Karl Rahner, a very influential Catholic German theologian of the 20th century wrote, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.” So how does a person become a mystic? Well our Catholic faith is already mystical but we can always work to be more fully plug into the mystery of God. The most important way is to change the way we pray (if needed).
Most Catholics were raised with a very “word heavy” and mind-focused experience of prayer. Meaning we were taught to pray with words (Our Fathers, Hail Marys, etc) and with our minds by asking God for things or talking to God in our head. Now neither of those are bad things but they usually lack the proper foundation: prayer is primarily a communing with God on the soul level. Any prayer that lacks a spiritual connection with God and remains in the mind is a less productive, less transformative, and less sanctifying prayer. The Saints teach us that the spiritual connection should be consciously chosen and entered into by the individual.
So how do we connect with God spirit to Spirit? The first step is to acknowledge the presence of God at the beginning of each prayer in one of four ways: 1) Christ in us. 2) The Spirit of God all around us. 3) The Person of Jesus with us. 4) God the Father in Heaven aware of us and ready to provide for us. The next step is to invite God into communion with our soul. Sometimes the Saints even suggest sort of telling our soul, “Ok, soul, we are uniting with God now.” The next step and an important step to becoming a more contemplative Church is to be comfortable in silence. Contemplation is simply being in the presence of God without words or thoughts (yet focused on God). This is actually the deepest form of prayer there is because our souls and God are becoming one. This is how we are sanctified (made holy) through prayer although that process cannot necessarily be “felt.”
With Jesus,
Daniel Hoover
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