This Morning: Sleeping Apostles on the Son Rise Morning Show

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning with Matt Swaim this morning to talk about St. Thomas More's The Sadness of Christ. The theme of sleepiness may all too appropriate for the early risers on the Son Rise Morning Show. I've named today "Spring Ahead Monday", celebrated with coffee, lots of coffee!

Listen live here or on your local EWTN affiliate at about 6:50 a.m. Central, 7:50 a.m. Eastern. 

We certainly won't have time for this during our short segment, but Thomas More pauses in his comments about sleepiness and inattentiveness in prayer--not just by Peter, James and John--among his contemporaries (and now us) in the midst of his explication of the story of Jesus's Agony in the Garden.

He admits that he's been rather hard on his fellow Catholics, "attacking that sort of prayer in which the mind is not attentive but wandering and distracted among many ideas" and then proposes "an emollient from [Jean/John] Gerson to alleviate this sort point, lest [he] seem to be like a harsh surgeon touching this common sore too roughly," and even making the reader feel hopeless about her ability to pray without distraction. (p. 56)

John Gerson (1363–1429) was chancellor of the University of Paris, a defender of St. Joan of Arc's innocence after her execution, and a promoter of devotion to St. Joseph. He worked hard to destroy the Great Schism of 1378 (with the competing anti-popes) and was known as the Doctor Consolatorius--like More's good friend John Colet, he did not use the scholastic method of exploring theological themes, but wrote more simply and directly.

More tells his readers that in Prayer and Its Value (De Oratione et ejus Valore) Gerson says there are three aspects to prayer: the act of praying, the virtue of praying, and the habit of praying. Using the example of a pilgrim on the way from France to Compostela, Gerson says that the pilgrim starts out with the act: being a prayerful pilgrim, devoted to Saint James, and meditating on the saint. He develops this virtue of praying throughout his pilgrimage, but sometimes he gets distracted, perhaps by the practical matters of blisters, rain, and other troubles. He's still on pilgrimage; he's still enduring all the trials and dangers of the journey, because it's become a habit. So the pilgrim just needs to persevere on the pilgrim trail, devote himself again to meditating on the saint to continue the act of praying, its virtues and his good habit. Only if he decides to break off his pilgrimage, go home, and decide never to complete it will he forfeit the benefits of the pilgrimage.

As More concludes, Gerson says it's same with prayer: "once it has been begun attentively it can never afterwards be so interrupted that the virtue of the first intention does not remain and persist continuously--that is, either actually or habitually--so long as it is not relinquished by making a decision to stop not cut off by turning away to mortal sin."

Thus More, calling Jean Gerson "the most learned and virtuous man" offers some respite to his readers, as long as they don't try to use this explanation as an excuse "for those who out of careless laziness make no effort to think about their prayers." (p. 58)

This emollient that More pauses to provide in the midst of his meditation on The Sadness of Christ could be a good pick me up for our mid-Lenten devotions. 

Nunc coepi! Now I begin!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Jean Gerson, 1714 Engraving By: Bernard Picart