Praying the Psalms

Bourguet, Wilkinson

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498281775
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The author, Daniel Bourguet, addresses readers as a friend on a potentially difficult pathway along which we need to proceed one step at a time. We have to know exactly where we are since it is easy to lose our way, but we discover and are led through 150 doorways into a marvelous edifice. This is no scholarly discussion of prayer but a steady progress towards prayer from a pure heart.

chapter 1

Searching for Real Prayer

Before we turn specifically to the Psalms, a thought about prayer rises up in my heart: Prayer is the splendor of human beings.1 I don’t know who it was that said this or where, but it is an idea I wish were my own. How often the truth of it can be seen in people’s faces; I long to be a reflection of it too.

Prayer Is the Splendor of Human Beings

Prayer is the splendor of men and women. I almost feel it would be better to add nothing and simply leave you, reader friend, to contemplate these words, much in the style of the ancients, who would only respond one pithy statement at a time. “Father, give us a word!” and the elder’s reply would be, “Prayer is the splendor of man . . .” I, however, am little more than a novice, and we novices are often rather forward, so, please forgive me if am a bit more expansive!

Prayer is the splendor of men and women. O, that this were the only thing I should say in my life, not only to you, but to God; the product of grace, the overflow of a life, the fruit of a walk: “Lord, I recognize and confess before you now: prayer is the splendor of man.”

Prayer is our splendor. There are so many wounded, disfigured people in the world, and this is the truth about all of us to some extent—from the time shame first crossed humanity’s face as we left the garden of Eden behind. Since then, it is our lot to weep over this lost splendor.

. . . a Splendor That Comes from God

It perhaps requires a lifetime of prayer for our prayer, as we turn towards God, to enable us to receive from him our primal splendor; it is not something which arises of itself; it is received. This splendor or beauty is internal, and for such splendor, such beauty, years of prayer are necessary, a slow remodeling in God’s hands, a patient working of his breath, a long labor of internal creation.

God fashioned man with his potter’s hands, but this was an external fashioning. The new man, the new woman, is fashioned from within, not with his hands like a hairdresser or beautician, but with his love, a little like the formation of a flower. The beauty of a flower grows from within, only then to be displayed to the world. With the new person it is much the same, save that our beauty is a reflection of God’s. To stand before God makes one lovely, as the psalm says: “Those who look to him are radiant, their faces are not darkened or troubled” (34:6). Beauty is received from God.

Prayer is the splendor of human beings; it is our grandeur, our dignity, our deep mystery. This is because it participates in a previously unknown grace in which men and women stand before God in an astonishing face-to-face encounter, an encounter taking place in the absolute contrast of a simple and common servant with the Lord of lords in his infinite majesty. A face-to-face encounter which is not by chance, not fleeting, not unexpected or unprepared for, but daily, habitual, for the duration of a lifetime and filling that life.

Face-to-face with God! Have we realized what this means? We can never finish measuring the reach of these words: “in the presence of God . . .” God, the infinitely great, above everything, there with me! How long it behooves us to be silent before we dare to pronounce the first word, the least word . . . !

In Prayer, the Truth Is Spoken . . .

If prayer is the splendor of human beings it is because it is a gushing spring of truth, a mysterious flowing fountain! To speak the truth is so rare, but prayer is a flow from the depths of the self, speech in which we are finally ourselves. Prayer is the birth of our deep internal truth, of our new being, the new birth Nicodemus had so much trouble understanding. The new birth comes to being in prayer.

In prayer, the truth of our very self leaps forth; the secret truth, buried like a treasure in a field; truth beyond the words we speak, which fills them and goes beyond them since no words can truly contain or enclose it; but truth which nevertheless speaks through the prayer even when the words are clumsy and inaccurate, too short or too hackneyed, too tired to say what we could never say of ourselves, the inexpressible secret of our being. Indeed, the deep-down truth emerges truly in prayer, and nowhere else as fully as in prayer, for the simple reason that this truth is spoken before God.

. . . Truth That Is Accepted by God

The birth of our inner being is accomplished in the hands of God and in no other way; it happens in prayer as we know ourselves to be received, heard, and understood by the one who acts towards us entirely with love. We finally become truthful because finally understood; finally true, without any mask, with no role to play, no reputation to defend, no opinion to conquer, because the love that receives us is more than equal to all that . . .

Prayer is the place where I am finally understood without any misunderstanding, understood even in what I don’t say, finally listened to in a silence which is true. How exquisite this is! Our silences are most often no more than half-silences, distracted silences; but God’s silence is open, available, welcoming, affording us such attention that it is a blessing in itself, a miracle. We can only marvel at the mystery of this listening which receives our deep truth.

Prayer Is Encounter with God . . .

Finally, in prayer I can truthfully say “I,” but also “you” (or “thou”),2 in an intimacy without equal but in which there is nothing cavalier; it is both intimate and respectful, close and yet awestruck. What a mystery to address God in this way, and what a wonder.

“Thou, O Lord, and I, thy child . . .” Prayer is an encounter; not an abstract one, but face to face, in which I, in my flesh and my blood, stand before this God who is so true, so real, that one day he became flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. More than face to face, it is heart to heart.

There is nothing unexpected or adventitious about this meeting; it has been anticipated by God since the first morning of the world, a meeting for which he created everything in heaven and earth. After creating everything and setting man as a jewel within creation’s show case, God was silent. The seventh day consists solely of God’s silence; he was silent, awaiting the prayer of his final creation, with the intense desire of hearing the sound of the human voice. What an astonishing silence this is of God’s, a silence waiting to be filled, a setting awaiting a precious stone, a hope. The whole of creation is God’s preparation for this meeting. In prayer, we bring fruition to God’s intent, we fulfil his hope. Perhaps one day we will hear God murmur these simple words, “I have been waiting for you.”

Prayer is the accomplishment of God’s hopes; what a mystery and wonder!

If this encounter is longed for by God, surely it is by us too. Prayer indeed is written into our desires, into our thirst for God. Prayer is therefore the meeting of two sets of desire, a double accomplishment, a summit where two paths meet; God and man together reaching their goal. The goal of humanity is God, and God’s goal is man.3

A goal, an objective, not just the chance meeting of two paths. God has been following his pathway for all eternity, and the two pathways embrace forever. Prayer is inscribed into the eternal longing of God and fulfils it eternally; prayer is therefore the bursting forth of eternity into our life.

If prayer is the splendor of human beings, it is because in it we meet with the God who is one, such that our own profound unity comes forth, a unity received from the God who is one; the unity of our being, our body, our soul, our heart, our spirit, our life-force . . . Our entire being is finally found to be unified, welcomed into the love of God, the love which arouses love in return, the giving of self.

In prayer, I am an offering to God, an offering of my being to this God who offers his silence to receive my prayer. Prayer takes place in this mutual self-giving; it becomes silent in the silence of God, a silence which fills God’s silence, a silence full of God’s silence: wonderment in the wonderment of God. We should not forget that God himself marvels, each day of creation unfolding in God’s own sense of awe: “God saw that it was good.” His wonderment grew from day to day until finally man was created. Then “God saw that it was very good” (Gen 1:31). God saw, pondered, and marveled, and then there came prayer to underscore this wonder. And so now too, God does more than see. He hears our prayer; he hears and marvels even more; the sound of our voice thrills him: “it is the voice of my well-beloved!” (Song 2:8).

. . . and Amazed Communion

Prayer is wonderment within the wonderment of God, so great that we can say that we are in God; we stand before God and are in God, as God is before us and in us; in us, indeed, because in our prayer there is the breath of the Holy Spirit who prays in us, praying to the Father, and contemplating the Son. God in me, and I in him, without confusion or separation. Prayer is this place of deep communion, this moment of eternity in which we are no more than a yes within the yes of God, the emergence of love within the love of God. In prayer, time tips into eternity; eternity penetrates time and transfigures prayer.

If prayer is the splendor of human beings, it is because it immerses us in the beauty of God; the beauty of God in this prayer is the Spirit within us pondering the Son, and turning towards the Father. In prayer, both God and man shine with the same splendor, the same light, in the same joy and the same mutual tenderness. This beauty that shines in us so displays the beauty of God, that on certain saints it can be seen; the beauty of God rests on their countenance.

Indeed! But . . .

Prayer Has Its Difficulties

All that we have just said concerns “pure prayer,” as the Fathers call it. Prayer like this is a gift from God, the work of God in us, but our prayer life is often very far from all this, and this causes us to suffer, a fact on which there is no need to insist. So, while it is true that our prayer may be far from what I have described, I describe it this way, nonetheless, since it is good to do so; prayer like this is not a dream; quite simply it is the goal of our journey, a goal from which we may be far distant but which from time to time w...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Searching for Real Prayer
• Chapter 2: The Father Teaches Us to Pray
• Chapter 3: The Son Teaches Us to Pray
• Chapter 4: The Spirit Teaches Us to Pray
• Chapter 5: God Is Listening for the 151st Psalm