In previous chapters I described the practice of contemplative prayer as a participation in the Paschal Mystery--the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I related this to the process of Lectio Divina, one of the oldest forms of meditative practice in the Christian religion, and then to the Eucharist. Contemplative prayer is in continuity with both the movement of Lectio Divina and the five presences of Christ in the Eucharist.

Contemplative prayer prepares us for a more profound reception of the Eucharist. It enables us to bring the fruits of prayer and the sacraments into daily life so that our entire being is more and more saturated with the divine presence and the concerns of the Gospel. Justification by faith is not just a cloak to put on. It is the deep interior transformation of everything in us into the mind and heart of Christ.

Contemplation Builds Christian Community

In the last chapter we looked at the first two theological principles on which contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition rests. A third principle is also important. Any practice moving towards contemplation is ecclesial in its effects. It bonds the people who are doing it with everybody else who is doing a similar practice, and indeed with everyone else in the human family. It creates community. As we sit in silence, we realize our oneness with others, not only with those with whom we pray, but with everyone on earth--past, present, and to come. What is deepest in them, their oneness with the divine presence, resonates with what is deepest in us. Hence, their joys, their trials, and their openness to God are part of us. In this way we share each other's burdens, as Paul says.

In contemplative practice, as we pray together identifying ourselves with the Paschal Mystery, we believe that Christ is in the center of the circle imparting to each the special graces each one needs. The participants are pooling their silence, so to speak, so that everyone gathered there can drink from this marvelous well of living water that rises up from the center of the circle. Silence in this context is liturgy of an exalted kind. We do not say or do anything, but we engage in a special kind of action that might be called alert receptivity. It is opening and consenting to God's presence and action within us.

The method of meditation as taught by John Main and the Centering Prayer method of contemplation are not so much something new in the Christian tradition as something old that is being renewed. The contemplative dimension of the Gospel has always been there but not as explicitly as it is now. Time tends to bring out the implications of the Christian message. The Spirit adjusts to people at different times and places in history. That is why the Spirit likes a little elbow room and does not like to be limited by excessive structures. When there is a reform of ecclesiastical structures, the Spirit rushes in. When the Spirit stirs up a big wind like the one occurring at Pentecost or during the Second Vatican Council, the wind in its turn may stir up a lot of dust. Things may happen concomitantly that are not always the direct intention of the Spirit. They may be overreactions to a prior sense of rigidity or over-confinement. Like anybody who has been confined, when you get out, you start to run.

The movement towards contemplative prayer responds to an enormous spiritual hunger in the human family. There is a huge vacuum in the world today because the Christian religion lost its hold on the masses after the French Revolution and throughout the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. Science, or more exactly scientism, which had become a kind of replacement for Christianity, got knocked into a cocked hat by two world wars and the cold war. It is no longer a substitute for religion or a panacea for unlimited progress, as was blissfully thought to be the case fifty or a hundred years ago.

As a result of these historical developments, people today are looking not so much for doctrinal certitude as for meaning in life. This need is greatly increased by the information explosion, a horizontal expansion towards unlimited information without a corresponding vertical dimension of meaning. We need an explosion of meaning if we are to handle this explosion of information in a fully human way. It is not surprising that people, prompted by the grace of God, are thinking, "How does one live in a world where neither science nor religion are meeting the needs of people at the deepest level?"

This awareness seems to be a movement of the Holy Spirit. It needs to be given a chance to grow and to follow its own momentum. It has already initiated a growing sense of oneness beyond doctrinal differences among members of the Christian main line churches. One of the purposes of the Centering Prayer movement as of the Christian Meditation Community is to contribute to the renewal of the Christian contemplative tradition and to make it available to the people of every Christian denomination. We all have roots in the early Christian centuries when the contemplative tradition was much more vigorous than it has been in the past few centuries.

John of the Cross is one of the major exponents of Christian mysticism. He teaches that contemplation begins in the Night of Sense, which brings to an end the springtime of the spiritual life. We experience, in some degree, the absence of God so that the practices that used to bring us satisfaction, enthusiasm, and motivation for ministry and the service of others, dry up. During this extended period of dryness, there is a disconcerting sense of going backwards in the spiritual journey. At the same time we experience a desire for solitude and a disinclination or inability to meditate discursively. We no longer can move from one concept to the next as in discursive meditation or multiply acts of the will as in affective prayer.

Lectio, as we saw, consists of four moments or ways of relating to Christ. The practice prepares our faculties to enter into deeper relationship with Christ. Our faculties become oriented towards resting in God. Rest, however, is not the end. It is rather the beginning of an even more intimate relationship with Christ in which the contemplative dimension is the source of our activity. No longer does the false self, with its dependence on our emotional programs for happiness, over-identification with our group, and cultural conditioning motivate what we do.

When we reflect in our prayer and multiply particular acts of the will, we are dominating the conversation. But if we really believe in the divine indwelling and the promptings of the Spirit, we are more apt to listen. And the more we listen, the more we realize that the inspirations of the Spirit have to be heard. We cease to drown them out with our brilliant flights of metaphysics, theology, devotion, or whatever we think is prayer.

John of the Cross was greatly influenced by the sixth-century Syrian monk, Pseudo Dionysius, about whom we know practically nothing. He had an enormous influence on Christian spirituality because he identified himself as a disciple of Paul. In those days plagiarism was not considered a fault. When authors wanted their material to be well circulated, they piggybacked on one of the saints or apostles. That is what Pseudo Dionysius did. His teaching is in turn reflected in The Cloud of Unknowing, by a fourteenth-century anonymous English mystic. The Cloud modifies the over-intellectual tendency of Pseudo Dionysius while giving us at the same time his profound teaching.

John of the Cross used the works of Pseudo Dionysius in Spanish translation as his bedside reading. The research of Marilyn May Mallory, a professor in the Netherlands who did a survey on contemplative prayer about twenty-five years ago, has shown that in one point at least there is a serious mistranslation of the original text.¹ According to the translation that John of the Cross used, the text read, "We must be detached from all our desires in order to reach divine union." To be detached from every desire is virtually impossible in a monastery. It is absolutely impossible for those who live in the world. But that is not what Pseudo Dionysius actually wrote. The correct translation is that we must be detached in all our desires. This is obviously a whole other world of meaning. But for three or four centuries generous people, pursuing the contemplative life, have been frustrated and confused by John of the Cross's injunction to give up every single desire. Contemplative prayer gives us the grace to be detached in our desires. That means that our desires must be freed from the motivation of the false self. Then we can lead the spiritual life in any state of life as normal human beings.

Continued . . .

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1. Marilyn May Mallory, Christian Mysticism Transcending Techniques (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum).

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Excerpted from The Better Part by Fr. Thomas Keating

You can obtain a copy by visiting the Contemplative Outreach Bookstore.