Interview with Emilie Griffin Continued

Emilie: I've been there—well, not exactly, but I first became involved in the spiritual life when I was the mother of three young children and working in a demanding and stressful job—I began to believe that being closer to God could help me as nothing else would. Spiritual Classics is one way of getting to know the twelve spiritual disciplines and how they can be practiced with some depth. But it's bite-sized. So you could read these selections and reflect on them each week . . . with friends and colleagues, in a small group, or by yourself. I believe that we have excerpted some real wisdom but made it accessible to busy, modern people. If you are working in a major corporation and carrying big responsibilities, I think you can begin to be in touch with such disciplines as guidance and study. Each one of the readings might offer another way of getting to know the Lord, to show him acting in each of fifty-two lives. And that is encouraging in any walk of life.

Q: Which of the readings do you like the most? Why?

Emilie: I like so many of them, it's really hard to choose. I loved Paul Tournier admitting that he tried to meditate for an hour, and nothing happened! But after some reflection, I decided my favorite is André Louf who writes about prayer. In all his work (as in the selection below) he emphasizes the superabundance of the heart—the way our hearts just overflow when we cooperate with the Holy Spirit. He compares our praying to a musician strumming on a lute. Something about that simple comparison just lifts me up and refreshes me.

Interviewed by Lynda L. Graybeal

Excerpt from Spiritual Classics

Biography and Editing by Emilie Griffin

André Louf (1929B )

André Louf is an experienced teacher of prayer. He belongs to the Cistercian religious community, which is known both in Europe and America for a life of joyful simplicity. Cistercians (sometimes called Trappists) live carefully regulated lives, doing mostly agricultural work. They observe silence, times of solitude, carefully balanced with times of work. Many people know them for their farm products: jams and jellies, cheeses, and the like. But most often they are known for the depth of their prayer lives.

In the United States, Cistercians Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating are well known as teachers of centering prayer.

In his small book, Teach Us to Pray: Learning a Little About God, Father Louf brings a lifetime of experience to us in a way that makes prayer attractively simply. He teaches us how easy and natural prayer can be when he answers the question, "Is Praying Difficult?"

When he speaks about "The Superabundance of the Heart" he is drawing on a very ancient tradition of heart prayer that is a precious resource to the whole Christian community.

Father Louf is Belgian; he has broad scholarly knowledge of the Desert Fathers, but always (as you will notice in the following selection) his concern is to invite us into the delight of prayer.

TEACH US TO PRAY

Is Praying Difficult?

A fourteenth-century Byzantine monk, who for a short time was Patriarch of Constantinople with the name of Callixtus II, answers this question with the illustration of the lute-player. "The lute-player bends over his instrument and listens attentively to the tune, while his fingers manipulate the plectrum and make the strings vibrate in full-tone harmony. The lute has turned into music; and the man who strums upon it is taken out of himself, for the music is soft and entrancing."

Anyone who prays must set about it in the same way. He has a lute and a plectrum at his disposal. The lute is his heart, the strings of which are the inward senses. To get the strings vibrating and the lute playing he needs a plectrum, in this case: the recollection of God, the name of Jesus, the Word.

So the lute-player has to listen attentively and vigilantly to his heart and pluck its strings with the Name of Jesus. Until the senses open up and his heart becomes alert. The person who strums incessantly upon his heart with the Name of Jesus sets his heart a' singing, "an ineffable happiness flows into his soul, the recollection of Jesus purifies his spirit and makes it sparkle with divine light."

Is praying difficult?

No one is going to give you the answer to that question. This short book has no answer for you, either. It cannot pretend to be an introduction to prayer, much less a manual of instruction. We have been listening together to the witness of a centuries'-old tradition of prayer in the Church of Jesus. Something may have revealed itself to you on the way. Has the Spirit of Jesus, who never ceases from praying in your heart, suddenly disclosed and avowed Himself? Like the embryo that leapt in the womb of Elizabeth when it encountered Jesus in Mary's womb?

If not, that is no reason to feel discouraged: your Hour is still to come.