"We pray to become divine"

[Loki]

Quote from the homily this weekend. He was stressing that prayer, contrary to popular media, does not necessarily imply religious fanatic to be avoided, or a last ditch effort to resolve something hopeless.

I really like that idea, and it's the concept I've had of prayer for awhile now, but I don't know if it's a common interpretation of it, or if it is an orthodox point of view.

Outside links (ie, theology) are especially welcome in addition to commentary.

[Fantine]

That sounds quite "new age" to me.

Some Catholic priests and theologians who blended some new age thinking with Catholicism are Anthony de Mello, Bede Griffiths, and Matthew Fox, but I don't think any of them are (or were) on good terms with the Vatican.

Here's some of what the Vatican says about the New Age:

The New Age concept of God is rather diffuse, whereas the Christian concept is a very clear one. The New Age god is an impersonal energy, really a particular extension or component of the cosmos; god in this sense is the life-force or soul of the world. Divinity is to be found in every being, in a gradation “from the lowest crystal of the mineral world up to and beyond the Galactic God himself, about Whom we can say nothing at all.

Do we save ourselves by our own actions, as is often the case in New Age explanations, or are we saved by God's love? Key words are self-fulfilment and self-realisation, self-redemption. New Age is essentially Pelagian in its understanding of about human nature.(74 (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html#fn74))

It is also true that techniques for going deeper into one's own soul are ultimately an appeal to one's own ability to reach the divine, or even to become divine: if they forget God's search for the human heart they are still not Christian prayer. Even when it is seen as a link with the Universal Energy, “such an easy 'relationship' with God, where God's function is seen as supplying all our needs, shows the selfishness at the heart of this New Age”

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html#3.5.%20The%20“god%20within“%20and%20“theosis”

In short, the Vatican is upset that some Catholic clergy promote New Age techniques and spirituality in tandem with traditional Catholicism.

And because this is the "liberal Catholic" forum, I'm not going to advise you to drop everything and report the priest to the bishop or anything.

I have attended different workshops that have borrowed techniques from the New Age while being conducted under the auspices of Catholicism, and personally I found them very beneficial at the time. (There is even something in the Vatican document that says, "they can be a good preparation for prayer, but they are not prayer.")

New Age Catholics like to point out that the works of Thomas Aquinas were condemned by the Vatican many times during his lifetime, and it was only after his death that they relented....

They also say that St. Augustine changed the course of Catholicism (not in a good way.)

[JasonV]

For both Loki and Fantine,

Fr. Basil Pennington's text "Centering Prayer".

[Fish and Bread]

Many of the eastern church fathers emphasized the idea of life as process of theosis and divinization wherein people would become more and more God-like, eventually becoming one with God. It's not really outside the bounds of traditional thought to believe that. I guess the distinction would be that, unlikely new age theology, eastern Christianity did not teach that God and man became one entity but that man became "divine" through a sharing of God's created energies, not truly God but a created being who became a part of God's energies forming an intimate connection. Or something like that. It's complicated. :) Read St. Gregory Palamas. ;)

[Loki]

I guess the distinction would be that, unlikely new age theology, eastern Christianity did not teach that God and man became one entity but that man became "divine" through a sharing of God's created energies, not truly God but a created being who became a part of God's energies forming an intimate connection.

Thanks F&B; this is likely what he was driving at. I have spoken to him enough to suspect that he's very theologically sound in what he does and says, and would not, even if it were a Conservative Catholic forum, try to have him investigated over such an ambiguous statement.

[Protinus]

I understand the "becoming divine question through prayer" question from Loki. However I do not wish to answer it as I don't think we can become divine..even metaphorically and as per some of the things that I have said in other threads.

I do not think that we should shrink from public prayer as in praying before meals in public. My cradle Catholic boys are intimidated and embarrassed by this....but the have their own peer trials right now.

I am reading Thomas Merton's "Thoughts in Silence", page 40 right now and he writes:

"In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense of whole being. Prayer is then not just a formula of words, or a series of desires springing up in the heart - it is the orientation of our whole body, mind and spirit to God in silence, attention and adoration. All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God."

This helps me approach the mystery of God and strengthens my faith.

[Loki]

I'm meeting with him tomorrow; I suppose I could just ask ;)

[CaDan]

OH NOES!!1!!!! teh nu age!!11!!!

More correctly, I think this was probably a riff on hesychastic prayer. Have a look at the Philokalia or the works of St. Gregory Palmas.

[Loki]

"love of the beautiful, the exalted, the excellent, understood as the transcendent source of life and the revelation of Truth"

Philokalia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia)

This sounds right.