Deeping our Prayer Life with the Holy Angels

For those of us who were blessed to participate in the National Eucharistic Congress, or to follow it at home, we all know what a great moment it was in the history of the Church, not only for America, but for the whole Church. Just one sign of its fruitfulness is the fact that the number of Mass-going Catholics who believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist has risen from 63% (Pew Research, 2019) to 69% according to a new survey on June 3, 2024 (Vinea Research). In order to keep this fire of faith in and love for Jesus in the Most Holy Eucharist going, however, we must nourish and sustain it. And this we can do especially through personal prayer. Mother Gabriel writes,

The therapy in order to acquire and maintain the capacity to believe again in this frightening crisis of faith is living prayer, not mechanical formula prayer, but prayer formed by life, carried by a longing for God or filled by the knowledge of God. Faith in God and in His existence grows in prayer and silent meditation. Without prayer, faith will never become living. For this reason, the first requirement in the crisis of faith is: to pray.

In the Work of the Holy Angels, we are obliged to draw strength daily [as far as possible] from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Holy Communion. We are obliged to pray daily, in a believing and living way (in conversation with God)—and to pray precisely for those who no longer want to pray. There is an [evil] spiritual contagion in the air, such that even small children in good families absolutely do not want to pray anymore, nor to set foot in any Church. (Mother Gabriele, Lost and rediscovered values, Advent 1972)

Most of us are familiar with vocal prayer, with “saying our prayers”. To be fruitful, these should be said with both mind and heart. But it is especially in meditation, and in mental prayer in general, by entering into living contact with God who is present to us, that we will learn to hear Him and follow His will for our lives, to allow ourselves to be transformed more and more into His likeness and grow in an ever deeper relationship of love and friendship with God, the relationship of sons in the one Son, Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict XVI writes in his series of catecheses on prayer (General Audiences from August 2011 to March 2012),

Dear friends, making time for God regularly is a fundamental element for spiritual growth; it will be the Lord Himself who gives us the taste for His mysteries, His words, His presence and action, for feeling how beautiful it is when God speaks with us; He will enable us to understand more deeply what He expects of me. This, ultimately, is the very aim of meditation: to entrust ourselves increasingly to the hands of God, with trust and love, certain that in the end it is only by doing His will that we are truly happy. (Aug. 17, 2011)

“Lord, teach us to pray!”

When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, He answers with the Our Father (cf. Lk 11:1 ff.). St. Augustine states that whatever we may rightly ask of God in prayer is contained in this prayer the Lord has taught us (cf. Letter to Proba, 22). St. Thomas adds to this teaching that not only are the 7 petitions of the Our Father the summary of all we should ask of God, but

also the order in which we should desire them. Thus, in itself, the Our Father is a complete teaching on “how to pray”. In her Way of Perfection, St. Theresa uses precisely the Our Father as the structure for her teaching on prayer, both vocal and contemplative prayer. She writes, when reciting “the Paternoster, realize that you are verily and indeed in the company of Him who taught it you and kiss His feet in gratitude to Him for having desired to teach you and beg Him to show you how to pray and never to leave you” (Way of Perfection, 34). If we want to learn to pray, therefore, it is an old Catholic practice to meditate slowly on the Our Father. St. Nicholas of Flue (patron of Switzerland) once made a one day pilgrimage, during which he was praying all the way. Having arrived at the destination, he had reached only the first words: Our Father.

Man is called to an eternal communion of love with God, in and through Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and man. This loving communion with the Triune God will be our greatest joy and beatitude in heaven. But if this communion of love and friendship will be our reward in heaven, it must already begin here on earth. Initiated in Baptism and sustained by the Sacraments, this “vital and personal relationship with the living and true God” is nourished and grows precisely through prayer (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church [=CCC] 2558).

…Prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with His Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit. …Thus, the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the Thrice-holy God and in communion with Him. This communion of life is always possible because, through Baptism, we have already been united with Christ. (CCC 2565)

It is especially in “living” prayer, prayer from the heart with the full consciousness of being in the presence of, listening to and being heard by God, that we cultivate this relationship of love and friendship. St. Therese writes, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy” (cited in CCC 2558).

Creating a space for God

In order to grow in the life of prayer, it is first of all necessary to make “space” for God in our lives, to “make time for God regularly,” as Pope Benedict says above. For a home-schooling mom with many children, a regular time may not always be possible—she must do what she can, given she is working 2 jobs!—but for many, allowing silent time for God is simply a matter of self-discipline, and the readiness to “give up” some of our other occupations: radio, television, internet or social media, among other things. Do I really need to read everything in the news, even Catholic news? Do I need to spend so much time on Facebook, sending messages or browsing the internet? Is reading the word of God or going to a weekday Holy Mass important to me or even on my radar at all?

Making time for God means making concrete choices, the will to reduce input from so many other directions, the renunciation of something good for something better, for something essential! Pope Benedict writes, “In our time we are taken up with so many activities and duties, worries and problems: we often tend to fill all of the spaces of the day, without leaving a moment to pause and reflect and to nourish our spiritual life, our contact with God” (Aug 17, 2011). We all have our pet habits and routines. But is there not something we could cut back or eliminate from our daily life, in order to make (more) space for God, for being and resting in God?

Persons at the hand of the Angels must unconditionally learn and be able to keep silence. It must be a kind silence, which comes of itself, from interior peace and from the desireless union with God. Before being able to be silent, however, comes the detachment of self from all the encumbrance of unnecessary habits and bonds. Only then will the soul become free to be in God. (Mother Gabriele, Texts on Silence)

Therefore, we need to learn to let go. Mother Gabriele writes, “Every act of holy renunciation is the freedom of giving to God out of love. God responds with the abundance of grace of prayer, love and sacrificial strength” (Spiritual Maxims). Jesus, the perfect man and our model in His filial relationship with the Father, was markedly a man of silence and prayer.

The Gospels often present Jesus, especially at times of crucial decisions, withdrawing to lonely places, away from the crowds and even from the disciples in order to pray in silence and to live His filial relationship with God. Silence can carve out an inner space in our very depths to enable God to dwell there, so that His word will remain within us and love for Him take root in our minds and hearts and inspire our life. Hence the first direction: relearning silence, openness to listening, which opens us to the Other, to the word of God. (Ben XVI, March 7, 2012)

The silence of resting in God

Even more important than carving out a silent time for God is creating this interior silence necessary to hear and be with Him, both during prayer and outside of our formal prayer time.

And here Mary is a very real model. Luke the Evangelist repeated several times that Mary, “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (2:19; cf. 2:51b). As a good custodian, she does not forget, she was attentive to all that the Lord told her and did for her, and she meditated, in other words, she considered various things, pondering them in her heart. (…)

Thus, day after day, in the silence of ordinary life, Mary continued to treasure in her heart the sequence of marvelous events that she witnessed until the supreme test of the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection. Mary lived her life to the full, her daily duties, her role as a mother, but she knew how to reserve an inner space to reflect on the word and will of God, on what was occurring within her and on the mysteries of the life of her Son. (Benedict XVI, GA, August 17, 2011)

In the Work of the Holy Angels, learning this silence of Mary (and of the holy Angels!) is of utmost importance in order to learn to listen for and hear the call of God through the Angel. “This capacity to be silent is only the root, the prerequisite for the recognition of one’s Angel, for hearing one’s Angel, for being able to be led by one’s Angel, for one’s mission from God” (Mother Gabriele, Texts on Silence). To cultivate this silence and spirit of recollection and prayer in our lives, it is first necessary to let go and detach ourselves from so much noise also within us. Writing to members of the Work, Mother Gabriele writes:

This holy silence is not merely not speaking, rather it is a stillness and soundlessness which fills the whole soul. In order to reach this silence, one must make oneself free from exterior restlessness: haste, pressing earthly thoughts which distract again and again, noise. And from interior restlessness: worries, absentmindedness, self-complacency, in that one abandons all and hands oneself over to God alone, completely separated from everything, without desires, unconditionally.

Room should be made for this silence, a time and place, for each of us without exception. It is not possible to establish a general norm, because every life follows a different course. But in the daily life of each, there should be room for holy silence, preferably before the Tabernacle, where the Lord has wrapped Himself in the silent Bread. (Texts on Silence)

Just as we need to nourish ourselves daily on earthly bread, we need even more to nourish ourselves daily on the word and mysteries of God, and if possible, on the heavenly Bread of the Eucharist, assimilating both in contemplative prayer. Again, Pope Benedict points to Mary, who is so near to us, who lived as one of us, as our model.

Mary teaches us how necessary it is to find in our busy day, moments for silent recollection, to meditate on what the Lord wants to teach us, on how He is present and active in the world and in our life: to be able to stop for a moment and meditate. St Augustine compares meditation on the mysteries of God to the assimilation of food and uses a verb that recurs throughout the Christian tradition, “to ruminate”; that is, the mysteries of God should continually resonate within us so that they become familiar to us, guide our lives and nourish us, as does the food we need to sustain us. (GA, August 17, 2011)

Praying with the heart

The first step of prayer is therefore to recollect ourselves, to place ourselves with living faith and love in the presence of God. This goes for both vocal and mental prayer, for prayer must always be an affair of the heart, a living contact with God, our Blessed Mother, the Angels and Saints.

Entering into contemplative prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy: we “gather up” the heart, recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, abide in the dwelling place of the Lord which we are, awaken our faith in order to enter into the presence of Him who awaits us. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, so as to hand ourselves over to Him as an offering to be purified and transformed. (CCC 2711)

It is not important that we have great thoughts or lofty meditations to present to the Lord (the meditations help us, not Him!), but that we consciously be there with Him and try to be lovingly attentive to Him while we meditate and pray. This is not to say we will not have distractions, but we should have the good will to begin again and again without discouragement, laying the concern which distracted us into His hands and turning our thoughts and hearts gently back to the Lord. For prayer is always a gift; we will only receive this gift, however, if for our part, we make a sincere and constant effort. We may be tempted, for example, to say our Rosary mechanically, because we can never concentrate well on the mystery. But precisely this is the temptation—not to try anymore, and it can lead to spiritual sloth or even acedia. God, however, looks not on our “success”, but on our good will, our effort, our love and longing to be with Him. Mother Gabriele reminds us,

Never forget that prayer should be something beautiful, offered to the Lord as a gift. He who speaks to God at the urging of his heart, his prayer is always full of life. He will not tire of it. But he who accustoms himself to go to GOD only with prayers that he knows by heart or reads, his prayer always lacks vitality. It will slowly become a mechanical prayer, it becomes spirit-less. But where there is no spirit, there is no living love anymore, nor life.

So, if you have to recite your prayers by heart every day, remain full of life! Never let a prayer pass over your lips while the spirit sleeps. The Angel can then offer no flowers to God, only wooden beads, straw wreaths. Life must be in prayer, living contemplation, living faith, hope and love, a living intercession, a: desire-to-give- God-joy.

Remember, to be able to pray well and with life, one must hunger: hunger for the presence of God, hunger for the love of God, hunger for the forgiveness and redemption of God. Everyone who is satiated grows shallow. Ask daily for a hunger for God – and your love will be inventive. Inventive love, however, produces the most beautiful fruits of prayer.

We should never get discouraged when we experience times of aridity in prayer. God knows when to lead us with light and consolation, or with the trial of spiritual dryness. St. Philip Neri would say, “Spiritual persons ought to be equally ready to experience sweetness and consolation in the things of God, or to suffer and keep their ground in dryness of spirit for as long as God pleases, without their making any complaint about it.” If we are faithful, humble and persevering, God will grant us the grace of an even deeper prayer.

Without stress, we can meditate very simply on Our Lord, His life and Passion, His word especially in the Gospels and New Testament, His love in the Sacraments, Our Blessed Mother, our Guardian Angel, a spiritual text or a word we received in Confession, just to cite a few examples. “By reading and reflecting on what we have read, dwelling on it, trying to understand what it is saying to me, what it says today, we open our spirit to what the Lord wants to tell us and teach us” (Pope Ben. XVI, August 17, 2011). As we read in the last Circular Letter on the Holy Eucharist, to be fruitful, our prayer must involve an openness and willingness to be transformed: to be purified, enlightened and changed more and more into the likeness of Christ and His Self-giving love, as our Model and Savior.

The Holy Rosary is also a meditative prayer which can serve as the structure for our time of meditation. Repeating the Hail Mary, we can reflect on the specific mystery in the life of Christ or our Blessed Mother. What was it like for Mary to receive the message of the Angel? How was it in the darkness of the cave of Bethlehem, or in the Garden of Olives? The Rosary was the constant companion of Pope John Paul II, the first prayer of the day even before going to the chapel; while travelling or kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, he was ever and again seen with a Rosary in his hand. It is the prayer of the Family.

Mother Gabriel advises us to pray with the Angel, to let our prayer extend into our day to day life as a silent resting in God:

Ask your Angel for the grace of meditation and for the strength to draw fruit from this meditation. For every genuine meditation has value, and every value, as soon as it is a living value before God, always bears fruit. The fruit which comes from a good, genuine meditation is threefold: Calmness, breadth, equanimity.

These three lead to wisdom, for wisdom is always the sign of maturity. Wisdom always comes from silence, from the broad, silent calmness. It is not sufficient for merely the lips to be still. The heart must be able to rest in God. Should your employment require that you speak a great deal, then train yourself, in the measure possible, to guard silence gladly, to gladly look up to God and simply to rest – without words – in Him. Then the manner of your personal communing with God will pass more and more from words to light, to beholding. And then you will remain with your Angel before God as one. (Novitiate letters)

There may be times, for example after praying the Rosary or after Holy Mass and Communion, when we can simply remain silently in God’s presence, when we need few words except perhaps occasionally to rekindle the fire, like “Jesus, I love You,” or “My Lord and my God!” or “My God and my All!” If we feel drawn to it and the Lord gives us this gift, in this prayer we allow Him to speak to our hearts what words cannot express.

There will be other times when we want to just sit and “chat” with the Lord, to say, “Good morning, Jesus!” and tell Him about our day, our joys and trials,. The Curé of Ars once said, “When God sees His little creatures coming, He inclines toward us as a father does to listen to his child, who wants to talk to him.” And there may be still other times when we sense our poverty and misery more intensely and can only say, “Lord, have mercy on me, a poor sinner!” and Our Lord accepts this. He gladly listens to our prayers of intercession for others, for our concerns and needs. But let this not be the heart of our prayer. We are there for God, as His servants, not vice versa. Let us think on Him! praise Him! thank Him! And when we our oppressed by the Cross, let us trust Him and wait for Him, asking of Him the grace of patient endurance and acceptance of His unfathomable will, with the words of Jesus in His agony, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup away from Me; still, not My will but Yours be done” (Lk 22:42). If we are willing to watch and pray with Him, He will certainly help us to bear our trials and bring us into the light again. This very suffering we can offer in expiation for so many who do not pray, who do not believe or long for the Lord.

If we pray with our good Angel, asking him to praise God with us especially in the Sanctus, the Angel can more easily guide and inspire our prayer, and bring us light and consolation according to God’s will and our own state of soul. For the Spirit loves to work through the mediation of His Angels! Even Jesus Himself was strengthened in His prayer on the Mount of Olives by an Angel (see Lk 22:43), leaving us a noble example.

Background work!

Very important for a healthy prayer life and our spiritual life in general is what we do outside of prayer! If we are to meditate well, our intellect and imagination need to be “well-fed” through regular spiritual reading, above all Sacred Scripture, but also other spiritual authors. We can ask our Guardian Angel! Further, if we love God from the heart, we will think on Him often throughout the day. We can ask our Angel to help us with this, and give us little nudges during our work or free time. Little ejaculations, repeated again and again, can remind us that we are in His presence, the presence of our Blessed Mother and the Holy Angels. Every time something goes wrong or against our will or inclinations, we can see it as a “greeting” from the Lord! We can send Him a greeting in return saying, “I accept this Lord, for love of You! For Your priests! For the conversion of sinners!” This is how the Angel of Fatima taught the shepherd children to “make of everything a sacrifice”, a gift pleasing to the Lord.

Above all, if we want to find God in prayer, we must also prove to Him that we love Him in daily life, striving for the virtues pleasing to Him, especially a generous acceptance of sacrifice and sincere love for our neighbor. St. John teaches,

No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is brought to perfection in us…. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 Jn 4:12, 20-21)

Also conversely, it is precisely in contemplative prayer that “the Father strengthens our inner being with power through His Spirit ‘that Christ may dwell in (our) hearts through faith’ and we may be ‘grounded in love’ (Eph 3:16-17)” (CCC 2714). Therefore, let us be good to one another, kind and compassionate, forgiving one another in Christ, that God may send His blessing upon us, on the Church, on the whole world.

Pray without ceasing!

If we love, we will want to be always in the presence of the Beloved, to speak with Him frequently, to go with Him everywhere! Citing St. Paul, we read in the Catechism,

“Pray without ceasing … giving thanks always and for everything in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father” (1 Thes 5:17; Eph 5:20).… For “we have not been commanded to work, to keep watch and to fast constantly, but it has been laid down that we are to pray without ceasing” (Evagrius Ponticus). This tireless fervor can come only from love. Against our dullness and laziness, the battle of prayer is that of humble, trusting, and persevering love. (CCC 2742)

Sr. Maria Basilea