Thought for the Day...

Here's a thought for the day on the spiritual life from the spiritual autobiography of Thomas Merton...

In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling as if we did not know where we were going.
In another sense we have already arrived.
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are traveling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.
But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!

The Seven Storey Mountain, 419.

Reflect on your own life. Do you feel, like Merton, that you are traveling to an unknown destination at which, ironically, you've already arrived? How does this describe your spiritual experience, your faith journey? How is it different?

Thoughts on the journey from old friends...

Prayer must penetrate and enliven every department o four life, including that which is most temporal and transient. Prayer does not despise even the seemingly lowliest aspects of man’s temporal existence. It spiritualizes all of them and gives them a divine orientation. But prayer is defiled when it is turned away from God and from thee spirit, and manipulated in the interests of group fanaticism.

In such cases, religion is understood to be at least implicitly misdirected, and therefore the “God” whom it invokes becomes, or tends to become, a mere figment of the imagination. Such religion is insincere. It is merely a front for greed, injustice, sensuality, selfishness, violence. The cure for this corruption is to restore the purity of faith and the genuineness of Christian love: and this means a restoration of the contemplative orientation of prayer.

Real contemplatives will always be rare and few. Butt ht is not a matter of importance, as long as the whole Church is predominately contemplative in all her teaching, all her activity and all her prayer. There is no contradiction between action and contemplation when Christian apostolic activity is raised to the level of pure charity. On that level, action and contemplation are fused into one entity by the love of God and of our brother in Christ. But the trouble is that if prayer is not deep, powerful and pure and filled at all times with the spirit of contemplation, Christian action can never really reach this high level.

Without the spirit of contemplation in all our worship—that is to say without the adoration and love of God above all, for his own sake, because he is God—the liturgy will not nourish a really Christian apostolate based on Christ’s love and carried out in the power of the Pneuma.

The most important need in the Christian world today is this inner truth nourished by this Spirit of contemplation: the praise and love of God, the longing for the coming of Christ, the thirst for the manifestation of God’s glory, his truth, his justice, his Kingdom in the world. These are all characteristically “contemplative” and eschatological aspirations of the Christian heart, and they are the very essence of monastic prayer. Without them our apostolate is more for our own glory than for the glory of God.

Without this contemplative orientation we are building churches not to praise him but to establish more firmly the social structures, values and benefits that we presently enjoy. Without this contemplative basis to our preaching, our apostolate is not apostolate at all, but mere proselytizing to insure universal conformity with our own national way of life.

Without contemplation and interior prayer the Church cannot fulfill her mission to transform and save mankind. Without contemplation, she will be reduced to being the servant of cynical and worldly powers, no matter how hard her faithful may protest that they are fighting for the Kingdom of God.

Without true, deep contemplative aspirations, without a total love for God and an uncompromising thirst for his truth, religion tends in the end to become an opiate.

- Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, 115-116.

The world says, “When you were young you were dependent and could not go where you wanted, but when you grow old you will be able to make your own decisions, go your own way, and control your own destiny.” But Jesus has a different vision of maturity: It is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go. [See Jn 21:18.] Immediately after Peter has been commissioned to be a leader of the sheep, Jesus confronts him with the hard truth that the servant-leader is the leader who is being led to unknown, undesirable, and painful places. The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross. This might sound morbid or masochistic, but for those who have heard the voice of the first love and said yes to it, the downward-moving way of Jesus is the way to the joy and the peace of god, a joy and peace that is not of this world.

Here we touch the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future. It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest.

- Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, 81-82

The Apophatic Way

Recently I've been rediscovering the apophatic way. I don't have much time to describe it now, but suuffice it to say that apophaticism is an acknowledgement that God is mystery, beyond our full comprehension, beyond the captivity of our limited language. I have been taking this journeying with some old friends: St. John of the Cross, Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Merton. I've also been journeying with a new friend, Belden Lane. Lane wrote a wonderful book the subject entitled, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. I hope to write some reflections on this book more in the future, but that will have to wait for another time. Today, I want to sahre with you a prayer from Merton that caught my rekindled apophatic attention....

"Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names. Teach me to pray on this side of the frontier, here where these woods are.

I need to be led by you. I need my heart to be moved by you. I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. I need my will to be made strong by you. I need the world to be saved and changed by you. I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow. I need you for all the crazy people. I need your healing hand to work always in my life. I need you to make me, as you made your Son, a healer, a comforter, a savior. I need you to name the dead. I need you to help the dying cross their particular rivers. I need you for myself whether I live or die. I need to be your monk and your son. It is necessary. Amen."

Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. Journals, volume 4. Lawrence S. Cunningham, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996: 46-47

Merton & Lent

The Lenten season always seems to drive me back to my good friend Thomas Merton. Maybe its the deep introspection and contemplation of the mysteries of life and God. Merton did write a book called New Seeds of Contemplation, so it seems only fitting.

Here are a couple of quotes that I love from New Seeds that really strike me, especially during this time of year:

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. We are free beings and sons [and daughters] of God. This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom, in our lives, and in the lives of others, by choosing the truth. To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity. (32)

Be content that you are not yet a saint, even though you realize that the only thing worth living for is sanctity. Then you will be satisfied to let God lead you to sanctity by paths that you cannot understand. (59-60)