Prayer, however, can be a tricky business. We've all been there: we have every intention of taking time for prayer or stopping by the chapel for a visit, and it somehow never happens. Or, we sit down with an open book or journal and immediately our minds race from subject to subject. We think about our schedule, our next meal, or even something as mundane as our chipped nail. We just can't focus. We know it's important to pray, but why is it so ridiculously hard to pray sometimes? Why are we so distracted?
I think it is because we have forgotten how to recollect ourselves.
What is recollection?
Dietrich von Hildebrand says that recollection is an antithesis to distraction. Our minds tend to fly from one thought to another, and this state of mind is at the mercy of our mechanism of associations, never touching anything but superficially. Hildebrand writes: "A person who exhausts himself in the moment's concerns, who passes without a breathing space from one concentrated work to another, who always give his unreserved attention to the task of the hour without ever recollecting himself - such a person is as little recollected as one who dissipates his life in dreaming, playing and empty chatter." (1)
True recollection integrates the entire person; it is a realization of the profound depths of our being. "Recollection proper always means an awakening to the essential, a recourse to the absolute which never ceases to be all-important and in whose light alone everything else discloses its true meaning." (3)
For example, when a task of great dignity is in front
of us, we must “recollect” ourselves in preparation for it. We withdraw from
our contact with our immediate duties and present concerns: we remove ourselves
from the whirlpool of the great and small things of life and emerge towards
God, the Cause and Goal of all being. We place ourselves before what is true
and unchanging: our eternal destiny and supreme goal. We face God directly. Then,
and only then, when we recover our deepest, unique direction towards God, do we
actually recover ourselves and resume identity with our innermost selves. God
reveals man to man. “In His perspective alone can we see every finite object in
its proper place in creation, revealing, in the light of supreme truth, its
particular meaning and value." (4)
We find our way home to ourselves. To who we really
are.
We must gain a full and adequate awareness of things,
hearkening to God’s call from the depths of our being, and bringing our most
intimate selves to full actuality. We are inclined to lose ourselves in the
present situation; to forget the proper and ultimate meaning of our existence.
In this dispersed attitude, we are not really and truly alive.
How do we remain in a recollected state? To be sure,
we must divert our whole attention from God and concentrate upon certain tasks
at hand. However, we need not sever connection with the profound and ultimate
center of our being. We can keep within
the divine context. While we are attending, technically and intellectually,
to the task in question, our awareness of God continues to resound in our soul
like an unending melody.
This is the mark of the saints.
This is an attitude of holy sobriety.
True recollection allows us to rightfully recognize
our human faults and tendencies, precisely because it enables us to live in the
light of truth. Recollection makes us, literally, collect ourselves again. And,
I believe, we will never achieve a deep and profound life of prayer unless we can
authentically recover this widely forgotten virtue.
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