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October 12, 2025, Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time:

Grades of Prayer – 4. Prayer of Simplicity

We continue our reflection on the Grades of Prayer. So far, we have reflected on Vocal Prayer (which involves personal and community prayer, in which we use words, prayers, and liturgical or formal text to communicate with God), Meditation (in which we use our reason and intellect to think and reflect on God using the Scripture and other liturgical books), Affective Prayer (in which we us our will to express our love and affections to God and experience his love for us). Now, let us consider another grade of prayer, that is the Prayer of Simplicity. There are several spiritual authors who talk about this form of prayer. St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa did not use this name, but have recognized this form of prayer and called it prayer of acquired recollection, or some others call it prayer of simple gaze of the presence of God.

It seems that Jacques Bossuet (1627-1704) was the first author to use this name Prayer of Simplicity. He defines it as a simple loving gaze upon some divine object, whether on God himself or one of his perfections, on Christ or on one of his mysteries, or on some other Christian truth. It is a form of ascetical prayer that is extremely simplified. The discursive formerly used in meditation has now been transformed into a simple intellectual gaze; the affections that were experienced in affective prayer have been unified into a simple loving attention to God. The prayer is ascetical, meaning that the soul is able to attain to this type of prayer by its own efforts with the help of ordinary grace, but often it is the transition point to mystical prayer.

Jordan Aumann in his Spiritual Theology further explains it saying, the Prayer of Simplicity is thus the bridge between ascetical and mystical prayer. It is, as it were, the final disposition before the Holy Spirit begins to operate in the soul by means of his gifts. For that reason, one may frequently experience a blending of acquired and infused elements in the practice of the prayer of simplicity. If the soul is faithful, the infused elements will gradually be increased until they dominate the practice of prayer entirely. Thus, without any shock and almost insensibly, the soul proceeds gently from the ascetical practice of prayer to mystical contemplation. This is an indication of the unity of the spiritual life and of the fact that there is only one road to perfection.

In summary, we can say that the Prayer of Simplicity is a sustained gaze, loving gaze on the beloved, or attention on God. This prayer helps to move from discursive meditation to a more direct, contemplative relationship with God. It can also refer to prayers for inner simplicity and freedom from attachments to worldly things that distract from God. You can practice it by simply resting in God's presence, maintaining a gentle, loving awareness of Him, or by praying for the grace to be free from the clutter in your life. If you really want to think of an example, for this type of prayer, imagine a child looking at the face of a mother with a smile, with wide open eyes and without blinking of the eyes. Prayer of Simplicity enables us to become like a child in the arms of a mother. God desires that we become like children in his loving hands!    — Fr. Jesu