Time for God Book

It is because I want to excel in my prayer life that I got this book to read. However, the author has a surprise for me. It is not about a "method" of prayer or your techniques of meditation, Ibrahim. The first fundamental truth we must understand, and without which we cannot make progress, is that the life of prayer, or so-called contemplative , is not the result of a technique; it is a gift we receive.(p. 11). On p. 13 the author goes on to show that it is dangerous to confuse Christian prayers with New Age techniques. Not all roads lead to Rome here! New Age spirituality rejects the mystery of Incarnation: God has in Christ revealed Himself. At the bottom of New Age is the promise of illusory self-fulfillment that denies the need for grace. New Age fosters egoism while Christianity teaches us to die to the self and be self-less in taking up the Christ of Christ and following after Him as a beloved disciple of His. What matters in New Age spirituality is self-fulfillment where the "other" does not come to the equation as far as communion with the Divine, Our Lord, is concerned. While the goal of New Age is to attain the absolute "I" or union with the great "All,", the ultimate end of Christian prayer is to transform the self in me into God, who stands before me as His supplicant, knocking the door of my heart daily, in fact every moment. In Christianity, this is meant to achieve union that would distinguish me as an involved being with the Lord, and the result is mutual self-giving in love.


On P. 19 Fr. Philippe touches on an important point. What if I don't experience moments in prayer that are not beautiful or satisfying? No profound thoughts or sentiments to make me feel like I am "in the spirit" like some who use a spiritual thermometer to test their spiritual temperature. Fr Philippe says, I is not as important to experience moments of prayer that are beautiful and satisfying, rich in profound thoughts or sentiments, as it is to be faithful and persevering in prayer. In other words, we must not focus so much on the "quality" but on our fidelity to prayer. Quality will be the fruit of fidelity. Times of arid, impoverished, distracted, or relatively brief prayer, if practiced faithfully every day, are more meritorious and bear more fruit than long,ardent prayers offered inconsistently when we feel the circumstances conducive. After seriously committing ourselves to the life of prayer, the first battle we must win is fidelity at all costs, according to the rhythm we have established for ourselves. This is not an easy victory. The devil knows the dangers for us and so tries to dissuade us the best he can. He knows that a person who is faithful to prayer can easily slip through fingers or, at least, will slip through one day. For this reason, the devil will everything and anything to hinder us from fidelity prayer.

As I got out my prayer journal and started to make notes from the book I checked out of the library, inter-library loan, I noticed something; I like almost every paragraph that I would have to end up copying down the whole book in my handwriting. Every line is written by the author with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It speaks to a very real situation in my spiritual life needs.

On p. 32, the author answers those of us who claim that they don't need a time set apart for prayer and after all they are praying in whatever they are doing. He tells us that we should be realistic as it is not easy to remain united with God as we go about our workday concerns. Our natural tendency is to become completely caught up in what we are doing. Moreover, if we don't know how to take an occasional pause in order to engage ourselves solely with God, then it will be hard to keep God's presence in mind while working. We must re-educate the heart, says Fr Philippe, and the surest means for this fidelity is prayer. The author reminds us of how it is an illusion for a man to think that he loves his wife and children if is engrossed in his work that he can't dedicate a few minutes to, or to be there for them 100 per cent. Fr Philippe says that love breathes in gratuitous freedom. We should learn how to "waste time" for the sake of others. In this sense we gain more than we lose. This is one way of understanding the Gospel passage about losing one's life to find it. Fr Philippe warns us against of allowing our fickle mood tell us whether to pray or not since "what charmed me yesterday may become intolerable tomorrow because of a change in mood or weather. We can be shallow and fickle." Then Fr Philippe teaches me a very beautiful Christian truth which is: Freedom is the capacity to be guided by what is true and not by external reality. He is right since what is external in my world of reality is fickle but the Lord, our Rock, is, indeed, immutable. So, am I, Ibrahim, guided by external reality or what is true? On page 35, Fr Philippe reminds me that I should ground my relationship with God not on unsteady impressions or shifts in my mood, but on the cornerstone of Faith. I should not allow my unsteady emotions give expression to what the Lord meant for it to be a secure, rock solid foundation. Fr Philippe sheds light on the verse in 2 Cor. 3: 17 says "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there lies freedom". To me this meant if I bring the Lord to what I am doing, have his companionship in this or that deed, then there is freedom within, and this means operating on a large level, doing things in the abundance of God, God's presence by His Spirit releases me, Ibrahim, from the inner shackles to be free, to do good to all people for the sake of good itself, not for the sake of reward to milk out of God from the other side, or this would be cheap! Because I invite God to be the center of what I am doing, I get rewarded with "freedom", freedom on the divine level, and that means transparency, purity,beauty, cleanness, chastity. On pages 58 and 69 Fr Philippe reminds us that Love is king, regardless of circumstances, and everything always flows from it. Love profits from everything, good as well as bad. Love profits from feelings as well as dryness, from inspiration as well as aridity, from virtue as well as sin. This reminds me of what the apostle Paul says that all things work together for good.

But still how do I pray? Ho do I have time for God? On page 71 Fr Philippe says:
[ when we do not know how to pray, it is very simple to proceed this way: Let us recollect ourselves. Let us be silent and enter our hearts, descend into our interior selves, reunite ourselves with that presence of Jesus who lives in us and remain peacefully with him. Let us not leave him alone, let us keep him company in the best way we can. If we persevere in this exercise, then we shall not delay in discovering the reality of what the Eastern Christians call "the place of the heart" or the "inner cell".]

What if I feel spiritually arid and not even able to reflect? Do I just sit around doing nothing? Or do I pray up a storm and work up some ferventness in prayer and give myself guilt trips?

On p. 78 Fr Jacuqes answers our questions, not like a know it all man who speaks from theory but as a man who has gone through these times himself and can sympathize:
[In the case of meditation, this new stage frequently
begins with a knd of spiritual aridity, the inability to
reflect, and the inclination to remain inactive before
God. Nevertheless, this "doing nothing" is not inertia
or spiritual laziness, but a loving attitude of abandonment.
This transformation is a great grace even for those
long accustomed to saying many things to the Lord or
fincbng joy in meditation. Such persons may feel &sillusioned
because it seems they are regressing,
becoming impoverished in if not incapable of prayer.
They are no longer able to pray as they used to, that
is, with the help of the intellect and basing their interior
discourse on thoughts, images, and feelings.

In his works, St. John of the Cross insists (even
criticizes spiritual directors who do not understand this
on convincing those who receive this grace
that this poverty is in fact true wealth, and that they
must not try to return to meditation. Instead, they
ought to content themselves to remain before God
in an attitude of self-forgetfulness and with simple,
loving, and serene attention.]

I often read about "poverty in the spirit" but really didn't understand what it really meant until I read this book and saw what he had to say about St. John of the Cross.

What about my being weighed down by too many faults? I am not doing what I should be doing...What kind of a Christian is that?! On p. 84, he beautifully writes:
[Sometimes, God wounds us more efficaciously by
leaving us in our poverty than by healing our misery!
Indeed, God seeks less to make us perfect than to
unite us to himself. Perfection, or our own idea
or definition of perfection, would make us self-
sufficient. Instead, to be wounded makes us poor, yet
it places us in communion with God. This is what
counts: not to acquire an ideal state of perfection but
to be unable to live without God, to be so tightly
bound to God, in our misery as well as our virtues,
that God may unceasingly pour out his love on us
and that we may feel the need to give ourselves completely
to him because there is no other way! This
bond makes us holy and leads us to perfection. This
truth explains many things about our spiritual life. It
helps us to understand why Jesus did not free St. Paul
from his thorn in the flesh, rather, God said to him,
"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made
perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9).

Now, this book should speak to the heart of anybody searching for God in their life.I was making notes of the book in my prayer journal and I found that I was almost copying the whole book down with my pen. Some books you just eat up and this one is on top of them.