“If you wish to know how these things come about, ask grace not instruction, desire not understanding, the groaning of prayer not diligent reading, … darkness not clarity, not light but the fire that totally inflames and carries us into God by ecstatic unctions and burning affections.” St. Bonaventure, “The Soul’s Journey Into God,” 7:6
In the seventh and final chapter of “The Soul’s Journey Into God,” Bonaventure gives a meditation on fully passing over into God. It is the mystical experience of leaving behind all things to rest fully in God. It is something only fully achieved in eternity, but can be experienced fleetingly in this life in times of prayerful meditation. This may seem hard to imagine. Indeed even Bonaventure recognizes that it is only achieved by the Holy Spirit giving a person the desire to experience God in this way, and even then only those who experience it can recognize what it is like to receive this state of giving oneself completely over to God.
A key challenge that we have with this kind of mystical discussion is how we understand prayer. For many people, prayer is something that we do. It is about what we say to God. To have something to say to God, we have to have something that we think in order to say it to God. None of these things are the heart of prayer. Prayer is first and foremost putting our trust in God. Trusting fully in God comes before any thought, any action, any words. We cannot choose to trust something. Rather, trust is something that grows. Trust in God comes from the Spirit working within us, deepening our relationship with God. We receive trust rather than create it ourselves. As that trust grows, we naturally turn to God with our hearts. Our thoughts and words follow where our trust and hearts are; action do not lead us there. Prayer, then, is about time set aside to experience our trust in God. Sometimes it may then express itself in speaking to God or thinking about God, but that is a result of prayer and not prayer itself. The prayer is the dedication of ourselves to God in trust.
The image of mushrooms in a yard might be helpful. Mushrooms are the fruit of the fungal system that runs through the soil. When there is enough moisture, mushrooms push through the surface. They are what we can see of the fungus; they are the result of the large network of fungus under the ground. They are the tip of the iceberg. Spoken prayer – whether formal words shared in worship or personal extemporaneous words – are the visible or audible parts of prayer. Most of it lies below the surface, bursting forth only when the conditions are right. To have meaningful spoken prayer, though, requires good healthy soil full of life. This good soil is a gift from the Holy Spirit to us.
Prayerful meditation, then, is a time of stillness before God where our trust is directed fully at God’s goodness. For this to happen, Bonaventure tells us, requires us to shut down our intellect and all of the distracting thoughts it brings. Instead it is a time of peacefully recognizing being in God’s presence. When this happens, he continues, the experience is pure joy. In order to reach this stage, though, one must go through the pain of dying to ourselves. This is the experience of seeing God crucified and giving ourselves over to that cross, that we might give up all in our lives that we cling to above God. In clinging to Christ instead of ourselves, the way is opened to us to experience the joy of being with God fully. Bonaventure ends by turning to the words Christ gave to Paul: My grace is sufficient for you. (2 Cor 12:9). This is the point of the entire journey of the soul – to come to the point of relying on God’s grace alone and not ourselves.