Contemplative prayer and action – life under the direct influence of the Seven Gifts of the Spirit (counsel,prudence, fortitude, reverence, wisdom, understanding, knowledge – is the gospel program for human health, wholeness, and transformation.
(IG 74) : Fr. Thomas Keating.Intimacy with God. Pag. 74
The Welcoming Prayer is a method of consenting to God’s presence and action in our physical and emotional reactions to events and situations in daily life. The purpose of the Welcoming Prayer is to deepen our relationship with God through consenting in the ordinary activities of our day. The Welcoming Prayer helps to dismantle the emotional programs of the false-self system and to heal the wounds of a lifetime by addressing them where they are stored — in the body. It contributes to the process of transformation in Christ initiated in Centering Prayer.
Contemplation as Letting Go
Friday, September 2, 2016
It’s really hard to “sell” contemplation because it’s precisely like selling nothing. For Americans, contemplative prayer is counter-intuitive. Even worse, it is, at least for me, a daily practice of assured failure! If you are into success, you will give up quite early on. Contemplation is largely teaching you how to let go—how to let go of your attachment to your self-image, your expectations, your very ideas. Every such “set up” is a resentment waiting to happen. So maybe we are just redefining success as foundational happiness and contentment.
As you gradually learn to let go, you learn how to rest in what some call “the eternal now,” a kind of present satisfaction with the present as it is. You don’t need to manipulate or change the moment in order to be happy. What is starts being enough to make you happy, although to get there, you must be tested many times by your anger and fear about what is not. I must be honest with you here. Contemplation trains you how to let go of what you think is success, so you can find the ultimate success of simple happiness.
I’m going to say something that maybe will sound like heresy, but I’m offering you a “pearl of great price.” De facto “salvation” has little to do with belief systems, belonging to the right group, or correct ritual practice. It has everything to do with living right here, right now, and knowing a beautiful and fully accepting God is this very moment giving to you. All you can do is sit down at the banquet and eat. If you can enjoy heaven now, you are totally prepared and ready for heaven later.
Perhaps another metaphor will make this clearer. In A Sunlit Absence, Martin Laird, OSA—a brilliant teacher of contemplation at Villanova University—illustrates contemplation as an act of letting go and allowing ourselves to be sculpted into a masterpiece:
According to ancient theory of art, the practice of sculpting has less to do with fashioning a figure of one’s choosing than with being able to see in the stone the figure waiting to be liberated. The sculptor imposes nothing but only frees what is held captive in stone. The practice of contemplation is something like this. It does not work by means of addition or acquisition, but by release, chiseling away thought-shackled illusions of separation from God. . . . Contemplative practice proceeds by way of the engaged receptivity of release, of prying loose, of letting go of the need to have our life circumstances be a certain way in order for us to live or pray or be deeply happy. . . . With enough of this stone removed, the chiseling becomes a quiet excavation of the present moment. What emerges from the chiseled and richly veined poverty of the present moment? The emerging figure is our life as Christ (Phil. 1:21; Col. 3:3-4). [1]
Gateway to Silence:
Let be. Let love.
References:
[1] Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation (Oxford University Press: 2011), 60-61.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Holding the Tension, an unpublished talk given in Houston, Texas (2007).
Fr. William Meninger Homily_August 13, 2016 and a guided meditation from Cardinal John Newman (Prayer used by Mother Theresa)
Homily
The readings this morning are complicated and diverse so I would like to focus on just one important line from the epistle to the Hebrews. It is very relevant to the interest right now on the Olympic games. The imagery is that of running a race with your eyes on the goal. The author says, “Run the race that lies before you by keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus”. This, of course, is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. to be a follower of Christ. We must keep our eyes fixed on him with the purpose and intensity of an athlete striving for victory. What we sometimes don’t realize however is that we already have the victory, Christ has won it for us, we have simply to reach out and claim it as our own.
Somebody has said that “the error of the past is the wisdom of the future”. This means that our failures, the times when we have allowed our eyes to drift from the goal, from following Jesus, should be an impetus and actually an encouragement supporting us in returning to that goal which is Jesus.
We do realize, all of us, that the most basic and fundamental teaching of Jesus is one of love. Not just love of God, but like unto it love of neighbor. This is why Jesus would say that whatever we do unto one of the least of his brethren we do unto him. And why St. John tells us that we cannot love God whom we do not see unless we love our brother and sister whom we do see. Richard Rohr reminds us that love is our very structural and essential identity. To live in conscious connection with the loving inner presence of God is to find our true self. Plato says, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy is when a man or woman is afraid of the light.”
I would like to do something now that is a little bit unusual for a homily. I would like to bring us into an experienced connection, another type of communion if you will, with the love of Jesus, of God and of one another. I would like to take you through a brief, guided meditation. This meditation is a prayer written by the English theologian , Cardinal, John Newman. It is a prayer that Mother Theresa tells us she recited every day of her life.
So I would ask you to sit as comfortably as you can, perhaps close your eyes and just for a brief moment try to be aware of God’s presence within you and about you, as Jesus said, where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them and the kingdom of God is within you. (Brief pause). And now with great sincerity, listen with your hearts and offer this prayer keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus.
Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,
That my life may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me
That every soul I come in contact with
May feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine,
So to shine as to be a light to others;
The light, O Jesus will be all from You; none of it will be mine;
It will be you, shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me.
Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example,
By the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do,
The evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.
—
May you be happy,
May you be free,
May you be loving,
May you be loved.
Father William Meninger
| Contemplative prayer is the change that changes everything. It’s not telling you what to see, but teaching you how to see. And when you know how to see, you’re home free. You’re indestructible. When you know how to see in a non-dualistic, holistic way, you know that it is what it is both before and after any analysis. Reality still is what it is. When you learn to surrender to that, quite frankly, you’re going to be a much happier, transformed human being. And when you do work for change, your efforts will have a non-obsessive character to them.
The contemplative mind gives you access to your birthright, to what is already within you. When you discover and connect to this awareness, you will have the distinct feeling that you already knew this. Spiritual cognition is recognition. It’s knowing on a more conscious level what appears to have been known in the unconscious. Now you have the ability to humbly, quietly trust it, and even on occasion say what so many biblical characters and saints say, “God told me.” I know that can be a dangerous claim. If you put such power in the hands of egocentric people, they’ll mangle and misuse God-told-me kind of talk. The gift of contemplation will be experienced as freedom, abundance, love, spaciousness, and grace. This entire experience of gratuity makes you fall in love with God. In fact, I would say that utter gratuity is one of the clearest indicators of any authentic God experience. But it also installs its own critique. When you know the real thing, you start developing a nose, an eye, and an ear for the false thing. You can recognize truly converted people. And you can smell people who are just using the church, sacraments, or priesthood to aggrandize themselves. For them it’s still all about “me.” When you move to the level of divine mind, the mind of Christ, you know it’s not all about you. In fact, it is all about God! And you will soon find yourself loving all that God loves–which is going to be an ever widening circle of realizations and loves. At that point, you have been taken into the very life of the Trinity. You are already there, objectively, but most of us don’t know it yet. When you start flowing consciously and allowing the divine flow through you, you will share the experience of gratuity expressed by the Psalmist: “Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name give glory because of your mercy and faithfulness” (Psalm 115:1). Reference: Adapted from Richard Rohr, Transforming the World through Contemplative Prayer (CAC: 2013), CD, MP3 audio download |
Father Carl Arico wrote a series of questions and answers about the richness of Contemplative Prayer, Centering Prayer and the role of Contemplative Outreach.
I highly recommend you read his article: Renewing the Understanding of the Contemplative Tradition
