Prayer

Since the Middle Ages, however, a sort of egoism has occurred that makes prayer and the attitude of prayer impure. If we use prayer in order to become more perfect in ourselves, to descend into ourselves, as was the case with the medieval Christians and perhaps still is today—if we do not look out into the external world with the illumination we have received, then prayer can only estrange and isolate us from the world. This has happened with many of those who have used prayer as false and seclusive asceticism. They have wanted perfection, not only as the rose, which adorns itself that the garden may be fair, is perfect, but for their own sakes that they might find blessedness in their souls. When we seek God in our souls and then do not pass to the other world the power we have thus won, we find that we are in a sense punished. Thus you will find in the writings of many authors who have known only the type of prayer in which inner warmth is to be found—even in the work of Miguel Molinos—remarkable descriptions of all sorts of passions and impulses, fights, temptations and wild desires that the soul has to experience if it seeks perfection by inner prayer and complete surrender to what it understands to be God. If we approach the spiritual world by seeking God one-sidedly, if we only unfold that feeling for prayer that leads to inner warmth and excludes illumination, this neglected other side takes its revenge on us.