A Simple Method of Contemplative Prayer

The Method

• Adopt a comfortable posture with the spine as nearly straight as possible and the eyes open or half-closed.
• Form a specific intention for your period of prayer.
• Say to yourself or quietly an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. (the prayers mentioned can be found at CatholiCity dot com))
• Then with your indrawn breath say to yourself or out loud 'Jesus' and with your outward breath 'Mary.'
• Persist in this for whatever time you have decided, I recommend not less than ten minutes and not more than forty-five.
• Finish with a Salve Regina/Hail Holy Queen and offer your thanks to God.

The Rationale

• There is nothing mystical about the posture. Its designed to be comfortable enough to hold for a reasonable length of time without being so comfortable that you fall asleep. If you prefer kneeling to sitting while you pray then do so.
• The intention transforms your action from a solitary one to a communal one. If you intend the spiritual benefits of your prayer to flow to the needs of the world, or the Church or your loved ones then it is not all about you. If your intention is to be strengthened in virtue then, again, the chief beneficiary of your good acts will not be yourself.
• Saying the prayers of the Church is not only a good thing in itself but, psychologically and physiologically it provides a bridge between whatever you were doing before to what you are about to do. It allows your body and mind to relax into their new activity.
• Jesus is the breath of life to us so invoking Him with our inspiration makes good sense. Mary is our mother, our fellow pilgrim, our good companion, so sending our respiration up to heaven with her for company also makes sense.
• Again the prayers at the end are good in themselves and, in the case of the Thanks Be To God, necessary, whilst also acting as a useful bridge.

Practical Tips

As soon as you try to keep your mind focussed and your body still both of them immediately revolt and seek to through you off course. As far as the body goes you are likely to break out into itches and aches and pains combined with a need to convulsively swallow every few seconds. Of the two, body and mind, this is probably the easier to overcome. When you feel the need to scratch, change position or swallow don't try to ignore it or to resist it heroically. If, in addition to paying attention to your breathing and the names of Jesus and Mary you just direct your mind towards the part of the body most affected and, as it were, mentally observe it then the feeling will likely pass away fairly quickly. If not then change position and settle down again. In my experience this bodily restlessness stops being an issue after a fairly short period of regularly praying this way.

The mind is a much trickier proposition to deal with. Distracting thoughts race through it almost all the time and you begin to engage with them and get led away into wondering what to have for lunch or who's going to win the World Series or the wonderful thing you are going to do the moment you stop praying or whatever. There is nothing you can do to prevent thoughts arising so don't try. Focus as much as you can on your breathing and on the names of Jesus and Mary. When you notice that you've engaged with a thought don't get irritated or resolve to do better next time. Just gently let it go and resume your focus until the next time. Unlike the challenge from the body this distraction is likely to be with you for the duration so just live with it and do the best you can do.

Reflection

No method or form of prayer acts like a magic bullet in and of itself. In order for it to be effective in a spiritual sense, whatever it might do for us therapeutically as a stress reliever, it needs to be accompanied by a right intention on the part of the person praying and a free act of grace given to us by God through the hands of Mary. Moreover, even if those things are present prayer on its own does not constitute the spiritual life, it needs to be accompanied by a participation in the life of the Church, her sacraments strengthen us, her liturgies teach us, her Sacred Scriptures refresh us, and our fellow members in Christ need our charity as we need theirs.

Granting all these things what spiritual benefit can we hope for from this method of praying? This is something that will vary from person to person so really the only way to find out for yourself is to do it for yourself. Decide that for a period of time, a month maybe or three months, you will set aside half an hour or so for at least six days every week and pray in this manner and then you will be in a better position than I am to answer the question.

The question of outcome though is linked to that of right intention which I mentioned above. The aim is to focus entirely on the love of God who has come to us, through Mary, in the person of Jesus Christ. We cannot be unmindful of the details of His life, particularly His Passion, Death and Resurrection, but these are present to us implicitly in His sacred Name as are the other two persons of the Trinity. They are present also in the name of Mary who stood at the foot of the Cross on Golgotha and who is the daughter of the Father, the spouse of the Holy Spirit and the Mother of the Son. Our purpose though is not to call any of these things explicitly to our conscious minds but simply to place ourselves in the presence of this divine love expressed in incarnated form through Jesus and received and lived out most perfectly in Mary. And having placed ourselves so we simply wait for that seed to grow in the way and at the pace that the good God decides is best for us. We travel in faith towards love sustained by hope. And then we will know.

@stevhep

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The picture is a detail from The Annunciation by Joos van cleve

Martha, Martha.

In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.
(Psalm 94:19)

Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful:and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.
(Luke 10:41-42)

Both David (the psalmist) and Jesus draw a contrast between the drain on resources caused by multiplicity and the peace to be derived from simplicity. David describes an internal environment and Jesus an exterior one but, of course the two are intimately linked.

Martha's busy-ness was concerned with the tricky task of being a good hostess for an horde of visitors which meant having to juggle several balls in the air at the same time. Mary was simply concerned about sitting at the feet of our Lord and learning from Him.

Anyone who has tried meditating will recognise David's description. Our body may be as still as Mary's but our mind is, like Martha, bustling around like a shuttlecock from one thing to another and, very often, back again. The key difference, though, is that Martha's activity is purposeful and useful whereas the thoughts rattling around inside our head are often neither. Both of the sisters are focussed on Jesus, just in different ways. A contrast is often made between Mary as emblematic of the contemplative life and Martha of the active one. This is true so far as it goes there is, however, what Al Gore would no doubt call 'that little known third category' where action follows contemplation.

Had Martha sat at the feet of Jesus before performing her hospitable tasks then her multiplicity would have been secondary to her simplicity. Not simply second chronologically but also she would have become in some sense detached from her actions, performing them diligently but with a part of herself still dwelling by her Lord. Because, however, she performed them as an alternative to listening to Him then her affection for Him and desire to hear His words were among the other balls she was juggling and not always appearing as the most important ones either. Nonetheless, focussed or unfocussed both Martha and Mary were primarily motivated by love of Jesus and  'love covers a multitude of sins.' (1 Peter 4:8)

What David describes is a mind juggling umpteen balls at the same time and a soul delighted by the comforts of God. As I mentioned in a previous blog (Repentance-Why Bother?) words change their meaning over time. The 17th century translators of the Authorised Version understood comfort to mean something different from what their 21st century readers might suppose. At its root is the same word used in fortress, fortification, fortified and the like. Literally it means "strong together" and would have been used in the sense "strengthen greatly." So David should be understood to be saying something like "In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy strengthening helps delight my soul."

Listening to Jesus would have given Martha strengthening help that would anchor her in simplicity whilst she was busily doing many different things. Her multiplicity would have proceeded from a unity and returned to it. By not listening she discovered herself to be in the midst of multiplicity longing for simplicity but without the strength or wisdom to find her way to it.

Something similar applies to our own 'multitude of thoughts.' Whether we are in contemplative or active mode without a divinely inspired core they will be diversity without unity. Thoughts will head off in all directions; sometimes they will collide, sometimes they will go down dead-ends and often they will just circle round and round and round.

Divine comfort, which is an action of the Holy Spirit, will nor necessarily stop any of that (although on rare occasions it probably will) but it will change the way we experience the phenomenon. We can be Martha's without the angst. This multitude does not possess the power to command our attention, all that it can do is request it. Hard as it may be to believe we do have the ability to refuse those requests. Letting thoughts pass us by without our focussing upon them is only an effort if we have nothing else to focus upon. And the Spirit giving 'delight to my soul' is a powerful counter-attraction.

The advantage that Mary possessed was that she was fully aware of the presence of Jesus. He filled her sight, her hearing, her mind and her heart to the exclusion of all else. We are seldom so obviously blessed.Yet, nonetheless, if we have made the basic decision of faith in favour of Christ and His Kingdom and if, where possible, we have been strengthened by the sacraments then He is a permanent guest within our own hearts. Only unrepented mortal sin can drive Him away from us. And if He is within us then we, if we listen (which is the one thing needful), can hear Him always. And that is a comforting thought.

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The picture is Christ in the House of Mary and Martha by Vincenzo Campi

Centering Prayer: Some Reflections

                                            An Old Woman Praying by Nicolaes Maes

Some Christians think that Centering Prayer is an invaluable way to deepen their spiritual lives, others think that it is the work of the devil and many more have never heard of it. For the benefit of the latter I shall briefly summarise it based on this leaflet (pdf)

The Guidelines

1. Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.

2. Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.

3. When engaged with your thoughts*, return ever-so gently to the sacred word.

4. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.

On the subject of choosing the 'sacred word'-
The sacred word expresses our intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.
The sacred word is chosen during a brief period of prayer asking the Holy Spirit to inspire us with one that is especially suitable for us. Examples: God, Jesus, Abba, Father, Mother, Mary, Amen. Other possibilities: Love, Peace, Mercy, Listen, Let Go, Silence, Stillness, Faith, Trust, Yes.

The practice is recommended for 20 minutes a time, twice a day. Its proponents argue that it is based on an ancient Christian practice referred to in, for example, the medieval English work The Cloud of Unknowing which is true so far as it goes. It is no coincidence, however, that this practice emerged and was publicised at a time when Eastern meditation techniques based on Hindu or Buddhist mantras were gaining many adherents in the West. Indeed it is strikingly similar to Transcendental Meditation which also recommends two twenty minute periods with eyes closed. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Christianity appropriating and Christianising this or that aspect of non-Christian cultures, philosophies or practices, The key question is always: does this provide a bridgehead to advance Christianity into new areas or a breach to permit non-Christian beliefs to invade the Church? In the case of centering prayer we can only answer that question when we have some sense of its benefits or risks.

Some critics contend that repetitive prayer is wrong and unbiblical. In that I think that they err. Repetitive prayer in a variety of forms has been a continuous practice of the Christian Church, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, for at least 1800 years most widely today in the forms of the Holy Rosary and the Jesus Prayer. The experience of the Church is that such prayers confer immense spiritual benefits on those who use them, on the Church as a whole and on the wider world. There is, however, a difference between  prayer based upon a sentence or phrase which contains a clear meaning and a particular aspiration and praying a single word with no specific content attached to it. It is the difference between active and passive. There is a place for passive prayer within Christianity but it needs to be recognised as a particular category and cannot claim close affinity with its more active cousins.

I suppose the first question to be asked about any form of prayer is- what is purpose does it serve? The first word of the prayer which Jesus gave us is 'our' as in Our Father. This teaches us, among other things, that God does not wish to save us as mere individuals but as individuals in community. All Christian prayer has both a vertical direction towards God and a horizontal one towards our neighbours particularly to those in the family of faith. To pray passively, opening ourselves up to the still small voice of God in our hearts, is a means to strengthen us in our active lives of faith. Practically all the great contemplative pray-ers of the Catholic faith such as St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila were enormously active and creative people who contributed largely to the Christian life of their time. When the emphasis lies in the personal benefits of centering prayer rather than in the contribution it can make to the life of loving service demanded of all Christians then it veers towards a sort of quietist form of therapy which produces undoubted personal benefits like calmness. There is nothing wrong with therapeutic meditation but it is not a form of prayer.

For a prayer to be Christian it requires both its form and content to be in harmony with the faith of the Nicene Creed. The person praying is establishing or strengthening her personal relationship with the Father, through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. It cannot then be a matter of indifference what word or words they use in that prayer. The word is only unimportant if it is a sort of background noise to lull the active mind to sleep while the rest of the person rests in a sort of zone of self-induced calm. What a pray-er should seek is a living connection with the living God and the tradition and experience of the Church suggests that pre-eminently the name of the Lord serves that function. Not because it has some magic mystical power but because every time a Christian uses it it calls up within them consciously and unconsciously a memory of all that they know and love about Him and this activates the heart in a movement of love towards Him. The name of the god-bearer Mary can also have a similar effect because by a special gift of the Lord she has been privileged to convey Jesus to us and us to Jesus. This is not to say that other words should never be used but I suggest that we impoverish our prayer when we exclude the names of Jesus and Mary from it.

Looking at the tradition which centering prayer claims to draw inspiration from, The Cloud of Unknowing, the key passage (at the end of chapter 7) is this-
And if thee list have this intent lapped and folden in one word, for thou shouldest have better hold thereupon, take thee but a little word of one syllable: for so it is better than of two, for ever the shorter it is the better it accordeth with the work of the Spirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this word LOVE. Choose thee whether thou wilt, or another; as thee list, which that thee liketh best of one syllable. And fasten this word to thine heart
This seems to be a straightforward enough source to draw upon but I think that it overlooks two key points. Firstly the preceding passage includes this-
Yea, and so holy, that what man or woman that weeneth to come to contemplation without many such sweet meditations of their own wretchedness, the passion, the kindness, and the great goodness, and the worthiness of God coming before, surely he shall err and fail of his purpose. And yet, nevertheless, it behoveth a man or a woman that hath long time been used in these meditations, nevertheless to leave them, and put them and hold them far down under the cloud of forgetting, if ever he shall pierce the cloud of unknowing betwixt him and his God
(apologies for the old English the more modern translations are still under copyright)
Clearly the author has in mind that what we call centering prayer is a late stage in a process of growth in prayer life which is preceded by, among other things, a contemplation of our own sinfulness and the goodness of God. One arrives at the 'sacred word' after perhaps years of contemplation and prayer which helps us to discover just what that singular word might be. To begin centering prayer without this preliminary process might or might not be a good idea but it clearly isn't what the author of The Cloud of Unknowing had in mind.

The second thing overlooked is the monastic context of this form of prayer. Those who used it also prayed the Divine Office (based on the psalms) seven times a day, went to Mass daily, were subject to the authority of a Rule and an Abbot (or Abbess), and had a confessor and/or spiritual director. Not only this but all parts of their lives, including their prayer lives, had a community dimension. Even hermits prayed the Office as a part of the praying Church not purely as individuals. It is certainly reasonable to adapt monastic forms of prayer to the use of people living in the world but that does not mean plucking out this or that attractive aspect of it and dumping all the rest as unappealing. The Church is possessed of much wisdom in such matters and these forms have come into existence and endured because they serve a good purpose. Not least they remind us of the 'our' of the Our Father.

My conclusion is that the practice of centering prayer is valuable and Christian only where the person who uses it situates it within the context of, as it were, a cloud of related practices. Each person should have their own little Rule. Ideally they should not choose that Rule for themselves but accept it from a wise spiritual director or at least from an Institute or organisation steeped in the prayer life and practices of the Church.That Rule should include daily reading or chanting of the psalms. The argument that much of the content of these psalms is difficult or even repugnant to the modern mind is no reason not to use them. Prayer at times ought to be hard work, we do have to make an effort, it is a struggle. Repeated reading of the psalms with the mind of the Church enables us in time to crack the nut and get to the sweet kernel within, if that takes years or decades well then let it take years or decades. The Rule should also include frequent resort to the sacraments since these give us strength and reaffirm our rootedness both in Christ and the community of the Church. And the Rule should make it plain that the object of centering prayer is to know God better, to love Him more and to serve our neighbours with all our strength.

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Shakespeare & the Apostles

Agincourt, Imagination and the Bible

 Then he took the twelve apostles aside, and warned them, Now we are going up to Jerusalem, and all that has been written by the prophets about the Son of Man is to be accomplished.  He will be given up to the Gentiles, and mocked, and beaten, and spat upon; they will scourge him, and then they will kill him; but on the third day he will rise again. They could make nothing of all this; his meaning was hidden from them, so that they could not understand what he said.
Luke 18:31-34

King of France
With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur: 
Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow 
Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat 
The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon: 
Go down upon him, you have power enough, 
And in a captive chariot into Rouen 
Bring him our prisoner.
Constable of France.
 This becomes the great. 
Sorry am I his numbers are so few, 
His soldiers sick and famish'd in their march, 
For I am sure, when he shall see our army, 
He'll drop his heart into the sink of fear 
And for achievement offer us his ransom
Henry V, Act III, Scene 5


The Apostles do not come well out of the Gospels. They seem to have a near perfect ability to misunderstand or not comprehend Jesus. It is tempting to dismiss them as unusually dense or at least woefully ignorant. It does not help much if we remember that we know the end of the story and they didn't, that we have the benefit of the reflections on Jesus and His mission in the Epistles and two thousand years of Christian thought and they had to make do with very much less. The reason this is not helpful is because it is a purely intellectual exercise on our part. Most readers of the Gospels, Christian or not, are emotionally invested in Jesus, often to a great degree, and it hurts us when we see Him desperately trying and usually failing to make those closest to Him understand who He is and what He is doing. That emotional wound, that empathy which we feel, cannot really be touched simply by engaging in the mental exercise of adding up the things which the Apostles could have known and could have understood and comparing it with what our Lord was asking them to know and understand. Emotional wounds need to be treated with emotional medicines.

(enter Shakespeare)
One way of reading Scripture is to immerse oneself in it imaginatively. If we try to see the events unfolding before us not through the eyes and with the feelings of a 21st century person but as near as we can manage it with the feelings of the historical participants then our perspective will change. For most of us it will not be possible really to enter into the thought processes of the Apostles, the holy women or the Pharisees because their thinking was dominated by a framework of assumptions and experiences that only professional historians could really reproduce. Their feelings, however, would be akin to ones that we ourselves are familiar with because the lapse of two thousand years has effected no change in the human emotional range whatever it may have done to the world of ideas. In this context Act III, scene 5 of Henry V becomes a useful tool. Why? It is set on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, the flower of French knighthood and nobility is preparing itself for a foreseen victory. In that they are wise, they possess the greatest warriors in Christendom, they are fighting on their own soil and they heavily outnumber the English. It is not vainglorious or foolish of them to expect to be victorious, quite the reverse they have no reason to expect anything else. Yet, as it happens, on that October day in 1415 they experienced a crushing and humiliating defeat. Shakespeare, I think, captures well their attitude and does not portray it as he might have done as being hubristic. This makes the contrast with what follows all the sharper.
(exit Shakespeare pursued by angry Frenchmen)

If we read the Agincourt section of Henry V then none of its participants appear to be behaving in an excessively foolish manner, they do not irritate us by their denseness. If we read the Gospels in a similar way then we can see that the Apostles, particularly on the eve of the Passion found themselves emotionally in a place analogous to that of the French nobility. They expected a triumph and had good reason for such an expectation. In Jesus they recognised the promised Messiah, the Anointed One of God. Their understanding of these titles was that as a descendant of King David and Solomon our Lord would restore the kingdom of Israel to its ancient glories driving out the occupying Romans and humbling their insolent neighbours. A restored Israel would be rich and powerful and all the world would acknowledge the might of Israel's God. That Jesus had the power to be just such a Messiah they could not doubt, had He not displayed His power over sickness and death and had not His words shown a wisdom greater even than Solomon's? That Jesus did not intend to use His power in such a fashion they could not grasp. That is to say they may have intellectually grasped that His words pointed in a different direction but, rather like our attitude towards them, they could not emotionally grasp the significance of His mission because in their heart they desired something different. It would require the horror of the Passion and the joy of the Resurrection to flood into their inmost being before they could be open to understand as keenly with their hearts as with their minds what it was that Jesus stood for.

If we enter into their emotional lives then not only can we understand them better but we can also feel more deeply for ourselves the impact of the Easter events. Then, like the Apostles, it will be only natural that these events become for us the foundation of all that we are and do in the world. It should not be understood, however, that I am suggesting that we should read the Gospels only in an imaginative way. The scriptures can and should be read in a variety of different ways- as narratives, as literal truth, as metaphorical truth and so on- since only then can they yield to us all the treasures which they contain. Moreover, they should always be read with the mind of the Church, two thousand years of Catholic reflection and meditation have preceded us and we should draw upon this resource looking towards it for guidance and support particularly where we encounter passages and sayings which are difficult to understand or to integrate with scripture as a whole.

Nonetheless the imaginative reading of scripture has enormous potential to help us release our inmost energies. This does not only apply to the Gospels, the Exodus story of Israel escaping from bondage has often exercised great influence over those suffering oppression precisely because they can enter imaginatively into the sufferings of the Hebrews and see in their salvation a source of hope for their own plight. Personally too I recall that in the days after my mother died I read the Book of Job and what I saw there spoke to me and moved me and changed me in ways which had not been possible before because I could now see his loss and pain through the eyes of my own bereavement. The Bible has been called the Book of Life and it is that in this sense: your life can be found within its pages and that life by it and by prayer and the Holy Spirit can be transformed from darkness into light.

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Mary & Eternal Life

                                     Christ's Farewell to His Apostles- Maesta Duccio

 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent
John 17:3

Ruth said, “Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.”
Ruth 1:16-17


There are degrees of knowledge, particularly knowledge of persons. The longer we know them and the more intimately then the better we know them. In a life beyond the veil of death when we shall encounter Divinity face to face then, certainly we shall know Him far better than we can today. Nonetheless eternity starts now, that is, eternity enters into us and we into it to precisely the extent that we know God. Every moment where we meet Jesus, in the Gospels, in the sacraments, in prayer, in our neighbours is an occasion where time expands into timelessness. There can be no doubt that the human who entered most fully into this intense relationship with the Father, through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit was Mary His mother. In the Old Testament Book of Ruth we can see a type or figure of this relationship.

Ruth is one of these Very Small Books of the Bible that I referred to in my blog Sense & Sensuality. It is a curious work to be incorporated into the Jewish scriptures and there is no obvious reason to account for its presence. It is a lovely story certainly but the Jews had many lovely stories that didn't make the canonical cut. In the context of Jewish historical narrative it does tell us who King David's great-grandmother was but since, as it turns out, she was not only not a Hebrew but, worse than that, she came from their hated neighbours the Moabites, against marrying whom there were strict regulations in much of Old Testament times, you might think that the Jews would be inclined to downplay this fact rather than canonise it. The author of Ruth and the compilers of the canon probably saw in the story not simply an historical account but one which was also profoundly symbolic.

The pivot around which the action revolves is the steadfast love of Ruth, a widow, for Naomi her Israelite mother-in-law who is also a widow and, worse still, has been bereaved of her sons. Ruth follows the advice of the psalmist
Listen, my daughter, and understand;
    pay me careful heed.
Forget your people and your father’s house
Psalm 45:11
She accompanies Naomi who returns to Bethlehem in Israel, in doing so Ruth has to leave behind her own nation and national religion to go to a strange land made up of her hereditary enemies. Her sole reason for doing this is the love she bears for Naomi who, old, widowed and bereaved will need the support of her daughter in law to be able to live. In these two figures we can see Naomi/Israel acting as a light of attraction to Ruth/Gentiles, that is, that the foundation for drawing Ruth into a knowledge and love of God was the power of the way Naomi lived her life as wife, mother, mother-in-law and worshipper of the Lord God of Israel and by extension if all Israel became a nation of Naomi's then the Gentiles could become a world of Ruth's. In Bethlehem the two live humbly and in poverty. The love that Ruth has shown to her mother-in-law wins her the sympathy of Boaz, a local landowner, who allows the Moabite woman to glean from his fields what the harvesters leave behind. And, to make a short story shorter, Boaz marries Ruth who has a son, Obed, whom Naomi raises.

                                              The Visitation- Lucca Della Robbia

So what has this got to do with our Lady and experiencing eternity in the present moment? In the Angelic Salutation St Gabriel said to Mary The Lord is with you but he might equally have said you are with the Lord since he was talking about the close relationship which existed between the Virgin and God. Mary conceived Jesus in her heart before she did so in her womb and one could go further and suggest that before she conceived Him she knew Him. During His mission our Lord stated 'The Father and I are one' (John 10:30) and since Mary from childhood intimately knew the Father it follows that she must have known also the Son. In the relationship between Ruth and Naomi we can see a figure of that between our Lady and the religion of Israel. Ruth clung closely to her out of a selfless love, a love which both eliminated her concern for merely material things, she left behind all that she knew or could have hoped to have in order to follow her mother-in-law, and expressed itself in purely practical ways, she gleaned barley to help feed Naomi. That is, a union was effected between eternal imperishable love and the temporal need of the present moment.

We see in figure too our Lady committing herself to virginity. In seeking to persuade her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab Naomi says 'Go back, my daughters. Why come with me? Have I other sons in my womb who could become your husbands?' (Ruth 1:11) Orpah, Ruth's sister-in-law does go back but Ruth persists thus, so far as she knew, abandoning her chance to become a mother in order to serve Naomi as Mary would later, so far as she knew, abandon her chance of becoming a mother in order to serve the God of Israel with all her mind, strength, spirit and body. By wholly committing everything about herself to the Lord our Lady lived and moved and had her being in the Eternal One while she yet fulfilled her temporal duties.

For Ruth as for Mary events took a surprising turn. When she learns that Boaz has the right to marry her she says to him 'Spread the wing of your cloak over your servant, for you are a redeemer (Ruth 3:9) To which he replies 'May the Lord bless you, my daughter! You have been even more loyal now than before.' (Ruth 3:10) The relationship with Naomi opens up the possibility of a further and deeper relationship with Boaz who has the power to redeem Ruth from poverty and childlessness. Even so Mary's devotion to the religion and God of Israel draws her into a relationship with the Son of the Father.

When Naomi receives her grandson the women of Bethlehem say to her 'his mother is the daughter-in-law who loves you. She is worth more to you than seven sons!' (Ruth 4:15) Here we see a figure of the relationship between Mary and Israel. Through her child (which is also a descendant of Ruth) she brings redemption but also, and crucially, she is valued for herself, for the love and self-sacrifice she brings to all her relationships. All that she does is fruitful and is made tenfold more fruitful through the fruit of her womb Jesus.

In all of Mary's life we see an interweaving of the things of time, her practical works of virtue and love, and the things of eternity. These are not parallel experiences but through her Son and her knowledge of Him, beginning before she conceived Him, they are an invasion of eternity into time and an uplifting of time into eternity. The story of Ruth lays before us a clear example of how this kind of life is to be lived. It is for us, through the grace of God, to follow in the path blazed by these holy women.

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Mary & the Birthdays of Jesus

              Christ Appearing to the Virgin by Follower of Rogier van der Weyden 1475

And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
Luke 2:34-35

I saw the Blessed Virgin as very full of years, but no sign of old age appeared in her except a consuming yearning by which she was as it were transfigured. There was an indescribable solemnity about her. I never saw her laugh, though she had a beautiful smile
Anne Catherine Emmerich- Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Historians are undecided about the date of the Nativity of our Lord although as a sort of reflex action they are almost unanimous in denying that it was 25 December as if giving credit to the wisdom of the Church was somehow a violation of their professional duty. Likewise there is some dispute about when the Catholics first started to celebrate this event as a dedicated Feast. Some say it was earlier and some later. What I think we can be fairly sure about though is that the Blessed Virgin Mary knew the date and that every year as it came around she would have pondered in her heart the events of the first Christmas and the significance which they bore. Of particular poignance for her must have been the Christmases which she marked in the years between her Son's Ascension and her own Assumption. We cannot now enter into her thoughts, memories and prayers but we can consider those matters which most likely occupied her reflections and which perhaps should occupy ours also.

Our Lady was unique in many ways and led a unique life. Not the least singular facet of it was that she witnessed the death and burial of her Son, His return to life and His Ascension into heaven. These experiences could not but be present before the eyes of her memory every time she marked the anniversary of His birth. Each Christmas for her would be a kind of palimpsest where each recollection of an event or emotion from that night in Bethlehem would uncover a thousand thousand others associated with the life of her beloved Jesus.

It is easy for Christians and sometimes even the Church to overlook St Joseph and his part in the Nativity seeing him as some kind of bit part player, an extra in the scene. We can be sure that this is a fault of which our Lady was never guilty. To her Joseph was a tower of strength, a friend, a faithful loving companion, the first man to hold her Jesus in his arms, to look tenderly at Him, to love Him wholeheartedly. To recall the first Christmas for Mary would also be to recall Joseph's steadfastness in marrying her despite her pregnancy, his support and care for her and the unborn child on the journey to Bethlehem and for mother and newborn during the flight into Egypt. They shared the agony of the hunt for the lost boy Jesus through the streets and Temple courts of Jerusalem. Most of all, perhaps, they shared year after year the hidden life of working, living in a community, raising a child to manhood being lovers of God and lovers of neighbour in that greatest of all trials the seeming triviality and mediocrity of the everyday. No doubt also his presence at this intense moment of life would bring to mind the time when this just man departed from it going to his eternal rest enfolded in the love of the Virgin and the Saviour the two most important people in his life. And this points us to an essential truth about Christmas. It is a family celebration, Mary would not recall the child without recalling too the foster-father. We who are adults seldom pass a Christmas season without revisiting our childhood feasts, the parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, uncles, aunts and others who welcome or not trailed through our seasonal rejoicing and accompany us still in our fondest memories. Welcoming a child into the world is a time for bringing families together and in Jesus we welcome the universal child, our destinies and the destinies of all who are dear to us are bound up in His. If our adult selves have dispensed with the large family gatherings of the not-so-distant past we should at least bring together in our prayers those we will not or cannot bring together in the flesh.

If St Joseph is backgrounded in our Nativity scenes and cribs the shepherds and Magi are not. Whilst our Lady may have held these things in reverse order in her heart her Christmas memories would certainly not have neglected them. Most of all, I think, it would have been the shepherds whose memory she treasured. Partly because they were present on that wonderful world transforming night as the Magi were not. Partly also because the Mary who sang-
He has shown might with his arm,
    dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
 He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones
    but lifted up the lowly.
 The hungry he has filled with good things;
    the rich he has sent away empty.
(Luke 1:51-53)
would cherish above all the devotion of the poor humble folk. Filled with the thrilling joy of the Angels song and the bright good news the shepherds had only their adoration of the infant Jesus to give. It was indeed the first gift that Jesus received. How could Mary not be delighted? And who could imagine that this delight would fade with the mere passing of years? The arrival of the Wise Men with their welcome gifts and their acknowledgement of the celestial significance of her child would serve too to remind the Blessed Virgin that her child was not hers alone, He was a Divine child and His life would have a purpose and meaning greater than that of any other man born of woman. These visitors with their backstories of Angels and stars point us to two more Christmas truths. Christmas is not just a private event it is a community one, preeminently the communion of the faithful but the office parties, the being kind to annoying strangers on the bus because its the season of goodwill, remembering to check that the frail neighbours are ok, giving alms to the homeless and treats to the carol singers are all part of the community Christmas and not the least important part either. The second truth this points to is that Christmas really and truly is a religious feast. The Son of Mary is the Son of God, born of a virgin, Saviour of the World. The Angels rejoiced for a reason, the star shone for more purposes than one, a guide to the Magi and a sign to us. There may have been days when our Lady did not recall shepherds or wise men, donkeys, oxen and cribs but there was never a day when she did not rejoice in the God from whom and for whose purposes her greatest gift had come. And Jesus is His greatest gift to us also.

                                          Christ Appearing to His Mother by Guercino 1629

In the events of the Nativity of our Lord we can discern all three of the theological virtues, faith, hope and love. It is safe therefore to infer that they would all have been present in Mary's Christmas meditations. It seems to me that of these three hope is the chief and characteristic feature of the season of Advent and its culminating festival. As our Lady encountered layer after layer in that Christmastide palimpsest of memory I think also that for her hope was its key note. Inextricably linked with the Bethlehem events was that scene nine months before when the Archangel Gabriel had said-
"Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
(Luke 1:31-33)
So from the moment He was Incarnated in her womb Mary's Son carried her liveliest hopes, for the liberation of Israel and the world from the dominion of sin and death and for the bringing of unconditional love into not only her own life but into every life. And that birth attended as it was with heavenly signs, followed as it was by the prophecies of Simeon (Luke 2:25-35) confirmed, strengthened and made present those same hopes. Even the attendant features, giving birth in poverty, fleeing into Egypt, the Massacre of the Innocents could not dim a hope founded on such sure foundations and now sustained by the living, breathing, joy-giving presence of that tiny infant, flesh of her flesh, who had become the centre and purpose of her whole life. Nor could the perhaps weary years of toil and obscurity when that child was growing before her eyes into the man who would fulfil all that she had been promised and more besides.

In those Christmases which the Blessed Virgin kept between His Ascension and her Assumption it would not have been possible to think of the crib without recalling the Cross. The life which had lain naked and vulnerable in her soft arms at Bethlehem had before the end hung naked and vulnerable once again upon the hard arms of the tree of death on Calvary. The hope which had entered the world from Mary's womb seemed to be buried in the sepulchre of the garden. But if Jesus had died indeed the hope in His mother's heart had not died with Him. It was built on the testimony of the Angels in Judea, the star seen in the East, the Son whom she had come to know as no other creature would or could come to know Him and love as no other creature would or could love Him. This golden thread running through her life could not be snapped. And privately, delicately, filially He returned to her. A joyous moment, a transport of delight an outpouring of love beyond the power of imagination, a second Christmas. Of His appearances to the Holy Women  and to the Apostles the Gospel speaks but of this moment there is a discreet and respectful silence and who can wonder?

St Luke records (Luke 24:51-52) that after the Ascension the disciples experienced great joy. Mary is certainly included in that description. And yet, and yet...she was a mother, she had seen her Son die an agonising, horrible death. Such a Son, such a death. And more than this He was now hid from her sight until it should be the will of God for her own life to come to the end of its mortal, terrestrial journey. No one was more nourished by the Spirit in prayer than the Mother of God, no one enjoyed a more close relationship to the Father than she, no one experienced the sacrament of the Eucharist in a more complete manner than she. However, the final, complete and eternal reunion with her Son, body, soul and spirit was not yet accomplished. The plenitude of happiness awaited her but had not yet come. The time to cease exercising the virtue of patience was yet some distance into the future. As Mary celebrated these Christmases of the interregnum years reflecting on her Son's entrance into the world of Men how powerfully she must have felt the hope that the time was near when she would enter fully into the world of heaven. How longingly she looked for her birthday in the Kingdom of God so that she could resume that fully human loving relationship that she had brought into the world on that birthday which we now call Christmas. As in so many things Mary is here our prototype. Sustained by hope, filled with longing the Christian should ever look to that time when we shall see Him face to face and know Him even as we are known. (cf 1 Corinthians 13:12)

Don't forget to read my Nativity fable Adoration of the Pangolins downloadable from Wattpad.

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Some of my earlier blogs have been collected as an ebook This Contemplative Life also on Wattpad

This Contemplative Life

I have collected together some representative posts from this blog and turned them into a free, downloadable ebook on Wattpad This Contemplative Life which includes-

• Christian Meditation
• Who Needs #Buddha?
• The Bible and the Virgin
• Controversies and Random Thoughts
• Mary, Mother of Christians, and Her Daughters

And much more besides.

Also, for reasons too complicated to go into, I have written a short (1500 words) Christmas fable about two scaly anteaters, Harum and Scarum, a happy donkey and the Nativity of our Lord. This is the Adoration of the Pangolins also in downloadable form.

The result of all this is that you can now take me with you wherever you go. Surely an offer you can't refuse.

Mindfulness and Identity

                                                    St. Mary Magdalene by Pietro Perugino

I keep the Lord in mind always.
Psalm 16:8

There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action
Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade

#Mindfulness is something that you may well find trending on Twitter from time to time. This is because it has become a fashionable lifestyle accessory for some Western elite groups. The name and to some extent the technique have been borrowed from Buddhism and put to the kind of use that might make actual Buddhists shudder. Hash-tag Mindfulness is a way of making you more effective at what you do, so that a #mindful arms dealer will be able to sell more arms or a #mindful manufacturer of equipment for torture will make more exquisitely painful products than their less #mindful rivals. As a Christian I don't know whether to be sorry that once again our Western elites have bypassed a perfectly good and ancient Christian tradition of mindfulness to seek out an exotic alternative or be glad that we have not experienced such a shameful abuse of a concept that aims at so much more than being the mental equivalent of jogging or going to the gym.

As a business strategy #mindfulness aims at changing how you do what you do, as a Buddhist one it aims at changing how you perceive the nature of reality. The basic idea is to spend time in being still so that you are only aware of the present moment. Brooding over the past, worrying about the future are let go off and you focus only on now, you become aware of your breathing, of your body, of your self as you are and not the self compounded of your imagination and anxieties. Time spent doing this overspills as it were into the rest of your life so that when you undertake a task it is the task alone that absorbs you, distracting concerns about anything outside of the moment are left behind. Business Reporter quotes a CEO on the benefits of this “the ability to concentrate on one thing, and not get distracted. There’s no point in getting stressed about things you can’t control, they key is learning to understand that.” Alternatively-

In mindfulness, we see things as they really are. The Venerable Gunaratana writes that our thoughts have a way of pasting over reality, and concepts and ideas distort what we experience.

 Mindfulness sees the true nature of phenomena. In particular, through mindfulness we directly see the three characteristics or marks of existence -- it is imperfect, temporary and egoless.

#Mindfulness helps to increase profitability but is derived from an approach which suggests that the drive to succeed materially in this material world is a deceitful illusion. A technique has been entirely ripped out of its context and applied to ends which are antagonistic to its beginnings. A Christian Mindfulness will have an effect upon what we do and what we perceive because it aims to fundamentally transform who we are, to change our identity. In this sense it too is antagonistic to #Mindfulness, Buddhist Mindfulness, of course would also have an effect of changing who we are but I will leave its practitioners to argue their case while I advance a Christian one.

The most important part of any moment, and of all our moments, is the relationship which we have with God and the relationship that God has with us. Derived from that the second most important part of any moment, and of all our moments, is the relationship which we have with our neighbours. To be mindful of these things continually is one of the aims of a Christian mindfulness. As I have already identified there is both an external aspect, what we do, and an internal aspect, what we perceive and who we are, to this. The two things are related and, as it were, feed off each other. Part of the relationship has been described in this way by the Buddha-

What we are is the result of what we have thought,
is built by our thoughts, is made up of our thoughts.
If one speaks or acts with an impure thought, 
suffering follows one, 
like the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the ox.
Dhammapada 
And by Jesus like this-
"The things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy. These are what defile a person" 
Matthew 15:18-20

By 'thoughts' and 'heart' our Lord and Sakyamuni clearly mean something different from what we normally ascribe to these words. The mind as the seat of the discursive intellect, the heart as the seat of the emotions are both implicated in what we do and so is the rest of the apparatus which we use to respond to the world and to ourselves. We might think of 'ego' or 'psyche' as being words which describe the concepts which are being referred to. In any event there is a further dimension, thought or feeling precedes action but the effect of acting especially a frequently repeated action is to alter the things which we think and the feeling which we feel. A negative feedback loop is set up if we continually do harmful things then we will be ever more inclined to do more of them more often. Or a virtuous spiral is entered into if we do positive things we shall be ever more inclined to do more of them more often and so rise towards ever greater perfection. Aquinas said a habit of virtue cannot be caused by one act, but only by many.

We have more control over our internal environment than over our external one. Although you may think that this is a truism it is worth dwelling over for a moment. A great many people who are aware that they are 'worriers' prone to living in a semi-permanent state of anxiety are resigned to the fact that that is the way they are and that there is nothing they can do about it so they focus almost exclusively on trying to manage their external environment to reduce the number of anxiety producing situations. We do have basic personalities and there is indeed only so much that we can do to change that, although all things are possible to God, but that does not mean that we can do nothing. It is not a sin or a personal failure to be plagued by anxiety nor is there anything wrong with seeking to alter that by medical means such as medication but neither should we abandon all hope that internal changes can be brought about which, at least from time to time can significantly ease the burden that we bear.

In the internal environment which we inhabit we are not alone unless we choose to be, we can kill the presence of the Spirit by mortal sin, and so any practice of mindfulness should begin with our relationship not to our body but to our God. The psalmist words at the top of the page could be more literally rendered as I keep the Lord always before me If you stop everything which you are doing and thinking and simply become aware of the presence of the Lord within you, within your breathing, within every beat of your heart, within your silence and your noise, within your focussed mind and your dispersed one then you enter into a perception of the one thing necessary so that all the other things may exist at all. Your awareness of self becomes a felt, in the heart, and perceived, in the mind, awareness that firstly before all else your self is relational. You exist to be in relationship not to be autonomous. Moreover, since the same God is equally present to all then your relationship with Him necessarily includes the truth that you exist to be in relationship with each person in whom He is to be found ie everyone. The Lord is always before you in the double sense that He is always directly present to you as Himself and indirectly present to you in others. Actually you could extend the principle to include His presence in all that He has created but if I did so it would make this blog absurdly long. It may be easier to get a handle on this double sense if rather than being present to an abstract notion of God you make yourself present to Jesus who is fully human and fully God and who took on His humanness through Mary precisely as a consequence of the Divine Love for those in whom He dwells.

Relationships can begin without words and once begun can pass at times beyond words but communication is essential to any relationship and humans normally use words as an unavoidable part of that process. It therefore follows that to be mindful of the relationship which we have with our Lord and to help its growth and development we need to use words. But if our primary purpose is awareness of the truth of that Divine Presence we cannot achieve that by continually using our discursive mind to work out what to say next. Christian tradition suggests that during periods of contemplative prayer (which is to Christians what mindfulness is to Buddhists) we should use a small number of words frequently repeated. These are not magic formulae which will summon the Divinity or automatically raise our consciousness to new levels. They are ways of expressing essential truths about Him about whom we are becoming increasingly aware. The phrase or word which we use must, then, bring some facet of Him before the eyes of our heart. Every time we use a word or group of words in their train comes the associations which we personally have with those words. This may be an emotional memory or an event or an idea or some combination of these and other things beside. The more we focus on what we say the more associations come with it but even the least attention suffices to introduce these associations however slightly into our heart. And since we are sharing all those associations with our Lord He responds to us at a deep level and so adds new meaning and dimension to the words and associations, He creates in fact new associations. It is a fruitful process because each new encounter adds new associations and/or a deeper level of meaning to existing ones.

Much of the focus of #mindfulness in its business variety is on breathing and posture, in its Buddhist and Hindu original model it is additionally on a mantram. From a Christian point of view there is no harm in associating your prayer with your breathing or paying attention to your posture so long as you recall that these physical acts are strictly secondary considerations to what is primarily a spiritual relationship with God. If they help, thats fine. If they don't help, thats fine too. If sometimes they help and sometimes they don't well, guess what, that's absolutely fine as well. There is a Christian technique, hesychasm, associated with monks in the Orthodox tradition which firmly linked the Jesus Prayer with breathing and posture but never considered these as more than making someone more able to respond to the gifts of Grace which God sends and it is Grace which is the true motor of contemplation not this or that mechanical method.

So far so hypothetical. Of what would a period of Christian mindfulness/contemplation consist? I can only really speak to my own experience. I usually try to do this first thing in the morning (first thing means after ingesting caffeine nothing is possible before this.) I read from the Scriptures, always finishing with something from the Gospel. I then get myself into a comfortable position. I usually remain motionless but I'm not sure how helpful or otherwise that is, its just what I do. I make a bridge from everything else into contemplation usually by saying the Our Father. Then much depends upon the state of my psyche at the time of starting. Sometimes I am aware that I am in a good condition to concentrate well so I restrict myself to two words. I inhale silently saying 'Jesus' and exhale saying 'Mary' (I appreciate some Christians will be shocked at introducing Mary at this point but I will come to that later.) Sometimes if I am more scatter brained I will use a longer form of word such as 'gentle heart of Jesus, I trust in you.' I loosely associate that with my breathing but it really doesn't matter much whether I do or I don't. The benefit of the longer form is that it gives me more aspects to attract my attention too. When my mind wanders, as it often does, I find it easier to draw it back to a group of concepts, gentleness, the heart, Jesus, trust, than to only one or two. As an aside I never worry about my mind wandering, it is more distracting to get annoyed by distractions than it is to just accept that they are going to happen and just patiently re-directing your self back to the words as soon as you realise that you have been mulling over what to have for lunch instead of the gentle heart of Jesus.

There are a couple of physical things which I find to be genuinely helpful. One is not closing my eyes. Your level of consciousness alters depending on whether you are seeing or not seeing and it seems to me that you are more likely to go of into dreamy states which are pleasant but unproductive if you keep your eyes shut. Buddhist and Hindu techniques usually involve half open eyes more or less focussed on the tip of your nose. I find this unhelpful partly because I have a short nose and go cross-eyed trying this at home but more seriously because I am not seeking to look inward as such but to look towards the Lord who certainly inwardly present but is by no means confined to my internal environment. I find then that looking at an Icon while I pray is helpful both to keep bringing me back from wandering and to remind me that its really not all about me.It's not necessary to always use the same selection of words, God has an infinite variety of facets and we have a huge variety of moods and levels of awareness and so on. Using a few words from the Scripture we have just read or one that comes into our mind before we start praying might be good or selecting from the range of short prayers recommended by the Church or constructing one for ourselves that particularly speaks to our own relationship with God might all be suitable. What is important though is not to keep chopping and changing in the middle of a period of prayer because then it is your discursive mind which is dominant not your listening to our Lord. You are adding a conscious distraction to the involuntary ones which anyway assail you.

What has this to do with changing Identity? Well, it can happen in two ways one of which is potentially adaptable to people without faith as being a fruit of technique and one of which flows from the relationship of the lover with their Beloved. When talking about #mindfulness I mentioned the overspill effect of being able to concentrate on one thing. If you were to practice #contemplation then the overspill would relate to the content of your contemplative session. Holding in your mind for about 20 or 30 minutes a series of words or images with associations to them is not something that will remain confined to that part of the day. The more often you do it the more likely your mind is to revert to these words or images throughout the day. The longer you do it the more frequently this is likely to happen. I have held to this practice for some time and find myself reverting to my prayer words hundreds of times a day, when walking, when waiting for a bus, when eating. It doesn't need to be a prolonged thing, I can look up from a book to check the time and between looking up and looking down the words will have run through my mind. They can pop up while I am working or having a conversation without impinging on my ability to concentrate. Writing about the Jesus Prayer the author of The Way of a Pilgrim referred to this as self-acting and continuous prayer. I can't pretend that it is continuous in my case but it is certainly self-acting. Of course I choose to contemplate the objects of faith so by frequently calling into my mind my associations of Jesus (and Mary) I am invoking a set of values to do with love, kindness, gentleness, patience, humility and so on. This in turn has an immediate impact upon my behaviour, I cannot think of Jesus (or Mary) and yell at someone at the same time for example. And as my behaviour is modified many times a day so symbiotically my personality and self image change with it with a cumulative effect as the years go on. It would certainly be possible, of course, to substitute non-faith based words and concepts to contemplate and frequently recur to. The effect on your identity would depend upon the concepts you chose but that it would have an effect is fairly certain, as the Buddha pointed out, you become what you think.

From a Christian point of view this process is an auxiliary benefit. The aim is is not to become a what but to become a whom, you become whom you contemplate. As St Paul put it yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20) and All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) That is, we do not contemplate our Lord (just) because He is a really cool dude.  We enter into a relationship with Him that we might, by Grace, be transformed by Him or more accurately that we might be united to Him so that being one with Him His thoughts are our thoughts, His deeds our deeds, we identify with Him in such sort that our Identity becomes indistinguishable from His. God became Man by nature that Man might become God by participation. The more we are mindful of Him the more we ourselves have the mind of Christ Jesus (cf 1 Corinthians 2:16.)

Finally, a word about Mary, the mother of Jesus. One thing to bear in mind about contemplation, everybody is different. Some people just don't benefit from it at all. Some people find that they have no difficulty focussing on God as an abstract concept. Some find that contemplation comes most easily to them in relation to the Sacraments of the Church and will contemplate best in the presence of the Consecrated Host. Yet others find that the Jesus of the Gospels, the Jesus of the Passion is all that they desire. But that does not exhaust the possibilities. Many remember that our Saviour is also the Just Judge who will condemn unrepentant sinners on the last day. This can set up a barrier to contemplation if, like me, you have a good deal to fear from the Just Judge. Mary, however, is a perfect mirror of the Divine qualities which she has received as a gift from God. Justice and punishment are reserved to Himself but mercy, kindness, gentleness and the tenderness of a mother shine forth in our Lady. In contemplating her who in her turn uninterruptedly contemplates her Son we see those aspects of Him which will most encourage and strengthen us if we are weak. And so having recourse to Mary is the ladder that God extends to the most feeble and inadequate members of His flock of whom I am one. Indeed so keen is He to recruit to His Kingdom such folk He has even established a dedicated form of contemplation, the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, through which Jesus can be viewed through the eyes of Mary. And for all the success of #mindfulness it is still the Rosary which is far and away the most popular form of meditation practised in the West, long may it remain so.        

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Bride of Heaven

A Love Song

Listen, daughter, consider, and turn your ear.
    Forget your own people, and also your father’s house.
11     So the king will desire your beauty
Psalm 45(44):10-11

Many of the psalms have Superscriptions or Headers at their beginning before getting into the actual psalm itself. Most of these are technical or musical notations referring to types of instruments or tunes. Some refer to particular episodes in biblical history to which the psalm supposedly relates; the most famous of these being Psalm 50(51)  A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba which explains why David is so repentant in that song. Psalm 45 (confusingly numbered 44 in some Bibles) is unusual in that in addition to the technical part the superscription adds "a love song"  or as one version beguilingly puts it A canticle for the Beloved. It is also unusual in that most Christians agree that its literal meaning is of secondary importance to its spiritual one. Naturally, Christians being what they, there is a bit of a falling out as to what that meaning actually is but we shall come to that by and by.

On the face of it the psalmist seems to be primarily concerned with celebrating a Royal Wedding. Specifically the marriage in Jerusalem of one of the kings descended from David and Solomon to a foreign wife. Perhaps, indeed, that was all that the author consciously intended  to do. There is though a constant motif that runs all the way through the Old Testament in which the relationship between the Almighty and His People Israel is compared to that between husband and wife. It was natural enough then in light of that to incorporate this psalm into that motif. Christianity took that theme up and saw in the bridegroom the figure of Christ and in the bride an image of the Church. And as in the larger so in the lesser it could also be seen as a portrayal of the relationship between the individual believer as lover and Jesus as the Beloved. A further, more controversial, layer of meaning will be referred to later.

What is interesting in the verses I have highlighted here is that they contain a fairly detailed programme of action condensed into a very few words. Poetry has the ability to do this and the psalmist in this case was no mean poet. The Bride is advised to-

• Listen
• Consider
• Turn towards
• Forget i.e. turn away from.

When she has done this and as a result of having done this she will become beautiful (or more beautiful) in the eyes of the King and, therefore, He will desire her. In the context of a Jewish wedding what follows from that will have been in the minds of those who first heard the psalm Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh (Genesis2:24) Where the bride is a human and the groom is God incarnate then what we have here is a prescription for achieving Divine Union where the bride enters by participation into the very being of the Blessed Trinity.

A prescription is only of use if it is possible to fulfil its requirements. So, can we, could the bride, do what the psalmist proposed? The first injunction is 'Listen.' We live in an age where people walk around the streets or sit on public transport listening to personal stereos or mobile phones. When not doing this they listen to TV's, radios, DVD's, movies and even, occasionally, each other. When not listening they are usually talking. People even sleep with TV's turned on. The problem you might think is not that there is too much listening but that there is too little silence. In fact, from a spiritual point of view, there is too little listening because there is too little silence. God speaks to us it is true but in a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12) To hear Him we must listen attentively for Him alone, be still, and know that I am God as another psalm puts it. (Psalm 46:10) To listen to Him requires an effort on our part, a desire to hear Him.

Specifically there are several ways that Christian tradition recommends to us as methods through which we might hear the voice of the Bridegroom. Reading the Scriptures is one, or actually two at least since there is more than one way to read them. We can take a passage or a chapter or a book in the Bible, begin at the beginning and work our way right through to the end. Then we can think about what it means and, if we are wise, we can consult the opinion of others by reading commentaries on the text and see what better minds than ours have made of it. That is one method and the Gospels in particular are well suited to be used in this fashion. Another approach would be the practice known as lectio divina where after prayer we take a very short passage of Scripture read it slowly and/or repeatedly and then  let it slowly sink into us. Not so much thinking analytically about it as holding it in our minds and waiting to see what fruits will spring from the seed within us. As I have already hinted there is the practice of prayer to help our listening too. In this context it cannot consist of a list of demands that we want God to action but rather of an upward motion of our heart inviting a downward motion of His Spirit into us. In my series about Christian Meditation I outline a number of ways to do this.

God also acts at times through human agents. We can hear Him if we pay close attention to the lives of the Saints. The Christians of the Reformation traditions (often called Protestants) tend to restrict themselves to the examples given us by outstanding biblical characters, and indeed there is a rich treasury of such to be found within the pages of the Bible. Catholic and Orthodox Christians look additionally to the many examples of Christian living which the past two thousand years have given us. Throughout the world and throughout the ages Saints of widely varied characters in all sorts of settings have shone like good deeds in a naughty world (Merchant of Venice Act 5 Scene 1) Whatever our own personality type or circumstances might be we will be sure to find a Saint whose life, words or deeds will speak the voice of God to our own condition whether that be the wisdom of a St Therese, the gentle patience of a St Bernadette or the outspoken counsel and visionary insights of a St Catherine of Siena. Nor indeed need we confine ourselves to the past. It is well known in the West that the spiritual traditions of the East call for spiritual seekers to look for wisdom at the feet of gurus. What seems to be a well kept secret is that the West too has a long tradition of Spiritual Directors, male and female, who are steeped in the various contemplative and prayerful spiritualities of Christianity and have the wisdom and experience to guide others.

So, we the Brides can, if we wish, listen to our Lord speaking to us through all these channels and others besides. Then what does the psalmist counsel? 'Consider.' This seems fairly straightforward. Reflect on what we have heard, consider it from various aspects, impact our options. Except that we are not considering a business transaction or a career change neither has our listening been of a conventional kind. With Jesus 'to listen' means 'to encounter.' He is our potential bridegroom, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. It is not enough just to weigh up with our minds the pros and cons of His proposal to us, though we could certainly do that on the Pascal's Wager principal. We need to respond to Him with our whole selves, body, mind and spirit, because we will be living with Him with our whole selves both in time and in eternity if we accept His offer of marriage. If His call awakens something within us then we need to consider what it is we shall lose if we accept Him as well as what it is we shall have to gain. He may call upon us to sacrifice material things or established relationships upon which we have so far relied and depend instead entirely upon Him and upon Him alone.

Having considered we must turn to Him decisively. We turned aside from our way to listen to Him. We paused to consider what we had heard. Now He becomes our way, He is the route we travel and the destination at which we arrive. He nourishes us, He sustains us, He loves us and unites Himself to us and we allow ourselves to be united. The foreign bride of the psalm is urged to forget her own people, meaning her nation, and her fathers house, meaning I suppose both her family and her national religion. At a literal level this is a sacrifice which Jesus later put in these terms Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26) It is a radical gamble, to cast yourself into His arms and let everything else slip away from you. And indeed this forgetting of what lies behind is partly a conscious effort of casting aside all impediments. More than that though it is a becoming absorbed in new interests. Very often the close friends of a new bride expect their friendship to continues much as before, the bride herself may expect so too. But gradually as time passes, perhaps as children arrive, the things which concern her, which she cares about, which she is willing to sacrifice for become more and more different from those things which a single girl about town has on her mind. The forgetting then is less a casting of of the old and more a putting on of the new.        

There is a more than literal meaning though to this command to forget. God does not hate families or expect us to do so either. Except for those few people called to live out their Divine Matrimony in monasteries or hermitages most Christians will experience the companionship of the Bridegroom in the context of their own domestic setting, their earthly spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends, communities, Churches. There Jesus is to be an inseparable companion, His friendship and example enriching the way that we give of ourselves to those dear to us, the way that we love and are loved. The turning to Him, the forgetting of earthly chains becomes not a negation of these relationship but a raising up of them to a higher level, a spiritualisation of them. If the Saints have acted as agents of God to us then we must act as agents of God to our neighbours for if we are one flesh with Him how could we do otherwise? There is one important proviso in all that we do however, Every Christian must be a potential martyr. The commitment we have made is one that overrides all others. Given a choice between suffering or even death on the one hand or repudiating our faith, by word or deed, on the other then we must be willing to suffer and dies if needs be. Not because we desire a reward in heaven but because we are faithful spouses. At this point, given many events in recent world history, I feel the need to stress that for Christians the concept of martyrdom consists of a willingness to endure suffering but never, never, never a willingness to inflict it.

The Bride who has done these things, listened, considered and turned towards the Bridegroom, becomes in His eyes beautiful precisely because she has done those things. In the whole history of humankind it sometimes happens, rarely I'm sure but sometimes, that a bride becomes a little vain. She is proud of her beauty and congratulates herself if only within herself about it. In his letter to the Ephesians St Paul lets us into a secret about the bride of Christ.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25-27) Any beauty we may have comes to us as pure gift from the Bridegroom. What Christians call Grace, the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, is the very thing that prompts us to listen, that helps us to consider wisely and which sustains that act of will by which we turn towards Him and keep turned towards Him. And it is the sacrifice of the Son on the Cross at Calvary that washes us clean from all the acts by which we have disfigured our beauty from the very moment that we first set our heart on anything other than Him. So if we are radiant brides He is our radiance, if we have a beautiful dress He has supplied it. Another motif which runs through the Old Testament is that of adultery, the sin by which Israel turns from the Almighty and runs after other husbands. If we too fall in that way then our Groom stands ready to make us anew if we once again turn back to Him. We have no cause for vanity or pride but many causes for gratefulness and, it maybe, for repentance too.

Not the least cause for our gratitude lies in the fact that He, Creator of all that is seen and unseen, desires us. He loves us. He died for us. We are not instruments to be used we are made by Him in His image and likeness. Despite all that we have done to mar that image, to distort that likeness He will patiently help us to reconfigure ourselves to our Divinely crafted original. He desires us, if we remember this continually then we will as continually strive to make ourselves worthy of that love by allowing His hands to mould us into that which we should always have been had not our blindness and folly led us astray down dark paths where He is not to be found.

And so to the controversy. What I have said so far is I think common ground among most Christian traditions. Catholics see in the figure of the bride all that Protestants see. In addition, however, they discern Mary the Mother of Jesus. In part this is because, in a sense, Mary is the Church. For a time, certainly, the Church consisted of her alone, she was the first to hear of Jesus, the first to have faith in Him, the first to give Him to the world, the first to follow Him. In part also it is because she most assuredly is the spouse of the Holy Spirit for by His power it was that she became fruitful and contained within her womb Him whom the heavens could not contain, the Logos of God, her Son Jesus. But I think even if we lay aside all these claims for Mary which Protestants for reasons of their own baulk at we should all be able to agree that our Lady represents to a superlative degree all those qualities which the psalmist outlines.

Mary listened to the Archangel Gabriel attentively, she considered their meaning she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be (Luke 1:29) And not just once did she listen, not just once did she consider but repeatedly  Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.  (Luke 2:19) His mother treasured all these things in her heart.  (Luke 2:51)  And she turned towards Him and forgot all else at the beginning Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ (Luke 1:38) and at what appeared to be the disastrous end Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister (John 19:25) And, quite literally she was given a new family When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 26-27)  A family which she was at the centre of and family ties which strengthened not weakened their mutual faithfulness to the Bridegroom  When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus  (Acts 1:13-14)      

And we for our part can do nothing better than to imitate Mary. As she chose so can we Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces will never be ashamed. (Psalm 34:5)
  
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