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There is a profound spiritual renewal taking place in the heart of the Church. It is subtle and can only be found in the still small whisper of the Lord. I noticed it within myself in the last few years. Conversations I had with friends in both the laity and the priesthood began to shift. The restlessness of our culture coupled with a Church of frenetic busyness, noise, and self-reliance came to a head in the lives of many people. Many of us started to realize that we were more like hamsters running in a wheel than true disciples of Christ.
It turns out discipleship must be dominated by prayer, simplicity, and sacrifice, not by an incessant celebration of ourselves, the world, and our plans. What has been missing is intimacy with the Lord, which can only be found through deep prayer and encountering Him frequently in the Sacraments.
The wisdom of the ages—which has been passed down to us through Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, the Magisterium, and fully lived by the saints—is still our guiding principle. Much of what we have been given in the last few decades sought to throw out this wisdom in favor of the world, but the Lord is in control, not us. He knows what we need in every time and place. The noise of the technocratic world, which has infiltrated the Church at a cacophonous level, can only be overcome by a return to deep prayer, silence, stillness, asceticism, and sacrifice.
Pope Francis declared 2024 a Year of Prayer in preparation for the Jubilee Year of 2025. Something the Church has been in desperate need of considering how often we do not pray, but instead, embark on constant initiatives and plans of our own making only to discover they do not bear lasting fruit. We tend to mistake the Holy Spirit and our own will because we cannot hear Him in the hurricane force distractions raging within our souls.
The Lord is providing the antidote, which is the fruit of the Year of Prayer. He is re-awakening the wisdom of the contemplative life, which is accessible to every member of the Church regardless of vocation. There are contemplative parents, priests, singles, and religious who discovered that the only way to Christ is ultimately through the interior life, which then moves outwards in service of others. It cannot be the other way around.
Living waters cannot flow in prayerless deserts, but it can flow in abundance in prayerful deserts. If we do not pray, we dam up the flow of Living Water the Lord wants to give to each one of us in order to renew the Church and the world. Lack of prayer is the primary reason the Church has not been able to renew the culture.
The desert is an ancient image for doing spiritual combat and encountering the Lord. It is the place of purification, silence, and emptiness. That emptiness allows us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is the place where we can be healed and made whole. That is why so many saints went to the desert, to mountain caves, or other places of solitude. They left behind the worldly distractions in order to encounter the Living God.
We live in a chaotic age that is slowly destroying us spiritually. We are inundated with distractions, noise, and images. We are constantly busy. The Lord knows there is only one antidote to our present spiritual crisis: prayer. It is only through our willingness to step out of the noise and soul-crushing pace of our lives into the silence of God that we will find true healing and encounter the One who loves us. We need to create spiritual deserts or caves within our souls and homes for prayer.
This deeper prayer found in solitude is not only meant for monastics. It is meant for every Christian as the means by which we are transformed into saints by living in intimate union with the Most Holy Trinity. It is in the solitude of prayer, that we hear at the level of the heart, the deep love God has for each one of us. It is where the dizzying pace slows, and the noise dies away.
Noisy, busy souls cannot hear God. Only recollected souls can truly hear God, and this requires dedicated prayer in silent solitude. It means dying to self and getting up a bit earlier, staying up a bit later, or shutting off social media during nap time so we can encounter God in a deeper way.
It is not coincidental that so many people are quietly discovering the wisdom of the Carmelite Mystics, the Desert Fathers, and other masters of prayer right now. We are bombarded with a deafening din that is spiritually killing us. We were told for decades that being a Christian is simply doing stuff. This counterfeit reduced the Church to a non-governmental agency that has done immense spiritual damage.
The saints were successful in accordance with the level of prayer they put in. The Sacraments, Adoration, and prayer came first for supernaturally successful saints such as St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John Paul II, Venerable Aloysius Schwartz, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, St. Katharine Drexel, etc. It was not the other way around. It was not about their plans. They sought the will of God in the deep prayer that comes from silence and solitude before taking any serious action in their apostolates. They often lived at dizzying paces as they served the sick, dying, orphans, and school children, but they knew that deep interior union with God in prayer was non-negotiable.
Thanks be to God, the Lord in His mercy corrects us and leads us back on the path when we stray too far in one direction. The primacy of prayer is slowly making a comeback and with it will come renewal. There will be a springtime in the desert:
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the lily it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Car’mel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. (Isaiah 35:1-2)
We have meditated on this passage in relation to the coming of the Messiah, but it is applicable to our lives of deep prayer. It is in committing to going more deeply into prayer through mental prayer and meditation, which then opens us to the God-given gift of contemplation, that transforms the aridity of our age and our own souls into a place of renewal.
This spiritual seed the Lord is planting in our age has been picked up recently by Exodus 90 who is running a series called “A Year with the Desert Fathers” with Bishop Erik Varden of Norway. It makes sense that the wisdom of religious life is now being made more and more accessible to the entire Church. The evangelical counsels and interior lives of religious are meant to serve as leaven for the entire Mystical Body. The lie that the contemplative life and asceticism are only reserved for a chosen few hidden away in monasteries is collapsing.
As the Western Church realizes how much we have become slaves to our culture, sensuality, technology, and the lies of our age, the more we will come to embrace our own patrimony. The answers we have been seeking have been within our own Tradition this entire time. To sever the interior life from our vocations is to cut off the path of transfiguring intimacy with the Lord. It is to relegate the spiritual life to something external and superficial. The Lord desires deeply transformative friendship with every single one of us. This means cutting off the distractions and giving Him our whole hearts in prayer.
The Desert Fathers series has a target audience of men, but there is no reason why women cannot learn the wisdom of the Desert Fathers from the series as well. For those who do not know where to begin with learning how to go deeper into prayer, you could start with Dr. Ralph Martin’s The Fulfillment of All Desire, Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Fire Within, Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene’s Divine Intimacy (which I quote frequently in my articles), Dr. Peter Kreeft’s Prayer for Beginners, or Bishop Barron’s An Introduction to Prayer. These books can serve as a gateway into the written works of the saints on prayer such as St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and others.
The single most important step is to set aside time for deeper prayer. The wisdom of the Desert Fathers and the saints will do us no good if we do not protect our time of prayer as much as possible. Life happens, but prayer should be absolutely non-negotiable every single day. Some days our prayer may be simply saying the name of Jesus throughout the day as we care for sick family members, or if we are sick ourselves. No matter what, we must return to dedicated silent mental prayer as soon as the difficulty passes. The Lord will bless us in the measure we give to Him.
Now is the time to reclaim our spiritual heritage. Each one of us is called to intimacy with the Lord through deep prayer. There is nothing in our day that is more important than prayer. He wants to renew the dry, arid land of our hearts with the life-giving waters of union with the Most Holy Trinity. Let us turn to Him with our whole hearts. Let us not delay.
I’m pretty convinced that man is by nature a contemplative, only he’s got to discover it. To live contemplatively is fundamentally a matter of standing still and paying attention and looking. (Bishop Erik Varden, O.C.S.O. taken from The Pillar)
Photo by Emmanuel Appiah on Unsplash
