Teach us to Pray
Sermon Notes on Luke 11. 1-13 for 24th July
Teach us to pray
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBZuRUVIb9E. In the movie Meet the Parents, Jewish nurse Greg Focker is desperate to impress his fiancé’s WASPY (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) parents. The only thing more awkward than trying to impress her family is the moment when he is asked to say grace. He improvises by reciting part of the musical Godspell as a prayer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekoHxB4idmg). The cringe worthy scene highlights some difficulties in prayer.
In Luke 11.1-113, the disciples come to Jesus asking: “Teach us to pray”. There is such a hunger behind the four words “teach us to pray”. The thirst for prayer emerges out of a sense of emptiness or incompleteness we discern in ourselves. Our loneliness, our grasping for more, our addictions – these all emerge out of that divine spark within us that like a magnet draws us deeper and deeper into God. As Augustine put it “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.” The sense of incompleteness or emptiness or awareness that there the Sacred exists draws us into prayer, yet prayer can be so difficult, why? The Bible says, “ask and you will receive,” but this doesn’t always seem true. Some have prayed and asked and not received. Some have “knocked” but feel that the door has remained closed/ So, what do we do? How can we be encouraged in prayer? To encourage you I want to share what has encouraged me – the interior castle by St Theresa of Jesus.
An interior castle
St Teresa, a Spanish nun, lived in a time of castles in the 1500’s. She was a Carmelite nun and had a very honest relationship with God. E.g., once, she fell in the mud and told God off: “if this is how you treat your friends is it any wonder you have so few?” People asked Theresa what they once asked Jesus, to teach them to pray. Under obedience she wrote a spiritual classic called The interior castle. Here are three important things she said about prayer that may help us.
Your soul is like a beautiful diamond castle.
"We consider our very souls to be like a castle made out of diamond or of very clear-cut crystal, in which there are many dwelling places.” Your souls is a paradise where God finds delight, your souls is the heaven in which God dwells. This is perhaps the most important thing for all of us to hear clearly: that our souls are beautiful crystal castles and God lives there.
Surrounded by castles in 16th century Spain, it is obvious that her surrounding environment inspired Theresa’s vision that the soul is a beautiful castle made of diamond. Theresa says further that in the crystal castle that is our soul are many rooms, or dwelling places. The interior castle describes the experience of prayer deepening as one “progresses” from the outer first room to the deeper and innermost seventh room.
In the “olden” days houses were designed differently. Houses were not as open plan as they are today. Alongside is our previous home in Albany WA. The house is designed with several rooms that are closed off to other rooms. The room on the right of the house is the office, it has its own entrance, and it is the place where “official” church business can be conducted. From the front door, one can enter the lounge, here friends are entertained. The upstairs rooms, including a private family room and of course the bedrooms are reserved for family and rarely do guests access these upstairs rooms. Similarly, in Theresa’s vision of the interior castle, the rooms or dwelling places represent a deepening relationship in prayer. Prayer is a journey from the outer mansions or rooms of the interior castle to the inner mansions or dwelling places of the castle. The innermost mansion is where the Sun or God shines brightest. The outermost mansions may have difficulty seeing the sun because they are further away, but nevertheless the person in the first mansion is still in the castle.
The first room
The entry into the interior castle is prayer and reflection, which takes you into the first room. In room one we have the beginnings of prayer. Any prayer will do. Perhaps we have prayed “help us God” or perhaps we have prayed “help this person God” or “bless this person” - this is the beginning of prayer. If all you have ever prayed is “thank you”, you have prayed enough, according to Meister Eckhardt. Theresa describes the first room as follows: “we are speaking to souls, that, in the end, enter the castle. Even though they are involved in the world, have good desires, and sometimes entrust themselves to the Lord and reflect on who they are, they hurry through it. During the period of a month they will sometimes pray, but their minds are filled with business matters that ordinarily occupy them” (Campbell 1985) . Theresa acknowledges the difficulties in prayer that I have previously noted, suggesting that the reason people in the first dwelling place or room cannot see the beauty of the castle is because of the distractions of busyness, ingrained habits and ways of thinking that have yet to be reprogrammed through prayer.
The seventh room
Prayer in the first three rooms is challenging, but in the seventh room it is as if God does the praying for us. Prayer in the seventh room is effortless union with God. Theresa says: “In the seventh room the union comes about in a different way: Our good God now desires to remove the scales from the soul’s eye and let it see and understand something of the favour God grants it” (Campbell 1985). She says further “when God communicates here to the soul, in an instant, is a secret so great and a favour so sublime – and the delight the soul experiences so extreme, that I don’t know what to compare it to” (Campbell 1985). Prayer in the seventh room is like a spiritual marriage between the soul and God.
I have been deeply encouraged in prayer by Theresa’s Interior castle. First, being reminded of the beauty of the soul and that God is within is affirming. Second, noting the common human experience of praying reminds me that I am already in the diamond castle where God dwells. Third, the promise of utter union with God experienced in the seventh room energises the prayer journey. The words of St Augustine describe the joy of prayer in the Interior Castle:
Too late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient,
O Beauty so new.
Too late have I loved you!
You were within me but I was outside myself, and there I sought you!
In my weakness,
I ran after the beauty of the things you have made.
You were with me, and I was not with you.
The things you have made kept me from you – the things which would have no being unless they existed in you!
You have called, you have cried, and you have pierced my deafness.
You have radiated forth, you have shined out brightly,
and you have dispelled my blindness.
You have sent forth your fragrance, and I have breathed it in,
and I long for you.
I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you.
You have touched me, and I ardently desire your peace.
Source: Campbell, Camille. 1985. Meditations with Teresa of Avila (Sate Fe: Bear and Company, Inc).
P.S. if you interested in having a regular prayer practice, many have found the following resources helpful:
https://pray-as-you-go.org/home (website and downloadable app).
Turning to the mystics is a podcast that offers a discussion on St Theresa’s Interior Castle Season 2. https://cac.org/podcasts/teresa-of-avila-session-1/