The shifting movements of prayer within our souls can be compared to a vast and wonderful dance with all its own drama, complications, and harmony. The soul in love with God cannot be contained or restricted to one expression of prayer. The soul wants all the choreography of a good dance. Our task is to let our souls love, dance, and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
By understanding this fluidity, we can watch and recognize as our souls move from thanksgiving to praise. After thanking God for his goodness, the soul wants to adore, praise, magnify and rejoice in the splendor of God. The soul relishes in the presence and beauty of the all-powerful, the ever-living, the Ancient of Days, the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty Warrior, the Alpha and Omega.
The soul is captivated and gets “caught up” in the glory of God and overflows in praise. It is a pure form of praise that is not born not from the actions of God, or the gifts of God, but simply by a deep and profound sense of awe in God’s existence, identity, and majesty. It is taken to new heights as we further realize God’s divine presence within us.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because HE IS.”
The heart that praises God is a heart that is free from darkness, fear, and anxiety. It is a heart that is able to dance its way through the fallenness of our world and soar above them to the things of God. The heart that praises God is a heart that is unhindered and able to see and love him in faith.
The Catechism explains: “[Praise] shares in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in faith before seeing him in glory.”
A faith that is born from praise is a faith that prepares us for eternity. The soul that praises God, in good times and in bad, is able to believe in him and in his goodness. Such a soul with this level of unity with God in this life is a soul that is being formed for an everlasting union with him in heaven.
The key and the passage to union with God is sincere praise. Nothing can replace it. Nothing can distort it. Nothing can weaken it.
The Catechism teaches: “By praise, the Spirit is joined to our spirits to bear witness that we are children of God, testifying to the only Son in whom we are adopted and by whom we glorify the Father.”
By giving praise to God with an open and trusting heart, we welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives and allow him to work his signs and wonders in us and through us. By the testimony of the Holy Spirit, we come to a greater awareness and appreciation of our status as the children of God. We realize our adoption as his children and our unity with him through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Older Brother.
The Catechism continues: “Praise embraces the other forms of prayer and carries them toward him who is its source and goal: the ‘one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.’”
All the other ways and forms of prayer reach their culmination in a synthesis with praise. All the other ways in which we converse with God point us to praise him with all our minds and hearts. Petition points us to praise. Intercession directs us to praise. Thanksgiving points us to praise. All the other movements of prayer, which are good in themselves, nonetheless, nudge us and urge us to give sincere praise to God.
To illustrate this point, the Catechism gives us the examples of Saint Luke: “St. Luke in his gospel often expresses wonder and praise at the marvels of Christ and in his Acts of the Apostles stresses them as actions of the Holy Spirit: the community of Jerusalem, the invalid healed by Peter and John, the crowd that gives glory to God for that, and the pagans of Pisidia who ‘were glad and glorified the word of God.’”
Along with the writings of Saint Luke, the Sacred Scriptures are full of accounts of God’s people giving him praise. In our lives, we are invited to continue that noble tradition and to rejoice in God, giving him always the praise of our hearts.
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