We now examine the traditional five major grades of prayer and the nine detailed grades which Saint Teresa of Avila discerned. Saint Teresa, like Saint John of the Cross, lived a regulated and regular life in a religious house. They more easily saw any change in their repeated daily pattern. None of our days are routine, and we may not be able to discern minor advancement in prayer above the daily noise.
The five major grades of prayer are:
1. Vocal — we do the talking, by interior or exterior voice.
2. Meditative — we do the thinking, assisted by the Spirit.
3. Affective — we do the loving, assisted by the Spirit 4. Contemplative — we receive God’s mind and will.
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5. Mystical (Unitive) — the prayer is no longer between two persons, but within one person, that of Christ.85
St. Teresa expands these five major grades of prayer into
nine specific grades of prayer. We list them, then examine each grade of prayer:
1. Vocal prayer
2. Meditation
3. Affective prayer
4. Acquired recollection
5. Infused Contemplation
6. Prayer of quiet
7. Simple union
8. Conforming union
9. Transforming union
Upon reaching grade nine, the student is fully Christ, (the divine body of Christ), and his prayer is not only humanly perfect, but divine. The student perfects his prayer by perfecting all the other virtues of spiritual advancement.
Thousands of men and women attained such union with
Christ, without ever reading an article on prayer or spiritual advancement. The Holy Spirit was their guide, and those few who could read, usually had only a copy of the gospel. Spiritual advancement is a matter of directed and sustained doing and not doing.
Vocal prayer (by physical or interior voice), is not really the beginning of prayer, it is the foundation of prayer which is practiced and cultivated in one’s entire life. Liturgical prayer of the Mass, prayer of petition, thanksgiving, praise or 85 The student does not lose the virtues he has gained, but he does lose his self identity. He now exists as an individual member of the single person of Jesus Christ. Christ is now all who are members of the body of Christ.
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contrition are lifelong. When Jesus and the saints drove out devils or multiplied food, it was by vocal prayer which was an expression of their perfected wills.
Attention and devotion in vocal prayer are requirements.
One should fix his will on a simplified image or word of the purpose of the prayer. An undirected mind or will makes for a less productive prayer in one’s soul.
Is prayer an action or reaction; can and should prayer be
forced? We cannot really force our way into union with God, but nor can we drift into union. Because of original sin, at its selfish results, we are not fully inclined to act towards something outside and especially above ourselves. A certain force is required to make rise our soul above selfish desires.
A schedule is conducive to spiritual advancement. We make a schedule based on good judgment, not momentary emotion. If we stick to the schedule we attain our goal, in part by force of habit. A prayer schedule can even be flexible, but it must be followed. We might pray on our way to work, or at lunch time, or arrive 30 minutes early to Mass to pray. If we have children, they could read a spiritual book during this time.
Be creative, pray a decade of the rosary in the parking lot after shopping, assemble your favorite prayers on your mobile device for use during idle moments.
Meditation, is also called discursive (reasoned) meditation, and St. Teresa included it as a grade of prayer. Like vocal prayer, meditation is cultivated over one’s entire life, rather than being just a stage.86 Perhaps most meditation is done on ones feet so to speak: in the car, on the couch, just before sleep, during moral trial. If one can make time and place, 86 Meditation is improved not only by practice of meditation, but by practice of larger spiritual advancement, which makes for a deeper participation in God. A soul at peace with God, is fertile ground for deep meditation.
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anyone may also make structured meditation, which consists of:
Preparation — Put oneself into the presence of God, make
an act of contrition and ask for God’s help in your prayer of meditation.
Consideration — Apply your thoughts to the subject of meditation, which may be a problem, a virtue, or a scripture reading. Examine it from all sides: God’s perspective, and application to our own life and soul.
Affection — This is the part of meditation in which our will (not our intellect) dominates. Virtues of the will are recalled by us, or presented to us: contrition, resolve, hope, faith and love may all occur. A session of meditation intentionally devoted to love of God would be called affective prayer or acquired recollection, which are the next two levels of prayer discussed.
Petition — Petition may be made after consideration in solving a problem, or simply to ask for graces of virtue.
Resolutions —We may benefit simply by loving or being
loved by God, with no specific resolution. If future action is appropriate then we resolve to do it. For any future action, planning is usually helpful; we might call to mind a virtue, perhaps go over a mental scenario of how we will
proceed the next time we are called to exercise the virtue.
We should be as specific as possible and even make mental practice of it. We might imagine our successful response to stress in the workplace, or habitual
impatience with a person. We see ourselves being
charitable instead of being stressed or impatient.
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Conclusion Thank God for graces received, and ask for blessings on your resolutions.
Affective prayer, here the will, not the intellect dominates, Affective prayer may occur in short sessions in response to some other occurrence. A profound session of contrition would be considered an affective prayer. If we are on the receiving end of affections, we should act with joy, but not gluttony or selfish satisfaction.
The saints have often found profitable prayer in
meditation on the passion of Jesus, that is his suffering at Gethsemane and on the cross. This period was his time of greatest moral remediation. Jesus certainly made moral remediation in the everyday exterior trials of 33 years on earth, but when he took on the sins of the world at his communion with the apostles, the trials became internal, and external to a degree not had before. The saints are drawn to a meditative sharing in his passion and remediation of the sins of the world.
Acquired recollection is humanly perfected affective prayer.
One has disciplined the will to the point that its virtues may be substantially directed at command. This is not a prayer of disciplined power, but of simplicity. This prayer is directed at God, whom we do not need direct any virtue at, other than love.
This level of prayer reaches the limits of what man can initiate in prayer; all steps beyond this one are initiated by God.
God initiates, but the student must still be properly disposed to make full use of these advanced grades of prayer, and spiritual advancement must continue.
Imperfections in prayer might be discussed here, they each impede prayer by distorting our virtues; they are moral 111
vices, of which remnant forms live on in religion and prayer.
They are:
Spiritual Gluttony: A common disguised manifestation of
this might be spiritual dissatisfaction, which is lingering and unsatisfied spiritual gluttony.
Spiritual Sloth: Spiritual advancement requires disciplined, regular and advancing moral effort.
Spiritual Pride: Often in the forms of judgmentalism or a
tendency to withhold forgiveness. Regarding judgment, let us first recall the words of Jesus, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For In the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”, (Mt 7:1,2). Humility and prayer, not preaching is the remedy. Over correction is indifference
to good morality.
Infused contemplation has its first occurrence as moral conscience, in which Christ our creator, reveals his own moral aspects to us. The word ‘infused’ prefixes many terms and refers to God’s initiative in giving a grace, awareness or ability.
The previous grade of prayer was ‘acquired recollection’ which was the initiative of the student; if it were called ‘infused recollection’, it would be the initiative of God.
Every Christian is called to infused contemplation, in fact every person is called to be a disciple of Christ, then the person of Christ in the divine union. Infused contemplation is on the route. The apostle Paul speaks of this awareness and activity of Christ, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me…”, (Gal 2:20). We again see the pattern or purgation of lesser acts, and an acquired or infused replacement act or awareness.
Remember, infused contemplation, and any spiritual
advancement, is just our gradual incorporation of the full
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divinity that was offered at baptism. 87 By sanctifying grace, Christ makes union with the student. Graces are instilled as the student frees himself of selfishness and seeks a deeper union with Christ.
Prayer of quiet is an infused captivation of the will. As the student progresses in the person of Christ, personal peace is the norm. The trials still occur, but they are recognized more as coming from our vocation as the ongoing Christ in the world, who still remediates sin, and less from our status as sinner, which the student is continually improving upon. The prayer of quiet is thought to be the highest grade of prayer attained in the illuminative stage of spiritual advancement.
God may allow some interior trail during prayer. It may be simple dryness, or it may be disordered thought or will during prayer or mental activity. Our task is to disregard the dryness or disorder and push on with our prayer, and to make it our habit to do so. The peace of infused prayer is there, but we must overcome the obstacles to arrive at it, and it is God’s will that we arrive at it.
To their last days, the saints suffered asymmetrical trials of the will. That is, their will was disciplined and advanced in the participation of Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, but they were also tasked with the needed ongoing remediation of sin in our world, and this sin was presented to them for remediation, just as it was presented to Christ in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross.
The three levels of unitive prayer: simple union,
conforming union, and transforming union were all discerned 87 Fully potent sacraments are the core reason why anyone seeking spiritual advancement to the level of divine indwelling (divinization) should join the Catholic Church. Some other denominations offer valid sacraments, but not all.
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by Saint Teresa of Avila, and her system of prayer remains the standard in the Catholic Church. As the student attains to the highest union, trials are usually exterior, as the will has been perfected. This is not an absolute, as we observe, the perfect will of Jesus Christ remediated sin which assaulted him from his interior faculties at Gethsemane and on the cross.88
Simple union, has the intellect and will fully or near fully participating in the three persons of God. The body and its senses are aware of God, but do not fully participate in God.
Conforming union, is sometimes termed the ecstatic union.
The entire person, body and soul has direct participation in God. This state is as close to the divine union that one may be, without entering into it. Entry into the divine union is permanent. This conforming union is also called the spiritual betrothal. Some saints who have made the conforming union, tell of its ecstatic states becoming more of a stable norm. The 88 The death of Jesus was a consequence of his entering into the sin of the apostles via the Eucharist. The apostles shared in Jesus Christ, but Jesus also shared in the virtues and vices of the apostles. Every part of the human Jesus except his will suffered the effects of sin ― “he became sin”, (2Cor 5:21). The human will of Jesus was a subset of the divine will. It was absolute in its principles and could not be corrupted, al else: emotions, body, reasoning were subject to corruption by the sin of humanity, which Jesus took on.
It was the communion cup pouring into his soul, its sin and his battle against it that made him sweat blood, and beg “let this cup pass from me.”
He appealed to the apostles in communion with him to share in his fight, but they slept on. Note that before his participation in original sin, Christ could not be kil ed (Lk 4:29-30), just hours after his participation in sin however, he could not avoid death. Clearly, the communion event of the last supper was Christ’s entry into sin for the purpose of redemption, it was the cause of his death just hours later. For the prior three years, attempts to kil or imprison him had repeatedly failed. All this points to the communion event as more than mere symbolism.
Jesus and all those in Heaven have no contact with sin, they can no longer directly remediate sin, this is the task of the Ongoing Christ on earth, that’s us. Powerful positive prayer is the work of those in Heaven.
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initial, tremendous ecstasy is adapted to and is no longer jolting. Peace prevails.
Transforming union is the goal of the Christian life, it is to become Christ, who is now the entire body of Christ. The transforming union is the divine union, the spiritual marriage which many saints have undergone. It was intended to occur in this life, and it still may. If the transforming union occurs in this life, the soul alone is made divine, the body still dies.89
St. John of the Cross said it is “nothing less than a transformation into God.” , specifically Christ who is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”, Rev 22:13.