Ladder of Divine Ascent - Step Twenty On Alertness

              As we labor to ascend to God (understanding that prayer is both the way of and the end of the ascent) we must prepare ourselves for the test of prayer.  The first battle is getting to the place and time of prayer.  This is what St. John talked about in Step 19: overcoming sleep, getting out of bed (or staying out of bed) and actually forcing ourselves to attend to the time of prayer.  In Step 20 he talks about the next part of our struggle in prayer - alertness.

            Alertness begins when we approach the time of prayer. "The bell rings for prayer.  The monk who loves God says, `Bravo! Bravo!'  The lazy monk says, `Alas.  Alas.'  Mealtime reveals the gluttonous, prayer time the lovers of God.  The former dance and the latter frown when the table is made ready."  We should not be surprised if we "don't feel like praying."  This is part of our fallenness, our own sinful condition,  the disorientation of our internal selves.  There are many times when the desire for prayer is almost nonexistent.  We must rouse ourselves to prayer.  Alertness is doing battle with our laziness and our lack of interest in prayer.  Alertness is motivating ourselves to attend to the things of God rather than the things of this world.  It is the triumph of the spirit over the body, of the will for God over the will for self.

            Alertness continues as we pray.  "The inexperienced monk is wide awake when talking to his friends but half asleep at prayer."  We learn from this that the labor of prayer is a labor with the thoughts.  We are far too "lazy" and "undisciplined" when it comes to our minds.  Instead of directing our thoughts and controlling them we allow them to run free, here and there, wherever they wish to go.  So, during prayer, we find ourselves often thinking about all kinds of other things.  How many times have we come to the end of a prayer only to realize that we have no idea what we just said?  How many times in the middle of liturgy do we catch ourselves reviewing yesterday's events and planning for the rest of the day?  Alertness is the struggle to control our minds and center them on the one thing that is needful.  It is the attempt to center our mind in our hearts, to eliminate not simply the bad thoughts but even the good thoughts which distract us from the pursuit of God. 

            This is not easy.  In our beginning attempts we will fail many more times than we succeed, but we must keep up the struggle.  For, as St. John promises: "This is the twentieth step.  He who has climbed it has received light in his heart."

1-3            Alertness defined.

            Alertness keeps the mind clean.  Somnolence binds the soul.  The alert monk does battle with fornication, but the sleepy one goes to live with it.  Alertness is a quenching of lust, deliverance from fantasies in dreams, a tearful eyes, a heart made soft and gentle, thoughts restrained, food digested, passions tamed, spirits subdued, tongue controlled, idle imaginings banished.

4-6            A description of the vigilant and the lazy.

            The vigilant monk is a fisher of thoughts, and in the quiet of the night he can easily observe and catch them.

            The bell rings for prayer.  The monk who loves God says, "Bravo, Bravo!"  The lazy monk says, "Alas, Alas!"

            Mealtime reveals the gluttonous, prayer time the lovers of God.  The former dance and the latter frown when the table is made ready.

7-9            The value and importance of keeping vigils and the dangers of excessive sleep.

            Long sleep produces forgetfulness, but keeping vigil clears the memory. 

           

            The farmer collects his wealth on the threshing floor and in the winepress.  Monks collect their wealth and knowledge during the hours of evening and night when they are standing at prayer and contemplation.

            Excessive sleep is a bad companion, stealing half a lifetime or more from the lazy man.

10-13            The dissipation that comes from laziness.

            The inexperienced monk is wide awake when talking to his friends but half asleep at prayer time.  The lazy monk is a great talker whose eyes begin to shut when the sacred reading is started.  When the trumpet sounds the dead will rise, and when idle talk begins the dozing wake.

            The tyrant sleep is a cunning fiend who slips away from us when our stomachs are full and attacks strongly when we are hungry and thirsty.  It proposes that we do manual work at prayer time, for in no other way can it interfere with the prayers of those who are keeping watch.  Its first step is to attack beginners, trying to make them careless from their first day.  Or it strives to prepare the way for the demon of fornication  Hence until we conquer it we ought never seek to be absent from common prayer, since shame at least may keep us from dozing off.

14            John warns that we must also be alert at the time following prayer.  It is then that the demons attack seeking to steal what we have gained from God.

            When prayer is over, wait quietly and you will observe how mobs of demons, as though challenged by us, will try to attack us after prayer by means of wild fantasies.  Watch carefully and you will note those that are accustomed to snatch away the first fruits of the soul.

15-16            The alertness maintained during the day can be sustained even when we our sleeping.

            It can happen that our meditation on the psalms may persist even into our time of sleeping.

            . . . the soul endlessly preoccupied by day with the word of God will love to be preoccupied by it in sleep too.  This second grace is properly the reward for the first and will help us to avoid spirits and fantasies.

            Such then is the twentieth step.  He who has climbed it has received light in his heart.

  

Ladder of Divine Ascent - Step 18 on Insensitivity

According to St. John, as we pursue the heavenly goal we need to be aware of the great danger of becoming desensitized to the importance of spiritual realities.  What he describes should be familiar to all.  When we are first awakened to the spiritual life and introduced to its depths, we are awestruck and experience a godly fear.  Yet, familiarity often breeds contempt or at least invites one to have a casual attitude.

            Insensitivity develops when we allow a division to exist between our words and our actions.  It is brought on by a lengthy illness which prevents a person from engaging in spiritual disciplines, carelessness and prolonged negligence.  In many ways it is hypocrisy at its worst and most pathetic.  We speak to others about certain spiritual practices and their importance and yet rarely embrace themselves for ourselves.  We remain unmoved and untouched by our own words and exhortations.  Even the reality of death and the judgement of God provoke no response.

            To understand such a vice and overcome it, John tells us, we must deliberately take hold of it and scourge it with unceasing prayer and the fear of God.  The source of this vice is not the same for all, and so greater effort is required from us to expose its causes and defeat them.   

1            John begins by defining insensitivity and its dominant qualities.

            Insensitivity is deadened feeling in body and spirit, and comes from long sickness and carelessness.  Lack of awareness is negligence that has become habit.  It is thought gone numb, an offspring of predisposition, the gateway to despair, the mother of forgetfulness giving birth to loss of fear of God and, in turn, to a deadened spirit . . .  .

2            The insensitive man is one who does not live as he speaks and teaches.  He remains unaffected by his own words and exhortations.

            The insensitive man is a foolish philosopher, an exegete condemned by his own words, a scholar who contradicts himself, a blind man teaching sight to others.  He talks about healing a wound and does not stop making it worse.  He complains about what has happened and does not stop eating what is harmful.  He prays against it but carries on as before, doing it and being angry with himself.  And the wretched man is in no way shamed by his own words.  "I'm doing wrong", he cries, and zealously continues to do so.  His lips pray against it and his body struggles for it.  He talks profoundly about death and acts as if he will never die.  He groans over the separation of soul and body, and yet lives in a state of somnolence as if he were eternal.  He has plenty to say about self-control and fights for a gourmet life.  He reads about the judgment and begins to smile, about vainglory and is vainglorious while he is reading.  He recites what he has learnt about keeping vigil, and at once drops off to sleep.  Prayer he extols, and runs from it as if from a plague.  Blessing he showers on obedience, and is the first to disobey.  Detachment he praises, and he shamelessly fights over a rag.  When he is angry he gets bitter, and then his bitterness makes him angry, so that having suffered one defeat he fails to notice that he has suffered another.  He gorges himself, is sorry, and a little later is at it again.  He blesses silence and cannot stop talking about it.  He teaches meekness and frequently gets angry while teaching it.  Having come to his senses, he sighs and shaking his head embraces his passion once more.  He denounces laughter, and while lecturing on mourning he is all smiles.  In front of others he criticizes himself for being vainglorious, and in making the admission he is looking for glory.  He looks people in the eye with passion and talks about chastity.  Out in the world he is full of praise for the solitary life and cannot see how much he is disgracing himself.  He glorifies almsgivers and despises the poor.  In everything he shows himself up for what he is, and does not come to his senses, though I would not say he was incapable of doing so.

3            Such a man remains unmoved even by the harshest and most fearful of realities - death and judgement. 

            I have seen such men weep as they hear of death and the dread judgment, and with the tears still in their eyes they rush off to dinner.  And it amazed me to see how this stinking tyrant by means of complete insensitivity could even manage to overpower mourning.

4            Fear of God and endless prayer alone gain the upper hand in the battle with this vice.

            I have described, as much as my poor talents permit, the wiles and the havoc wrought by this stony, stubborn, raging, ignorant passion, and I refuse to dwell on it.  If there is anyone with the God-given skill to heal the sores, let him not shrink from the task.  I am not ashamed to admit that my powers fail here, for I am very sorely tried by this vice and I would not have been able alone to analyze its wily ways if I had not laid hold of it, gripping it hard, examining it to discover what has been described above, scourging it with fear of the Lord and endless prayer.  That is why this tyrannical evildoer said this to me:  "Those who are under my sway laugh when they see the bodies of the dead.  At prayer they are stony, hard, and blinded.  In front of the altar they feel nothing.  They receive the Holy Gift as if it were ordinary bread.  And I laugh at people when I see them stirred by compunction.  My father taught me to kill everything born of courage and love.  I am the mother of Laughter, the nurse of Sleep, the friend of the Full Stomach.  When I am found out I do not grieve, and I am the ally of Fake Piety."

5            Parents and Offspring.

            Amazed by the words of this demented fury, I asked, in my astonishment, for the name of her father.  "I was not born of just one parent," she said.  "I am of mixed and uncertain origin.  Big meals keep me going, time adds to my stature and bad habit fixes me in such a way that he who possesses me will never be rid of me.  But if you are always on the watch and think of eternal judgment, maybe I shall let go of you to some extent.  If you discover why I came to be within you, it will be possible for you to do battle with my mother, since she is not the same for all.  Pray often where the dead are laid out and paint in your heart an indelible image of them, traced there with the brush of fasting.  For otherwise you will never defeat me."