Pre-Owned Dark Intimacy: Hope for Those in Difficult Prayer-Experience (Paperback) 0829407081 9780829407082

In its author's own words, this book sketches "a realistic approach to the beautiful but dark intimacy offered us by God in our daily praying." David J. Hassel sees prayer as intimacy at its best, yet, like any other deep sharing, it makes "terrible demands on all partners." In god, he continues, we find a confidant who fulfills all the conditions for intimacy. Fr. Hassel discusses eight types of prayer, each of which corresponds to a deeper stage of intimacy with God and each of which arises from the experience of a particular sacrament. The first stage is the awareness of a hunger for intimacy which, while it may be directed toward another person, does not exclude God. The second stage is the prayer of day-to-day intimacy with roots in baptism, The third and fourth stages - are founded in the sacrament of reconciliation. When these four prayer-types are present, others can then open up. The fifth stage is that of apostolic work and prayer, rooted in confirmation and the anointing of the sick, while the sixth type is the prayer of powerlessness "set deep in the sacrament of marriage and in the quasi-sacraments of religious vows and loyal, long-term friendship." The final two stages are the prayer of being and the prayer of ultimate union. These eight states, Fr. Hassel shows, are continuous and progressive, leading into the "depths of the self... and finally into the ever deepening mystery of God."