Attack Heaven With Your Prayers

I had seen a mutual follower of mine on Twitter recommending a book called Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence. She said the book will change your life. I'm not going to use hyperbole so I won't go that far but what I will say is that it really gave me perspective on the divine providence and conformity to divine providence. But more specifically, the acceptance and surrender to divine providence. Often times, I have wondered if I entered into the Church properly. I didn't go through the catechumenate. In fact, to put it in blunt terms, I scratched, gnawed, clawed, and howled, to be let in through the doors of the Church. Both figuratively and literally. I remember the depressive state I entered into prior to my baptism and wondering if any one had heard my cries. That I desired the Church, that I was ready to surrender to God, that I wanted to, but I wasn't.

One thing they told me about in an adult catechesis class once was that Christianity wasn't an idea or a philosophy but an encounter, a relationship, with God. I thought, okay, but why does it seem as if I'm only being presented mere information? All I seemed to be getting was information. I had heard that information does not save, but the transformation saves. I had never experienced any sacrament. I grew up non-denominational. We were all about information. We said we were about relationship too. But there seemed to be more information than relationship. This was like that with the catechesis classes I went to. Of course, those classes weren't actually intended to be for catechumens. They were specifically meant for those who were already converted to the faith. I had plenty of time to inquire and wrestle. The question was when I could actually be let into the Church.

But I had always wondered if even attempting to circumvent the catechumenate was a sin. But as I read Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, something became much more clear to me. St. Claude de la Colombiere speaks of our wrestling with God as similar to the Syro-Phoenecian woman's begging and pleading with Jesus to heal her daughter.

"Remember how He acted towards the Canaanite woman, treating her harshly and refusing to see or listen to her. He seemed to be irritated by her importunity, but in reality He admired it and was delighted by her trust and humility, and for that reason He repulsed her.... The more He seems to be unwilling, the more you must insist. Do as the woman of Canaan, use against Him the very arguments He may have for refusing you.... Do not lose courage when you have begun so well to struggle with God. Do not give a moment's rest. He loves the violence of your attack and wants to be overcome by you." (ch. IV, 3)

Eastern Christians speak similarly on prayer. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov writes,

"For those who have not yet obtained true prayer of the heart, violence in bodily prayer helps—I mean stretching out the hands, beating the breast, sincere raising of the eyes to Heaven, deep sighing and groaning, frequent prostrations." (The Arena, ch. 44)

We see the recurring theme that when begging for the full abandonment to the Will of God, it is necessary to exert oneself, to beg, to persistently plead, and to use the arguments against them. If it is truly an experience, then one should stop feeding the information in a neo-Gnostic sense and allow the experience to be observed and lived. That was what I never got from having to constantly put up with the weeks, months, year and a half, of non-stop information. When I first encountered God, it was being handed a prayer book by a treasurer at an Anglican Mission. I knew then that I wanted to be brought to God there. I wanted God to show me a sign that someone cared for my soul. Then the rector asked me one week why I wasn't receiving the Eucharist. I explained that I wasn't baptized. The rector practiced what he preached and still practices what he preaches. He fulfilled the command to go forth and baptize making disciples. He baptized me as soon as he got back from his vacation.

I was going back and forth between a Ukrainian Catholic parish and a Melkite Catholic parish for some time hoping to be received into the Ukrainian Catholic parish. The appointed catechist at the Ukrainian Catholic parish didn't know what to teach me, didn't know what I needed to be taught, and didn't always have the time to teach me. Fortunately, the Crazy Church Lady came in at the right moment. I was spiritually dehydrated, I felt like I was wallowing in my sins, exerting more intellect instead of having the experience. Not observing the love of God. But that's what the Crazy Church Lady showed me. The Archimandrite asked me the week before my chrismation if I had any questions. My question was, "When can I start practicing what I believe?"

So I didn't go through the catechumenate. Either in my entrance into Anglicanism or in my entrance into Catholicism. As strange as it may be to some. No. What I did was I merely attacked Heaven persistently with a constant plea to have the Will of God done unto me according to His wish. There is an element of neo-Gnosticism that emerges when humans get in the way of the Will of God. The Will of God is that all men be brought into His Church but if it is incessantly taught to people that the Faith is not a mere intellectual assent but a relationship and an encounter lived out with the Living God, then people who realize what they are missing out on will see they are spiritually starving. They are dehydrated. I kept wallowing around in my sins wondering if I'd be able to make a confession but that was impossible as long as I was not inside the Church. And I kept being fed information while those who were "initiated" were there telling me that it was an experience, and I needed the perfect understanding of the liturgical practice. But don't get them wrong, hey, an infant can be received without perfect knowledge, it's just the adults that cannot.

Let me just say, without faithful men and one faithful woman like the treasurer at that Anglican Mission, the rector, the Archimandrite, the deacon who made the point that sometimes humans can become obstacles in preventing God's will from being done, and my godparents, I probably would have rejected God by now. I felt like my constant begging to be finally let into the Church for sometime was an act of pride on my part because of the persistent legalists who prefer to hold to the formalities even when it may not apply. I realized, especially after reading that point made by St. Claude de la Colombiere, that it was actually humility all along. I am greatly aggrieved with the neo-Catholic mentality so persistent in today's Catholicism that is more faithful to a bureaucratic institution than a living organism, but I know what I submitted to was the opposite of that mentality. I do not need to submit to that. I submit to the living organism that is the growing body of Christ. And sinful humans do harm to the body at times but the body remains His perfect, infallible body, not theirs. And the exemplary Christian witness is what is to be looked to. The witness of the saints, not the Pharisaical tribunals. So attack Heaven with your prayers until the Will of God transforms you.