Only one prayer has ever worked for me. And it works consistently. What is that prayer? It’s not one to be taken lightly, nor is it a pleasant one. But it is one that, without fail, brings forth the fruit for which it asks. My father likes to say that humility has a short shelf-life. I found out that asking for humility is one of the most dangerous things because you will get what you ask for. Only now do I see what this prayer was and why it worked.
Prayer, something I have always questioned, is simply asking God for God. Briefly, I’d like to touch on three possible misconceptions of prayer and then I’d like to describe the essence of true prayer. While these are my own formulations, I’m entirely indebted to Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, and Aldous Huxley.
The first misconception is that prayer changes God. It is almost tedious to bring it up, but some people hold to this heretical idea and treat God (unintentionally!) as a dead object: I pray x, and out comes y; insert quarter, return Coca-Cola. This is the lowest form of prayer because it treats God as one among many concerns when God should be the singular concern. This sort of prayer is eminently egoistic, though not necessarily selfish. Knowing one’s deficiency and crying out to God for help is a magnificent step towards God and away from sin. This is where I remained for most of my life. This sort of prayer is essentially pluralistic: I am praying for a multiplicity of things. Since I am not seeking God and God alone, I have created idols of God’s gifts. To ask the greatest gift for any gift other than himself is idolatrous. To put it another way, reward-prayer is polytheistic. This doesn’t mean that it is “evil” or even entirely wrong. For example, to ask that God be in all things is not idolatrous, but to ask God for all things is patently selfish. To ask for anything – even for others – other than God is to ask for something other than the best for them. When we pray to God through God it should only be for God.
The second misconception of prayer is that it is only psychological. I came to this understanding, as many people do, after I started to realize that reward-prayer didn’t have much to offer. I could pray for something as much as I wished, but there was never any effect. In fact, praying for things often just made me more disappointed later. So I began to think of prayer as a psychological practice, a way of letting off psychological steam. But practicing psychological-prayer had no real life to me. I quickly gave it up. But I was wrong. While prayer may result in a calmed mind or a sense of well-being, this is a product of the never-ending process of prayer. Closely related to reward-prayer, psychological-prayer looks for the imminent fruits of prayer rather than the source of that fruit itself. Stopping short, psychological-prayer turns the activity of prayer into a self-centered activity. Psychological-prayer may actually be aimed at charity: balancing one’s own mind so one can live more charitably towards others. Even reward-prayer may be oriented towards charity, but without asking for the right gift – God Himself – prayer falls short. But even here, it is obvious that seeking self-improvement will enable one to improve the condition of others: you are the condition of others. Or, to put it another way, our behavior conditions others; if we improve ourselves, we improve the condition of others.
The third misconception of prayer is that prayer doesn’t do anything at all. This is where I went after realizing that reward-prayer didn’t work and psychological-prayer had no real motivation since I usually got more done if I didn’t pray. So I took to the idea that action is more important than the wishy-washy passivity of prayer. Again, though, I was very wrong. This is largely based on the first two misconceptions: if it’s only psychological or only for rewards (which often don’t come), what’s the point? Non-prayer skips the apparently useless inaction of prayer for the evident action of human life. “Do not pray, do!” this misconception says. But is human work ever genuinely good? Certainly we don’t know the end results of our actions, whose ripples go on through all time. But no action is perfect and thus no action is perfectly useful. What then of the inactivity of prayer? Prayer does seem useless because it is inaction – what good has ever come from inaction?
Supreme good. Christ brought radical forgiveness which treated our sins as nonexistent. Forgiveness washes away wrong actions by its simple inaction. Forgiveness turns the other cheek – this might result in two slaps instead of one, but hitting back results in even more. Forgiveness treats an action as if it had never happened, and so grants pure existential freedom both to the forgiver and the forgiven: I am freed from my grudge and you from your guilt.
In prayer, the purest form of forgiveness is found because it opens itself up to all in all. The unforgiving soul is seeking ego-centered vengeance. Forgiveness is not possible while selfishness asserts itself. And this is why reward-prayer, psychological-prayer, and non-prayer lack forgiveness. Forgiveness grants cosmos to chaos. And prayer allows us to forgive even a God who refuses to be contained by our concept of “goodness”: by complete self-emptying, we forgive all and manifest God to the world.
Genuine prayer, at its core, is ontological, not psychological. Let me elaborate. St. Augustine says that care is the prerequisite to reason: we must first care if we are to care to think. Heidegger says that Being is “concern” (Sorge). If Being is care, love, or concern, what is its relationship to prayer? By asking God through God for God, we submit ourselves completely to God. This sort of submission is not only a psychological submission, though it is that; the submission in genuine prayer is an ontological submission. “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22). To give up one’s cares is to give up one’s very being.
Genuine prayer is the renunciation of one’s claim to Being and the emptying of one’s very self (kenosis). But Nature and God both abhor a vacuum, and God will enter any soul who empties herself. Because genuine prayer, the heart of sincere religion, is kenosis, it is not only ontological but meontological (meon, “non-being”). This sort of nihilism is an essential predicate to being filled with God – realizing that all is vanity and becoming perfectly empty is really just this: emptying ourselves of emptiness. While it may seem to Nietzsche like nihilism, it is the world of appearances which conceals truth. That is to say, everything we take to be casually true is false, empty, and imperfect. The closest we come to truth, fullness, and perfection is by emptying ourselves of the vanity of the world.
Genuine prayer is pure passivity. But it does not end here – if prayer ended with perfect inactivity, Nietzsche would be right and it would be a dead and pointless activity. But prayer is in fact the most perfect activity: emptying oneself and being filled with God means that one does the activity of God. And the activity of God is always greater than the activity of men.
A life of prayer brings not only God to us but God to others – prayer brings the greatest reward to others without seeking reward for oneself. Prayer also steadies the mind by perpetual self-emptying. Reward-prayer does not reach the rewards offered by genuine-prayer, nor does psychological-prayer reach the psychological calm granted by genuine-prayer. And the truth is – they can’t. Psychological-prayer, being focused on the psyche, cannot ever get past stressing over itself. And reward prayer, if asking for anything other than God, cannot give God to others. To help the world, one must not help the world. By seeking exclusively God through God for God, there comes about a cosmic transformation. When we find peace in God, others find peace in us. If we are peaceful in our actions with others, we create a more peaceful world and exhibit even more the grace of God.
What does this mean? It means I’ve discovered prayer for the first time. For a long time I thought of prayer as reward-prayer, then as psychological-prayer, and then as useless. Now I see that it is the use of the (apparently) useless which is beyond the utility of anything else. I haven’t created any new ideas: in fact, I hope I haven’t.
Prayer is not for reward or psychological balance, nor is it useless. Every time we pray, we improve the human condition more than any technology ever has or ever can. Even if it seems useless to empty oneself even for a moment in the modern world, a single second of stillness is worth more than a lifetime of motion. The power of prayer is to change all chaos into cosmos, all hatred into love. There is no better time than now.
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Well said. People tend to use God as either Santa Claus or a Crutch, that is, when we wish for pleasure in our lives or to end pain. It’s a mistake.
well said, stewart. it’s worth noting, however, that when Christ taught His disciples to pray, his model for them included a request “give us this day our daily bread”. I think, however, that the request for daily bread can be understood to have several meanings. first, Christ is our bread of salvation, clearly seen in the Eucharist. seen this way, the request for daily bread is simply an acceptance of and a surrender to Christ’s offered sacrifice, renewed daily.
however, even if you interpret it literally, its interesting to note the almost monastic quality of this request. “daily bread”, the absolute minimum requirement for the sustainment of life. This can be seen as a request for God to grant continued life that we may draw nearer to Him. aristotle’s concept of the leisured life is important here. just as the philosopher argued that we cannot pursue the good while caught up with the mean concerns of survival, so is it harder to open oneself to God when you must concern yourself every second with continuously living. on the flip side, abundance is a similar distraction. so the Lord’s prayer only asks for that which is necessary to continue living in service to Him.
Wouldn’t you say that being filled with God is a reward?
Mike,
It’s worth considering the meaning of “daily bread” which is our translation of epiousios (from ousia, “being”) which is not bread per se, though the dependence on God for our epiousios. But you’re absolutely right to bring up Christ’s prayer. I believe Christ’s prayer is not primarily for food, but for the recognition of our complete dependence on God. It says, “We cannot sustain our own being,” or, more childlike, “We cannot feed ourselves.” This recognition relinquishes our arrogant assumption that somehow we provide for ourselves. Thoughts?
Brendan,
I would not say that being filled with God is a reward. A reward requires a personal self to receive the reward and recognize it as a reward. Receiving God requires that selfish personality to be annihilated.
But yes, it is certainly a filling, but not one that can be evaluated as a reward because a reward is one based on merit. I would say that it could be seen as a gift, but never a reward. A reward requires a self, the very thing kenosis gives up. And the gift only remains ours as long as we continue giving. Whenever we stop giving the gift, we destroy the gift of God. Thoughts?
Since I resist calling this a reward, I would ask this question to you: How is being filled with God a reward?
If you want something, then the satisfaction of that desire is a reward, regardless of whether you deserve it. However, the word “reward” does carry a connotation of entitlement, so maybe you should pick another word, “gift”, perhaps. That word leaves the question of justice for another conversation.
Stewart,
I would agree with that understanding. it puts it in line with the rest of the “requests”, if you will, in the rest of the prayer. ‘Thy Kingdom come’, for example. obviously our prayers cannot speed the eschaton. rather, it is an affirmation of faith that the kingdom will come. similarly, to pray to God ‘thy will be done’ doesn’t change God’s will or its effectiveness. rather, this kind of prayer is a cultivation of humility, which i think you’re absolutely right to focus on. this is not to say that prayer is simply a kind of didactic catechism that simply cultivates habits of the mind through repetition. that would, i think, violate Christ’s injunction against praying “as the heathens”, with “vain repetitions”. rather, I think that God meets us through the act of faith and humility that is genuine prayer. we are obviously incapable of enacting such a change in ourselves. our merciful God sees our faith and obedience and it is enough. He meets us more than halfway.
Stewart,
This article is really interesting and brings up several perspectives I had not before considered, so thank you for that.
My two thoughts are these: first, we are specifically told to ask for that which we need. Distinction, of course, being made between need and desire, we are still told to ask the Heavenly Father for provision as a child would his earthly father. I am still turning over in my mind whether this means asking whatever we desire and trusting the Father to provide what is good, or how such prayers would change with growth and maturity.
I certainly agree that one purpose of prayer is to remind us of our utter dependence on God, reminding us also that we provide nothing for ourselves. The point Michael made is well-aligned with Proverbs 30, where a petition is made for basic necessities alone: “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me only with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”
My final concern is that you seem to be arguing that the self must first be emptied before Christ can enter into it (“God will enter any soul who empties herself”). Meaning that I must do a work before Christ can indwell me, but scripture clearly teaches we can do nothing of ourselves, we have no natural desire toward righteousness, and “It is God who works in you, both to will and to do according to His good pleasure.”
I tend to think the opposite occurs: there is never a void. As we pray, asking God for God, through God, He indwells us and so pushes out Self like Archimedes did the water in his bath. I haven’t given a lot of thought to these ideas, but this is my initial perspective. What are your thoughts?
Naomi,
You are right — the emptying of self and the entrance of God are simultaneous and inseparable and both gifts. Even the capacity to see need is a grace. The two events are one. There is never a void, as you said, but it is no opposite: self-emptying is always in fact self-filling. The products of this event are not human and cannot be counted as merit as they are always only God in you.
The request for that which is needed to sustain being, epiousios, is ultimately what we need, thus the simple prayer for sustenance. It is enough to accept the gift of God as enough and not store up manna. What we need most fundamentally is the Ground of Being, God himself, the Bread of Life. But you are certainly right. What we desire should not be what we desire as illusory egos. Not to say that there isn’t a true Self–our “I” is located in God’s “Thou.”
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