Myss | May 1 2012
I recently wrote a small piece on prayer for a particular CMED group of students. I send out a prayer each month to these students as part of their work with their Fate to Destiny Sacred Contracts class. As I was searching through my literature on prayer, I reviewed some of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, the renowned and rather old world Catholic theologian. One has to sift through his writings to find his wisdom as it’s hidden, but it’s still there. I selected only a slight passage – not much – in which Aquinas notes that prayer is made more powerful by a person’s clarity of heart and mind and secondly, by living in accordance with what you are praying for. That is, your life choices and lifestyle need to be congruent with your prayers rather than counterproductive. Prayers will not compensate for foolish life choices, particularly conscious foolish life choices. You cannot pray for health and then poison yourself with the wrong foods, in other words.
The response to this teaching was astounding, given how brief it was. The outpouring of positive comments by people especially surprised me given that the source of this teaching is Aquinas. It’s not that I think Aquinas is such a bad guy, but he’s not on the top ten list of popularly read authors these days.
But one who is far more current though just as much a “blast from the past” is John of the Cross, the wondrous Spanish Carmelite priest who was St. Teresa of Avila’s spiritual advisor. He is not remembered so much for that as he is for having authored his immortal work, The Dark Night of the Soul. The expression alone, “I am in a dark night,” has become a part of our common parlance, though many who use that phrase are unfamiliar with its origins.