This series of four essays addresses as battle domains our daily fight against the four tenets of the prevailing cosmological thinking of our time: Moralistic Therapeutic Deist Universalism. Part 1, and the subsequent parts each describe a means that we must exploit daily to allow God to reverse these dominant tenets. 

“How do we fit in?”

The second battle domain is Modernist Theraputicism, which defines prevalent modern beliefs about Reality, “How do we fit in?” by answering that “God does not need to be involved in one’s life, except to resolve a problem.” But Christian Reality identifies a Trinity that dwells within our souls. 

Continuing the theme from Part 1, like all effective heresies, Modernist Therapeutic thinking can extract enough of Christianity to let Modernists declare themselves Christians; or, since Modernism is sufficiently ill-defined, to declare themselves members of other religions. But their ironically named Therapeutic Reality defines a god that lacks the divine intimacy of the Holy Trinity. For the Modernist Therapeutists, their deity is only a being to summon when worldly issues arise. For them, the notion of an all-powerful, eternal Trinity pitching His tent within our immaterial souls is impossible. This heresy stemmed from a 1300s theory conjecturing that any supernatural essence/form held by entities, including God, is unnecessary, mere baggage thrust upon the material world. Even the saints needed to fight this conjecture. St. Teresa of Avila, the Doctor of the Church that these essays will often quote, recalls the days when she did not know that “God was in all things by presence, power, and essence,” but once God gave her this favor, she was certain. She learned that “He was there only by His grace (Interior Castle (IC) 5.1).”

Given all this “strange doctrine” (Hebrews 13:9) now integral to Western culture and life, every Christian must recollect how they fit with the Reality of the Holy Trinity. This is God’s work, but each Christian must initiate and show openness to this Truth through habit and prayer, which leads to further action. 

The Means to Battle Therapeutic Reality: Contemplative Prayer 

In this second battle domain against Theraputicism, the specific means to resist this current-age thinking is Contemplative Prayer. As a start to take out the Therapeutic god, the soul actively but quietly uses its faculties (which are defined simply as perception, memory, imagination, reason, and will) to understand where we fit in. This first step always focuses on Christ in the Gospels, but can include discursively turning over the Apostles’ and other saints’ writings. The purpose of this active yet quiet prayer is, as St. John of the Cross writes, “to know how to imitate him and behave in all events as he would (Ascent of Mt Carmel (AC) 1.13.3). 

That effort eventually simplifies into the “loving attention” that defines Contemplative Prayer. St. Teresa teaches: “The will is so fixed upon her God, that the restlessness of the understanding greatly afflicts her… let it alone, and let her throw herself into the arms of love, for His Majesty will teach her what she is to do on that occasion (IC 4.3).” That is, pray with less thinking, more gazing. St. John of the Cross (AC 2.12-13) maintains that this evolution from silent, active thinking to Contemplative Prayer is natural. Discursive reflection and the imagination become unsatisfactory. The soul prefers to “remain alone in loving awareness of God, without particular considerations, in interior peace and quiet and repose.” Indeed, instead of imaginings, memories, and reasonings, the soul knows through faith that it is filled with the real Trinity. 

Christ Himself introduced this never-before-practiced type of prayer, as Luke 6:12 exemplifies: “And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and he passed the whole night in the prayer of God.”

The saints offer timeless advice on what to avoid here. First, “attempts to force the mind to be empty do more harm than good (Fire Within, Dubay).” Christian prayer is an active and full attunement toward the indwelling Holy Trinity. This includes rejecting completely heretical “centering” Eastern, yoga-like prayers that focus on the self and its problems and workings. Second, avoid thinking the soul deserves prayer advantages, such as deep peace, social honor, accomplishment, and healing. In fact, believing that we will never gain any benefits exhibits humility (IC 4.2). 

The soul is then fully on the Purpose battlefield that God has defined, not one defined by the Therapeutic god. One’s fight turns to distractions in prayer. Many never win that war, as the devil, world, and self are relentless. These souls quit the effort altogether, as they fail to grasp the persevering victories of those who have gone before them. As St. Teresa counsels, the devil will try to make us abandon the fight (IC 4.1). Indeed, the Modernist propagandizing plays its role: Under the spell of materialists, many believe they have wasted their time (IC 4.1), as no apparent physical-world good may have resulted. 
But each return to the indwelling Trinity from a distraction is a victory of love. David Torkington explains that any small return, which in Hebrew means “repent,” defines prayer itself: the selfless act, rejecting the thinking you would prefer. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC #2715) upholds this: “The focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self.” In fact, this turning back reveals the power of God, coexisting mysteriously with the apparent human effort required (Torkington, p. 411). 

Guidelines

To allow God to fight back against the Modernist Therapeutic tendencies we all build, given the culture that develops us, and to help realize this means: 

1. Find a space where moments with God can happen within your soul – darkness, silence; CCC #2717: “Contemplative Prayer is silence, the ‘symbol of the world to come’ (St. Isaac of Nineveh).”
2. Focus on the indwelling Trinity, but to do that, make only very gentle and simple acts to focus. At times, the soul’s meager faculties can hinder what God is working on (see WP, Ch. 25). The most one should do is utter a simple word, quietly (WP Ch. 31).
3. Allow yourself to try different poses, locations, times of day, and recollecting thoughts and words.
4. Develop the habit with a daily time slot. We all require such frequency to overcome the long-imbued Modernist thinking that forms us. 
5. Write down periodically what distracts you. What you jot down helps drive Part 3, as you notice the patterns of those individual wayward thoughts taking you from God: fears, imperfections, venial sins. 
6. Persevere. As the Catechism (CCC #2710) affirms, “One makes time for the Lord, with the firm determination not to give up, no matter what trials and dryness one may encounter.” 
7. Pray throughout the day the simple words, “May Your Kingdom Come.” Your goal here is to overpower the inherent Therapeutic tendency to know a Reality that constrains God.
8. Memorize and pray this powerful Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Remember your own humility, which one needs to allow God to reign.

Note that we also can advocate Contemplative Prayer with the Indwelling Trinity to Protestants, for their own efforts to defeat Modernism, as we work toward their ultimate conversion. 

Next, the heretical Moralistic (relativistic and changeable) god also needs defeating. So, in Part 3, next week, the daily journey to defeat Moralistic Therapeutic Deist Universalism continues. But, as always, remember that the most significant power behind this battle is God’s, with the soul welcoming that power.