Grade 8: Prayer of Conforming Union

While St. Teresa calls this degree of prayerful union with God the spiritual betrothal or espousal; others call it the prayer of ecstatic union, taking the name from the primary external phenomenon of this grade. However, Prof. Jordan Aumann prefers to use conforming union and transforming union for the last two degrees of mystical prayer. (Cf. Spiritual Theology, p.344) Accordingly, "in the prayer of simple union all the interior faculties of the soul are centered on God alone; only the external senses are still free. But in the prayer of conforming union God captivates even the external senses, with the result that the soul is totally divinized, so to speak, and prepared by God to move to the full and final commitment of the transforming union." (Ibid.)

Fr. Aumann continues, "In the prayer of conforming union, therefore, the soul loses the use of its external senses, either partially or totally, because all the interior faculties are absorbed in God and the senses are alienated from their proper natural functioning. It is with difficulty that the soul turns its attention to external activity, though it knows that sometimes it must 'leave God for God' in performing its duties or services of charity for others. But the predominant sentiment of these souls is the longing for full and perfect union with God, accompanied by a longing for death. The soul now echoes the yearning of St. Paul to be dissolved and to be with Christ (Phi. 1:23) and the statement of St. Teresa as a child: 'I want to see God, but to see God we must die.'" (Ibid., p.345)

"In the ecstatic experience of the conforming union, the soul not only has contact with God in the very center of its soul, but also it seems to peer into the very essence of God and discover divine secrets… The soul experiences that it is in God and God in the soul, and the concentration is so complete that all the faculties are absorbed in this union… Mystical ecstasy is therefore a concomitant or normal phenomenon of the prayer of conforming union. Unlike prophetic ecstasy, mystical ecstasy is both sanctifying and meritorious. The essential element in this prayer, however, is the absorption of the soul in God; the ecstasy is a secondary but concomitant element. Both of these elements are necessary for the true mystical ecstasy. Without the union with God in infused contemplative prayer, the ecstasy would be a natural ecstasy or trance, a falsification of mystical ecstasy caused by an evil spirit, or the gratia gratis data of prophetic ecstasy." (Ibid., p.346)

We are also told that the principal forms of ecstasy which occur here can be gentle and delightful, as well as violent and painful (cf. Ibid., p.347). Except perhaps for their apparent difference between delight and pain, even St. Teresa found it difficult to distinguish clearly the essential difference between them, as we read: "I should like, with the help of God, to be able to describe the difference between union and rapture, or elevation, or what they call flight of the spirit, or transport --- it is all one. I mean that these different names all refer to the same thing, which is also called ecstasy. It is much more beneficial than union: the effects it produces are far more important, and it has a great many more operations, for union gives the impression of being just the same at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end, and it happens interiorly. But the ends of these raptures are both interior and exterior." (Ibid., p.347)

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