Do We Really Want God?
During Lent, The Church reminds us to focus our energies and embrace the spiritual practices of almsgiving, fasting and prayer in new and deeper ways. I have mostly struggled at different points in my life with the practice of prayer, with questions distractingly rearing their ugly heads as to how, when, where, and even, why to do so? Then of course, I read these words of the Carmelite nun, Ruth Burrows:
[W]e look hither and thither for someone who will hand us the secret [of how to pray]. All this is proof enough that we are overlooking the fundamental fact: that prayer is not a technique but a relationship. There is no handicap, no obstacle, no problem. The only problem is that we do not want God. We may want a ‘spiritual life’, we may want ‘prayer’, but we do not want God. All anyone can do for us, any guru can teach us, is to keep our eyes on Jesus.1
“The only problem is that we do not want God.” Wow! “All anyone can do for us, any guru can teach us, is to keep our eyes on Jesus.” This struck me to my core. When I received this message, I was reading works of Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622)—Bishop, Founder of the Salesian Order, Doctor of the Church—and discovered in him, a ‘guru’ of sorts who by his very life and work kept his eyes fixed on Jesus. Francis’ life of study and service as priest was never an end to itself; but always for God and God’s people, which defined his spirituality and way of prayer. He simply wanted God and all else flowed from that desire. St. Francis de Sales teaches us to keep our eyes on Jesus by reminding us about the goal and spirit of prayer.
As humans, we seek answers about our ultimate origin, the meaning of our existence, and our final destination. This first ‘attentive thought’ provides a point for reflection. If we attend to this tug on our heart which gives us pleasure, as St. Francis de Sales points out in his “Treatise on the Love of God,” we come to know the truth of who and whose we are—our beginning, middle and end.
As soon as a man gives a little attentive thought to the divinity he feels a certain sweet emotion within his heart, and this testifies that God is God of the human heart. […] This pleasure, this confidence that man’s heart naturally has God, assuredly comes from nowhere but the congruity existing between God’s goodness and our soul. It is a great but secret congruity; a congruity that all men know but few understand, a congruity that can neither be denied nor easily penetrated. We are created to the image and likeness of God. What does this mean that we have the utmost congruity with his divine majesty?2
Francis explains that the accord between God and the human person is not simply the pull of the human heart, but a “reciprocal perfection.” This simply means that the human person “has great need and great capacity to receive good; [while God] has great abundance and great inclination to bestow it.”3 In essence, we are made to receive God’s abundance. We are made for relationship with God; we are made for union with God. Through prayer, we intentionally turn toward God, we orient ourselves to God—to ask for what we need and “what seems necessary.”4 In his Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent (1615), Francis is clear that “[t]he principal petition which we ought to make to God is that of our union of wills with His, and the final cause of prayer lies in desiring only God.”5
The union of wills—our will with God’s—is an important aspect of St. Frances de Sales’ way of prayer. It calls forth single-heartedness and simplicity. Francis tells us that union can take place with or without our cooperation; at times, it seems we are the first to show up; at other times, we have no idea how we got there; and that on our part, union in prayer is an act of will and utter openness6—all prompted by grace. In the end, “We simply let ourselves be carried by his divine good pleasure, just as a little child is carried in its mother’s arms, by a certain kind of admirable consent which may be called the union, or rather the unity of our will with that of God.”7
In truly desiring only God and, by God’s grace, consenting to that mysterious union of wills, we know prayer; we know the truth of prayer in its act and end: deep profound intimacy which carries and permeates all that we do. And how do we cultivate desire and consent? How do we embrace the ‘sweet emotion in our hearts’ and ‘be carried by that divine good pleasure’?
In a sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday of Lent (1615), St. Francis de Sales, our ‘guru’, invites us to growth toward three dispositions for prayer to support us in this cultivation: “be little by humility…be great in hope and…be grafted onto Jesus Christ crucified.”8
The first disposition for deepening relationship with God is growth in the virtue of humility. On a number of occasions St. Francis de Sales reminds us of the Beatitudes, in particular: “Blessed are the mendicant in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Growth in the virtue of humility helps us except the truth of our reality, that we are indeed poor and that we have nothing but that which is freely given to us by God.
The second disposition for prayer is our readiness to carry the tension inherent in hope—the now and not yet:
[H]ope is pleasant since it promises that we shall one day possess what we long for, but it is bitter because we are not now enjoying what we love.[…] it is necessary that hope be placed upon charity, otherwise it would no longer be hope, but rather presumption. Hope, like an arrow, darts up even to the gate of Heaven, but it cannot enter there because it is a virtue wholly of earth. If we want our prayer to penetrate Heaven we must whet the arrow of the grindstone of love.9
Hope, bound with love, is intimately entwined with the disposition of growth in humility; we indeed remain hopeful for the gifts of which we can only now glimpse. Thus, hope, bound with love, in this world—for God, others, self and creation—keeps our hearts singularly focused and resting in God’s good pleasure.
The last disposition that St. Francis de Sales invites our growth toward is that of intimacy with Christ. He bids us ‘to be grafted onto Jesus Christ crucified’. He calls us to relish the fruit of the tree and rest in its shadow—on Mount Calvary,10
Let us remain then at the foot of this Cross, and let us never depart from there, so that we may be all saturated with the Blood which flows from it. […] But what is it to be clothed with this Blood? Do you not know that we say: There is a man clothed in scarlet; and scarlet is a fish. That garment is made of wool, but it is dyed in the blood of the fish. In like manner, even though we are clothed with wool, by which it is understood that we perform good works, these good works—though from us—have neither worth nor value if they are not dyed in Blood of our Master, whose merits render them agreeable to the Divine Majesty.11
Francis further challenges us to remain clothed with Christ. We are to be clothed with the blood of Christ, to conform to Christ and become Christ’s word and action to and in the world.
Living toward profound humility, growing in our capacity to hold the inherent tension of the now and not yet, and conforming or ‘being grafted onto The Crucified’, we can only but keep our eyes on Jesus Christ, as did St. Francis de Sales. Our indispensable poverty before God, our inexplicable hope in God, and our inextricable union through, with, and in the crucified Christ, renders us silent. We remain simply and essentially in stillness before God. As Francis notes, “the heart’s repose does not consist in remaining immobile but in needing nothing. It does not lie in having no movement but in having no need of movement.”12 In this moment of ‘having no need for movement’, we know God is God and God’s love and goodness lives in us and as such transforms us.13
So perhaps in this season of Lent, as again the Church invites us to focus our energies and embrace in new and deeper ways the three spiritual practices, we might choose prayer. And in doing so, ask ourselves, “Do we desire God?” or more pointedly, “Do I desire God?” And I suggest, we might today employ the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales—a ‘guru’ who can indeed, teach us to keep our eyes on Jesus.
Notes
1. Ruth Burrows, “Prayer is Not a Technique,” Give Us This Day 3, no. 10 (October 2013): 306.
2. Treatise, I.15. All citations from the Treatise on the Love of God are taken from John K. Ryan’s translation, 2 vols. (Rockford: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 1975). While not adapted to inclusive language, it is my hope that readers will respect the use of the masculine language of the period and make the leap to the intent of the saint which is for all humanity.
3. Treatise, I.15.
4. Sermon, Third Sunday of Lent, 5.
5. Sermon, Third Sunday of Lent, 5.
6. Treatise, VII.2.
7. Treatise, IX.14.
8. Sermon, Fourth Sunday of Lent, 9. St. Francis de Sales uses the term condition and I prefer the use of the term disposition which seems to me to invite a process of ongoing conversion. In today’s use of the vernacular, the language of condition seems to be something stagnate which we achieve and complete, rather than a state of being which calls for intentionality and ongoing effort. I do believe the term disposition captures the essence of St. Francis’ thought.
9. Sermon, Fourth Sunday of Lent, 10–11.
10. Sermon, Fourth Sunday of Lent, 11. The tree’s leaves are our hope of salvation; its flowers, Christ’s prayers for us; and its fruit, because of Jesus’ kenosis, our union with God.
11. Sermon, Fourth Sunday of Lent, 11–12.
12. Treatise, V.3.
13. Treatise, V.4.
