Solitude: Prerequisite for Prayer
For forty days and forty nights he [Jesus] prayed and fasted … He nevertheless condescended to teach us the practice of solitude, in order to speak alone to God. (OOCC, XXXIII, pp. 153 - 154; GIL, XXVIII, p. 107)
St. Vincent Pallotti stressed the importance of solitude in order to arrive at a genuine state of prayer. To maintain a consciousness of God’s presence, thereby experiencing an encounter with God, and to discover the nature of a person’s self as he stands before the presence of God, thereby entering into dialogical relationship with God, calls for an interior recollection. A person achieves the state of inner recollection with the help of solitude. Hence, solitude is an effective means for deeper prayer. In order to explain the meaning of solitude, St. Vincent gives the example of Jesus going into the wilderness and spending forty days and forty nights in deep communion with God. In order to have communion with God, Jesus goes into the wilderness. For Jesus, being in the wilderness meant being away from every person, being away from every form of involvement in the world, and being totally available to God. This is exactly what solitude means. Solitude totally frees us for God, thereby making a genuine divine- human encounter possible. Just as Jesus embraced the “wilderness,” we need to embrace “solitude” in order that we experience God in and through our prayer.
Do I cultivate a genuine attitude of prayer? Do I cultivate interior recollection in order to grow in my prayer life? Do I understand the meaning of “Jesus is going into the wilderness” in the context of my prayer life? Do I have the spirit of solitude, which makes me ready for God- experience?
In those days he departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. (Lk. 6: 12)