St. Sulpice found through prayer experience that praise (what he called also affective prayer or prayer of affection) and adoration to be the entry point of prayer before one enters into the great silence, the soul's being subsumed with and into God as in Divine Union. Other spiritual masters and saints who write of the soul's progression to union with God place prayer of praise and adoration as the highest form of conscious and/or subconscious prayer before the Unitive Way (union with God, unconscious in awareness, deep contemplation beyond consciousness.
The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life provide a means to understand and grow in prayer forms and prayer life through the purgative (of the senses), through the illuminative (the mind conscious and moves toward subconscious light), and for a few the unitive way (experiencing union of the soul with God with the mind, heart/emotions and body suspended).
Various theologians, mystics, saints, and everyday pray-ers may and can experience the various phases of prayer progression, and the gradations are a means of grasping for what is more and better--the good part as Jesus said Mary of Bethany had chosen--and to open our beings to a growth in communicating with God that progresses from verbal through mental to contemplative as well as from being in conscious awareness of self to subconscious to in essence unconscious state of the soul in union with God, love shared by the Lover with the Beloved.
We might decide we want to disagree or do away with forms of prayer and levels or gradations from beginner through proficient and on into esteemed or glorious, or of what form is of self at base and onto selfless and then on into Godhead at the pinnacle of prayer and praying. No one needs to make use of what those persons who achieved and wrote expressing what is union through, with, and in God; God does not force spiritual growth upon us nor of progression in prayer upon us. Those who want to learn and progress, do so.
It is akin to those who want to remain in the temporal or those who desire and strive to be in the heavenly or mystical realm or float in and out, between, with most then determined to prove the temporal can somehow be twisted through argumentation to be the same as or reap the same outcomes and experience as mystical union of soul with God: heaven on earth--even if this latter is brief and usually infrequent among those who have gone beyond praying at sensory levels, or petitioning for what the self wants or needs even if worded as if asking God what he wants for the person to give the person. That is quite different than a selfless prayer form of praise and adoration, a sigh of love or no signal other than love within making contact and interchange with the Love of the Trinity for the soul.
The late John Hardon, SJ.,* mentions the value and esteem placed by those experienced in spiritual life and guidance thereof. The following is what he has to say, based in part on what John of the Cross wrote, and John's based upon accumulative guidance and writings of great spiritual masters of prayer before him. I find Hardon's summation to be simple enough for even myself with Arachnoiditis pain progressing and my mind not able to read and retain what had been possible; the pain is eating my body and mind's ability to function or focus as well and am increasingly fatigued.
But I urge us all to continue to learn and not discount what those who experienced prayer teach us as being progressively deeper and increasingly pleasing to God, forms and phases or levels of prayer that we can simply "do" up to the point of the Third Way or Unitive in which the Holy Spirit takes over our affective, praise, and adoration praying. Levels or phases of praying are helpful to us, but this does not mean that a person, a soul, cannot skip phases and be at the peak of the Illuminative Way with prayer of praise and adoration of God. A child could thus be lifted by the Holy Spirit into union with God from a pure adoration without pretense or practice.
However, petitions always come from the self and the mind, with the heart sometimes lending emotion to wanting something of God including God to reveal His will or to help someone other to be healed. I believe in truth that I'd handle the increased and sickening nerve pain in my body if I moved on from prayers of pain, wordless as they may be but still of self, begging for relief or courage or endurance in suffering.
Well, see what you think of the late John Hardon's summation of levels and gradation of prayer and what is the highest form of prayer deemed feasible for a person him- or herself can offer. (Hardon does not mention the Unitive Way or union with God as prayer of union or some include it as contemplation; this is likely due to the Holy Spirit performs or prays the prayer of Divine Union--we do not cause this prayer or communication with God as it comes to and in us from Divine Will and Providence.
"There are more vistas to prayer than adoration admiration and praise, but no other forms are higher and deeper than these. None is higher because it is the kind of prayer that the Angels have been “singing” since the dawn of creation, and that intelligent creation is destined to be praying into the reaches of eternity.
"No other form of prayer is deeper than adoration and praise, because when we so pray, we are in contact with infinity - we are in conversation with God."
God bless His Real Presence in us, and love as God Loves!
* Adoration and Praise in Our Prayer
Excerpted from a conference
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
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