Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Lent
1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a | Ephesians 5:8-14 | John 9:1-41

At the heart of the parable of the prodigal son is a party. The younger son who returns, disgraced in his eyes, to his father meets only prodigal and gratuitous love. The father declares, “let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.” The father, representing God, does not care about the son’s sins. He only cares that he is back. And the younger son enters the feast to celebrate with his father.

The feast represents our relationship with God or prayer. God only wants us to enjoy the divine presence like we enjoy a party: putting aside all other concerns to enjoy, to open to the divine mystery. Of course, to change to a negative metaphor, prayer is the heart of the mystical theme we have been exploring this Lent: self-annihilation. Another obscure mystic helps us understand how prayer reduces the self to nothing: St. Paul of the Cross, an Italian and the founder of the Passionists who lived from 1694 to 1775.

St. Paul of the Cross taught self-annihilation in his many letters of spiritual direction. For him, annihilation is both being lost in God and being stripped in daily life. In this reflection, we will explore how the self is annihilated in prayer. In next week’s reflection, we will explore how the self is annihilated in daily life.

Perhaps his surname gives him away, but St. Paul of the Cross lived the cross. And he lived it, primarily, by giving most of his time to prayer. He would spend several hours a day, perhaps as much as eight (or more!), in silent prayer. And he taught this way of prayer to priests, nuns, and lay people alike.

Since “God is pure spirit and cannot be comprehended by us, for he is incomprehensible,” to pray we must abandon thinking and lose ourselves in God through a “holy interior silence” or “sacred divine silence.” This way of inner silence is the core of annihilation in which we remain ““all lost in God in a sacred silence…attentive to God in pure and holy faith.” Annihilation, St. Paul states, is “absorption in God.”

And he equates this way of praying in non-thinking silence with the prayer of Jesus on the cross: “Jesus prayed three hours on the cross…he remained in silence until the ninth hour, praying all this time.” So, he tells each of his disciples: “Stay in your annihilation…remain all lost in God in a sacred silence”

Further, St. Paul of the Cross reinforces the emphasis of John Chapman and Francois Fenelon on the need for constant prayer. He tells us, “never abandon holy prayer.” And, he writes, “you must go often to this dear Father by means of holy prayer in order to become more and more enamored of him…it is especially necessary that you make prayer because you are subject to many vicissitudes. In order to receive everything with resignation and bear all with fortitude, you must go often to be nourished in prayer.”

Now, in prayer, the self dissolves as we undergo obscurity and aridity. He writes, “remain in great obscurity and aridity…this is a most pure and disinterested prayer because you are stripped of self-satisfaction.” In the prayer of holy interior silence, we are stripped of all ego-satisfaction in prayer because it is both obscure to our reason and lacking in good feelings, which he calls “arid.” So, when we pray, we are not doing it out of a selfish need to feel good or master the spirit with our intelligence, but for God alone. This removes the self as the center of our experience.

He tells the soul in this silent, crucified prayer to “let your loving soul be detached from all that is created and pay no attention to its suffering nor to its enjoyment but give all its attention to its beloved Good.” This interior stripping serves to re-center us on God. St. Paul describes how we experience inner desolations, dryness, and sadness but these are the “means of dying to all creatures and living to God alone and for God alone. Continue then to be despoiled of everything and to drive away imaginations…Pray in pure faith with a loving repose in God.”

Thus, self-annihilation means losing oneself in God through interior silence. It is a silence in which we are not paying attention to ourselves, that is, to our thinking and our emotions. We are letting go of self-consciousness to be lost in God. And to be all lost in God in silence within is what it means to celebrate the feast in the parable of the prodigal son. It is the way of self-annihilation: “There is no way more efficacious than to annihilate yourself and reduce yourself to nothing before God.” To live the cross of Christ, to be crucified and so raised with Christ, St. Paul of the Cross tells us, “Continue your prayer in pure faith, lost in God in a spirit of humility and annihilation.”