This will be a
bird’s eye view of Ven. M. Celeste Crostarosa’s Grades of Prayer. I, myself have only just begun to reflect on
them in earnest. In Celeste’s early life it was either
Our Lord or her Confessor who ordered her to write out her mystical
experiences. In her later years,
Celeste wrote down of her own volition these 134 handwritten pages which she
called the Grades of Prayer to edify her community and the young women put in
the Sisters’ care. Generally, she was
inspired to write and share the richness of her mystical experiences she received
during Holy Communion or Adoration.
We have Italian
Redemptorist Frs. Dominico Caponi and
Sabatino Majorano to thank for the great service of gathering and studying our
foundress’ writing. American
Redemptorist Fr. Joseph Opptiz studied the works of those Italian Fathers and
translated their writings into English as well as giving us his own
interpretation of Celeste’s spirituality for our benefit.
Maria Celeste Crostarosa was a mystic. Like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and
others before her, Celeste used the imagery of the ladder to describe the steps
of prayer toward union with God. Celeste’s ladder
is taller than most, consisting of sixteen rungs or steps. Today
we will reflect only on the First Grade.
In the First Step she uses the Song of Songs to illustrate the marriage
union of the one being (the Bride) with the Trinity (her Beloved Spouse). Above all else, Celeste was Trinitarian and
Christocentric - Christ is the ladder we
climb; a gift from the Father planted in the merciful self-emptying (kenosis)
of the Son whose image is stamped on believers by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, our participation in the life of
Christ is a transforming union drawing the soul up the ladder to God.
She describes each step in two phases; the first is
the gift of prayer, and the second is the fruit of the effects of the gift: our
response. As we begin to look at the Grades I have
selected pearls, samplings from Celeste’s First Step so that we may focus more
easily on her shining insights.
·
Most
of the time Ven. Celeste writes in the third person. But then she will assert herself at certain
times and say, “This is how I see
The First Step on the Mystical Ladder of
Prayer of the Spirit
Ven. Maria Celeste Crostarosa
The Gift: Truth and Faith in God
The
Bride says in the Song of Songs: her
Beloved is like a stag that leaps over mountain and hills: the Song is
explaining what faith does to the soul.
Firstly,
she recognizes the voice of the Beloved. This voice is the certainty of truth
found in divine mysteries. The soul
listens to these in the speeding word that flashes by the spiritual ear. To those who seek the Beloved’s face with a
longing so pure and real, it is a gentle voice that lights up everything,
creating wonderful emotions, some still, some active. With
respect, this reminds us of the Beloved: the wonders we believe in and the
Divine Essence.
The Response:
The
soul stands there in astonished wonder.
She cannot keep up with the
Beloved for her mind has its limits; she would love to catch up and embrace
Him. Sweet Lord, let my lips say what my heart feels about Holy Faith: this is
the first step on the mystical ladder, a princely highway that leads her to
union with God.
The Gift:
This is the ladder Jacob saw
reaching from earth to heaven. The earth
is the Holy Catholic Church. The
prophet saw angels going up and down the ladder. These are the facts and lights about the
mysteries of Faith. Faith is planted
there and the soul rests on this steadfast base: Christ, the cornerstone. Through the merits of Jesus, my Word-made-Man,
the soul receives in her spirit multifaceted blessings through Holy Faith. By Faith, the greatest Good becomes hers.
The Response:
This is how I see it: you have put into me a kind of longing, a
longing to gaze upon you, to see you through your own truth –loving eyes. This need to fix my gaze upon the Beloved One
bears with it nothing of the sensual.
The
core of this first step of faith-filled prayer is sheer truth. It urges us to gaze with the greatest respect
upon God as the sum-total of all good, the Highest God and to see all things
through the eyes of the Beloved. The
simpler this act of faith, the greater is the quiet, safe rest she finds in
God.
The Gift:
While
looking at God with this gaze of sheer faith she is disturbed by daydreams and
other nuisance-things from the lower senses; even so, with faith, she gazes with
great peace and calm upon her object of beauty. The soul enjoys such oneness that the
inferior part is completely relaxed as it shares the simplicity of the
spirit. This is a straight-out gift of the Holy Spirit; this is done by loving, not achieving.
The Response:
So by God she shares the loving acts of the will. The Holy Spirit has sown a sacred love in her
will and this love has the power to share this divine gift which comes through
supernatural love, not by any action of the soul.
I
could weep so broken-hearted for the tragedy of the unhappy world that values
you so little and whose faith is nearly dead.
The
pathway of prayer is to know the truth of the divine mysteries. The knowledge of the faith forms the road and
the pathway to prayer.
Oh, if all were believers, all would be
saints!
I’ll try to unpack this now with the help of
Fr. Oppitiz’s commentary.
So, what is prayer? Prayer is an interpersonal relationship, an
inter-communication, a mutual exchange between a personal, loving God and a
responding, loving creature. Faith is
the pathway to God. Thus, faith and
prayer go hand-in-hand every step of the way. Prayer is also the pathway to truth. According to Celeste, unless prayer is rooted
in faith, both prayer and truth are incomplete. What is truth?
Truth is about the
truth of a personal God and the truth about the praying creature: the Creator
and the created.
Celeste speaks of the fixed gaze. This fixed gaze
is the intense focus of the whole person on the Loving Plan of the Father
opened to us by and in and through Faith.
This turning toward the Lord in Faith, she
realizes, is initiated by God who draws her to God’s self by implanting deep
within her, and within every person, a longing
for the Divine at the very level of being. Once a person practices this fixed gaze, they
will begin, little by little, to see all things “through the eyes of the Beloved.”
Simplicity is the fruit of this First Step
of faith-prayer. When we confront our
creatureliness and recognize our utter dependence on the Divine we can more
easily let go of the distracting nuisances in prayer that drift through our
minds by simply turning our loving gaze back on God. This is, as Celeste says,
a straight-out gift of the Holy Spirit.
Celeste’s prayer at the end of the First
Steps of Prayer is that all would be saints.
She firmly believes one cannot be a saint without prayer and there can
be no prayer without faith
Questions
for Reflection:
How does Faith shape my prayer?
What phrase, or phrases, from the First
Step moved my heart?
What is my
response to this gift?
