By Theresa Ryland
The Church recently celebrated the feast day of Saint Augustine on August 28. Augustine’s life shows how prayer and intellectual activity can unite in the depths of the human heart by grace. Augustine’s practice of sacred intellection reflects Christ’s prayer that his disciples would be “consecrated in the Truth” (John 17:19 RSV). As we begin a new academic year, it is appropriate to reflect on this particular aspect of Christian philosophy in the Augustinian mode, so that we may always seek to surrender our intellects to the divine Light dwelling within our hearts, to be taught interiorly by the Inner Teacher (Matthew 23:10).1
To approach this topic most generally, let us first consider this question: Are the activities of prayer and intellection distinct operations in the human soul? It might seem at first that they are distinct because, in contemporary parlance, it is common to separate the head and the heart. The answer to this question depends, however, upon how one defines both prayer and intellect. In truth, prayer and intellection are in fact distinct acts of the soul, but grace can so integrate the human heart to be able to synthesize these two activities into one harmonious act of a simple love-gaze upon Eternal Wisdom. The key to understanding how these otherwise distinct acts can become one lies in the concept of participation.
In the heart’s simple gaze upon Eternal Truth, initiated by the grace of faith, all rational reflection is elevated by participating in this deeper spirit of prayer. Reflection on the integrating work of grace in the mind leads us to affirm with Saint Evagrius Ponticus that “prayer without distraction is the highest intellection of the mind.”2 Such an integration is only possible by grace. For the Christian scholar who is conscious of union with the Trinity in the depths of the heart, even rational inquiry can be suffused with prayer, for that sacred place, in the grace of the Holy Spirit, is “filled with the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). In order to make this argument, we shall refer to a biblical and Patristic account of the heart in order to show how the grace of the Indwelling Trinity can integrate a heart to become more and more capable of sacred, prayerful intellection of divine mysteries.
Let us consider the depth and mystery of the human heart, specifically in its intellectual capacity for love-gazing upon divine mysteries. The Psalmist tells us that “the heart is deep” (Psalm 64:6). Each person has a deep heart, capable of spiritual perception. This deep heart (also called the mind or the spirit) is the innermost part of the human soul.3 According to the biblical and patristic understanding, the heart is the capacity for experiential knowledge of God through spiritual perception.4 Far more than merely the center of emotional life, the early Fathers of the Church conceived of the heart as the principal power of the human soul, capable of intellection of hidden mysteries through the illuminations of faith and love. Origen of Alexandria, for instance, interprets the scriptural meaning of heart in this way: “That ‘heart’ is used for the mind, that is, for the intellectual faculty, you will certainly find over and over again in all the scriptures, both the New and Old.”5
In the Patristic understanding, the intellect is not a tool to be used merely for rational discourse; rather, intellect is a sacred dwelling where Truth Himself abides. He abides there constantly in order to teach us about himself, if we would turn within to listen. The deep heart is ordered to enact the highest activity of the soul: nous (or in Latin: intellectus). This highest intellection of God by the heart (in a simple, intuitive love-gaze) by grace can also be called contemplative prayer. The Catechism reminds us that “according to Scripture, it is the heart that prays.”6 Saint Thomas Aquinas explains the spiritual renewal of grace as principally the cleansing and illumination of this mind, heart, or intellect: “Our renewal, which consists in putting on the new man, belongs to the mind.”7 Thanks to the grace given in baptism, the mind of each Christian is a sacred place. Baptismal grace transforms a person’s mind into a dwelling place of the Trinity, consecrating it as a Temple of prayer, an abode of divine Life.
What difference does this reality of the indwelling Trinity make for the operation of intellect, especially as it relates to the work of a Catholic scholar? The reality of the Indwelling Trinity changes a person’s interior life in its entirety. A baptized person stands on sacred ground even in the midst of practical activities of daily life, but even more so when he applies the same faculty used for Godward gazing to other truths, in the practice of philosophy or other sciences. No movement of the intellect escapes the loving gaze of the Inner Teacher, even in the study of the lower sciences. Saint Augustine’s integrated method of prayerfully consulting with the Inner Teacher in all his philosophical discourse shows that the activity of intellect is able to participate in the life of prayer ongoing in the deep heart. The lower activities of discursion (ratio) can participate in the highest activity of intellect (intellectus or nous), when intellect is understood in the Patristic way as that innermost gaze upon divine Truth. All of the movements of rational discourse in the intellect can occur under a higher light, as if basking in the stillness and silence of nous, that prayer of the deep heart. In this graced integration, a deeper spirit of prayerfulness can perfume all rational activity. Therefore, the various activities of academic work can participate in the contemplative prayer that is going on in the depths of the heart all day long. The more a scholar follows Augustine’s exhortation to ponder the heavenly mysteries in faith and love, and to return to the deep heart, the more that the intellect can participate in this personal, heart-to-heart abiding with the Inner Teacher.
Since all participants gradually take on the likeness of that in which they participate, all lower reasoning can take on the likeness of this higher, more noble form of divine Life deep within. In this way, one can maintain a sharp distinction between the acts of prayer and intellect, while also allowing for the possibility of their integration through participation.
As we begin a new academic year as Catholic scholars, let us pray for Saint Augustine’s intercession for sacred intellection, so that we might be able to surrender our intellects and all of our work to the divine Light within, to operate reverently and passively under its influence, so as to be entirely led by the Inner Teacher.
1St. Augustine, Confessions 11.8.10; De Magistro 12.40.
2St. Evagrius Ponticus, Treatise on Prayer, 34. Kalistos Ware explains that Evagrius “regards prayer as essentially an activity of the nous, of the intellect or mind” in “Nous in Noesis in Plato, Aristotle, and Evagrius of Pontus” Diotima, Vol. 14 (1985): 158-163, 158.
3Catechism of the Catholic Church 2562-4.
4The deep heart, mind, or spirit (terms used synonymously here) is not the spiritual power without the soul nor is it the soul without the spiritual power, but rather, it is the soul together with its spiritual power as one center of the person. Thomas Aquinas says that there are various senses of the term mind. The term mind sometimes stands for the whole spiritual power consisting of intellect and will, and sometimes stands for the subject of the whole spiritual power, cf. Disputed Questions on Truth q. 10. The subject of the power is the spiritual soul itself subsisting as the form of the body and also as more than just the form of the body. In his Commentary on 1 Corinthians, Aquinas succinctly reviews “what sort of man is called spiritual.” He says: “We usually call incorporeal substances, spirits. Consequently, because there is a definite part of the soul not associated with any bodily organ, namely, the intellectual part, which includes both intellect and will, that part of the soul is called the man’s spirit. Now in this part of the soul the Spirit of God enlightens the intellect and enkindles the affections and will” (Commentary on 1 Corinthians, ch. 2, lect. 3, 117).
5Origen, De Principiis, I, 1, 9, trans. G. W. Butterworth (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith Publishing, 1973), 14.
6Catechism of the Catholic Church 2562.
7St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 93, a. 6.
