Revelations of Divine Love · 56 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack
Chapter XLII-a
"Prayer is a right understanding of that fulness of joy that is to come, with accordant longing and sure trust" Our Lord God willeth that we have true understanding, and specially in three things that belong to our prayer.
The first is: by whom and how that our prayer springeth.
By whom , He sheweth when He saith: I am [the] Ground ; and how , by His Goodness: for He saith first: It is my will.
The second is: in what manner and how we should use our prayer ; and that is that our will be turned unto the will of our Lord, enjoying: and so meaneth He when He saith: I make thee to will it .
The third is that we should know the fruit and the end of our prayers : that is, that we be oned and like to our Lord in all things; and to this intent and for this end was all this lovely lesson shewed.
And He will help us, and we shall make it so as He saith Himself;—Blessed may He be!
For this is our Lord's will, that our prayer and our trust be both alike large.
For if we trust not as much as we pray, we do not full worship to our Lord in our prayer, and also we tarry and pain our self.
The cause is, as I believe, that we know not truly that our Lord is [the] Ground on whom our prayer springeth; and also that we know not that it is given us by the grace of His love.
For if we knew this, it would make us to trust to have, of our Lord's gift, all that we desire.
For I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace be first given to him.
But sometimes it cometh to our mind that we have prayed long time, and yet we think to ourselves that we have not our asking.
But herefor should we not be in heaviness.
For I am sure, by our Lord's signifying, that either we abide a better time, or more grace, or a better gift.
He willeth that we have true knowing in Himself that He is Being; and in this knowing He willeth that our understanding be grounded, with all our mights and all our intent and all our meaning; and in this ground He willeth that we take our place and our dwelling, and by the gracious light of Himself He willeth that we have understanding of the things that follow.
The first is our noble and excellent making; the second, our precious and dearworthy again-buying; the third, all-thing that He hath made beneath us, [He hath made] to serve us, and for our love keepeth it.
Then signifieth He thus, as if He said: Behold and see that I have done all this before thy prayers; and now thou art, and prayest me .
And thus He signifieth that it belongeth to us to learn that the greatest deeds be [already] done, as Holy Church teacheth; and in the beholding of this, with thanking, we ought to pray for the deed that is now in doing: and that is, that He rule and guide us, to His worship, in this life, and bring us to His bliss.
And therefor He hath done all.
Then signifieth He thus: that we [should] see that He doeth it, and that we [should] pray therefor.
For the one is not enough.
For if we pray and see not that He doeth it, it maketh us heavy and doubtful; and that is not His worship.
The path of loving devotion and self-surrender to a personal deity as itself sufficient means of liberation — the Gita's 'to those constantly devoted, I come forward as their deliverer,' Kabir's and the Sant poets' love-religion, the devotional stream that parallels Sufi love-mysticism. Distinct from mystical_union (the resulting state), fana_annihilation (the ego's unmaking at the path's end), ladder_of_love (eros staged toward Beauty), and prayer (the practice of address): bhakti names devotion as the soteriological road itself.
The passage emphasizes 'accordant longing,' 'sure trust,' and loving devotion as the primary mode of relating to God.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The instruction to turn one's will entirely unto the will of the Lord implies a letting-go of self-will.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text emphasizes that God actively orders all things for human love and service, doing 'all this before thy prayers' to guide the soul.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The passage describes the goal of prayer as becoming 'like to our Lord' and being 'oned' with Him, reflecting the doctrine of deification.