by Fr Ian
A method of contemplative prayer
Father James Borst, a Mill Hill Missionary priest who worked in India for many years, formulated a basic method of contemplative prayer for use by all Christians.
Like all techniques of prayer Father Borst’s method is intended only to provide guidance, to help us cultivate the dispositions that gradually deepen our prayer and also to help us avoid errors that lead us away from genuine communication with God. Properly speaking his method of prayer should be classed as a type of acquired contemplation, as described in previous posts.
We can never, simply by following a set technique, bring ourselves to the uppermost stages of infused contemplation: that’s always a rare gift from God, not something that we create out of our own abilities and talents.But neither are we supposed to just sit back and wait for contemplative prayer to develop as if by some sort of spiritual spontaneous combustion. We have to work to foster the conditions for God to be able to lead us into a more contemplative prayer, confer the gifts of his Spirit and guide us towards holiness.
Father Borst’s aim is to help us do this, and in what follows I’d like to give an outline or summary of his method, which he divides into nine distinct phases. He insists strongly that this exercise in prayer should take a full, continuous hour, so that we enter into real contact with God and reap the resulting benefits.
Phase One: Silence and Relaxation
As with meditation, I start by finding a quiet, solitary place. I relax outwardly and inwardly. I let all tensions flow away; let go of worries and preoccupations. I don’t try to actively, let alone violently, suppress moods, feelings or frustrations, which only increases tension and distraction. Rather, I acknowledge inner storms, obsessional thoughts, passionate drives of will and emotion, but allow them and encourage them gently to subside.
I seek inner peace and silence; allow my mind, heart and will to become serene and tranquil.
I enter into God’s presence. I become conscious that God is immediately and personally present, around me, beside me. And in God’s presence nothing really matters, everything is in his hands.
This first phase is preparatory, creating the right conditions for contact with God and receptivity to his grace. We should be ready to spend as much time as necessary fully relaxing, letting go, becoming serene and calm, and becoming aware of God’s nearness. To ‘waste time’ remaining in this first phase isn’t a failure to pray. It’s an offering of time, attention and effort to God.
Phase Two: Awareness of God’s Indwelling Presence
I reflect: God isn’t only around me and beside me, he’s within me. God dwells at the centre of my being. He’s closer to my true self than I am myself; he knows and loves me better than I know myself; he knows better what my true needs and welfare are than I do myself.
With God himself dwelling within me I am his image and likeness, a reflection of all his divine characteristics. I have the potential to grow in union with God, to draw out my resemblance to him more and more, to become a more and more complete reflection of him.
In this phase I relax into the awareness and experience of God’s presence within me.
Phase Three: Submission and Surrender
In God’s presence, in prayer, I submit to him as my Father, Lord, Creator of everything that exists. I bow down in homage to the greatness and majesty of his transcendence, his absolute holiness, love, goodness, truth. I remember that I’m human, a creature, and sinful.
I orientate myself towards God, who is around me, beside me, within me now, with a basic attitude of surrender:
- everything negative: all my cares, worries, anxieties, tensions, everything that preoccupies me. I hand them all over to God and ask him to remove burdens, to carry me, to lead me forward step by step. I trust in his care for me, no matter what happens. I realise the need to stop pushing and striving to ‘achieve’. In spiritual life progress only begins when we learn to surrender or abandon ourselves to the power of God’s grace to bring about change and foster growth in holiness.
- everything positive: my life and health, my gifts and abilities, all my life-experiences to date. My personality, my love, thoughts, energy, my whole self, body and soul. Everything about me comes from God and I offer everything back to him.
- all my future plans and ambitions, my desire to direct and control outcomes. What I want may not be what God wants. In prayer I try to discern what direction God wants me to move in, in keeping with Jesus’ own disposition, ‘Not my will, but thine, be done’ (Lk 22:42). I cultivate a readiness to abandon cherished personal plans in a spirit of submission and surrender to God.
Phase Four: Acceptance
Acceptance - of God’s will, of people and situations - follows on naturally from submission and surrender.
In this phase I resist feelings of non-acceptance, rejection, refusal, rebellion, and the instincts that give rise to them: anger and impatience, aggression and violence, frustration in the face of obstacles.
Resentments and grudges, arising from current circumstances or from past events, stir up an unspiritual disposition. They create a barrier to God, an obstacle to God’s grace, an obstacle to love.
Acceptance means that instead of the turmoil caused by these negative emotions I desire to be liberated from them into an inner calm and tranquillity. I desire to let go of resentments, slights and offences. I concentrate on fostering a disposition of gratitude to God for the many good things in my life; an attitude of forgiveness towards others, which also frees me from destructive feelings of hurt and anger. After all, I too have done many things that need to be forgiven.
I remind myself that in Christian life suffering - in the form of insults, obstacles, failed plans - have value. They conform me to Christ and teach me how to love with his divine, sacrificial love. So I pray for an increase in the capacity to suffer and for greater detachment from my own will; an increase in love and forgiveness towards others, an increase in peace within myself - all aspects of this disposition of acceptance.
Phase Five: Repentance and Acceptance of God’s Forgiveness
Repentance is recognition of reality: I’m handicapped, I’m weak and sinful, I lack holiness. Every day I give into self-centred, self-aggrandising tendencies.
So in this phase of my prayer I humbly confess my faults, I express regret and sorrow for them, I ask God for his forgiveness and I ask him for the grace to strengthen my future resistance to sin.
There’s no wallowing in guilt or self-pity. Rather, genuine sorrow for past offences and deep desire for change. The prodigal son is always our model.
I think about how to do penance and atone for past sins; how to mortify my present sinful inclinations. But also I accept and embrace God’s love and forgiveness; I know that God’s healing grace is stronger than my weakness and malice.
I express the basic Christian prayer of humble, truthful repentance: ‘Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner’. I’m confident that God welcomes me back into friendship with him.
Phase Six: Contemplation
After confession and the acceptance of forgiveness, obstacles to communion with God have been cleared away. So now I turn my whole self - attention, mind, emotions, will - towards ‘God alone’, God in himself:
- there’s no thought or desire for anything other than God;
- there’s no thought or desire for anything less than God.
I ponder the fact that, right now, I’m completely in God’s presence. I’m not analysing God’s nature. The dominant state of mind is one of awareness, gazing, ‘taking-in’, accompanied by emotions of affection and love, a desire to be united and ‘at one’ with God.
I contemplate God’s beauty, the perfect holiness, love, goodness, truth of his divine, transcendent nature - a mystery we can only slowly and tentatively penetrate, and which inspires silent awe. I stand before God as Moses stood before the burning bush (Exod 3:1ff) or as Peter, James and John ‘fell on their faces’ in awe before the manifestation of God during Jesus’ transfiguration (Mt 17:9-13).
Contemplation of God is a closeness that comes from depth of love, not from the exercise of reason. Contemplation means love directed towards God, not analytical thinking, trying to work out how God works. It’s an exercise in the theological virtue of love, a response to Jesus’ ‘greatest commandment’. It’s a quiet, calm awareness, an act of homage and adoration which is as wordless as possible, although a ‘repetition prayer’ is often appropriate.
Phase Seven: Receiving
God always responds to our raising of our heart and mind to him.
He has been seeking us long before we began seeking him.
He has always wanted us to know his love for us.
He has always wanted to draw us into his life; to make his home within us.
In this phase I open myself to God, I become receptive to his transforming grace, his spiritual gifts.
What I receive from God is:
- his presence, his love, his Holy Spirit, his transforming and sanctifying grace.
- peace, acceptance, the ability to forgive, the ability to suffer and to grow in holiness through suffering; the lifting of the burden of discouragement and despair; greater energy to serve God;
- the desire to offer back to him thanks, praise, adoration.
Phase Eight: Intercession
In this phase I ask God for my own needs (petition) and for the needs of others, the needs of the whole world (intercession). I put all my concerns and worries and plans before him, and ask for his blessing, his guidance, his encouragement.
To pray for other people, to ask God to be present to them and to guide and sustain them in their daily lives is an act of love towards them. Jesus commanded us to make this kind of prayer for ourselves and for others, to pray always and never lose heart (Lk 18:1); to pester God constantly with our needs and concerns (Mt 7:7; Lk 18:2-8).
So it’s apt that I do this now, during my time of contemplative meditative prayer.
Phase Nine: Praise and Thanksgiving
To end the hour of prayer I offer God praise and honour and glory. I express my desire to praise him for his goodness and love and holiness.
I also express gratitude for everything that I’ve been given by God. Eventually, as disciples of Christ, we learn to thank God even for our painful experiences, which help us to become detached from worldly appetites and pleasures and bring us close to Christ in the loneliness and suffering of his Passion.
In offering God praise and honour and thanks I also express the desire that, above all else, his will shall be done in me and in my life. I see that God yearns only for my good, for my salvation and holiness; I see his desire for me to turn completely to him; his desire for me to be completely united with him.
With these final thoughts and sentiments and expressions, glorifying God, I bring the time of contemplative prayer to an end.
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