An enduring legacy of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) is its clarion call to renew the Gospels and biblical theology and tradition of "the Way" of Jesus as primary sources of Catholic spirituality. We have only begun this trek, often on another less noble path or "my" way.
Trappist monk Thomas Keating defines a mystic as one who is head over heel in love with God.
I love that description. Love at its best. To ponder the love of one's life, and the Love of one's life is awesome to behold.
The Word of God in the sacred scripture that is embodied in Jesus the Christ is the font of Christian contemplation.
God becomes one like us in the flesh if Jesus in our human family. Incarnation is the Latin, "in the flesh." God becomes one of us in Jesus, except Jesus is without sin.
The blessed Trinity of the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier+ are together in one nature, both the Ultimate Myster and Reality for us. Their own inner relationship and dynamic of Love and absolute giving and receiving is the divine life that Christ was sent to share with each of us. How profoundly touching the Untouchable, Invisible. Incredible Lover - the Present with a capital P.
The manifold Gifts of the Holy Spirit are believed to come into fullness by way of regular practice of prayer and the growth of faith into contemplation with its progression and devlopment. A process it is, or, if you like, a procession like the nine of us in my family formed along Van Dyke on our way as a family to the late Saint Thomas the Apostle Church, our home church, at Miller and Townsend in Detroit, MI.
Saint Gregory the Great of the end of the sixth century, and the inspiration for the Catholic Care of the Soul Companions, summed up the contemplative tradition as the knowlege of God in Scripture and a precious gift of God.
He called it "resting in God." Mind and heart experience in some small or great measure a "taste" of what they are seeking, namely God. Only a glimpse morphs me no end. Really with a capital R for my oneness with the One as in the beginning, life everlasting, amen! For all Eternity!
This understanding perdured through the Middlge Ages. Fasting, chanting, vigils, solitude and periods of silence, simplicity of lifestyle, the rosary, veneration of icons, and more, always included contemplation as part of the Christ-centered goal.
Noticing is how spirituality is described. Contemplation is "loooking" beyond an earthly level.
An example of a contemplative life is Thomas Keating, or the late Thomas Merton who died in 1968 - the year of slaying of Matin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, my own brother Lucas in Vietnam, among so many historic and defining moments, including the TET Offensive, and, the beginning of the women's movement, some assert.
Merton became the leading contemplative voice from his cell in the Twentieth Century American Church. His body is buried at Gethsemane, Kentucky where Joe Oster, Ernie Bedard, among others will join me on retreat for a week in November.
Merton spoke up on contemplative prayer as well as social and global issues, including civil rights, social justice, nuclear disarmament, violence, ecumenism and East-West religious dialogue to name only a few examples. Merton proclaimed to a people in the atomic age, suffering and other consequences of the effecrts of World War II, and, the need to focus on life's primary purpose. This task is "in being one's true self; to come to one's true identity by returning to the ground of our true self - the true self anchored only in God."
Union with God was Merton's quest. It is our own also. I long for it daily. Merton was a prolific writer who taught me much about contemplative journal-writing, and more. In his, New Seeds of Contemplation,
Father Merton, the Trappist monk who stood in the market square in Louiville, KY, saying:
"These are all my people," -- seems to touch the soul, support and guides it in hearing the call to contemplation. He reaches out as a true soul friend in love, wisdom and understanding. His, The New Man, is grounded in Sacred Scripture explaining the dynamic of the spiritual journey in bliblical language. Merton also became aware of the fruits and gift of contemplation that came alive in non-Christian religions. This leaning gave birth to East-West religious dialogue.
Simply put, for Merton, "contemplative prayer is the preference for the desert, for emptiness, for poverty. One has begun to know the meaning of contemplation when he or she intuitively and spontaneously seeks the dark and the unknown path of aridity in preference to every other way. The contemplative is one who would rather not know than know...He accepts the love of God in faith, in defiance of all apparent evidence. This is the necessary condition and a very paradoxical condition, for the mystical experience of God's Presence and of His love for us.
Only when we are able to 'let go' of everything within us, all desire to see, to know, to taste and experience the presence of God, do we truly become able to experience that Presence..."
- From Merton's Contemplative Prayer
I like to get lost in the Love of God and then seem to know a fraction of a glimpse at times, of divine union at the tail-end of my centering prayer two sessions of twenty minutes daily. Most of the session is distracted by judgments, criticisms, and the like. Only when I gently return to my WOrd from Scripture - Beloved - am I resting in God some. Words cannot describe this
encounter and experience with the Holy.
This relationship I relish. Without it, I die inwardly and outwardly act unlovingly.
Prayer works. Prayer heals and mends. Prayer is the connection and union with the Unconditional God who is like a Mother Hen hovering over and within the fractured heart and soul. All the gunk of the shower drains in centering contemplative prayer for me. It takes much time simply and gently and lovingly BEING in the Presence.
Just a few hours before Merton's death in Bangkok, Thailand, these notes were found:
"Christianity and Buddhism agree that the root of man's problems is that that his consciousness is fouled up and does not apprehend reality as it fully is...Christianity and Buddhism alike, then, seeks to bring about a transformation of Man's consciousness...to transform and liberate the truth in each person, with the idea that it will communicate itself to others...The whole purpose of monastic life is to teach us to live by love."
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