Progressing in Prayer, Growing in Love

As you pray more and more, do not be surprised to find yourself praying for less and less. That is to say, praying for things pertaining to the self will gradually fade into intercession for others (1 Timothy 2:1) and more meditative (mental) and contemplative prayer (Psalm 63:6).

A singular petition remains, and must always remain until we achieve perfection: and that is for love (1 Corinthians 14:1). That is, that I might know God’s love more fully; that I would lose myself in His Sacred Heart. As the Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians, may you have the strength "to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:18-19).

When you pray for greater love, when you attempt to meditate or contemplate on such things, be neither surprised nor overly excited if you experience visions, such as an angel appearing at your side (Luke 1:11, Acts 12:7). They may speak little, perhaps only showing you the way or taking you by the hand to lead you to Christ. This is their reason for coming to you, as it always is, for such is the deepest desire of every Saint and Angel who has been purified and perfected in love (Hebrews 1:14).

What else would love desire than to introduce all who seek greater love to the Source—He who is Love Himself (1 John 4:8)? Do not delight in such visions or dreams for themselves (Luke 10:20); the visions are neither the gift nor the giver. They are simply the experience of having the gift placed in one’s hand—or better, pressed into one’s heart by the pierced hands of the true Giver (John 20:27).

What He will give you, if you persist in this prayer, is a transplant of the heart: "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). But not just any flesh! His flesh. His heart. His life. His love. You begin to realize with St. Paul: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).

When this occurs, you will find the things you used to pray for pertaining to yourself fade away. The sorrows or sufferings you endure, which you once prayed might be removed, become one with His sorrow and suffering (Colossians 1:24). You no longer seek an "escape" from suffering, but you seek Christ within suffering (Philippians 3:10). The pain you endure will be overwhelmed by the Love you find there. Prayers for healing, for a particular job, or for this or that will begin to lose their sense of importance, for to rest in great love is to rest in great trust, knowing that if you "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all these things will be added to you" (Matthew 6:33).

This is why we say that the faith which saves us is a faith always formed in love—"faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6). A loveless faith is inevitably nothing but a faith absorbed in the concerns of self, even if that concern is to gain eternal life or "get saved." As the scripture warns, "if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2). We do not have "faith" simply to get eternal life; such is not a faith that clings to love of the Other, but a faith that remains for the sake of self.

The end of the Christian faith is not merely that we might get to heaven. These rewards are part and parcel of becoming One with Him in Love (John 17:21). For these things are His, and in Him, they become our inheritance (Romans 8:17). It is in His Love alone that we are His, that His heart becomes ours, and that we might—as St. Peter says—"become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).