In Pope St John Paul’s letter to the Carmelite Family back in 2002, he says that Carmel helps people who are busy with so many concerns that they must give absolute priority to seeking, ‘the kingdom of God and His justice’. He identifies Carmel as a School of Prayer, a place where prayer becomes life and life flourishes with prayer.
So, Life in Carmel has to do with Prayer – in fact I would be as bold to say that you cannot live (or flourish) in Carmel without prayer. For Carmelites, prayer is the air that we breathe. Prayer for Christians has been one of the most important activities since the foundation of the Church. We follow ultimately the life and example of Jesus and in scripture we see Jesus regularly going off to a lonely place on many occasions, particularly when he had big decisions to make. We read in the Gospel of Luke, (Lk 9:28) that, ‘Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up the mountain to pray.’ For me, Jesus saw prayer as pivotal to his life of ministry particularly in times of discernment and decision making – the examples are numerous, before his baptism, before selecting the twelve, revealing his divine nature and before his passion, just to name a few.
So, if Jesus does it and obviously benefits from it shouldn’t we do it also? Carmel with her tradition and saints can teach us how to pray, because as John Paul II says, ‘Carmel is a school of prayer’. There are many different types of prayer but I will narrow it down to what we call personal prayer because this is what we do on our own, anytime, anywhere. When it comes to prayer, I am inclined to take the approach inspired by the Nike advert, ‘Just Do It.’ It should be as natural as speaking to a family member or a friend. My favourite quote about a definition of what ‘mental prayer’ is, comes from the great Carmelite Saint and Doctor of the Church, who lived in the sixteenth century, St Teresa of Jesus (of Avila). In the book of her Life, Teresa’s autobiography, in chapter 8:5 she says: ’For mental prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.’
For many, there is difficulty in Teresa’s simplicity! Teresa doesn’t complicate mental prayer whatsoever. The key ingredients to developing an intimacy with Jesus are time and space! For our prayer to be effective we need to give God the time and we need to be in the right environment. There is so much I could say about choosing the right time to pray and where the best place is but remember this is your friendship with God, you’re cultivating…not mine, so what suits me won’t necessarily suit you. What I offer is purely subjective and you can customise it to your various situations.
Two concepts that have helped me immensely have been to look at the time in the eyes of the ancient Greeks. When it comes to the amount of time, we spend in prayer it is really to do with quality of our time over the quantity of it. Or the Kairos over the Chronos. Don’t worry about distractions, they may need to be brought to prayer. Just use a word or a phrase to bring you back into the moment. A great phrase, I use is, ‘Jesus, I trust in you’. Start small until that becomes a habit and remember we’re not all called to be a Carmelite Nun.
The next ingredient is space when you have a deep and meaningful with a friend, you don’t choose the middle of the concourse in Kings Cross train station – it’s the same for our prayer. We often talk about the practice of making uncluttered space and unhurried time in the rhythm of our live to enjoy the presence of God. A phrase some have used to label that practice is vacare Deo. This Latin phrase can be difficult to translate well into English. The verb vacare can mean “be empty,” “be free from or unoccupied,” or “be idle or vacant.” To some that may imply a tone of irresponsible leisure. But vacare Deo simply means…giving God the gift of my full attention, when so often, I give God only a small percentage of my attention at any given moment.
The idea of vacare Deo may be what we hear in Psalm 46:10: “Be still [vacare], and know that I am God [Deo].”
In the monastic Rule of St Benedict, vacare appears six times in chapter 48 as part of a discussion about “being free” or “having leisure” for holy reading. There are certain ways of being present and attentive to God that are best cultivated in a place of solitary quiet. The Rule of St Benedict provides plenty of space in the monks’ schedules for holy leisure. St Benedict arranged a daily schedule for his communities that provided several hours of solitary quiet time.
The idea here, is to open up moments each day and space each week, to simply be available to sense God’s presence, discern God’s guidance, and hear God’s voice—in scripture, in nature, in our own hearts and minds. It is a mode of receptivity rather than a mode of initiative or intense activity. Perhaps these definitions can help us to practice vacare Deo:
- To be free for God
- To make space for God
- To be empty for God
- To be at leisure or available for God
- To waste time with God
So, by increasing our encounter with God, through our prayer, we are opening ourselves to allow God to transform us, that is Life in Carmel.
Fr Gerard Walsh, O.Carm
