How we can experience or hear God

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lief_Erikson
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
L

Lief_Erikson

Guest
In this thread, I hope that Catholics will feel free to post methods by which others might experience God’s presence or hear his voice. These can come from their own experience or the experience of saints throughout history. All discussion or debate about the validity of the methods collected here should take place in this thread. If any of us disagree with a way of hearing God that has been posted, if we feel like it’s divination, witchcraft, idolatry or something bad cloaked as good, let’s complain and debate in the other thread rather than clogging this one up.

Because all discussion of the techniques posted is being held for the other thread, there is no guarantee that anything anyone will read in this thread will be safe. Therefore, if you want to learn more about what people think of that technique, ask about it in the discussion thread or create your own thread in the forum about that technique.

This thread isn’t about us. It isn’t about how God has provided miracles in my life (not that I’m saying that’s at all bad for people to discuss their experiences- it’s just not the purpose of this thread), but about how other people may be able to come to experience God’s presence or hear his voice. We can briefly describe, in our posts, a sample experience of our own resulting from the technique of listening, praying or meditating we’ve described, if we want to, but these descriptions should be kept brief and should only exist to show what the results of using the described technique can be. We don’t want to clog the thread with the ways God has marvelously worked in our lives, when people reading through it have heard the saint stories and simply want to know how they can experience God. Let’s post the methods we may be aware of, of listening or meditating or other ways of coming to experience God, to help them :). That’s the goal.

Oh yes, and try not to post a method that another person has already offered in this thread. If this thread gets very long, it may become hard for people to scan it and double-posting techniques may become unavoidable, but let’s just try to keep things separate as long as we can.

The point of this thread is to create a collection of the ways of hearing or experiencing God that we or saints of history have used to come into closer relationships with our Lord, so that people on this forum who seek intimacy with Him or are despairing of the possibility of experiencing God will have a lot of possibilities to browse through and try.

Anyone thinking about using a technique that has been posted, please ask your questions in the discussion thread or create some new thread in this Spirituality forum about the technique. If anyone has questions about the purpose of this thread, please ask your questions there also.

May the Lord bless everyone who comes to this thread seeking greater fellowship with Him. May the Lord grant insight into the hearts and minds of those offering and those receiving.
 
Very simple - go to your nearest Church during Mass (where you get to both hear God in His word and see Him in the Eucharist) or Adoration where you can see Him in the Blessed Sacrament. Or read the Bible - where again you can hear Him in His word.

If we ignore these means by which He ordinarily makes Himself experienced and heard, how can we hope to gain anything by EXTRAordinary means?

Jesus warned us against seeking after signs and wonders, and it’s a common thread of those saints who received such experiences that they either a) weren’t seeking to do so in the first place or b) found that the physical consolations came and went and that they at least sometimes had ‘dark night of the soul’ and had to learn to have faith in God’s presence IN SPITE OF not feeling that ‘closeness’ or ‘experience’.
 
I agree with Lily, and would like to add one cautionary note:

DO NOT seek after miracles, signs, wonders, locutions, voices, apparitions, revelations, or other supernatural realities. By doing this, you open your heart to the devil, who loves to deceive man.
 
Please, friends, could we reserve warnings (or responses to this post) for the discussion thread? If you aren’t describing a practice that helps develop intimacy with the Lord, please make your point in the discussion thread.

Here’s one very simple technique I’ve been greatly blessed by in the last couple years:

Every time I think of it, I thank God for all the blessings he has given me that I can remember. It’s a very simple prayer, so often we don’t think of it as having power. However, this prayer of thanksgiving produces joy in me, which creates the feeling intimacy with the Lord. Sometimes, when doing this, people might feel God’s love rushing back into them as a response to their thanksgiving. I personally recommend frequent thanksgiving for those seeking deeper intimacy with the Lord.
 
I think the best, if not only, method is interior silence, as many great Saints have written.
“…be obedient to the gentle attractions of the Holy Spirit. In a sacred silence of faith and holy love receive what God the Highest and Best gives you…”
Click to expand...
~St. Paul of the Cross’ letter to Bartholomew Pepino of Saint John 2nd letter on December 24, 1768 Vol. 3 - Paul’s Letter #1685
Click to expand...
 
A humble, child-like faith. This doesn’t guarantee by itself that God will bless us with experiences but this attitude brings us closer to Him to begin with and increases the odds immensely that He will reveal Himself to us more deeply.

God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble. James 4:6
 
Another method, like the one fhansen mentioned, is again not guaranteed to provide spiritual experiences but, as he put it, “brings us closer to Him to begin with and increases the odds immensely that He will reveal Himself to us more deeply.” That technique is simply, during whatever prayer we’re speaking, whether it be the Our Father or the Rosary or others, stop after every line or every few words to think about what those words means for us in our specific situation. Just pause for a few seconds (or even a minute or more) after each line to think about what those words mean for us in our own situations. I do this almost every time I speak the “Our Father,” thinking about how, “thy kingdom come,” applies to me, the people I know (who may need evangelism), what virtues of God’s kingdom I am seeking and thus taking the opportunity to repray for them. Each part of God’s kingdom I think of therefore becomes a prayer in those words, whether a prayer of thanksgiving for the parts of God’s kingdom I have or a prayer of petition for those parts I or others lack. This can be done with every line of the prayer, or even every word of it.

This attentiveness to all the words or lines of the prayers we’re speaking can make us aware of answers to prayers God may be giving us through hymns or scripture readings during the Mass or during our private devotions.

This isn’t guaranteed to produce spiritual experiences, but it can create a closer relationship with God which might open the door to those things.

Another technique that may lead to deeper experience of God is useful to practice during meditation or prayer. Perhaps during your silent time, which ** GemmaRose** talked about, you may find it useful to conjure an image of Jesus, or various attributes of God, in your imagination. For instance, you might conjure in your mind an image of Jesus garbed in his Middle Eastern clothes, the way he is usually portrayed in Catholic Tradition, or you might imagine the Sacred Heart, or perhaps a roaring fire that symbolizes the Holy Spirit, or you might conjure an image of the cross, which is so deeply embedded in God’s heart.

Because God is omnipresent, everywhere at the same time, it is certain that Jesus or these parts of God’s being are actually in the places you imagine them to be. And if you imagine emotions coming from God to you, such as love, compassion or mercy, these too are part of God’s character and he feels them toward everyone on Earth, so this too will not be inaccurate. Therefore, in the deepest sense, even if some of the details of what you’re seeing are just you and not God, what you are seeing is real. We become like children drawing pictures with crayons of people sitting across from us in the room. The picture may be poor quality, but what it presents is real, because God is everywhere and thus if you imagine him sitting next to you or standing across from you, he is truly there, and his character is constant, so he does feel these positive emotions toward you that your imagination might construct him as portraying. And if you read God’s Word at the same time as this, you may experience additional illumination, because God’s Word is meant for each of us, personally, and therefore it truly is Jesus speaking to us.

This kind of close encounter with Jesus can create a deep sense of intimacy, of God’s presence. It is not guaranteed to, and pretty much any technique tends to take time before the fruits grow, just as bushes or flowers take time to sprout to the surface and produce leaves or petals after you first start watering them. The method of meditation I described above is similar to praying in the presence of statues or stain-glass-windows. Those pictures are there partly to help us center our mind on God and imaginatively come close to him, which can create a feeling of intimacy with God and of his holiness surrounding us.

It is also a good idea, before trying this, to pray that God will sanctify our imaginations and control what images occur. Also, as a general rule that involves not only this technique but virtually any form of meditation we might want to try, it may also be good to pray for angelic protection against demons. If we appeal to God for protection and wholly submit our souls to him, however, we are secure. Sometimes, while doing this, the images may move in ways we entirely didn’t expect, and God might actually seize control and give us images in our minds or experiences of his presence that come from him alone. That kind of possible supernaturalizing of this natural means of entering God’s presence is why I recommend praying for the sanctification of the mind and prayer against demons.
 
One more technique I’d recommend at this point is similar to my first suggestion in this post about praying. Just as it is useful to meditate on what each line of our prayers means, it is useful to meditate on what each line of the scriptures that we’re reading mean for us, how they are to be applied to our lives, and then we should ask ourselves the question of what we are to do with that knowledge, how we can apply it in our actions. Also, it is useful during scripture reading to try imaginatively bringing the Bible episodes to life, imagining the characters and the set and playing it in our minds like a movie, possibly filling in some details the scripture like leave out like the wind blowing and the smell of the seawater, the stink of men who have been trudging for miles and sweating, etc. I haven’t actually personally used this technique much, though I use the first two I mentioned in my above post. I apply the scriptures I read to myself all the time, and sometimes go further to think about the action part of this (I can be a bit lazy- other believers do much better at this than me), but I haven’t tried the imagining the scenes part often at all. Only rarely. However, I’ve heard from strong believers that this way of applying scripture to our lives and recreating the events of the scriptures imaginatively can be transformative and an astonishing blessing.

Remember, again, before entering into this kind of reading, to pray that the Lord sanctifies your imagination and blesses you with his truth, and that by these devotions you may come closer to him.
 
Laudatur Iesus Christus.

God speaks through His Church. Listen to the Liturgy (the Sacraments and the Liturgy of the Hours); listen to the Magisterium.

Spiritus Sapientiae nobiscum.

John Hiner
 
Lief, thank you very much for starting this thread!

on a quick side note, many protestants discuss a “personal relationship with Jesus”, and i am wondering if people in Catholic circles would refer to this as “developing a deeper prayer life”?

anyway, back on topic, i have heard of different types of meditative prayer (e.g. Teresian prayer, St Ignatius’ spiritual excercises) and was wondering if some posters could give a brief explanation of the types of meditative prayer they are aware of or have tried?

also, what is a rough estimate of amount of time devoted to meditative prayer each day/week?

thanks.
 
there is absolutely no technique, prayer method, secret practice or gimmick that will guarantee an experience of hearing or “feeling” God’s presence through the senses and/or imagination. What there is is the Church, Mass, the Eucharist and the other sacraments, the Word of God spoken in scripture and sacred tradition, and prayer. These are the gifts Jesus has given for our sanctification. Seeking after subjective experiences of God is futile and ultimately gravely dangerous to spiritual health. Anyone who professes to teach a guaranteed method to achieve such an experience is a charlatan. Don’t even bother contributing to this thread if that is your plan. Rather spend your time reading the classic Christian spiritual directors who have become saints: Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, Ignatius etc., and turn to regular prayer, reading scripture and most of all Mass and the sacraments. Experience the presence of God in the manner in which HE has guaranteed it, the Eucharist, through faith, not through the senses (read the English words of Aquinas’ great Eucharistic hymns to see what I mean).
 
over at newadvent, i just did a quick search (instead of working) and found this:

newadvent.org/cathen/04324b.htm

in response to puzzleannie, no one is looking for a gimmick. your comments are correct in that there is no guarantee that God will give us one gift or another, but i do believe that there are certain techniques and practices that can bring us closer to God, and therefore be more “in tune” with His will. prayer has been described as “intimate communication” with Christ, and anyone who has been in a relationship knows that lines of communication can always be improved.
 
puzzleannie and dang71, I’m responding to both of you in the discussion thread.

In the meantime, I’d like to offer one more technique for opening oneself to God that I’ve only discovered in the last few weeks (Really as soon as I became Catholic, praise God!): Praying the Mass.

It’s very simple to do this, though it might take some concentration. I mentioned earlier how useful it can be to take a few seconds or a full minute (or more) to meditate on each line of the scripture that one reads, or each line of a prayer that one speaks. This cultivates sincerely meaning each of these words. Praying the Mass builds on this, taking it a couple steps further. I can see one of the priests at our church praying the Mass frequently. He speaks each word of his part of the liturgy as though he has thought about it carefully and truly means it with all his heart, and when he sings or reads scripture, he often has a joyous smile on his face, because he is truly carefully heeding every word he is speaking. When other priests are leading the service or hymns are being sung, he is clearly deeply involved and caring about what is going on.

I do what he does, as well as I can. And this is not about expressions at all, obviously. Expressions are completely unnecessary. This is about what’s going on in one’s spirit.

Praying the Mass involves making the entirety of the Mass into a personal prayer. God’s Word, the scripture, exists for us all. Interpret the scripture readings of the day as being God’s special, personal word for you this day, this week, or at this stage in your life. Feel as though Jesus is standing there, not a priest, and you are the only person aside from him in the room (at that specific moment- unity is crucial to the Mass at other times), and that word is for you. It is what he has taken his time to make you aware of. Even more importantly, carefully consider the words of the scripture to see if there is anything in them that specifically responds to prayers you have been making, lately, or which relate to your personal life in any way. If it does relate, that is very likely God’s desired word for you. If you have a pencil handy, take notes on your program or something!

Also, pray the hymns. Let each line of whatever hymn, chant or other you might speak be your personal word to God, and think carefully about what is being said, not only because this is your word to God, but because it might easily become God’s word for you. Often, the hymns themselves contain words that directly respond to your situation, or to issues in your personal life, at this moment. So be aware of that and pay attention to them, both as your personal prayer or praise of our God, and also as his potential message to you (if it relates to you at all).

Furthermore, pray the liturgy. Whenever speaking the liturgy, try to really think about and mean everything you are saying. Turn it into a prayer for God, and watch it too, because like the hymns and scripture readings, frequently something in the liturgy might directly respond to something going on in your life. Truly ponder and mean all of it, to the best of your ability, and at the same time listen to it carefully as a possible word from God.

Pray the prayers too, obviously, as though you mean them. Interpret every blessing the priest gives you as God’s special blessing for you today. When he says, “Greet one another in the name of the Lord,” and you all turn around to say the peace, interpret all of those words of peace as God’s blessing of peace to you. Imagine that they are Jesus offering you peace, for they are, in fact, his Body of Christ. When the priest says, “the Lord be with you,” imagine and consider that the Lord is truly there with you now (for he is! The blessing truly does pray the Lord’s presence into your company in a special way).

Consider each gift you give at the Offering as your special gift to God, the miracle and wonder-working One Who reigns in heaven!, and it becomes personal and gains a new element of new joy.

During the celebration of the Eucharist, especially, cultivate an awareness of how stunning it is that this truly IS Christ’s body and blood! We are seeing and then tasting of the incarnate Lord!

And pray that God brings the Eucharist to life for you. In the “Prayers of Thanksgiving” topic someone posted a prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas about the Mass. He prayed it after Mass, but I think it might be useful to pray before Mass (again, obviously, pondering each line after we speak it), so that we can gain a meditative spirit about the Eucharist before receiving it. It may be useful to consider that prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas, or other writings of the saints about the Eucharist, at this point. I’d strongly recommend it, anyway.
 
That’s it, I guess, about praying the Mass. Summarized: Consider each part of the Mass to be God’s special word to you and/or your special word to God. Personalize it all and mean it all, thinking and meditating about every word and line and considering how it applies to your life or the prayers you’ve been making to God lately. Pray to God to be able to do this more completely, that he will bring it all to life for you more vibrantly.

Really, all the Mass is, or ideally should be, a prayer between us and God, us paying immense attention to all of it to see if God is answering our prayers or giving us any words at all that apply to our situations in any of the hymns, liturgy, readings, the homily, or the prayers. All of it is from God or from us, all of it designed to create intimacy between us and God.

For me personally, the Mass is my favorite moment of the week, because I experience so very much closeness to God during it. Protestant services, even very Holy Spirit filled ones (and I’ve been to a few of those) are nothing like it, if we pray the Mass and look for God in every part of it, rather than allowing ourselves to experience it only as going through some motions as a routine.

And I can’t help mentioning one more time the value of thanking God throughout the week. I know I already mentioned it, but it’s so easy to overlook such a simple prayer, and second only to the Mass, simple thanksgiving is where I usually meet God the most intimately. I know I’m double-posting just to repeat it, but it’s such an unspeakably valuable lesson. It took me years to start thanking God frequently, and now that I’ve started seriously doing it, I can’t stop and my love for God and experiences of his love for me have gone through the ceiling as a consequence. So anyone here who is seeking greater intimacy with God, try to thank God as often as you can for anything good you have or are going through, that you can think of.

I wish it wasn’t just me talking so much in this topic :(. I know others are talking too, but mainly with warnings, when what we’re looking for are more ways to enhance our prayer lives.

Any meditative techniques of the saints, or ways of reaching out to the Lord that they tried, would be very useful, here. So would more users posting their own ways of reaching greater intimacy with God.
 
In my experience, God first gives you a feeling of very deep wretchedness, and then, besides prayer, the most important thing is self denial. When you exercise yourself in denying you everything, then Jesus comes to fill the hole. However you can not deny yourself if He doen’t give you the will to do it. If you feel strong enough to take that journey (have nothing for yourself), you will feel God very clearly.
 
I believe what is being asked here is actually, what is contemplation, for it is in contemplation, that God speaks to us and transforms us through grace.

We do not make it happen, nor can we do anything to make it happen. No prayer method or technique will bring us into contemplation. All activity within, is that of God. Contemplation is from God it is His gift, and it is a gift of love.

However, that being said we have to open to God, and this we do through prayer. As St. Paul says, “pray unceasingly.”

I learned long ago, that the language of God is silence. As St. Teresa says, God speaks to us from our depth and it is where we hear him best, because in order to hear His language, we must be detached from our own agenda’s and emotional programs, which distort God’s will for us. We empty our hearts, so that He can fill them with His love. “God can not be grasped, except through love,” as the anonymous author wrote. Everything that comes to us from God, comes through love.

For me, sitting with my eyes closed, and with my heart directed toward God, is all that I need. Being in his presence can be described as two lovers resting in each other’s arms, not saying anything. Their mere presence to each other, communicates what they intend to say, and all that is needed.

So it is for me, when I rest in the presence of God. No words or experiences are necessary. Just being in His presence is enough.

In Christ Jesus
Jim
 
One of the ways I think God shows Himself first comes to my mind in His discourse to Job in chapters 38-41 I think, when God talks about the reach of His arm in nature, from the mountains to the animals.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top