KEEPING OUR EYES FOCUSED ON JESUS-2

Part Two

For St. Teresa of Avila, it is the personal encounter in following Jesus that unveils the loving mercy of God. This gift has its privileged communication in deep personal prayer. Prayer is always her top priority. For this Carmelite saint, the prayerful encounter with Jesus constantly stands at the center of our pursuit of God, the final desire of the human heart.

It is right at this juncture that the genius of Teresa can be a great help. She is called the mother of spirituality. She offers us the challenge of addressing a few fundamental steps to grasp the call of personal authenticity that is central to any spirituality. First, we need to grow in self-knowledge that leads to humility. We then accept the consequences of this emerging insight: the interplay of our personal limits and the mercy of God. This is all done in prayer, which she describes as a conversation with someone we know loves us. Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus nurtures this development. This is the story of the disciples. This is our story if we are open to the call.

“Who Do You Say That I Am?”

Few lessons of the gospel are more important than to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Walking with Jesus goes beyond the teachings of the church, beyond reading the Bible, beyond any devotions or other favorite religious expressions. Following Jesus is at the heart of faithful spirituality. Following Jesus turns our lives upside down. Following Jesus is the same today as it was in the day of the disciples. It calls us out of comfortable hiding places and takes us “where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).

We are invited to ponder the wonder of his compassion. We are asked to enter the stories. It helps to see ourselves as the persons who benefit from his many miracles.

In this way, like the disciples, we are led to the critical question: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29). There is no question more crucial in our life. Who is Jesus for us?

For the disciples and us, the consequences this ultimate pursuit come slowly. We are on the road, but our encounter with Jesus is always partial and incomplete. Our relationship with Jesus always comes at a price, and a price that continues to escalate. At the heart of the encounter with Jesus is a transition— moving from our vision for happiness, from our priorities, to the new world of Jesus’ vision and call. This conversion process repeats itself many times as we remain faithful with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. Prayer leads to an ever-expanding awareness of God’s will.

A new and deeper experience of prayer, flowing from these conversions, empowers us to live in a way that is progressively guided by God’s will. Our weakness is exposed dramatically. This struggle gradually reveals that the story of our life is the story of God’s mercy. Eventually it calls us into the lifegiving struggle to say no to all that is not God.

The four Gospels, in all their diversity, finally bring us a picture of Jesus which is a mirror for us. We look at Jesus and see what is most authentic about ourselves. We are children of God, loved and forgiven. In his exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis describes the joy and beauty of discovering our true selves when we respond to Jesus’ call.

“The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step toward Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms. Now is the time to say to Jesus, “Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord. Take me once more into your redeeming embrace.” (The Joy of the Gospel: #3)

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KEEPING OUR EYES FOCUSED ON JESUS

Jesus walks into our lives through the Gospels. The Gospels are a privileged part of the word of God. The Gospels give us today, as they have done all through Christian history, an opportunity to discover Jesus just as the first disciples did when they joined him on the dusty roads of Galilee.

The Gospels are structured so that we, like Peter and the others, meet Jesus in the marvels of his ministry. We also must respond to his invitation, “Come and you will see.” (Jn 1:39) We are called to hear his teaching and view his healings. We are challenged to respond to the radical message of forgiveness and inclusion. We are invited to ponder the wonder of his compassion. We are asked to enter into the stories. It is helpful to see ourselves as the blind person who gains sight, the leper who is cleansed, the paralytic who is forgiven and healed.

In our encounter with the gospel message, we need to make sure that the central meaning comes out loud and clear. The heart of the gospel is Jesus Christ Crucified and Risen. He is our savior who delivers us from the bondage of sin. God has taken the initiative in his saving love for us. Our basic call is to accept this love recognizing our need for salvation. If we are truly faithful to this life-giving encounter with Christ, we will grow, most often ever so slowly, in accepting the maturing demands of this love.

In The Joy of the Gospel, Francis puts it this way: “All revealed truths derive from the same divine source and are to be believed with the same faith, yet some of them are more important for giving direct expression to the heart of the gospel. In this basic core, what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead.” (The Joy of the Gospel #36)

This developing acceptance of the gospel message invites us, first of all, to see in God’s love for us the demand to go forth from ourselves to seek the good of others. This priority of love for others is the foundation of all moral teaching flowing from the central gospel truth of Jesus Christ.

Road to Jerusalem

The second half of the Gospel of Mark portrays the disciples as a group on the edge of disillusionment. They are dealing with the frightening call to walk with Jesus to Jerusalem and the absolute shattering of their dreams and ambitions.

All the while, Jesus continues calling them into the light, proclaiming the truth and preparing them to be free of the bondage of their self-absorption. The war in their fragmented hearts raged on. They were struggling with new self-knowledge that shattered their illusion of seeing Jesus as their ticket to power, wealth, and privilege.

After their abandonment of Jesus on that fatal weekend, they still clung together in bewilderment and with ever-increasing despair. With seemingly three years wasted, they feared they would be the next victims of the religious leaders. In the midst of this desperation and horror, Jesus appears with the incredibly merciful pronouncement, “Peace be with you” (John 20:21). There was no finger pointing, only unconditional acceptance and encouragement. Now, it was a new day. With this last piece of the puzzle, the resurrection, in their hands, their job was to resolve the mystery of Jesus in their lives. Now the command “follow me”, opened up totally new and welcoming horizons. They were ready to shed the uncertainty and dread and walk with Jesus in spite of the continuing ambiguity of life.

Moving from Religion to Spirituality

The disciples are a good mirror for us. We share their uncertainty and anxiety amid our misconceptions that move us to seek happiness and security in the wrong places. We too, suffer the consequences of a fragmented heart. We try to get by with the minimum for God and the maximum for ourselves. However, this ambivalence exposes an emptiness deep in our being. The “dos and don’ts” of our religion no longer are enough. The question of the rich young man is rooted in the inevitable pull of the heart for something more.

This is where we move from our comfortable and safe approach to God in our religious rituals and practices to a search for something more profound. Spirituality is the process of growth from inauthenticity into a more genuine relationship with God. Spirituality draws us into the struggle where we move away from the shallow and illusionary to bond with God in a more responsible and open way. This is a move from the formality of religion to a deeper spiritual path.

Despite our progress, we will eventually face the incessant challenge of compromise. This is the death-rattle of the ego, its desperate maneuver to preserve control. In spite of our spiritual growth, we are still strongly inclined to seek a space between the demands of the gospel and the comfort of the world. We subtly create our own gospel. We make Jesus over in our image. As with Peter after his triple rejection, Jesus does not give up on us. He is always calling us to life. Each crisis manifests a deeper insight into the depth of our weakness and the grandeur of God’s merciful love revealed in Christ crucified and Christ risen.

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PATHWAY TO PERSONAL RENEWAL

The Carmelite tradition states clearly that we are called to union with God. This is the goal of our full human development. This is the pilgrimage returning to the innocence of Paradise. We achieve this by a process of purification and transformation that begins with our effort to live an authentic and prayerful life. It concludes by the action of God in the state of contemplation. Our Christian life leads us through prayer to the experience of God that purifies and transforms us.

St. Teresa of Avila had a high regard for vocal prayer. For her, the key point was that we need to pay attention to whom we are praying along with the message of the words of the prayer. The common practice of mental prayer in her day was called meditation. It involved using the mind and the imagination to stir the heart. It led her to one of her more famous sayings, “For mental prayer in my opinion, is nothing else than intimate sharing between friends. It means taking the time to be alone with Him whom we know loves us.” (L 8.5)

Teresa always saw prayer’s purpose as drawing us into a deeper loving relationship with Christ. Deep personal prayer whether vocal or mental was the pathway to this all-important relationship.

Effects of Prayer

Regular prayer will always bring us to the challenge of changing our lives. The journey to the center and its encounter with our loving God in prayer is not cost-free. Prayer discloses what God wants in a way that confronts our blind spots. The nature of deep personal prayer is to draw us out of comfortable deceptions. Examples of these deceptions are our inability to listen to others, our assumption of privilege and prestige, the power and depth of our prejudices, and many more. The issue of time and the other excuses hindering our prayer are rooted in a fear of moving away from our comfort zone. All these factors contribute to and maintain a basic selfishness.

When we pray regularly with deep personal commitment, things happen within us. Prominent among these changes is a new consciousness. We begin to trust with a renewed sense of spiritual security. Faith leads us to be open to God leading the way as a guide through the darkness. Our relationships are enriched with an innovative sense of compassion. Likewise, we become more accepting and gentler with ourselves and with others. Failures become less traumatic and even seem as an opening to let God take over. Our faults are accepted. We find that we do not need to be in endless pursuit of looking good.

As our prayer becomes more authentic, there is a movement to our true center where God is. This moves us beyond the superficial self, the self-engrossed and shaped by the advertising world and the narrow self-interest of family, community, church and nation. Here we have become engulfed in the never-ending new products guaranteed to fill the void in a misdirected heart and the many “isms” that expand the blindness of our prejudices. This is the self propped

With this new focus on God in prayer, there are even more deep-seated changes within us. We begin to see the need for greater honesty and authenticity in all our relationships to persons, things, ideas and especially to the gift of God’s creation. We find it easier to cast out the log in our eye and to be more accepting of others in all their faults. “Either/or” thinking begins to fade away. The “both/and” view of life blossoms as a real possibility for us. We are amazed how a rigid “either/or” situation develops into several realistic possibilities. Finally, we gradually begin to experience life as rooted in an overwhelming sense of God’s gracious and merciful presence. Prayer, indeed, opens the road for our return to Paradise.

Prayer opens the passage to the true self hidden deep within. While this journey inward in prayer offers innumerable blessings, unfortunately, it is always limited and deficient. We gradually come to see how distant we are from our real destiny: union with God. This is the paradox of an authentic spiritual life. The more progress we make, the more we become aware of our helplessness, our sinfulness and our total dependence on God. This leads us to contemplation. Here God takes over. Our role is to let go so this divine activity can finalize our personal purification and transformation.

II

Grace in the Struggle

The part of the Pilgrimage to God that is probably most difficult for all of us is this. God wants everything. Therefore, we have to let go of everything. At first, we grudgingly respond to the gentle but ever so persistent divine call. But God is rightly described as The Hound of Heaven. We reluctantly begin to let go a little bit more. This is why Teresa has explained the process in seven dwelling places. In each stage of growth, God raises the price. We need to repeatedly accept new demands for self-surrender. For our part, it seems like an endless struggle. For God’s part, it is a gentle, consistent and determined invitation into freedom and love. Helping us progress from our narrow view of constant struggle to the continuing invitation to love and freedom is the true goal of Teresa’s teachings. We are made for God and we will be restless until we are one with God. “Everything I have advised you about in this book is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our will to his and the detachment from creatures …Unless we give our wills entirely to the Lord so that in everything pertaining to us, he might do what conforms to his will, we will never be allowed to drink from this fount. Drinking from it is perfect contemplation.” (W.32.9)

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JESUS TEACHING ON PRAYER

Jesus taught the people to start from where they were in their life situation. Jesus then invited them into the mystery of the kingdom. There was special emphasis on the parables as the method of his teaching. In the parables, he taught that prayer should be urgent, insistent, forgiving and always steeped in humility that recognizes one’s sinfulness.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offered a great deal of his message on prayer. First, there must be a conversion that shows itself in concrete action: reconciliation before offering gifts at the altar, love of enemy, prayer in secret with simple language and even silence, purity of heart and choosing God’s kingdom above all.

The Our Father

This all leads to the greatest lesson in prayer, the Our Father. (Mt 6:9-13) Jesus starts out by telling us not to pray as the pagans pray. Their prayer is described as an effort to wear down God with volume, repetition and perseverance searching for just the right phrase to gain the desired response from a somewhat indifferent deity.

Jesus‘ invitation to pray is totally opposite. God, he says, already knows what we need. God’s generosity is a given. According to Jesus, what is needed is a human heart disposed to the big-heartedness of the Father.

The structure of the Lord’s Prayer is clear. The first part draws us into the domain of the Lord who is “Our Father” both holy and loving. There is a divine plan. The petitions of the first part of the prayer place all the attention on God: the loving Father, the holy name, God’s kingdom and God’s will. We are pulled away from our small world of self-interest. In the second part, we come back to our needs and our dependence on God.

The initial address of “Our Father” is an expression in the original language (likely Aramaic) of parental tenderness and endearment. Today it would be “Daddy” or “Pop” or some similar utterance of an adult child. Likewise, by using “Our”, Jesus is revealing that we, as a community of disciples have been welcomed into a new family, a Godly family. All members are invited into a divine relationship of intimacy and confidence.

The next three petitions, in truth, are one: the coming of the kingdom is the central message of Jesus. The holiness of God’s name and God’s will are biblical statements that are part of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom.

The kingdom is God’s response to the consequences of sin flowing from the tragedy in the Garden. The first eleven chapters of Genesis describe this destructive evolution of evil that permeates our world. From the call of Abraham to Jesus’ declaration of the kingdom we have the counter-evolution of love in God’s plan. The Hebrew Scriptures are replete with expressions of the bondage to sin and death and, most of all, alienation from God. They also have a message of faithfulness and hope. In Jesus, there is a new saving presence which continues in his new family of faith, the Church. The kingdom is, indeed, the seed that will become the great tree to shelter all the birds. (Mt13:31-32) We participate in the coming of the kingdom when we walk with Jesus in a life of love and service to his reign.

When we pray for God’s kingdom, we are praying for deliverance from the consequences of sin. The magnitude of this seemingly simple petition is easy to miss. This prayer includes our pleas for practically anything that is good from the healing our child’s headache to elimination of sexual slavery, from success in the driver’s test to the conversion of the gangs, from peace with the in-laws to peace between Russia and Ukraine.

In the Good Friday liturgy, the Our Father is echoed as we pray that “God may cleanse the world of all errors, banish disease, drive out hunger, unlock prisons, loosen fetters, granting to travelers safety, to pilgrims return, health to the sick, and salvation to the dying”. God’s kingdom will overcome all hatred and every prejudice, any expressions of inhumanity, every dimension of poverty, and divisions of all kinds. The list goes on and on. All evil, and most especially death, is vanquished by the coming of God’s kingdom. The hidden Alleluia of Christ’s victory is always the wheat overcoming the weeds in our midst. (Mt 13:24-30)

When we pray “Thy kingdom come”, we are praying for all that we need (and, perhaps, even some of what we want). All our varied petitions in the prayer of the faithful, in our rosary, in our novena intentions, and in each hidden desire in our heart are most likely included in God’s kingdom. Yet, it is still good to pray for our individual concerns because it helps us become mindful of our dependent relationship with God.

The second set of petitions in the Lord’s Prayer reflects a pilgrim people like the Israelites wandering the dessert for whom manna is the bread for their human material needs. But the bread is also a symbol of the Eucharist. It is in this context that we are reminded that God forgives always. However, we can block that flow of mercy if we do not forgive. In the final petitions we pray that the forces of evil not prevail in our personal, communal and historical reality.

The Lord’s Prayer, then, is the prayer of the family of God on the journey to the unity and freedom of the kingdom. This is the New Creation, the eventual return to the original innocence inviting us to enter into a consciousness of our total reliance on God. It helps us experience the sense of divine intimacy. It fills us with hope.

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AN OBSTACLE IN DEEP PERSONAL PRAYER

The Real Difficulty in Prayer: God’s Attitude

A little bit of our heart is never enough. God is never satisfied unless we offer ourselves completely. God always wants more, the whole thing. Love is not about a little bit. All the problems in prayer are rooted in this divine posture. On our part, we are often willing, and even enthused, to bring God into some of our life. God has no interest in an eight-hour day. The divine program is twenty-four seven. It takes us on a long and winding journey to grasp this sense of totality that is God’s agenda.

We cling to the controls with an unimagined ferocity. We simply want to be in charge of how much time and what part of our life we will give to God. Both the “when” and the “how” of this venture definitely must happen on our terms.

This contrast between God’s approach and our approach is the root of our difficulties in prayer.

All this effort to open ourselves to God has one purpose. It is completely and absolutely about love. While love, no doubt, is a wonderful thing, it is very costly. Love constantly calls for a serious change in our personal schedule and a whole lot more. When dealing with God, we become artists in the great human venture of compromise. We end up in a program with God that includes our negotiables but we withhold our non-negotiables. We eventually learn that God is very patient with us. But in the end, God will have the last word. This is the ultimate reality for every human being. We are made to be one with God. This is our destiny. This is clearly the answer to the great human question, “Where are we going?” Most often, we have to learn that the hard way. Nevertheless, God’s desire for our whole heart is not going to change. God’s love is just too strong, too focused and too intense to let us get away. God made us to be loved and to be one with the mystery that is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God will have it no other way, no matter how hard we try to distract and re-direct the program according to our self-interest.

All human effort to answer that basic inquiry of human existence will all fall short of God’s clear purpose. No matter how good they may appear, each and every human endeavor that does not include our destiny to be one with God will fall short. In one way or another, all these activities are based on the denial of death, a moment when we become completely out of control. For God, death is simply a change that opens to the everlasting love that God has determined for us.

The Gospels are filled with sayings that attack our very human tendency to compromise with this program of eternal love that God has established for us.

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mk 8:34)

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” (Mk 8:35)

“Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39)

These sayings are just a brief sample of the multitude of similar statements that permeate the four Gospels. They ask a total generosity on our part. The jealous love of God is calling us into the divine mystery. This venture is the gradual, but unending, work of a lifetime. It is clear that God’s love is not a part time endeavor. When we begin a commitment to pray in a more serious manner, we should be aware that we are beginning a wonderful journey. In the end, with all its difficulties and complexities, it is all about love. God’s love of total generosity and supreme intensity transforming our love from its pettiness, brokenness and severely compromised generosity. It is long road of step-by-step effort that gradually leads to the freedom of being one with God. The first great obstacle is to not begin to pray with this new intensity. The second is to not understand that the true grace we hunger for is only possible when we continue the struggle to say yes to God. The Carmelite tradition is emphatic that all this is possible only with personal purification and transformation. This, in turn, can only happen through deep personal prayer that is an expression of the love in our heart.

II

Teresa of Avila tells us prayer is a conversation with someone we know loves us. Personal experience will show us what our difficulty in prayer is. It is overcoming our self-love to let our love of God rise to the top of our agenda. To do this we face the challenge of change, often deep personal change. Teresa says that prayer and comfortable living are not compatible. Prayer demands sacrifice that claims our time. It then confronts our lifestyle. Difficulties in prayer emerge from these very demanding personal challenges.

When we are praying, distractions are the most immediate obstacle. The direct answer to distractions is to regain our focus. This is done by returning to the text or to our prayer word, the mantra. This is all part of the battle of prayer. The ego sees prayer as a life or death issue. Life for the ego means to be in control. The Spirit is calling us to let go, to accept our poverty and surrender to God.

The root of distractions is this conflict of the ego and the Spirit. The distractions will not go away completely until God takes over within us in the development of deep contemplative prayer. Meanwhile, we need to understand there is gold to be found in the struggle of our relentless flights of fancy.

On the conscious level, our struggle is between our ego’s unending quest for control and gradual submission to God. At a deeper level, God often uses distractions to surface issues and concerns that help us on the road to self-knowledge and humility. Frequently our prayer session seems like a total waste of time. However, battling distractions has a double effect. It is a beautiful invitation to embrace humility. Likewise, it often makes us aware of our inordinate attachments which are commonly the root of our distractions.

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AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DEEP PERSONAL PRAYER

Christian Meditation

A second method of prayer is Christian Meditation. It is truly different in its approach from lectio divina and other forms of meditation where the mind is a vital component of the prayer. Christian Meditation is a contemplative approach to prayer that centers on silence. It hopes to eliminate, or at least quiet down, all thinking and the imagination during the period of prayer. The silence invites God to be active in our prayer. The spirit of poverty is the goal. We simply seek to create an emptiness that is the best invitation to the Spirit, where God prays within us. “In the same way the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.” (Rom 8:26)

The individual is asked to silently repeat the holy word, maranatha, which means “the Lord will come.” The choice of the word is arbitrary, and it is important not to think of its meaning. The simple and slow repetition of the mantra has a clear goal: the creation of silence that suppresses the mind and imagination. This happens by drawing the focus to the holy word or mantra. The repetition connects to one’s breathing. The slow repetition of the word is the individual’s prayer.

The mind and imagination are the source of the distractions. There is a fear on the part of the ego that the silence will lead to the loss of the ego’s control. The gentle repetition of the mantra frees us to let go. We want to open space for God. Simplicity and emptiness need to be the goal. The repeating of the word symbolizes and encourages the faithful surrender to God. Our hope is that we grow in purity of heart with openness to God’s grace.

The prayer is experiential and practical. People need to start the journey and let the experience be the teacher. The purpose of the simple repetition of the mantra, maranatha, is to clear the mind, to get beyond thinking. We want to move from the head to the heart. We need to pay attention to how we say the mantra. Our effort should be calm but firm in our prayerful repetition. This clears the mind enough to make space for the Spirit. The highly recommended schedule for this prayer is twenty to thirty minutes in both the morning and evening. We must never forget that the final measure of effective prayer is a life more in tune with the values of the gospel, walking with Jesus.

How to Meditate

The most important thing to learn about meditation is to meditate. It is extraordinarily simple. This is the problem. Few believe that something so simple is so effective and transforming.

To meditate, sit still and upright while seeking the awareness of God’s presence. As you relax, close your eyes. Slowly begin saying the mantra in four syllables. Do not think or imagine anything. As distractions come, return to the mantra softly but decisively. Even good thoughts are to be excluded. The target is twenty to thirty minutes in the morning and evening.

There are three simple goals to guide the two meditation periods each day:

1. Say the mantra for the complete time of the meditation. This is a skill. It will take time to create a habit.

2. Say the mantra throughout the meditation without interruption. The task here is to continually return as soon as possible from the persistent distractions that are the ego’s hunger for control.

3. In saying the mantra, let it draw you into the depths of your being, beyond thought, imagination, and all images. Rest in the presence of God dwelling in the depth of your heart.

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4. THE PRAYERFUL READING OF THE BIBLE

An Opportunity for Deep Personal Prayer

The Prayerful Reading of the Bible: Lectio Divina

Vatican II brought the word of God in the Bible to the center of all Christian spirituality. This revival has led to a growing practice of prayer that has had a long tradition in the church. This is called lectio divina. Literally, this means divine reading. Another description would be the prayerful reading of the Bible.

This prayerful reading seeks to listen to what God has to say to us. It will lead us to know and embrace God’s will. It is all about the transforming encounter with God’s special means of revelation, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

When approaching the Mystery unveiled in the Scriptures, we need the attitude of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10).

There are four steps to this prayerful reading of the Bible:

1. A slow meditative reading of a selected text of the Scriptures.
2. A reflection on the text that connects it with our life experience.
3. A response in prayer to this reflective activity.
4. Finally, a quiet resting in the Mystery of this encounter.

Four Steps

It is essential to prepare for this serious time of prayer. We need to create an atmosphere of silence, with minimal outside distractions. Next, we select the text. We then invoke the Holy Spirit.

In the initial step, we have to seek out the meaning: What does the text say? Silence is important for listening and avoiding the trap of making the text say what we want. We need to bring the heart into the process as well as the mind. A particular phrase or sentence may burst out as a light, sometimes gently, sometimes with great force. Hold on to it.

In the second step, we want to ask: What does the text say to us? We enter into a dialogue with the text. Here we want to make the connection to our life. The reflection leads to building a bridge between God’s word and our life situation at this moment. In this process, the distractions will never be far away. To cast out these disruptions in the mind, always return to the text. The all-important matter here is that we must return to the text and away from the mind’s ever-present wanderings. This discipline maintains a recollected and focused approach to the job of reflection in the second step.

In the third step, we try to discover what the text leads us to say to God. We are moved to prayer. We speak to God of how we know that we want to change. We acknowledge the struggle. We cannot do it by ourselves. Honesty is the true gold of this form of prayer. We seek help perhaps in healing a flawed relationship or getting rid of a bad habit. We ask assistance and guidance. We make resolutions to be more generous in walking with Jesus. Patience is truly important. This is always a slow journey from the head to the heart to life. This is about self-knowledge, a topic decisive to any authentic effort at prayer.

The fourth step, quiet listening and resting in the Lord, generates a contemplative mood. This is the goal of the prayerful reading of the Bible: opening ourselves up to the transforming love of God. Silence is the language of God. We slowly grow in the wonder that God loves us. While we do not always have this deep encounter of loving silence, it remains the goal. It is the gift that transforms us into the image of Christ.

Spiritual Transformation

When we approach the prayerful reading of the Bible in lectio divina, we should see ourselves as the one to whom the Bible is directed. It was formulated to address us here and now. However, we are always a member of a community. The Bible is not a personal prayer book but God’s gift to the community.

Our search for the meaning of the Scriptures needs to include the church’s guidance in biblical studies. Praying the Scriptures should lead us to seek an understanding of the biblical meaning. Prayer and study need to steer us away from making the Bible fit our demands and desires.

We need to keep the concrete reality of our life, our family, our community, and the larger circumstances of the political, economic, and social reality front and center. The first three steps are an encounter with Christ-for-us. He is our Savior calling us to new life. In the final, and most important step, we meet Christ-in-us. This presence grows in the gradual transformation of our being that results from our faithful and generous reading of the Bible. We are truly walking with Jesus.

The faithful practice of lectio divina helps us move out of our false self and to seek the gift of our true self. We slowly grow out of illusions of self-importance. We recognize the destructive power of self-absorption. This often-painful growth surprisingly is a growth in humility. This draws us toward the goal of the human journey, being one with God.

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THE BIBLE AND PRAYER

An Opportunity for Deep Personal Prayer

I

The People’s Experience of God

The Bible is a love story of God and his people. It is simple and clear. Yet, it is also complicated because this love absorbs human frailty and sin covering centuries.

The creation accounts in Genesis are written in their own symbolic and narrative style. They contain complex insights about the human experience and our historical reality. They portray the human venture based on three fundamental and deeply connected relationships with God, our neighbor and creation. The Genesis account relates a basic brokenness in these three relationships. This is sin. Adam and Eve, our first parents, set the pattern. We follow it as we place ourselves rather than God at the center of all reality. We refuse to acknowledge the constraints of being creatures.

While the Bible is the story of salvation, the consequences of sin are at the center of the story in Genesis’ first eleven chapters. They lay out the need for salvation. Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel and, of course, Adam and Eve and the apple are examples of humankind’s pulling away from God. God’s instruction “to have dominion over all the earth” (Gen 1:28) is mangled in our selfish patterns of behavior. God also told us to “till it and keep it.” (Gen 2:15) Our failure on both accounts has severely disrupted the balance between God, humanity and creation. This rupture is expressed in our time in wars, violence, abuse, neglect of the most vulnerable and the continuing violation of nature.

Pope Francis describes this sin that places ourselves at the center in today’s historical experience as “practical relativism.” He defines this practical relativism as follows: “When human beings place themselves at the center, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative.”

This relativism, a powerful and pervasive expression of sin in our day, leads to the exploitation and neglect of others at all levels. People are reduced to objects. Abuse of others, economically, racially and sexually, is a natural consequence of this mentality. We see all of this expressed in the invisible forces of the market, in human trafficking, in organized crime, in malignant consumerism, in the drug trade, unrelenting racism and in the rampant misuse of the land and the sea and air, flora and fauna. All these destructive forces flow from a false vision and denial of human dignity.

The story of salvation begins in chapter twelve of Genesis with the call and promise made to Abraham. What follows is nearly two thousand years of the evolution of that promise leading to Jesus in the epic struggle of sin and grace.

In its broadest sweep, the story flows in a time-frame across two thousand years from Abraham to Moses to David, moving to the prophets and climaxing in Jesus. Throughout, there is a continual expression of God’s faithfulness and human ambivalence. The story moves from the promise to Abraham, destined to become the father of a great nation, to Moses liberating the people on the way to the Promised Land. The era of David and the kings introduces the idea of hope for God’s final intervention in the person of the Messiah. The enlightenment of the prophets’ message expands and deepens this hope. Along the way, we are gifted with the collective wisdom of the people in other books, especially in the psalms. Each draws us deeper into the mystery of this ever-active, always loving and saving God.

Throughout this journey of Abraham’s family evolving into the Jewish people, the hope of the promise advances in spite of consistent and profound infidelities to the Law of the Covenant. Likewise, there is a slow but steady growth in the communal understanding of who God is and what God wants. Many centuries after Abraham, the people came to the deepest truth of all: there is only one God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

The entire thrust of the movement of this salvation history leads to Jesus, the Word of God. In Jesus, we have the fullness of God’s revelation. We have the invitation to enter into the Mystery of Love reflected in the beautiful harmony between the Jewish Scriptures and the great event of Christ crucified and Christ risen. The fullness of God’s grace and truth is revealed in Jesus in the abandonment and utter poverty of the Cross. Here we encounter the ultimate truth of God, a God of saving love and mercy.

II

The Bible as a Source of Prayer

The Bible’s story of salvation was put together by the people reflecting, sharing, and praying about their experience of God. Most of the writings in the Bible are the conclusion of the community’s deep discernment. Their on-going encounter with God took place over a long period of time. There was a steady process of maturing in their knowledge and acceptance of God. The gentle guidance of the Holy Spirit directed the journey leading to Jesus, the final and absolute Word of God in the flesh.

A centerpiece of this journey for God’s people was the Exodus: the liberation from slavery in Egypt. This included the passage through the desert and the entry into the Promised Land. The singular power of this experience guided the people down through the centuries of an often-torturous history. Again, and again, the children of Abraham reflected on the faithfulness of God who set them free. They found strength and fortitude in encountering the revelation of this God of the Exodus in their constantly troubled plight

The same is true of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This ultimate expression of God’s saving love has become the gateway to the new day, the New Exodus, in Christian history. We see in it the continual opening to hope, no matter how dark and stinging the ravages of life may be.

The central point of the story of salvation in the Bible is this. The message, in all its breadth and depth, comes from the people’s experience of the saving power of God who is active in their lives and their history. The Bible teaches us that the same God of the Chosen People is in our life. The word in the Bible gives us the light that enables us to encounter, understand, and embrace the reality of God’s continuing presence in our life. We are invited to participate in the call and promise today. This is the pilgrimage through history to the kingdom of God. The gift of God’s word in the revelation of the Bible is always a call to new life and new horizons.

III

Study and Prayer

Our approach to the Bible requires two distinct methods. One is to study the Bible to absorb the story and to grow in familiarity with the word of God. This should be done with a reverent spirit. However, it is an exercise of the intellect. We must develop a familiarity with the overall story. This should include a broad sense of the general themes, major events and the basic timeline from Abraham to Jesus. Pope Francis calls for this bible study in the The Joy of the Gospel. He says, “The study of the sacred Scriptures must be a door opened to every believer. It is essential that the revealed word radically enrich our catechesis and all efforts to pass on the faith…Let us receive the sublime treasure of the revealed word.” (#175)

The second method is the prayerful reading of the Scriptures. This task goes beyond the mind to the depth of the spirit within us, a truly different tactic. The prayerful reading of the Bible seeks primarily to listen to what God has to say to us in the midst of our lives. This demands an openness and emptiness that echoes Samuel as we approach the Holy Word: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)

We need to always be aware that the text is more than fact. It is a symbol, a window, and a reflection that lets us see the past as a mirror of today’s experience. This prayerful reading of the word of God needs to lead us into our present historical reality in a way that it discloses the mystery of God’s saving presence here and now.

Our search has three goals:

We want to acquire a personal understanding of God’s word.

We want to let God’s will for our life situation to become clear and practical.

We want to live the call to walk with Jesus.

These goals prepare us to face the challenge of the brokenness and confusion of our daily experience. In this prayerful reading of the Bible, we need to receive the message as if it is addressed to us personally at this specific time in history because it is.

In this time of prayerful reading of the scriptures, it is important to set aside any sense of study or preparation to share our understanding with others. We prayerfully read the Bible for one purpose. We want to grow in faith and simply be in the presence of the living God.

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AN OBSTACLE TO DEEP PERSONAL PRAYER

Prayer of Petition: Complex and Easily Distorted 

I

There are two fundamental points about the prayer of petition. We start with an awareness of our dependence on God. Second, whatever our petition may be, it must lead to God’s plan for our salvation, the Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospels. As we slip away from these central points, there is a change of focus from God to ourselves. We move gradually into deeper levels of superstition and magic. This is a denial of God and a gross distortion of our faith. It is amazing how flawed Christian prayer fades into the same structure of petition as practiced in witchcraft.

Moving away from a journey of faith and trust, we move toward the magical. We create our own image of God as our personal Divine Manipulator. This is how we become the center, and God is there in heaven at our beck and call. Now, it is not God’s Kingdom but our kingdom that is front and center. Most often our desires are for security and the elimination of anxiety. Usually, our prayer falls into a pattern of seeking some form of prosperity usually defined not by God’s Kingdom but by the norms of our consumer society with its assurance of wealth and comfort. Likewise, much prayer is brought on by a crisis whether personal or communal.

II

The Church’s prayer for a blessing of a car gives an important insight into this complex issue of the integrity of prayer of petition. The prayer of blessing makes three points: safety of those in the vehicle, the responsibility of the driver for the safety of others, and that Christ always be a companion of those in the vehicle.

This call for personal responsibility and accountability is critical to all prayer. God expects us to use the talents and gifts we have received. This task of human effort is spelled out beautifully in what we call the transcendental precepts. We express this human effort in the following guidelines for all authentic human activity:

1. Be attentive.
2. Be intelligent.
3. Be reasonable.
4. Be responsible.
5. Be loving.

In this way, whether in driving a car or any other genuine human activity, we are using our humanity as God wants. Only after this engagement should we enter the arena of the prayer of petition. By following the precepts, we develop a proper image of God. This is the loving providential God who operates within the limits of our sinful and broken human condition. God’s saving plan was made manifest in the death and resurrection of Jesus. God invites us to share in that great act of love by our service and surrender.

This is our final and complete entry into God’s loving plan. Along the way, everything we pray for needs to be measured in how it helps us achieve this final good that is God’s will for us.

Jesus has much to say about prayer in the Gospels. In Luke, Jesus makes it very clear how to decide about our concerns and God’s concerns. “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Notice the ravens: they do no sow or reap; they have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them. How much more important are you than birds!…Indeed, seek his kingdom, and these other things will be given you besides… for where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Lk 12:22–24, 31, 34).

In all of its complexity, the prayer of petition comes down to this. God is God. We are creatures. This is the basis of our relationship with God. As creatures we are ultimately defined by our mortality resulting from our sinfulness. Our basic petition is for freedom from this bondage. That is God’s plan for us: a freedom and love in this life that opens in the passage through death to life eternal.

God’s Plan and Our Plan

Most often, when people pray, their petition fits into their plan. They want God to respond when their strategy for happiness needs some help. But God also has a plan, and God wants us to respond to the divine plan. Here is the conflict, the two plans: God’s and ours. This is a significant problem with prayer. However, in the end, this difference can be a great source of life in our prayer.

I had my first experience of the conflict of the two plans in high school. The loss of a championship football game seemed like the end of the world to me. In fact, it was the beginning of a new and ever-so-more-wonderful world. After the loss of the game, I entered what seemed like an unending funk totally new to my teenage experience. What it was, in reality, was God making space so I could hear his call to enter the seminary, one of the best decisions in my life. It took me many years to understand that the pain and anguish of the loss were a true blessing. Life is always coming from death when we walk with Jesus.

For most people, a good part of their journey as Christians and searching people involves this transition from our plan for happiness to God’s plan for our happiness. We are clear with what we want and what we think we need. Deep personal payer opens up the wonder of the Gospels to let us see life in a new way. This is the transition from our kingdom to God’s Kingdom. In this way, we turn the prayer of petition into a true opportunity rather an obstacle to deep personal prayer.

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A TRUE TREASURE

In the very first days of his Pontificate, Pope Francis proclaimed the importance of prayer. In a daily homily he said:

“The Lord tells us the first task in life is prayer. But not the prayer of words, like a parrot; but the prayer of the heart gazing on the Lord, hearing the Lord, asking the Lord.”

This Blog, Praying Alone Together, has the goal to explain, support and encourage the prayer Pope Francis describes. I use the term “deep personal prayer” to identify this kind of prayer.

In The Catechism of the Catholic Church there are several definitions of prayer. One from St. John Damascene states: “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God”.

Our “good things” often conflict with God’s “good things”. A significant part of the Christian life is learning to discern the difference and importance of our self-perceived “good things” and the “good things” of God. More often than not, our “good things” are wrapped in the false values of our materialistic and consumer driven culture rather than the values of the Gospel.

For most people, a good part of their journey as Christians or as searching people involves this transition from our plan for happiness to God’s plan for our happiness. We are clear with what we want and what we think we need. It is like the adult list for Santa. However, through the experience of life’s many trials leading to a more loving awareness of the wisdom and beauty of the gospel, we gradually see the need for change. This eventually leads to the long and costly process of letting go and letting God. We become serious about making God the center of our lives. This spiritual growth is one of the important functions of the journey to contemplative prayer, the true goal of all spiritual growth. Deep personal prayer plays a critical role in this transformation.

In these pages I use two spiritual giants to define the prayer that I describe as deep personal prayer. Thomas Merton explains prayer as follows: “Prayer then means yearning for the simple presence of God, for a personal understanding of God’s word, for knowledge of God’s will, and for the capacity hear and obey God.”

In Merton’s definition of prayer, God is our true focus. We search for understanding and direction in our lives that will guide us toward God. Our call to contemplation becomes clearer in this style of prayer. We find five key points in Merton’s definition of prayer.

1. All prayer must raise our awareness and lead us to pay attention to God’s presence.
2. We need to engage God’s word. This is first and foremost through the Bible but it also is in the experiences of life.
3. The involvement with God’s word leads us to God’s will. This begins a process of undermining selfishness and encouraging generosity toward God and others. Prayer is critical in this enlightenment.
4. In this style of prayer, listening is the most important feature.
5. Finally, as we grow in understanding of God’s word and seeking God’s will, the Spirit directs us to follow Jesus.

Teresa of Avila offers this description of prayer: “In my opinion, prayer is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know love us.” (Life VIII, 5). In all of Teresa’s writings, the emphasis is unquestionably on the God “who we know loves us.” There is a continual growth in that love when we continue to be faithful to Jesus.

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