Now we come to the fourth way
that St. Francis de Sales counsels us to prepare for prayer:
The fourth way is simply to
exercise your ordinary imagination, picturing the Saviour to yourself in His
Sacred Humanity as if He were beside you just as we are
wont to think of our friends, and fancy that we see or hear them at our
side. But when the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is there, then this Presence
is no longer imaginary, but most real; and the sacred species are but as a veil
from behind which the Present Saviour beholds and considers us, although we
cannot see Him as He is.[i]
In the third way in preparing for
prayer, Francis directs our thoughts to the ascended Christ, at the right hand
of the Father; in this fourth way Francis wants us to think upon Jesus “as if
He were beside you”. This is, I think, a bit more involved than we might
initially see, so please bear with me.
We use our imaginations all the
time but don’t think much about it. When we listen to someone on the radio
describe an event our imaginations are at work. If a spouse or friend tells us
about how his or her day was, we use our imaginations as we visualize the
experiences that are shared. When we speak to someone on the telephone, we
visualize the person we are speaking with – if we’ve never met the person then
somehow, someway, we nevertheless form an image.
When we read passages in the
Bible about mountains melting or hills skipping or the Red Sea splitting, we
are using our imaginations as we visualize what we read. Do we not visualize
Jesus standing outside the tomb of Lazarus and calling, “Lazarus, come out”? Do we not “see” Lazarus coming forth, bound in
graveclothes?
Francis coaches us to picture our
Lord Jesus “as if He were beside you just as we are wont to think of our
friends”. I think there is a difference between picturing Jesus beside us
and picturing our friends beside us – Jesus Christ is omnipresent and our
friends are not; Jesus Christ is everywhere at every time and our friends are
not. Jesus Christ not only can speak to us wherever we are, He will speak to us
wherever we are – our friends cannot do this. Did not Jesus say, “I am with you
always, even to the end of the age”?
Our imaginations, just as our
hearts and minds, just as our souls; need to be rooted and anchored in God’s
Word, recreated in God’s image in Jesus Christ, purified and made holy. That
which is within us, who we are, and how who we live as a human being, a living
soul, the interplay of heart, mind, soul, spirit, imagination, the body, the
will – we simply do not have a comprehensive understanding of all of this –
thus we need God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to do a Divine work within us, a
work that we may have fleeting glimpses of, but a work which is beyond our
total comprehension (Hebrews 4:12 – 13; James 1:21; 1 Peter 1:22 – 25; 2 Peter
1:2 – 4; 1 Corinthians 1:18 – 2:16). All of this to say that just as we can
trust our Lord Jesus to purify our hearts and minds and bodies, so we can trust
Him to purify and guide our imaginations; as the image of Jesus Christ is
formed in us, so our imaginations are formed in Him.
I suggest that among our daily
readings, ought always to be a portion of the Gospel – our Lord Jesus in His Incarnation
ought always to be before us. We can use our daily portion of the Gospel to
learn to “see” our Lord Jesus with us as we enter into prayer. We can take that
image with us throughout the day. We can visualize the portion of the Gospel we
are reading, we can see Jesus in what we are reading and pondering, we can see
ourselves with Jesus in those verses, and we can move from the Gospel and Jesus
to Jesus in our living room, our bedroom, our back porch, the path or street we
are walking on – wherever we are in prayer, we can be assured that Jesus is
there with us.
Another way to begin this practice
of seeing Jesus with us is to select a particular passage of Scripture to use on
a continuing basis – this could be a psalm, such as Psalm 23, or a portion of
Gospel. I often use a section of John chapters 13 – 17, I see Christ Jesus and
his disciples in the Upper Room, I see myself with them in the Upper Room; from
there it is natural to see my Lord Jesus with me in the room where I have my
morning time of prayer and reflection. The more we exercise ourselves in prayer
and devotion and communion, the more natural it becomes. Christ wants us to
know that He is with us, always; always and forever and always forever – He wants
us to know this not as a piece of abstract information, but to experience it –
after all, we are called into friendship with Him!
We need not be afraid of the
wonderful capacities that our Father has placed within us when those capacities
have been presented to Jesus Christ (Romans 12:1 – 2) as an act of worship,
devotion, and surrender. Yes, we should indeed fear when any capacity within us
deviates from the Cross, the Word, the Way of Christ (Psalm 1). Whether we
speak of the mind, the heart, the soul, the spirit, the body, the will, or the
imagination – all that we are has been redeemed and made new by and in Jesus Christ
(2 Corinthians 5:14 – 21). We should no more fear to use our imaginations than
we should fear to use our minds, any more than we should fear to use our
hearts, any more than we should fear to experience the love and joy and peace
and communion of the Trinity within us and around us. Our Lord Jesus called us
to freedom and not fear and slavery! (Romans 8:14 - 39; 2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18;
2 Timothy 1:7; 1 John 4:18).
How are we seeing our Lord Jesus
today?
[i]
In the next section I will explore how Francis’s perspective on the “Blessed
Sacrament” can help us all – no matter what “tradition” we might find
ourselves in.
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