God’s love is always present in our lives, but we are constantly bombarded by distractions that draw us away from an awareness of God’s presence in ourselves and others. A reflective prayer life can help focus on this intimacy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and what God’s will for us might be. I seem to experience an intimacy with God while in deep prayer. A momentary immersion into a one-on-one silence with God by pushing all else away can help our human imagination respond. The idea of being immersed can occur in the quiet solitude of nature, during church services, and rapidly when I observe the helping out of someone in need. However, there is a profoundness when I read and insert myself into a scripture scene or holy moments like the above list. I call this imaginary immersion into scripture or any holy moment immersive prayer. While certain forms of deep prayer can be part of immersive prayer, the most important attribute is to have a grounded here-and-now sense of who you are and what you may become. We can re-shape ourselves into what God desires, but that means we need to become immersed in the unknown of our entire being. Heart, mind, and soul need to be united in the journey. While this seems impossible, it can become possible over time. Various types of prayer can combine our heart and intellectual nature to align all these parts of ourselves with God.
Some have described a prayer priority as the perception we must learn to pray contemplatively or even have mystical experiences. However, I believe this is unnecessary as we can desire a less confusing notion and approach of being immersed in prayer by being fully present to God. Doing so fills us with God’s grace. When we extend the prayer moment into action and/or being present to others, we extend the continuum of being immersed in the prayer far beyond the classic definition of prayer. Undoubtedly we can appreciate spiritual Christian Mystics such as St. John of the Cross or St. Theresa of Avila. They expressed their experiences of God’s love for ourselves or our neighbor in poetry and prose and did not just write but became living agents of Christ. While their prayer life may have been extremely deep, we can admire and follow their prayer practices because, as a result, they were also people of action. Jesus calls us to be living agents. St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila express this challenge far more succinctly than I ever could: we must love God and neighbor with our entire being.
Doing so means our mind, body, and soul must be immersed, as Jesus proclaimed in the Beatitudes. To embrace an integrated prayer life consists of appreciating and using as appropriate one or more of the three classic forms of prayer: Vocal, Meditative, or Contemplative. You may be called and have the gift within the various levels of contemplative prayer, but I caution people it should not be treated as a goal or achievement. The stages of Lectio Divina prayer are one way to bring all three styles of prayer together. Lectio provides the flexibility of discovery when reading scripture. This flexibility is where using an immersive prayer style has the most benefit. As an example, for many, the contemplative portion of Lectio does not occur. However, instead, you can be present to God and perhaps use your imagination to put yourself in the scripture scene. Utilizing our God-given gifts as a result of our prayer life allows us to do and be for the other and simultaneously express our gratefulness to the Trinity, bringing the concept full circle.
Using Vocal or Meditative prayer in an immersive way is fairly self-explanatory as many of us are used to praying for our neighbor in this fashion. The various degrees of contemplative prayer are unique to each of us and must be respected and appreciated. There is no need to compare and measure the depth. I have personally found when I become merciful, God seems to become more present with me and for “the other” in prayer. I highly recommend Lectio Divina as it allows us to be immersed in our way with God and neighbor.
In the spirit of Psalm 81, I offer vignettes of some of my reflective thoughts from prayers collected over the years of my own attempt at continuous transformation into a living agent.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Primary Lectio Divina word or phrase:
Page and discussion group on these Lectio Divina daily Gospel Readings.
Discussion group on St. John of the Cross.
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