Reviving Your Prayer Life: Entering into the Desert to Adore

Fr. Marie - Dominque Philippe, founder of the Congregation of St. John, meets with Pope Benedict XVI at the Community's 30th anniversary celebration in Rome - February, 2006

Fr. Marie -- Dominque Philippe, the founder of the Community of St. John, the fastest growing order of religious vocations in the world today tells us, “The neglect of prayer, more than anything else, is the typical vice of our time. We forget to pray.”

We all have periods of hectic activity where we neglect saying all the prayers we normally would and thus “abbreviate” our prayers. We all have periods of dryness in our prayer life even when we do try our best to spend time each day praying the liturgy of hours, our morning offering, the holy rosary, and novenas or whatever our usual prayer routine is, but struggle to focus on what we are actually doing. This is common of all human beings.

What is prayer? Saint Therese of Lisieux tells us: "Prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trail as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus."

Prayer is communicating with God, whether it be through verbal or non-verbal means and it is based on a personal relationship with God. In the material world, we work at our jobs and see growth in our intellectual and business skills – there is constant progression. Our life with Christ requires work, as well, but it also requires that we meet God – that we discover who He is in order to interact with Him on a personal level. If our souls are to grow and to be united with that of our Creator, then we need to expand spiritually. But how are to discover God?

Fr. Philippe suggests that we first enter into silence – that we retreat to a place where we can escape the constant chatter and noise of the world. To do this, we distance ourselves from the world in order to create an interior desert where God goes to adore Him. Just as God asked Moses to lead his people on a three – day journey into the dessert – to enter into a place where they could ascertain what their true vocation was, he also calls us to follow Him into the desert to determine what our true relationship with Him is in this life.

Fr. Philippe shares with us the nine steps involved in Adoration – which aid in discovering God.

ADORATION: A FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH GOD

What is it to adore God? Is it something we really know by experience, or can we only give a rote answer? If each of us were asked to write down what adoration is and whether we have had an experience of it there would certainly be some astonishing responses.

ADORATION: RE – ASCENDING TO THE SOURCE

To adore God is to place ourselves in His presence. Basically, adoration is a gesture of politeness toward God. We acknowledge that God our Creator is here, present, that He loves us, that He is creating our soul at the moment; and we want to place ourselves in His presence and surrender ourselves into His hands.

Charles Peguy, the French poet, says philosophy consists in re-ascending to the source. Philosophy makes us more intelligent and loving human beings for both God and our neighbor. During a retreat, being intelligent for our neighbor consists in remaining silent, while being intelligent for God consists in making an effort to adore and pray.

ADORATION: AN ACT OF LOVE

Re-ascending to the source requires an act of the will. It may be the most fundamental act of the will. If we have no will of our own, it is because we no longer adore. This may surprise us, but it is a profound truth. A person who has ceased to adore has gone astray, and because of a lack of will, inevitably lets himself be carried by the current. To re-ascend to the source, one must will to do so. One wills an act of adoration. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten us as He teaches us to adore. Adoration is elementary in our Christian life; it is its foundation. To adore is to discover the presence of the Creator in the depths of our being. As Augustine powerfully expresses it in his Confessions, God is closer to us as we are to ourselves. This is true because God seizes us from within; there is no distance between God and us. Thus, it is a question of discovering this presence, of discovering this Source, this wellspring for God is the primary source from which all light and love spring, from which every being originates. It is always together with Jesus and Mary that we adore. Without Christ, we cannot adore, for “apart for me you can do nothing.” Whenever we adore, we are with Him and Mary is always present.

ADORATION: A PERSONAL GESTURE

It is important to understand that only with Jesus can we truly worship, for it is a question of worshipping in “spirit and truth”, of adoring in love. We should love being close to God, for we know that He loves us, and should wish to discover this First Love who loves us in a unique way. Our response to this love is a very particular and personal gesture of adoration. Each of us has his own way of adoring and loving. We do not wish to simply be original in our exterior approach, but what is important is our manner of ascending to the source, of rediscovering God’s presence, of adoring Him in our own unique interior way. Adoration is our way of living, of breathing deeply as a human being, as a spirit bound to a body. For a human being, is it not the most profound natural act?

ADORATION: GOD EDUCATING

Adoration is a human being’s most personal act. It is also first in education. The Holy Spirit cannot educate us if we do not worship.

ADORATION: BREVIARY OF THE POOR

Seven daily acts of adoration can change everything. They are very easy to do during a retreat and can continue on in one’s daily life, for they are the “breviary of the poor,” the breviary of the laity, of those who lives are taken up with a multitude of concerns and whose lives do not have the regularity of the monks. This “breviary of the poor consists in punctuating the day with seven acts of adoration. They must be true acts of adoration wherein our body accompanies our spirit, for it is our whole being which adores, recognizing God as our Creator.

ADORATION: A DAILY PRACTICE

As soon as we awaken each day, our first act must be an act of adoration whereby we acknowledge that at every moment we receive everything from God, and whereby we give everything back to Him. With other people in the room, it may be difficult, but what a marvelous example we give in worshipping God. In adoration, we offer our day, we offer our life, and we anticipate our death. We acknowledge God as master of life and death. We acknowledge Him as our creator and surrender everything to Him.

In the evening as well, we should close our day as an act of adoration. The other five moments during the day should be easy to find. Take, for example, each time we complete one task and prepare to begin another. For a homemaker, this might be after each task she does around the house – following the end of each meal she has prepared, upon completion of the laundry or each load of laundry, each chore or errand.

ADORATION: PRACTICAL TRUTH

How many Christians today no longer adore, how many do not even know what it is to adore, reciting prayers with no idea of what comprises a personal act towards God. Is not adoration precisely a personal act towards God? When we adore we are alone before God and when before Him we know that he sustains us. Consequently, not only does an act of adoration place us in practical truth, but it frees us from all else as well. As soon as we adore, as soon as we acknowledge that we are dependent upon God and ultimately Him alone, we are totally liberated from our habitual conditioning.


ADORATION: THE THRESHOLD OF INTERIOR SILENT PRAYER

Adoration normally introduces us into a greater and deeper intimacy with God. It is the threshold of intimate prayer, of that direct contact with God in faith, hope, and love in interior prayer and not the mere recitation of prayer which, as good as this may be, must always lead to interior prayer. As Thomas Aquinas says, it is interior prayer which is important, all vocal prayer being ordered to it.

Given that “God is Spirit”, it is easy to understand why God would want this interior prayer before all else. Vocal and community prayer are excellent if accompanied by personal prayer. The recitation of prayers must lead us to the silence of adoration, and gathered around the Eucharist in adoration, let us interiorly beg Jesus to keep us silent and adore.

~ Adapted from Chapter 1 of “Wherever He Goes: A Retreat on the Gospel of St. John” by Father Marie – Dominque Philippe, Congregation of St. John, Laredo, Texas, copyright 2001.

To learn more about the Community of St. John, go here and here. To learn more about children's adoration, go here.