by Robert Royal.

The Cloud of Unknowing is probably the most popular mystical treatise in English, a sort of bestseller when it was written in the thirteen hundreds (when England was still Catholic), often republished over centuries, and a favorite of recent, highly discerning figures like C.S. Lewis. It's also unique (in my estimation) in that its author (an unknown monk) discourages people from taking up his book: "nor allow another to do so, unless you really believe that he is a person deeply committed to following Christ perfectly."

So as Lent begins today, if you're finding your prayers and spiritual practices in need of a fresh injection of life, here's a great place to start - with the author's own caution.

I often hear these days that Lent is not about "giving something up." I'm no one's idea of a spiritual guide, but absent other considerations it's clear that this is a half-truth. The Christian life is about giving up many things - not as an end in itself, as if created goods are bad - but in order to make room, as it were, for greater goods and a different order in body, mind, and spirit. There are many resources in the tradition to guide us through both concrete penances and deeper practices.

I myself have been benefitting from working through the Cloud because it's simple and profound. And teaches a kind of spiritual fasting, which is something we don't often remember in our material fasts. In contemplation, says the author, you place yourself between two "clouds."

A cloud of forgetting: you lay aside everything that ordinarily occupies your mind, all the daily tasks, worries, responsibilities, interests. Everything. You can return to them at the proper time. But when you're moving closer to God, you just leave all that behind during prayer.

This is easier said than done. If you try, even for a few seconds, you'll find that your mind is buzzing with all sorts of thoughts, many perhaps perfectly innocent, even necessary the rest of the time - "only human." But to detach yourself from them or let them pass by without focusing on them takes considerable practice. One of the useful techniques is just to give up and ask God to do it for you. That works. Sometimes.

The other "cloud" is the cloud of unknowing with regard to God Himself. We cannot fully know God with our limited human intelligence. He is more than we can grasp. But one way we can approach Him is not through knowledge, which can even be a hindrance in a sense (more on this below), but through love.

This, too, is easier said than done. Try it and you'll see that you always want to be talking to yourself or to Him when what you more often need is to draw closer by the only way we ultimately can: by remaining silent, letting Him come to you, which means waiting for grace. Cardinal Sarah's The Power of Silence presents this process with great spiritual depth and beauty.

Dante talks about this at the beginning of Paradiso:

To soar beyond the human cannot be described

in words. Let the example be enough to one

for whom grace holds this experience in store.

Paradiso, I, 70-72)

Lots of people seeking deeper spiritual lives in the desiccated culture of the West (a shallowness and dryness that have entered the Church as well) turn to Eastern religions, pre-Christian paganisms, ayahuasca retreats, Pachamamas of various traditions, and worse. But there's a whole Catholic mystical tradition, from the Church Fathers, through Augustine and Dionysius, Aquinas and Bonaventure, and more modern figures. Jason Baxter's An Introduction to Christian Mysticism is a good history.

But the point of it all is practice. The Cloud explains the importance of three ways of preparing yourself: reading, thinking, and prayer. A spiritual guide may help with these, because they need to be fitted to specific persons.

Some people may be moved to contemplation, for example, through Bible reading - with proper helps. Others may be motivated reading the lives of saints. Still others may nee...