By the time I was in college, the Charismatic Renewal was in full swing in the Catholic Church though I had not yet been exposed to it or its more demonstrative style of worship. In addition, I was one of a handful of Catholics attending a Protestant University–me, because the Lutherans rewarded me financially more than the Jesuits for being able to dribble a ball around my back and through my legs and shoot said ball into a round cylinder with accuracy and in the spring field and throw a smaller harder ball and occasionally hit one when thrown in my direction. When off the field, I was exposed to a different religious lexicon from the one I had grown up with, less formal and (seemingly) more spontaneous forms of prayer–“Lord, I just wanna . . .” or “Father, I just wanna . . .”– usually moving around a circle of gathered students or occasionally teammates who seemed more comfortable than I was with informal, para-liturgical prayer that often sounded more like little speeches aimed at those gathered than prayers to the One in whom we lived and moved and had our being.

A few times in college, and more times in my mid-twenties, I was exposed to Charismatic masses. My first year at Princeton Theological Seminary, where my wife and I were the only Catholic couple ever to earn a Master of Divinity degree, we fulfilled a Field Education Unit at The Upper Room in Redbank, New Jersey, a Catholic Spiritual Center that we later discovered originally had connections to the charismatic renewal. All it took for us to realize this was a few abrupt, exclamatory utterances of “Praise the Lord” and a post-communion time of prayer that included speaking in tongues (glossolalia). Because of capable leaders who also were rooted in a contemplative spirituality, its enthusiasts were less forward and presumptuous and more tactful than many I had encountered who acted as if they had found and pocketed the Holy Grail.

As an aside, some friends and I painted houses together in the summers to help pay for our graduate theological studies and we pressed our tongues firmly against our cheeks and had our account at the local Sherwin Williams Paint Store under the name The Semi-Gloss Olalia Painters. Ba-dum ching! But I digress.

What does it mean to praise?

What I wanted to talk about was praise. During those years, being exposed to people who self-identified as Christians who seemed to be so comfortable if not casual with saying “Praise the Lord” or “Praise God” and such things, got me to wondering: what, in fact, does it mean to praise, or better yet, what in practice, in life does it mean to praise God?

To me praise seemed an awesome thing–still does– perhaps even a rare act, certainly a reverent, holy expression not to be spoken casually or lightly. But I did not believe then, nor do I now, that praise is limited to out loud, verbal expressions like the straight-forward “Praise the Lord,” or that praise belongs solely to some imaginary spiritual elite.

There are three types of persons who I believe are especially inclined to offer genuine praise: children, those who have suffered much, and those who have lived long and well enough to become wise.

The first type offers praise that is pretheological, presymbolic, precognitive and comes from a placeless place within that is moved by the sheer incomprehensible surprise of being. The child’s world is enchanted, until it isn’t. But until it isn’t, the form of praise is the natural though inarticulate participation in the revelry and enjoyment of being alive. We are wired from birth, I believe, to wonder, to express awe, to give thanks, and, yes, to offer praise. It is indigenous to the human person from before time when we floated, as it were, in the womb-waters of the divine, the umbilical conduit connecting, nourishing, and sustaining us with life and love. To be clear, no one came out of their mother’s womb giving thanks or offering praise. And yet, it is the intended direction, the telos, the end to and for which we were created. Each of us is uniquely equipped with the esteemed capacity and grace to experience this. To say praise is innate to humans does not mean it is automatic or guaranteed. After birth we have to retrieve it, bring it to consciousness, cultivate it, and enact it regularly. It requires our cooperation.

Human praise is the most fitting response to our attachment to the divine through the exchange of love. God loves. We praise. To know one’s attachment to the Creator Spirit, to remember that one’s life depends upon the self-bestowal of God, flowers into praise for the humble of heart who cultivate it long after the loss of innocence. Thsse children who grow up to realize that in a world occupied with so many who are disenchanted, praise is an act of resistance, an echo of the Creator’s original delight: “And God saw that it was good” or as some have it “saw that it was beautiful.”  .

The second type of person of praise comes from those who are familiar with suffering and well acquainted with grief. One of my favorite classes in seminary was a course on The Psalms (what Bonhoeffer called “the prayerbook of the bible”). It was taught by Bernard W. Anderson, one of the great biblical scholars of the late 20th century. I learned from him not only that approximately one third of the psalms are gut-wrenching, fist-shaking, no holds barred laments that typically begin with airing of complaints in the spirit of “How long, O Lord, Why, O Lord, What the ef, O Lord,” but also that laments almost always end with either an expression of hope, trust, joy, or praise. Praise that rises up from suffering is one I can believe in. It is credible, trustworthy, and admirable. Rather than being disrespectful, vulgar, irreverent prayers, laments are, in fact, signs of great faithfulness and daring, uttered from a place of intimacy, vulnerability, and deep trust. Whereas some of these psalms offend human ears, Jewish spirituality is grounded in the convictional knowing that God is never offended by honesty, but rather by subterfuge, posturing, phoniness, and self-absorption. No prayer can be genuine if it is not honest. And God graciously receives any prayer that is honest.

It seems to me that what is most majestic about genuine praise is not that it comes from a place of ethereal, antiseptic bliss when all is well with me, but rather is born from one’s own poverty, vulnerability, need, or anguish that has been transfigured into wisdom which is a doorway to praise. The third type who offer authentic praise are those who have lived long and deeply enough to be stripped of or to have relinquished a rugged individualism, narcissism, or investment in false projects that claimed to deliver happiness and fulfillment, and who have endured and learned from suffering.

The latter two types are not better than the first type unknowingly offered from the first naivety of the child, but simply the more mature, full expression of genuine praise offered from a place of second naivety that comes, when it comes, from enduring suffering or from becoming wise through the gift and work of love. Sage, author, and survivor of the Shoah Elie Wiesel said, “No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.” The same can be said of praise.

To be continued . . .