Prayer is a word we all understand, but few of us seem to understand how to effectively make the spiritual climb with our prayer lives. Give glory to the saints in heaven because they were able to ascend the levels of prayer and become intimate with God in ways that most of us might not understand or even consider possible.
If you study over the life of the saints, you will undoubtedly read various accounts about their solemn and pious prayer lives. It was their devout prayer lives in Christ and their faith in the Lord that helped form them into the saints we know and love.
God hears our heart not our voice. – St. Cyprian
This post has been written to help provide us information and guidance on how to ascend the levels of prayer. Prayer is the stairway to heaven. Prayer is a stairway and purgative process we all must climb and go through, either in this life or the next.
The information prepared in this post is based on the riveting and enlightening lecture given by renowned spiritual warfare expert, Father Chad Ripperger.
I will also include some verses from the New Testament about prayer and excerpts from the saints to help supplement the reading. I may be mistaken, but I have counted 144 verses in the New Testament that mentions prayer, and 23 verses where the Gospels mention Jesus was praying or prayed. Jesus is the perfect model for prayer.
After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened Luke 3:21
Learning this information was almost like a baptism. We can have confidence in God that Holy Mother Church teaches us the truth. The proof is in the lives of her saints.
I want to be only a poor Friar who prays…Pray, Hope and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayers…Prayer is the best weapon we have; it is the key to God’s heart. You must speak to Jesus not only with your lips but with your heart. In fact on some occasions you should speak to Him only with your heart. – St. Padre Pio
These are my notes from Fr. Ripperger’s lecture. We will review prayer levels 1 -2.
Prayer levels 1-4 are levels we can obtain on our own through perseverance and with the help of God’s grace along the way. Prayer levels 5-9 we can’t obtain on our own. God takes over at those levels of prayer. And God expects each of us to reach them.
Here are the nine levels of prayer:
- Vocal Prayer
- Mental Prayer
- Affective Prayer
- Prayer of Simplicity
- Infused Contemplation
- Prayer of Quiet
- Prayer of Union
- Prayer of Conforming Union
- Prayer of Transforming Union
Prayer is nothing else but union with God. – St John Vianney
With all of this said let me humbly say I am certainly no “ace” or expert with prayer or theology. But God calls us to be saints so I keep trying, and I hope we all do.
So let us start the spiritual ascent. Here we go!
- There is a correlation with where you are at in your spiritual life and where you are at in the nine levels of prayer. Per saints, you must pray in order to be saved.
- We have to go through a purgative process to start ascending the levels or prayer.
- The more virtue you have, the higher you start ascending these levels of prayer.
- Most people don’t advance in prayer because prayer is difficult and arduous.
- Some suffer from distractions; some get no feelings or consolation out of it.
If you do not pray you will not be saved. – St. Augustine
- We have an obligation to pray every single day.
- Laymen – should pray 15 minutes per day, minimum.
- Prayer helps us to meet our obligation with God’s justice and then charity.
- Charity demands that we seek perfection.
- Prayer, being arduous, is manly. Real men pray.
- Prayer constitutes the stairs in which we ascend to the heights of heaven.
- Prayer is defined as lifting the heart and will to God.
- Our mind and hearts are turning towards God when we are praying to Him.
This is how you are to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, Matthew 6:9
Level 1 – Vocal Prayer
Vocal prayer is any form of prayer expressed in words, whether written or spoken. Vocal prayer is the lowest level of prayer because it involves the lower faculties. With vocal prayer you must use your mouth or some other external faculty.
The two requirements of vocal prayer are:
- Attention – the more focused and the more attention you give to your prayers the more efficacious (producing the intended result) your prayers will be.
- Devotion – because we love God, and we want to be close to Him.
The two types of vocal prayer are:
- Private prayer – Prayers that we pray on our own (Matthew 6:5-8)
- Public prayer – Examples are the Mass or going to a Benediction.
- The constituents of prayer are the mind and the heart, the will.
- Prayer is the process by which we ascend to the beatific vision.
- Prayer is a lesser approximation of what it is like to be in the beatific vision.
- The corollary to the beatific vision is happiness.
- You won’t truly be happy unless you are praying.
- People constantly neglect their prayer life and wonder why they are miserable.
If a man wants to be always in God’s company, he must pray regularly and read regularly. – St. Isidore
Level 2 – Mental Prayer
Description
…he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone. Matthew 14:23
- Mental prayer is the lifting of the mind and heart to God.
- Mental prayer involves imagination.
- There is no vocalization that occurs in mental prayer.
- There can be subvocalization (you imagine the words in your own mind).
- Mental prayer involves dispersive meditation – application of the mind to some supernatural truth to penetrate its meaning.
- Mental intellect predominates with the help of God’s grace.
Obstacles
Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Mark 14:38
- If you are suffering from distractions mortify yourself.
- Most people have developed habits that go against the act of prayer – example watching TV a lot makes the imagination submit to an external thing.
- If you want to advance in prayer turn the TV off, or TV has to be used moderately.
- If you pray to God the wrong way, you are going to end up offending him.
- God, like us, likes to be approached in certain ways: with humility, contrite hearts, devotion, and giving Him our full attention. We are more likely to give someone what they want when we do that, and God is the same way.
Conditions
…he would withdraw to deserted places to pray. Luke 5:16
- You must be quiet in mental prayer.
- There must be external and internal quiet with mental prayer.
- In mental prayer the intellect is predominant.
- Mental prayer depends heavily on the imagination.
- Our appetites must quiet down during mental prayer.
- Your emotional life does not have the same object as your prayer life.
- You must spend time each day meditating, submitting your faculties completely to God. This is the process where you start ascending the levels of prayer.
Trust the Process
I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, John 17:9
- Mental prayer takes time to develop.
- There are a variety of different methods such as Franciscan or Ignatian.
- Mental prayer is a necessary stage of formation in your soul. You cannot advance in the spiritual life without this form of prayer in your daily prayer life.
- St. Teresa of Avila – she is a doctor of the Church. She makes it absolutely clear that the entrance way to all the higher levels of prayer is mental prayer.
- St Teresa of Avila – You have to meditate to get to a higher level.
- Meditation it is the entrance point to higher levels of prayer.
- Get to mental prayer by following traditional forms of vocal prayer.
- Your formation in mental prayer will help to get you to Level 3, Affective Prayer.
Mechanics
While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. Luke 9:29
- With mental prayer you take a supernatural truth like Christ’s perfections, and you consider them. You try to understand them.
- And then the next step is to love the supernatural truth considered and carry it into practice with the assistance of God’s grace.
- Christ is the perfect man so we should be making him our example.
- Reflect on something such as God’s omnipotence, like times in your life when it seemed like something wasn’t going to happen and then suddenly it did because of the actual grace that God can bestow on people.
- Mental prayer involves reflecting on one thing from a variety of different points of view. Example – St. Teresa of Avila would kneel down and start praying the Our Father Prayer and spend two hours reflecting on Our Father looking at it from a variety of different points of view.
- Consider a variety of different resources you can use to help: the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus will give you some indication of the Lord’s perfections.
- If you want to know the perfections in Christ or know Christ better, use the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus.
- The object of prayer life is God.
- To engage in mental prayer, pick a specific image, teaching of the Church, perfection in God, or a saint, and consider it from different points of view.
Habits
The next day, while they were on their way and nearing the city, Peter went up to the roof terrace to pray at about noontime. Acts 10:9
- Prayer is a virtue, a good habit, and it takes a lot of time to develop.
- You have to have a high degree of the habit of prayer to ascend the levels.
- Be consistent each day with your vocal prayers, and this will help to make mental prayer easier for you carry out on your own.
- Builds habits with your prayer life. Habits will make it easier for you to meditate.
- Try to find a specific time(s) of the day to pray.
Recommendations
But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit. Jude 1:20
- It is not just that you make a decision to pray it is how you pray that will determine how effective your prayers will be before God.
- Be humble and contrite with your prayers.
- Advance in devotion and attention with your prayers.
- One must advance in devotion and attention to advance in prayer.
- The better you do this the easier it is to ascend the levels of prayer.
- Best book on mental prayer: The Ways of Mental Prayer by Fr. Dom Lehodey
If Christ Jesus dwells in a man as his friend and noble leader, that man can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. – St. Teresa of Avila