The Prayer of the Heart: Returning to the Place of Deepest Intimacy

Despite the innate hunger for God, this thirst for intimacy, for prayer within each one of us, we also live in a society that is increasingly forgetful of God. This is due, primarily, to a profound though mostly subconscious despair of our ever being able to know God as he is and enter into a real and living relationship with him. Having forgotten the earth-transforming newness of the Incarnation of God in our world in Jesus Christ, we now doubt his closeness and his care, and our own ability to establish any kind of meaningful relation with the "divine," who is now faceless and nameless (or receives any number of our own wounded projections), rather than taking the name and face of Love which he revealed to us when he came and walked among us, suffered and died for our liberation, and rose into the fullness of life for our sake and on our behalf. In this despair, we are removing ourselves more and more from the heritage of our past, from the Judaeo-Christian tradition which provided the soil in which authentic humanity and culture could flower so beautifully. For it is in fact in Christ, and only in Christ, that humanity itself receives anew the gift of its own beauty, the restoration of the full beauty and goodness and truth that God intended for us in the beginning, but which was so deeply fractured by original sin, and which is wounded by every sin committed since the beginning of time. God wants to restore to us this beauty, to give us anew the very gift of our humanity, and in this gift, to also give us the full and radiant beauty of the whole creation again. As opaque as our world seems, as hidden as God may appear, it is the deepest truth of God's intentions that he desires to pull back the veil, to let our hearts glimpse the beauty that he wanted for us from the beginning of time, and, in this unveiling, to communicate to us the fullness of his own love. Yes, he wants to illumine our gaze so deeply that we begin to see all things, and our very selves, bathed in the light of his own inner life as Trinity. He wants to reveal to us that he is a God whose very Being is Love: the dance of eternal Intimacy between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, from which he has created us and in which he has destined us to share, already in this life, and in utter fullness in the endless consummation of eternity.

In this book I have sought, as the bride in the Song of Songs, to "bring out both what is old and what is new, laid up for you, O my Beloved" (Sg 7:13), and as a gift, also, to the reader, so that you may hopefully find a greater space of confidence, understanding, and desire opening for you to draw near to the One who ceaselessly draws near to you. I hope that my words, however imperfect they may be, will help dispose you to encounter him who wants to espouse himself to you in the inner sanctuary of your heart, made the tabernacle of his presence, and indeed to sanctify and transfigure your entire being, body and spirit, and every moment of your existence, to be radiant and transparent with his own love and with the intimacy that he shares eternally with the Father in the kiss of the Holy Spirit.