of God, is turned towards the Father, is bound to the Father by the Holy Spirit of that filial love.

[11:07]

And then when man refuses to glorify God through the obedience against the law, then man loses his key position ceases to be the headstone of this universe, and therefore all the various lines of the universe, although they still keep in some way, as ruins do, something of the architect's plan, the original plan. Nevertheless, as ruins do, the lines rise, indicate a direction, don't get there, they break the ruins. And that is what happened to the cosmos, the fact that the headstone of this cosmos, of the dome of this creation, was broken out through the refusal of man to glorify God.

[12:13]

And that destroys not only the image of the novus in this world, in this cosmos, but also the presence, the activity of the Holy Spirit. And this is quality, so to speak, inner quality of this image of God, the macrocosmos and the microcosmos. The Holy Spirit withdraws. But then at the moment in which the second Adam dying on the cross, the glory of God descending, the glory of God becoming man again, restoring that headstone. There it is again in him. Then when he goes the opposite way of Adam, Adam wins. When he dying the death of the cross completely, interiorly, allows, as it were, to be stripped of all glory.

[13:22]

That is, let us never forget that, that is the essence of the death on the cross. That is why the Lord died on the cross. The cross is the destruction of all human glory. That means of the last trace, of divine likeness in the guilty ones, the criminal. In the criminal who suffers their conscience. Cross is not only the physical torture, but it is the moral annihilation The taking away of every crown and glory. The complete immersion into shame. Annihilation in shame. That is the essence of the crunchment of the cross.

[14:26]

That's the second Adam, the Son of God made man, that he took upon himself. In order to, in this way, lead mankind again, the opposite way that Adam had gone, through him to the glorification of the Father. The one who was stripped of all his glory, he then is raised by the Father in the glory of the resurrection. He then is exalted, his name is exalted, so that in the name of the Kurios, of the Lord, that means the glorified Adam, all every knee should bend. And in that way, worship should be restored here on this earth, in spirit and in truth.

[15:27]

Therefore, this annihilation of the second Adam on the cross leads to his glorification by the Father. And in this way, becoming the Lord through the raising, as it were, power of the Father, not only in his divinity, but in his humanity, becoming the Lord, filled with glory. Heals with the Spirit. So that St. Paul says, the Lord is the Spirit. There he is the head of this new version. After Easter, he is the one through his ascension who is, as St. Paul says, always living as the high priest to intercede for us before the Father. That is the restoration of that person through the cross and the resurrection, the exaltation of Christ.

[16:34]

There the Holy Spirit is again. In him then as the source. From his fullness we all receive. Through baptism we enter into that death. We are crucified with him. And therefore glorified with him. And therefore in baptism and through baptism. Being members of this curious. We can say our father who art in heaven. And we can say that not only as a moral petition, as a form of politeness, or as a form of intimacy, or a form of friendship. We say that because we are of God's children, as St. John says. We are his children. Our being, our spiritual being is that we are children. Because the Holy Spirit dwells in us as in a temple.

[17:38]

He is present in the world who is restored in the image and likeness of the Logos through the mystery of baptism. So in this way we, our prayer, Christian prayer, prayer in the curious, Prayer at that time when the Spirit is there again. As St. Paul says, before the Lord was glorified, the Spirit was not there. But now he is glorified. This cosmos is restored. And therefore the Spirit is there. He is at our disposal. Everybody who thirsts, let him come to me. And let him drink who believes in me. Because as scripture says, rivers of living water shall proceed from him.

[18:42]

That means from the risen glorified Messiah. So therefore, I only mention that because there you see that is the, let us say, the essential inner ontological transcendency of Christian prayer. Christian prayer, for that matter, is a true mystery. That means an incarnation and a realization on our human level, on the level of this visible world, of the divine power of the Holy Spirit. Now this essential ontological transcendence of prayer That naturally is there also, and that is vital for us to realize that. That also has its certain, let us call them psychological realizations.

[19:43]

The inner essential mystery character of human, of Christian prayer. That it is our prayer, but it is the groaning of the Holy Spirit in us. That is, we look away and still we don't know what to pray. It is the Spirit who knows in us. That transcendency has, as it says, I must say, necessarily hears the psychological forms in which that is manifested to us. And the first psychological form is this. We are, prayer is something that is over will. That means it is something which, now we can say, overpowers us. Now we can be overwhelmed and transcend ourselves, as it were, in two directions.

[20:45]

Into the direction below and in the direction above. In all things and beyond us. And the strange or marvelous thing is that divine transcendency always takes two directions. Into the inmost, deepest heart, the roots of our human being, and beyond, the reaches of our human being. These two ways prayer is transcending. Down into the roots, and beyond, let us say, the roots. How? Through humility. Prayer, Christian prayer, cannot be separated from humility. Before Saint Benedict speaks about prayer in his rule, he has the seventh chapter in which he explains the deepest Mystery of the conversion, of the humility, and that is that we are not only in words proclaiming ourselves to be lesser than anybody else, but that in our inmost heart we believe that we are worlds and not men.

[22:02]

That is the heart of humility of the conversion. There we, as you say, we see that transcending ourselves, but in the downward direction. We are a world and not man. That is transcending. And that is the mystery of humility, which proceeds and which is expressed in the very mystery of prayer. Comes to its psychological expression. When Our Lady, who for that matter is, one can say, the typification of Christian prayer in the Magnificat. My Lord, my soul magnifies the Lord. Why? Because he regarded the lowliness of his hand. Or take the one, take the mouse, take the priest, that mouse.

[23:06]

For example, even the Latin white. We find right in the center of the canon of the Mass, right after the consecration, one of these prayers, in which certainly these celebrating clergy, all those who are present at the altar, strike publicly their breasts and say, Nobis quoque peccatoriums, famulis tuis, demultitudine viserationum tuarum speratum, also earth, sinners, your servants who put their trust only in the multitude of your mercies. A wonderful expression, I think the most classical way, an expression of this aspect of Christian faith, that it is rising out of the depth of humility. That is in the Eastern churches, in the Eastern liturgy.

[24:14]

And they are just, read to you one prayer, the prayer of Simeon, the theologian. And I think just reading it, you will be listening to it, you will realize what I try to say. He says, Savior, I know that none other stumbles before thee as I stumbled, or did the deeds which I wrought. But this too I know, that the greatness of my stumblings and the multitude of my sins go not beyond the measure of the longsuffering of my God. Do not go beyond the height of his loving kindness. With the oil of compassion, thou dost cleanse and brighten them that fervently repent.

[25:18]

Thou makest them to share in the light, to participate in thy Godhead. And thou workest without stinting. These things give me wings, O my Christ, and heartened by the richness of thy gifts to me. Rejoicing while I tread, I partake of the fire, I that am of straw. That is the reality of Christian prayer. Now, there is another way of transcending, and that is the one that is indicated in tomorrow's Mass. That is the transcending of charity. Humility is that individual before thee, O God, I am, but dust and ashes.

[26:19]

But then there comes that intervention of divine compassion, And the one who professes himself to be a hero's foundling, a child of wrath, is taken into the arms of his divine father and becomes a brother among many other brethren. And so he is taken into the wide places or spaces of the divine charity, the wide places which we call the church. where there are two or three gathered together in my name. Be gathered together in my name, that means public prayer. Because gathered together in my name, the invocation of the divine name is the essence of prayer. Therefore, where three or two or three are gathered together in my name, that means for the purpose of worship, there I am in the midst of them.

[27:31]

Therefore, common prayer, public prayer, should be taken not as a burden, not as a distraction, but as the pledge, the assurance, and the reality of the divine presence. not alone do i approach god but thank god covered with the purity of the church the bride of the holy spirit i do not approach god supported by my own sanctity i approach god supported by the collective sanctity of the church That is the tremendous consolation in public prayer. That is why public prayer is so overwhelming. That means why public prayer constitutes a world of richness, wealth. a time-consuming business, something that transcends the capacity of my intellectual understanding.

[28:39]

I dare say that nobody has ever assisted at three nocturnes with understanding every word he said. Isn't that quite a safe statement? So therefore, what is a tremendous consolation, you know, to think It's just what a tremendous consolation it is for somebody who has no voice to try to sing in unison with others. What he can't do, somebody else covers it up. And he is, he walks before God. and with his own lame voice on the crutches of other voices. That's beautiful. I think that is a saving experience. And that is not only what the voice is concerned, but that is as far as the heart is concerned, the mind. We are insufficient.

[29:42]

We are not so alert that we could fill the tremendous fall of public prayer, a liturgy which certainly is a coat too big for any one of us to wear individually. But we don't have to wear it individually. It is the big mantle with which the mercy of God has covered the church as a whole. That is the meaning of public prayer. So there it is. The fact that Christian prayer, for that matter, is in the most perfect form public prayer shows clearly the transcendent character of Christian prayer. Not only into the depth, but on the level on which I find, into the horizontal, as it were. So there we receive, as it were, this.

[30:48]

I praise the Lord who puts the word upon my tongue. Not only on my tongue, but the tongues of the entire church. There I stand, together with St. Leo and St. Ray, we are saints, saints and thousands of them, and I am supported. They are my garments, covered with which I stand before God, the majesty of God, the public prayer. And therefore this collective form, as it were, this ecclesiastical form, This intellectus divinus that is given to us in the ecclesiastical world, let us say in a sort, or in the pockets of the Roman Missal, or in this whole apparatus of the liturgy, that is then something that forms me, that widens me out. If the individual would be left constantly to his own poor imagination to express himself before God, what would be the result?

[31:58]

But what a tremendous happiness it is if, if I have this beautiful form, the locus, the word of God, and then my mind should be in heart, um, hearty or heart-filled harmony with this word, with this voice. That is the beautiful principle as St. Benedict has expressed it. Salam spiritu, salam et mentem. Then there is a third way in which Christian prayer transcends because it is the work of the Spirit in me. It's the voice of the Spirit in me. It's the reality of the Spirit in me. And therefore transcends. Transcends in the vertical. Transcends into the divine glory.

[33:00]

And this transcendence in the divine glory becomes, as I said, psychologically expressed and felt and experienced in the, what we call, jubilation. And be not drunk with wine wherein is luxury, but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual catacombs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father. That is the jubilation. That is the transcendency, the rising above the narrow confines of the human heart into above, into the divine glory.

[34:07]

In all things and above all things. St. Augustine has expressed that aspect of Christian prayer in such a beautiful way when he says, Because God is beyond all human expressions, and still man is not allowed to be silent before him, there is nothing left but to burst forth into jubilation. which means that the heart rejoices without words and that the infinite abundance of joy breaks through the dam of the syllabus. And then he turns to the congregation and he says, And you, vos estis tuba, psarterio, cittara, tympanum, corpus corda et organum et cymbala benisonatia, vos estis hecoria, you are all this, trumpet and psalter and harp and tympanum and choir and cymbals, you are all this.

[35:21]

And that is the figure and beauty of the resurrection in fire. This Holy Spirit comes to us and is the gift of the risen Savior. No wonder then that this Holy Spirit is drunkenness in our hearts. And that is why he raises the heart to that height where Christ is enthroned at the right hand of God. ever living to intercede for us. So in these three ways, the transcendency, the reality, the divinity of Christian prayer is expressed. Utmost humility. Broadness of charity earns the height of joy.

[36:13]

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