One-ed to the Will of Our Lord

And all this brought our Lord sud­den­ly to my mind and He showed these words and said:

“I am the ground of thy pray­ing–
first, it is my will that thou have some­thing,
and next I make thee to want it,
and after­ward I cause thee to pray for it.
If thou prayest for it,
how, then, could it be that thou wouldst not get what thou ask­est for?”

And thus in the first propo­si­tion, with the three that fol­low, our good Lord shows a pow­er­ful encour­age­ment, as can be seen in the above words.

In that first state­ment, where He says: ​“If thou prayest for it, etc.,“
there He shows the very great plea­sure and end­less reward that
He will give us because of our praying.

In the sec­ond state­ment, where He says: ​“how then, could it be? etc,
this was said as an impos­si­ble thing,
because it is the most impos­si­ble thing that can be that we
should pray for mer­cy and grace and not get it.

Because every­thing that our good Lord caus­es us to pray for,
He him­self has already appoint­ed to us from with­out beginning.

Here can we see, then, that it is not our pray­ing that is the cause of the good­ness and grace that He does for us,
but God’s own char­ac­ter­is­tic good­ness.

And that He showed truth­ful­ly in all those sweet words when He says, ​“I am the ground.”

And our good Lord wills that this be rec­og­nized by His lovers on earth
and the more that we rec­og­nize this,
the more we shall pray (if it is wise­ly accept­ed)
and this is our Lord’s intention.

Pray­ing is
a true, gra­cious, last­ing inten­tion of the soul
one-ed and made fast to the will of our Lord
by the sweet, secret work­ing of the Holy Spirit.

***

Our Lord God wish­es for us to have true under­stand­ing, and espe­cial­ly in three mat­ters that are relat­ed to our prayer.

The first is by whom and how our prayer orig­i­nates;
​“by whom,” He shows when He says, ​“I am the ground. …”, and
​“how” is by His good­ness, for He says, ​“First, it is my will.”

For the sec­ond, in what man­ner and how we should prac­tice our
prayers; and that is that our will be trans­formed into the will
of our Lord, rejoic­ing; and this He means when He says, ​“I
make thee to will it…”

For the third, that we under­stand the fruit and the end of our
prayer: that is, to be one-ed to and like our Lord in everything.

And for this mean­ing and for this end was all this lov­ing les­son shown; and He wish­es to help us, if we will make our prayer just as He says Him­self — blessed may He be!

This is our Lord’s will:
that our prayer
and our trust
be both equal­ly great.

For if we do not trust as much as we pray,
we do incom­plete hon­or to our Lord in our prayer,
and also we delay and pain our­selves;
and the rea­son is, as I believe, because
we do not tru­ly acknowl­edge that our Lord is the ground on
which our prayer grows,
and also that we do not rec­og­nize that prayer is giv­en us by the
grace of His love.
For if we knew this, it would make us trust that we would
receive, by our Lord’s gift, all that we desire.

***

I per­ceived in me five kinds of oper­a­tions, which are these:

rejoic­ing,
mourn­ing,
desire,
fear,
and cer­tain hope:

“rejoic­ing” because God gave me under­stand­ing and knowl­edge that it was Him­self that I saw;

“mourn­ing,” and that was because of failing;

“desire,” and that was that I might see Him ever more and more, under­stand­ing and acknowl­edg­ing that we shall nev­er have full rest till we see Him tru­ly and clear­ly in heaven;

“fear” was because it seemed to me in all that time that that vision would fail and I would be left to myself;

“cer­tain hope” was in the end­less love, that I saw I would be pro­tect­ed by His mer­cy and brought to His bliss, and rejoic­ing in His sight with this cer­tain hope of His mer­ci­ful pro­tec­tion gave me under­stand­ing and com­fort so that mourn­ing and fear were not great­ly painful.

And yet in all this I beheld in the show­ing of God that this kind of vision of Him can­not be con­stant in this life — and that for His own hon­or and for increase of our end­less joy.

And there­fore we are fre­quent­ly with­out the sight of Him,
and at once we fall into our­selves,
and then we dis­cov­er no sense of right­ness — noth­ing but the
con­trari­ness that is with­in our­selves
(and that from the ancient root of our First Sin with all that
fol­lows after from our own con­trivance)
and in this we are trou­bled and tempt­ed with a sense of sins and
of pains in many dif­fer­ent ways, spir­i­tu­al­ly and bod­i­ly, as it is
famil­iar to us in this life.

***

But our good Lord, the Holy Spir­it
(who is end­less life dwelling in our soul),
full safe­ly keeps us,
and makes a peace in the soul,
and brings it to rest by grace,
and makes it sub­mis­sive,
and rec­on­ciles it to God.

And this is the mer­cy and the way in which our Lord con­stant­ly leads us as long as we are here in this change­able life.