Prayer—Consistency Matters More Than Method

"In a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it." (1 Cor. 9:24)

When I talk to Catholics about their spirituality, one of the most common complaints I hear is that they are unhappy with their prayer life. It is very rare for me to speak to someone who says, "Why yes, I am happy and fulfilled with my prayer life!" The vast majority of people express disappointment with the quality of their prayers. The complaints are legion—they don't know what to say, prayer feels dry or forced, they can't stay focused, they don't feel like it accomplishes anything, they are bored with the fixed prayers but don't feel eloquent enough for spontaneous prayer, they get tired, don't have time, haven't found a method they like, and so on. When it comes to prayer, nothing seems to be going right for them.

Renewal of James Larson's "Rosary to the Interior" for Candlemas

As many readers of this blog know, I was privileged to enjoy a long and fruitful professional collaboration with the late James Larson, which continued on until his death in 2020. After his passing, I worked with his family to bring Larson's essential essays to print in the book The War Against Being and the Return to God, in which Mr. Larson argued that essential problem at the heart of Church's crisis is the rejection of a Thomistic philosophical framework.

"Vindicate Me, O God"—A Defense of the Psalms

Domine, exaudi orationem meam, et clamor meus ad te veniat.

1. Since the beginning of Christianity, the Psalter has formed the core of Christian prayer. We see this right from the New Testament; St. Paul tells the Ephesians to "address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs"; elsewhere he advises the Colossians to "admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." (Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16) The First Epistle of Clement, one of the earliest Christian writings outside of the New Testament, quotes the psalms upwards of fifty times, testifying to the deep integration of the psalms into the apostolic Church's worship and piety. 

Discouragement from Habitual Sin

Do you struggle with discouragement from habitual sin? For many Catholics this is a huge problem. There is a pattern we tend to fall into: we do well for a while, but when faced with temptation we give in and sin. The sin brings apathy, a sense of "Well, I already blew it, what's the use in trying?" So you go into a slump—your prayer life suffers, you keep committing the same sin over again (because you already messed up, so what does it matter?), and you get apathetic. Maybe a week goes by. Maybe a month. You feel like a slob, spiritually and in other respects. Eventually you are so unhappy and angry with your life that you rouse yourself; you say, "I have to get right with God." You go to confession and lay your soul bare before a confessor. He gives you some good advice, you repent tearfully, receive absolution, and go out rejoicing, resolved to do better this time. You are grateful for God's mercy and kindness at giving you another shot and things go well for you spiritually. Things continue this way for a time—maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months—until you get complacent, get tempted, and fall again. Then the cycle repeats. Year after year after year. Maybe decade after decade.

This can be frustrating in the short term, but the long term consequences are more dire. Repetition of this pattern over many years can lead us down a dark path, the steps of which include:

• Acedia (spiritual sloth): "It's inevitable I'm going to commit serious sin sooner or later so there's no point trying to make spiritual progress."
  
  
• Distraction: Unhealthy focus or preoccupation with just "that one sin" such that you ignore other important aspects of your spiritual life (see USC, "Distraction of That One Sin").
  
  
• Resentment: Simmering bitterness towards God. "It is unfair of God to prohibit something I am unable to restrain myself from doing. It puts me in an impossible position."
  
  
• Blindness: Inability to see the working of grace in ones own life.
  
  
• Dulling of Conscience: Having accepted the inevitability of certain sins, one's conscience dulls to them; we get used to that sin or at least to the idea of living with the sin.
  
  
• More Time Outside of Grace: The lengths of time we perceive ourselves to be in a state of mortal sin grow longer and longer; the times we are disposed to receive Communion grow shorter and fewer, until they are like small islands of grace in a vast sea of sin.
  
  
• Loss of charity: A gradual hardening of heart takes over. We become jaded and angry, impatient with ourselves and others. The very ideas of spiritual progress, grace, etc. seem like jokes.
  
  
• Loss of Hope: "At the rate this is going, It'll be a miracle if I make Purgatory." 
  
  
• Despair: "How can I—or anyone—possibly avoid going to Hell? The vast majority of us are simply doomed." 
  
  
• Loss of Faith: You no longer perceive the issue as your problem, but as a problem with the faith itself. "The Catholic religion doesn't work. It only gives me stress and anxiety. This system simply can't be the truth. I can no longer assent to this."
  
  

As we can see, discouragement at habitual sin can create a slow decline that ultimately leads to loss of faith. It is good to recall that Satan is in this for the long haul; while individual sins certainly matter, the devil aiming bigger than that; he is trying to create an overall trajectory in our life that leads us away from God. He is attacking us tactically, while we tend to get bogged down in the bushes, unable to see the forest for the trees.

Do you recognize this pattern in your life? Even if you are not to the point of despair or loss of faith, does any of this sound familiar? It very well may. I've been here for sure. And so have many Catholics, for whom the pattern above is the reality of their spiritual life. Not all will eventually lose faith, of course; people walk spiral down this vortex to varying degrees. Many of us have been (or are on) this path somewhere.

So what's the way out? The real problem is that "Try harder next time" and like advice doesn't seem to help. Most have been struggling every way we know how to free ourselves from habitual sin for years. Some eventually have victory; many don't. Is there a better way?

We ultimately need to reframe how we look at this problem, and it starts with revisiting the idea of "winning" and "losing" against temptation. When we are tempted, we are thrown into a spiritual battle, a battle we can either win or lose. But when do we win or lose—at what point is a particular spiritual conflict won, or conversely, at what point is it lost? Most of us will answer that the battle is won when we pass on without committing the sin, and that it is lost if we commit the sin we are struggling with. How many of us, after fighting with a temptation, fail to persevere and then think, "Well, I lost that battle", or something similar?

While it's true that victory of temptation is a "win", it is not always true that committing the sin is a "loss", at least in a certain sense. What I mean is this: thinking "I lost that battle" implies that the spiritual battle is over once you have committed the sin. Nothing could be further from the truth. What happens after we sin is just as important. The battle isn't just whether you will sin; it is how you will respond to the victory or failure. If you have victory, will you become complacent and idle? If you are defeated, will you become discouraged, fall into a slump, and go down the slope described above? The battle after the sin is pivotal, as it determines whether you will be solidified in a certain spiritual "trajectory."

Therefore, when you commit a habitual sin, rather than thinking, "I've lost again", or "I blew it", or "There's no point in praying or trying now that I'm already in a state of sin", instead think, "The battle is not over. I am moving into a new stage of the battle. I can still win." Even if you have sinned, your prayers still matter. God is still just as invested in helping you. You don't need to throw in the towel. You don't need to beat yourself up; focusing excessively on your own failures is itself a trap of pride. The battle has not ended; I can have victory at any time if I choose God now in this moment. The moment of grace was not at some place in the past when you were struggling between light and darkness; the moment of grace is now; it is always now. All you have to do is strike now and you win. Every time. The victories will be varied and the journey will be bumpy, but you'll get to where you want to go. Where you are heading is more important than whether the road you are on has potholes. It's not so much whether you hit potholes; it's whether the potholes eventually cause you to give up and turn around. 

Maybe this is nothing new. I am certainly not promising any breakthroughs. But I am sharing something that has been extremely helpful to me in my own spiritual life. Realizing that the battle does not end if I sin, that the moment of grace is now, and that as long as I seek God in any given moment I always win have been transformational principles. Perhaps they will be of some help to you as well.

Happy Advent brethren

Related: "Christ Will Give You Victory" (Jan. 2019, USC)

Sample General Intercessions from Traditional Sources

Let's talk for a moment about the part of the Novus Ordo Missae known as the "General Intercessions", or the "Universal Prayer" as it is called in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. 

The GIRM (71) entrusts the priest with regulating these prayers, essentially giving him carte blanche to conduct them as he pleases⁠—the only stipulation being that the priest introduces the intercessions and that prayers be made for the church, political authorities, the suffering, and the local community (although this structure is merely a recommendation that is "desirable" but not mandated). The prayers are to be "sober" and composed with "wise liberty" and should not be overly wordy. They may be read by anybody from anywhere—"from the ambo or from another suitable place, by the Deacon or by a cantor, a reader, or one of the lay faithful."

Because of the broad diversity allowed here, how the General Intercessions are presented can vary tremendously from parish to parish. And, as is usually the case when individuals are granted more leeway in liturgical celebrations, things tend to go awry.

The image at the top of this article was sent to me by a friend recently who noted with irritation that the General Intercessions frequently become occasions of political propagandizing. Even when they are not, they are often banally composed platitudes devoid of any sense of the majesty of the one to whom they are addressed. Often they are merely presented for merely temporal concerns without any reference to man's supernatural end. As Fr. Z used to say, they are variations of "O God, you are big. Help us to be big like you."

When I was a DRE, my pastor stuck me with the very unenviable job of composing these intercessions every week. I was a bit resentful at this; even if it had become common for lay people to read the intercessions, I always felt it was not our job to compose them. One of the most essential duties of a pastor is to lead his people in prayer; if we were using a Mass that required these prayers to be composed, it seemed to be something the priest himself ought to do himself. Still, I did my job and composed the prayers, trying as best I could to meet the demands of my pastor and the liturgy while making sure the intercessions reflected the traditional thought and vocabulary of the Church.

This made me think that there are probably many others who are in a similar situation: faithful, traditionally minded Catholic DREs or lay volunteers who find themselves having to compose the General Intercessions who may dislike the task or not be any good at it.

To that end, I took it upon myself to put together some intercessions taken from traditional sources—the prayers of various saints, bishops, and traditional devotions—that can be used during the General Intercessions in the Novus Ordo. You won't find any phrases like "encounter", "faith journey" or "parish family" in them. I've tried to include several different prayers for each of the four categories referenced in the GIRM so that these can be mixed up and used over several months. Some of the prayers I had to paraphrase or edit a bit to get them in the right format, but they are 90% unchanged.

Also, I can hear some people arguing that these prayers are "overly wordy", which the GIRM specifically suggests we avoid. To that I say...eh...whatever.

I have linked them as downloadable PDFs:

• General Intercessions for the Congregation (paraphrased from the prayers of St. John Chrysostom)
• Prayers for Those in Authority (taken from intercessions composed by Archbishop John Carroll, specific to the United States)
• Prayers for the Suffering (various traditional sources)
• Prayers for Local Families, Community, Farms (various traditional sources)

I don't like the thinking behind the General Intercessions in the Novus Ordo. I don't like the idea of the prayers for the Mass being composed willy-nilly every week by whomever. But, given that this is happening and that it is the norm in the Catholic world, maybe we can at least do it better. If you're going to do it wrong, at least do it right.

Of course, as I have said many times before, this problem and many others could all be avoided entirely by using the Traditional Latin Mass. Just saying.

Praying Through the Mass

Last weekend I attended the Extraordinary Form Mass at Our Lady, Star of the Sea in Jackson, Michigan. I am blessed to live within an hour of several weekly EF Mass options and Star of the Sea is a beautiful historic urban church particularly well suited to the splendor of the Mass of Ages (pictured above).

I was feeling kind of lethargic and depressed when I went in. I didn't bother picking up the Mass booklet or the printed worship aid. I wasn't interested in following along or anything. I just slumped down and leaned my head on the pew in front of me and started to pray.

The music was beautiful, though, as always. It's easy to just relax and let the chant seep into your heart the way the smoke of the incense wafts into your head. I confess, by the time the Kyrie had begun, I was kind of in my own inner world. The beauty of the music had got me moved and I began contemplating the issues in my life, sorting through my troubles and bringing them before God.

I continued in this manner for some time, nominally going through the motions of standing, kneeling, etc. but the entire time deeply immersed in my own inner life and not giving much heed to externals. I don't think I even noticed the homily. 

Before I knew it, it was the final blessing and the Last Gospel. It was then that I realized that I had been in prayer the entire Mass. I don't think I have ever prayed continuously through the entirety of a Mass before, not like this at least. And I felt great afterward.

As I left the church, I realized that such an experience probably could never have happened at a Novus Ordo Mass. The Novus Ordo has too many "interruptions" and makes too many external demands upon the worshiper with the gestures and responses one is expected to make. The "active participation" that the architects of the Novus Ordo envisioned too often turns out to be a kind of surface activism ("I'm participating because I am physically moving and saying lots of things"). If I were to spend the entire Novus Ordo in prayer in this manner, it would necessitate me positively tuning out of the Mass—intentionally ignoring the liturgy.

Now it's true that in a certain sense, I was not paying attention to the Mass in this experience either, but not in the same way. I didn't have to tune out of the Mass. It was more like, the very structure of the Mass itself allowed for this particular sort of experience of it. It is as if in the Extraordinary Form, there is a hidden "low road" built into the form of the liturgy itself that allows oneself pass through it in a contemplative "mode." I'm grasping at straw trying to explain what I mean, but hopefully my meager words convey the substance of what I am getting at.

I'm not one of those people who believes the Novus Ordo is intrinsically offensive to God or impious or anything like that; but between the NO and the EF, it is crystal clear which one has a structure more conducive to prayer.

Christ Will Give You Victory

This morning I did a very general confession by appointment to a very excellent diocesan priest a few towns over from me. After confession we talked for about an hour, and I had some very helpful insights that I wanted to share. None of this is novel, but even so, revealed to me in the right moment it all proved to be "a word in season" (Prov. 15:23). If you are walking through a dark cloud, perhaps this will help you.

I. Do we spend too much time picking bad fruit off of our tree rather than looking at the root and finding out why it is producing bad fruit to begin with? Confessing the same sins over and over again and beginning to doubt it will ever be different? It's good to recall that God's will for you is not to "manage" your sins; His will is to have total victory over them. Have you sunken into a place where you have given up hope that you will ever have victory over your sins and have begun to settle for just maintaining your current place—treading water while you try to manage your sins? This is not why Christ died for you. His death gives you the power you need to have total victory over your sins and that should be our goal and our hope.

II. We often use a language of "distance" when speaking about our spiritual lives. Saints are "closer" to God; sin puts us "farther" from Him. However, given that God is omnipresent, "not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27), we have to remember that this language of distance is a metaphor for something else—its a way of quantifying our likeness to him; those who are more transformed by grace are "closer" to God, those who resemble Him less are "further." But really we are only ever as far from God as we put ourselves. When we sin we can feel like God is very distant, like we are prodigals suffering in a distant land. But the truth is, there is a bit of a Wizard of Oz illusion; though we may feel distant, we can go home at any time if he just really will to. The distance is only as great as we think it is. All you need to do is turn your face towards home like the prodigal son and the father will run from the house to meet you where you are.

III. It's easy to reduce grace to merely a legal concept: an abstract state we are either in or out of. That certainly is part of it, but it's not the whole part. What is the point of being "in" grace? I have sometimes prioritized the mere fact of being technically, 'legally' in a state of grace while ignoring the purpose of what is supposed to happen while I am in that state. Grace is not merely an indicator of whether I am in a state of friendship with God or not; it is also a vital force from God whose purpose is to work in my life to transform me. That is to say, grace is not merely adjectival ("state of grace"), but it is a noun. It is a thing; it is like a power or energy that is the very life of God which is lavished on us in order to ennoble us and enable us to love God beyond what our natural limitations would permit. What's the point of being "in a state of grace" if I am not actualizing the growth that being in such a state is supposed to make possible? 

* * * * *

My friend, you can have victory over your sins. Begin by believing this, trusting Christ to grant you this triumph, and take things one day at a time.

Even if you feel apathetic or distant from God, whether from sin or just lethargy, remember you can go home if you only will to. The distance between yourself and God is only as great as you let it be.

Don't focus only on being in a state of grace, but once there, on letting grace change the state of your life. Grace is not merely a place to be in, but a vital power God gives us to transform our lives. Be aware of it's work in your life and rejoice in the small victories it wins.

Christ will give you victory.

Break the Teeth of Our Enemies

I am positive that by now most of our readers have heard about the shootings in my area. I live in Jurupa Valley, San Bernardino is about 40 minutes north of me, Redlands about 20 minutes, and Corona where one of the shooters lived is about 20 minutes away. 

  

There are those in the media mocking prayers after such an event, when in reality prayer is the greatest and best thing we can do. What can a soul do unless Providence puts him at the place of violence or you are personally involved in law enforcement, the military or federal agencies to affect the situation? 

Today is the feast of St. Galgano, who is a patron in the brotherhood that I belong too, the Militia Templi. I have written about St. Galgano here, and also have worked with Ryan Grant of Mediatrix Press on a book project, and an audiobook available here. St. Galgano was a knight chosen by God to lead a life of prayer. His asceticism was so great that it certainly rivaled or exceeded any bodily exertion he could have done in training at arms. When he became a hermit, St. Michael told him that he had joined the Heavenly Militia. 

For hundreds of years after his death, his head remained incorrupt. It was St. Galgano who the locals and people up and down Italy and into France invoked in times of danger to offer prayers to God for deliverance, prayers which were many times answered as have been recorded, and are recorded in both the book and Audiobook above. The Lord our God is mightier than any weapon, and stronger than any shield. David was able to slay the mighty Goliath not because he was stronger or better equipped, or because of political maneuvering. He defeated Goliath because the Lord was with him. But even a mighty warrior does well to pray before going into battle. I would rather be saying prayers than murmuring cheap political slogans; at the hour of death, I would rather call upon God then hum Imagine. St. Galgano effected much good, even after his death, and that goodness came through prayer. 

I hope that you will join me in praying that our Lord breaks the teeth of our enemies, Psalm 3:7 as the church not only prays in Her Psalter but also invokes on the feast of St. Pius V in his collect. I also pray that he grants all the just who died quick deliverance from their purgatorial cleansing, thanksgiving that the violence was not worse, and that this reminder of death and how close we always are to death brings souls to repentance through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: and let them that hate him flee from before his face." Psalm 68:1