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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 20 - Page 1 |
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THE THRESHOLD OF REAL PRAYER Saint Anthony the Great, while in the desert, said that there are three kinds of people who came to God. One kind were those who automatically love God, and to them the whole thing is easy. They just had to pray and to be happy, and it all worked out for them. The second kind were born with a fear of God, and you get examples of these when you study the fathers. There is the story of somebody who, the first time he heard that he would go to hell unless he prayed 'without ceasing,' simply went into the church and signed up. In Anthony's time, which was well over a thousand years ago, it seems that those two kinds were fairly common. But today, at least in the West, the first kind seems to be incredibly rare, and I'm not even qualified to talk to them, but the question doesn't arise. They might be thought of as already being saints. Even the second kind now seem to be quite unbelievably rare. But it does happen! Then there is the third type, who come to God as a result of affliction ... as a result of the difficulties in their lives. Most people who grow up with modern attitudes and modern desires and still eventually remember to turn to God fall into this latter group. For them, if they aim as high as did those ancient monks and hermits, the climb is steep, the journey difficult. They need an interim goal, one that is possible in this life. Most of the people we meet on the search today eventually become the third kind, but very often to begin with they aren't even that. The affliction of which I speak is itself an act of grace, and it is withheld from people until it is clear that they will benefit by it. Often to start with they just have a leaning toward something, a yearning toward something, but they don't know what. Part of that is because of the difference in education in our times and not because of differences in basic character. One thing we have begun to understand is that whenever you gamble on God's being tricked into doing your work for you, He will always know you are doing that, and he will never respond. So therefore although the possibility is there, the moment you consider it in the wrong way, the moment you become calculating about it, it disappears. For all these reasons, prayer is very different depending on which of these four kinds of person you are: on one or other of the three steps, or on the way to the third? |
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