Lectio
“Without prayer he cannot find the way to the Lord. He cannot understand the truth. He cannot crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts. His heart cannot be enlightened with the light of Christ. He cannot be savingly united to God. None of these things can be effected unless they are preceded by constant prayer.”
— The Way of a Pilgrim
Meditatio
Repentance begins with the admission that we are powerless to consistently do good, speak truth, and pursue what is righteous, just, and merciful without God, who, alone, is good and is the source of all goodness, all truth, and all righteousness. This does not mean that we have never thought, said, or done anything good before repenting. St. Justin Martyr states that all good, all truth, and all reason, whether intentional or unintentional, is from God — the spermatikos or the seed of the Logos — so even when those who do not know God, or perhaps even flatly reject Him, reason rightly and so participate in goodness, truth, and righteousness, they are, without knowing it, sharing in God’s goodness. The problem, however, is that we cannot participate in this goodness fully or consistently without Christ.
Without Christ, we will always fall short of absolute goodness, absolute truth, and absolute righteousness. We will always fail to live up to the perfect ideal that is God — an ideal only Christ has ever fully lived out. Without Christ, we may do some good, speak some truth, and act with some fairness, justice, and mercy, but our standard will always be a moving target tainted with self justification or worldly values. Once we can admit this, whether by great love or great suffering, we are ready to repent, and in doing so, to ask for help, which is to say, we are ready to pray with life-dependent sincerity.
Prayer, then, is not what earns us a share in goodness, truth, and righteousness — that share is already given, seed-planted in us as it is in anyone. Prayer is what turns unconscious participation into conscious consent. Left to ourselves, we brush against goodness, stumble into truth, act rightly by accident or instinct — scattered, inconsistent, easily mistaken for our own doing. Prayer is the opening through which we stop merely bearing the seed and start yielding to what it asks of us: to be aligned, consciously and continually, with the Goodness, Truth, and Righteousness that is God Himself. Or perhaps more truly — we do not align ourselves at all. We consent to being aligned, to His hand doing in us what we could never do to ourselves. Our repentance, though it may feel like death, we come to find, is actually the beginning of true life in communion with the Giver of Life, for it is only when we give ourselves over to what is good and true and righteous that we are free.
Oratio
Unknown To Me
the way
the truth
the life
unknown to me
except by accident
falling in and out of goodness
stumbling in and out of the light
grace draw me out of myself
by great suffering
by great love
into the Way
into the Truth
into the Life
into prayer
into You
Contemplatio
You have already been touched by goodness you did not choose and truth you did not earn — seeds planted before you knew to look for them. Now you are invited past accident into consent: to let what has stumbled toward Him become, at last, a surrender. Rest here a moment, and let Him draw you the rest of the way.
Related Scripture
“For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
— Philippians 2:13 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Obedience Without Anxiety: Meister Eckhart and the Goodness That Fears Nothing (Lectio Divina), which turns from prayer’s quiet consent to a fiercer surrender — an obedience that already carries within it every good it asks us to release control for.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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