Near Pavilions

Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: 
Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.
(Psalm 31:20)

If we get into a ferry boat in order to row from one side of a river to the other our oars will spend some time in the water and some time in the air. Keeping them constantly buried in the water may cause us to thrash about quite spectacularly but it will get us no closer to the far bank. We shall, instead, go wherever the current wishes to take us. Waving them about continuously in the air might cause them to glint and shine in the sunlight giving any spectators a rare pleasure in the sight, Once again, though, it is the current and not ourselves which will decide our final destination.

In order to reach the good earth of the farther shore, then, it is necessary for us to combine the two elements of air and water. This is by way of an allegory for humans who are composed of both flesh and spirit. If we give ourselves over entirely to the demands of the flesh alone then we shall sink below the level of being fully human. If we aim at being pure spirit we might be more than or less than fully human. But we are not created to be more or less human, we are to be simply human and thus fully human.

Objectively the spirit is superior to the flesh but, for us, the two are firmly united. Therefore while our flesh must be under the control and direction of the spirit it must also be given what is due to it. If God had intended us to be wholly and entirely spirit then that is how He would have created us. In our journey to the further shore we must unite water and air, flesh and spirit in the service of a purposive will which aims at defying the current of the world in order to fulfil God's purpose for us.

In practical terms this means that for every period of time necessity causes us to be immersed in the things of the world we must find a balancing time when we are exposed to the healing light from above. This does not need to be an equal amount of time in chronological terms, since the world and the Divine wield powers of different force over us, but it does need to be a deliberate and daily repeated act of our will where whether we feel 'spiritual' or not we allow ourselves to seek for and rest in the secret pavilion which God has set up in our heart.

There is no magical one-size-fits-all formula which will guarantee happiness and serenity to all who use it. Not only are we all different from each other we are even different from ourselves, varying widely over the course of just a single day as to what does or does not speak meaningfully to us. In general then it is sensible to lean heavily on the wisdom of those who have made the ferry-crossing before us and have left behind the boat and the oars most suited to our purpose. That is, the Church offers to us multiple ways of reaching the pavilion and we should use the ones which our experience shows will most help us. Daily attendance at Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, attentive and meditative reading of Sacred Scripture are only some of the tools which we can use to help us cross to the other side. And if we do not use them we will be taken instead to where we do not want to go.
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The picture is Jesus Calming the Storm from Gospel Book of Otto III

Virgin Most Serene

Have recourse to her in thy temptations,
And the serenity of her countenance will strengthen thee
(Psalter of the BVM II)

Catholics often explain their devotion to Our Lady by saying that it is easier to gaze upon the moon than it is to look directly at the sun. That is to say that we know that the source of light and strength, love and wisdom is God and that He has, through Jesus, made it easy for us to approach Him. Nonetheless when we think how hideous and ugly we have made ourselves by our self-willed wickedness and repeated failures to act as we know we should our heart fails us. Reason and the teachings of the Church make it clear that we can turn to Our Lord but the heart has its own logic and will not be convinced by mere words and thoughts.

Knowing this weakness of ours and longing for us to turn to Him the Good God has given us Mary to be our companion, guide and teacher on the path towards Him. As the moon receives all its light from the sun so to the Mother is a perfect mirror of the virtues of her Son. The moon  has its own features and characteristics, likewise Mary unites her own maternal solicitude to the light of the Spirit which illuminates her from within. Her purpose is to bring us to Jesus and our purpose in turning to her is to be covered by her mantle so that we may appear before Him without shame.

St Bonaventure (to whom the Psalter of the BVM is attributed) wisely advises us to draw strength from the serene countenance of the Blessed Virgin when assailed by the storms of temptation. How can we do this? One option is to take his advice literally. Never be far from an image of Mary, a picture, an icon, a statue, and when the need arises stop what we are doing and simply look at her. Focus our attention on the Virgin in her serenity until the storm subsides and we can resume our normal business.

We can also through our prayers meditate on her countenance as reflected in her life. The mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary or those of the Seven Sorrows, her attributes mentioned in the Litany of Loreto and the accounts of her in the Gospel are things we can spend time with. Immersing ourselves in these will weaken the hold of satan upon us and help to drive temptation far away.

Most profoundly we can, in the depths of our hearts, wordlessly and silently simply contemplate the one who can say of herself "I am the Immaculate Conception." Looking at the night sky on a clear, still night can fill us with a wonderful sense of the infinity of the universe. Similarly gazing with the eyes of the heart upon the Immaculata can open up to our sight the wonders of the Blessed Trinity to whom no one is closer than Mary, daughter of the Father, spouse of the Spirit, mother of the Son. In the battle against darkness Our Lady of Light, the Most Serene Virgin Mary, is a powerful ally and source of strength.
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The painting is The Immaculate Conception by Carlo Crivelli 

The Carthusian Option

I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me
(Psalm 84:9)

The earliest martyrs of the English 'Reformation' begun by Henry VIII were Carthusian monks. They were executed because of their loyalty to the Apostolic See in Rome. There is something richly symbolic in the fact that an order which is committed to contemplating the things of God and whose motto is Stat crux dum volvitur orbis ( the Cross stands firm while the world turns) was the first to apprehend what Henry's plan would lead to.

Another monastic order, the Benedictines, have as the first words of their Rule "Listen carefully." This word 'listen' may indeed be the Benedict Option which the world, and particularly the Christians who inhabit it, may most need to exercise. Paradoxically the best environment to enable one to hear is silence.

We are accustomed to making our decisions, big or small, in the midst of a cacophony of noise. Not simply the external noise generated by things but also the internal noise generated by our mind's leaping from thought to thought, impulse to impulse, stimulus to stimulus. The choices so made may be good or bad but they share one characteristic; they are hurried. What appears before the eyes of our mind is the obvious and the material and it is from those things that we draw the primary conclusions which prompt us to act.

The world, and we ourselves, are made up of a fine web of subtle and invisible things. We see them if we look and hear them if we listen but whether we see and hear them or not they are there and they are of the most vital importance to us. We cannot then fully understand ourselves or the world if we are continually in hurry mode. To get behind the noise we must stop and listen to the silence.

It is in silent listening every day that we can begin to hear what the Lord God speaks in us. He speaks through the material universe, through the world of men and of events and through our friends and acquaintances. He speaks too, and that most profoundly, through the Sacred Scriptures, the Sacraments and in the prayer of contemplation. It is, perhaps, because they listened above all to these things that the English Carthusians perceived long before the practical men of politics did that Henry VIII was hell-bent and so, ultimately, would be those who went along with him.

It behoves each of us then, if we wish to understand the signs of the times and the secrets of our own hearts, to become listeners. To contemplate the One who is All Wisdom and Love itself. Is this a difficult thing for an ordinary person to do you ask? "This commandment, that I command thee this day is not above thee, nor far off from thee...But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it" (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

Although it is a specifically contemplative order the Carthusians prescribe no single method of prayer to its monks. Instead each is free to find among the treasures of Catholic spirituality the one approach which is most suitable to them. We can do the same, prayer is a very adaptable thing. Even a Rosary prayed with a recollected mind is a form of contemplation. Seek and you shall find. You might even wish to start on this blog with my post on 'A Simple Method of Contemplative Prayer'

The symbolism of the Carthusian martyrdom is twofold. First, that their contemplation gave them a clarity of vision which others lacked. Second, that they died out of loyalty to the universal Church. Deep personal prayer does not estrange us from the corporate life of the body of Christ it unites us more firmly to it. Through contemplation we can understand and love with ever greater comprehension the liturgies, sacraments and dogmas of the Apostolic faith. We are not saved or enlightened as individuals apart and alone but as members one of another in the body of Christ. It is through contemplation that we can gain the quiet Carthusian strength to bear witness to truth in our lives and to fully understand the meaning of the words Stat Crux Dum Volvitur Orbis
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The Paintings are Martyrdom of the Carthusian Priors by Vicente Carducho and The Forty Martyrs by Daphne Pollen

Lectio Divina for Holy Week

Wikipedia tells us that 'Lectio Divina (Latin for "Divine Reading") is a traditional  Benedictine practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God's Word. It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the Living Word' Which, I think, means that we need not be overly bothered with context but that if we find a passage, clause or word then we hold it in our mind and simply gaze at it with the eyes of the heart. That is to say, we don't do the intellectual analysing which we might do in other situations but we hear it as a lover speaking out of the fulness of His heart directly to our own heart.

One such text for Holy Week, when we recall the turbulent events culminating in the drama of Easter, might be this-
 I abode in the wilderness.
I waited for Him that hath saved me
(Psalm 54:8-9)

On the Cross our Lord told the penitent rebel "I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43) The Creed informs us that Jesus descended to Hell that same day from which we can conclude that paradise is where He is. The opposite case, then, is that where He is absent we are cast out into the wilderness there to wait His coming. When we, by mortal sin, kill grace in our soul we place ourself apart from Him in the desert. Sometimes too we experience abandonment even when we have done nothing amiss since such is the Father's will for us. In either event all we can do is compose ourselves to wait for the One that has saved, is saving and will save us, our dear Lord, Jesus Christ.

An icon of this text is the Blessed Virgin Mary on Holy Saturday that agonising time between the burial of her Son and His rising again. Of the first of those events she was certain with the certainty of sight of the second she had only the certainty of hope for things unseen. In the wilderness, without Jesus, waiting in sorrow and in faith was all that she could do.

How often during that day must she have said 'O Jesus, O my Jesus, O Jesus' Words that came from the centre of her grief laden being. Repeated over and over with an emotional and personal force that came from more than thirty years of loving relationship with her Divine Son. The word Jesus had for her all the associations that flowed from the great joy of Annunciation and Nativity through the hidden years to the apotheosis on Golgotha. There is much debate about the use of mantras in Christianity but if we could say them as Mary said her Son's name on that day of darkness we would be nearer to heaven than we are. As we can't it might be wiser to use the texts and prayers that our mother the Church gives to us.

At all events full of grace and virtue as Our Lady was she still had to abide her sorrow in patient waiting. The gifts of God come to us when He wills to send them. We cannot call them down simply by the strength of our own efforts. We must give of ourselves in our sorrows and in our joys and then wait.The Spirit visits us not because we deserve Him but because we need Him and He comes only at the times which He knows to be best for us. Until then we are in the wilderness, but we do have this sure and certain knowledge, the One for whom we are waiting loves us more than we can possibly love Him and His blood has been shed for us.
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The painting is in a Book of Hours from the Workshop of the Master Francois.

A Simple Method of Marian Prayer

The Method

• First, obtain some Rosary beads.
• Begin by praying + In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
• On the first bead pray-

Dear and Most Blessed Lady Mary
As you brought Jesus to St Elizabeth when you visited her bring Him also to me.
As, by the Father's will, she was filled with the Holy Spirit at the sound of your voice send the Paraclete also to me.
That, strengthened by the Blessed Trinity and accompanied by you, I may bear my cross in life, through death to the Glorious Resurrection
In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

• On the next beads pray the Our Father the Hail Mary the Glory Be and Hail Holy Queen (these prayers can be found at CatholiCity.Com)
• On the small beads pray Immaculate Heart of Mary, I trust in you.
• After ten such prayers (a decade) on the large beads pray And after this our exile show unto us the Blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
• Once you have prayed five decades you can either keep going for as long as seems right or finish with the following prayers-
• Hail Holy Queen
• Our Lady, the Mystical Rose, pray for us
• Our Lady, Refuge of sinners, pray for us.
• Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.
• Glory Be.

The Rationale

I've written a lot about the benefit of going to Jesus through Mary. Rather than repeat myself here I invite you to check out my posts which are tagged with Blessed Virgin Mary especially, perhaps, With Mary to Jesus.

Practical Tips

• While praying you may find it helps your focus if you look at an image of our Lord and our Lady or at a Crucifix.
• As a symbolic way of uniting your offering with Catholics across history and around the world you could pray the second Hail Holy Queen in Latin as the Salve Regina.
• To slow the prayer down and make it more contemplative you could link it with your breathing. Pray the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the indrawn breath and I trust in you on the outgoing one. Do remember to breathe normally when you get to the And after this etc. part though.
• If you are accustomed to meditating on a mystery while using the Rosary beads because this prayer is shorter than the normal Rosary I suggest that you consider just one mystery for every five decades. You can find subjects from the opening prayer, not just the Visitation but also the mysteries of the Trinity and your personal relationship with each member of it, dying to self and so on.

Reflection

The central terms of this prayer are the Immaculate Heart and our trust in it. What does this mean? We know from Scripture that our Lady pondered the things of God in her heart. It is possible then to deduce the qualities of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as being love, for the Blessed Trinity as God, for the Incarnate Son as her own child Jesus and for all of her neighbours as being beloved by her beloved. Mary's heart is also reflective and contemplative. It is sinless and filled with prayer. By expressing our trust in it we are saying that our own hearts, timid, uncertain and sinful as they are, long by being united to Mary to become like her; above all in devotion to Jesus who is our salvation. Mary is Mediatrix of Grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit flow through her hands, through our prayer of trust in her Immaculate Heart we express the hope that the grace of conversion may come to us so that our own hearts will increasingly resemble hers so that she will be able to present us to Jesus as beloved children and not as sinful, self-willed rebels.

The Marian prayer par excellence is of course the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It has been highly praised by Popes and Saints. Our Lady herself has encouraged it in her appearances to visionaries around the world. I do not offer this prayer in any sense as a rival to it. For those who already pray the Rosary this can be an addition to their prayer armoury. For those who do not yet pray it for one reason or another it can help them express their devotion to our Blessed Mother and may perhaps lead them in time to the Rosary itself. All I can say for certain is that I myself have found it useful in helping me to grow in love towards Jesus and Mary and hopefully also in uniting my will the the sweet will of Mary which is always united to that of her Divine Son Jesus.
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This post is a companion piece to my earlier blog A Simple Method of Contemplative Prayer

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The painting is Immaculate Heart of Mary by Smith Catholic Art

With Mary to Jesus

The same night the Lord said to him: Arise, and go down into the camp: because I have delivered them into thy hand. But if thou be afraid to go alone, let Phara thy servant go down with thee.
Judges 7:9-10

In the Book of Judges the nervous Gideon is shown several miracles by God and then given a commision to visit the camp of the enemy. You might think that witnessing the power of the Lord and being personally reassured by Him was enough but apparently it wasn't. Gideon remained timid, the flesh may have been willing but the spirit was weak. The Almighty could have taken offence at this but, as it happens, He didn't. He knows of what stuff we are made, as well He should, and so in addition to all the other things He had offered Gideon He made provision for a companion in the mission. Humans like to have someone to share the burden. We see something similar in Moses being granted the assistance of Aaron. Later Jesus would send out His disciples in pairs. Not that they needed each other to proclaim the Good News, to heal the sick or to perform miracles. No, they needed each other because they needed each other, that's just the way we are.

When Catholics say that Mary is given to us to help in our journey towards Jesus some other Christians argue that since Jesus is both the Way and the destination Mary's role is spurious. I think she is only spurious in the sense that Phara and Aaron and the twinned disciples were spurious, that is to say not at all. God does not change His way of operating. He knows that if we were perfect we could come to Him uncompanioned but it is precisely because we are not perfect that we need to come to Him at all. He gives us the gift of a mother, and of such a beautiful mother, since we know that Jesus is both our saviour and our judge. If we long for the one we rightly fear the other. Like Gideon we may have been reassured in multiple ways that our sins have been forgiven, washed away in the blood of the Cross, yet still we hesitate because we know how terrible they are and how often since we accepted Christ we have repeated them. And then gentle Mary comes to us, smiling and kind. She strengthens our hearts and taking our hands she walks side by side with us in our pilgrimage to her Son. And because she does this we make a pilgrimage that otherwise fear would have prevented us from setting out on. More souls have been saved by accepting Mary's help than ever will be by rejecting it.

Another way of looking at this can be seen if we consider this episode from the Lord of the Rings by the Catholic author JRR Tolkien-
"Filled suddenly with love for this old man, he knelt on one knee, and took his hand and kissed it. 'May I lay the sword of Meriadoc of the Shire on your lap Théoden King?' he cried. 'Receive my service, if you will!'"
(Return of the King, Chap 2)
The hobbit Merry was not simply pledging his service to Théoden, since the king was bound by oaths, loyalty, ancient friendship and love to Gondor service to Théoden automatically also meant service to Gondor. And in this double service Merry rode of to war on the fields of the Pelennor where he played a crucial role in destroying the chief of the Nazgûl. One could not love the king of the Rohirrim without also loving the cause of the people of Minas Tirith.

The same, of course, applies to Mary and Jesus. If she fills us with love, if we are touched by her example and by her person and so pledge ourselves to her she only accepts us so that she can deploy us in the service of her Divine Son and present us to Him as His faithful servants because we are hers. Jesus and Mary are not rival sovereigns with  rival servants like Abraham and Lot. They are a single sovereignty doing the will of the Father competing with each other, as it were, only in love, mercy and forgiveness.

There are any number of different ways of entering into our Lady's service. One is by beginning our day's activities with a prayer such as this-

Dear and most Blessed Lady, Mary.
As you brought Jesus to St Elizabeth when you visited her bring Him also to me,
As, by the Father's will, she was filled by the Holy Spirit at the sound of your voice may you send the Paraclete also to me.
That, strengthened by God and accompanied by you, I may bear my Cross in life, through death to the glorious resurrection in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

Frequently through the day, whenever you have a few seconds to spare, you can renew your Marian commitment by quietly or silently offering up this aspiration-
O Mary, guide me to your Jesus.
And then we can rest reassured in the truth taught to us by St Bernard that never was it known that any one who fled to her protection, implored her help, and sought her intercession, was left unaided.
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The painting is Christ appearing to the Virgin by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden

The Gate & the Way

An Evangelical Christian preacher very often, if not always, preaches on the need for conversion. She will invite her hearers to accept Christ into their hearts and be born again. Catholics and other Christians are prone to finding this repetitive and tedious. They have, they think, already made that fundamental choice and are more interested in finding out the best way to translate it into their daily, hourly, lives. By contrast, Evangelicals often find Catholic preaching tepid and uninspiring. Moreover since it often focuses on outward behaviour it can lead an unconverted person to pursue an hypocritical life where they publicly conform with their bodies to Catholic usages but inwardly do not accept them and practice vices in private.

The late nineteenth century Quaker Hannah Whitall Smith reflected on a useful distinction which can be made here. There are Christians primarily concerned with foundation truths and those who mostly deal with superstructure truths-
"Foundation truths deal with the beginnings of things, superstructure truths deal with their development. The first show the entrance to the divine life, the last teach how to live and walk after we are in that life. Without the superstructure truths, the foundations remain bare and crude; without the foundation truths, the superstructure will be tottering and unsafe."
(The Unselfishness of God: Chapter 29)
Growing up she was exposed to much teaching about how she should live but not about why she should make such choices which were radically at odds with the world at large. When she encountered the Revivalist movement she, or at least her faith, went from being dead to being alive. This led her to direct her attention to the exhilarating task of making converts. But that was not the end of the story for her-
"As years have passed on and the foundations of our Christian life have been, as we believe, securely laid we have become more and more interested in the superstructure and now to some of us the old preaching which once we did not understand has become marrow and fatness to our souls. This is not so much because the preaching has changed as because we have changed."
(Quaker Writings: An Anthology)

The obvious thing to say at this point is that the Church needs balance and must find a way to combine both things. How it is to do this is a question above my pay grade to answer. To paraphrase Mr Spock, however, I will say that the needs of the many are often the same as the needs of the few or of the one. That is, each one of us who call ourselves Christian cannot afford to neglect either our own foundation or our superstructure. Specifically we cannot take our calling as an unexamined first assumption. We must continually revisit Christ, Christ Himself, and be born again in Him from out of the death of sin and forgetfulness which we constantly plunge ourselves into.

For Catholic and Orthodox Christians the sacrament of penance (confession) can play an important part in this process of renewal, unless it becomes a routine outward practice with no inward feeling attached to it. It could be said though that if we have many eggs the Lord has provided us with many baskets to put them into. That is, we have multiple ways open to us to return to our Divine source and seek refreshment. As we are each different then we may each find different methods more helpful to us. Prayer is one, daily examination of conscience is another, listening to charismatic preachers is a further option and so it goes on.

For my part I find nothing, outside of the sacraments, more powerful than the Gospel. When I approach it with a thirst for Jesus it always satisfies me. How you read the Gospel and why you read it will powerfully affect the impact it will have on you. When you pick it up longing with all your heart to encounter the Beloved then He will not hide Himself from you. In His divinity and in His humanity He is there, waiting for you, longing for you as you long for Him. Although I read from the Scriptures every day I do not always do so with the same attitude, few of us do. We must consciously call to mind the need to shore up our foundations and then open ourselves to what the Holy Spirit will do through the pages of that wonderful text to bring us to a rebirth in Christ.

Nor must we neglect our superstructures. The Church has produced many saints and their lives and examples can inspire us, teach us and guide us in our journey towards God. And we should recall that not all the saints are in heaven, some are among us still, some perhaps are our neighbours, our priests or teachers. Some, it maybe, do not yet embrace all the fullness of our faith but yet can still show us the effects of grace in the human heart. The Christian life is not only about doing but also about being. Sometimes the fastest way to travel is to stand still and the most deep reaching sound is silence. We can build up our faith lives and strengthen ourselves to help others by occasionally or frequently doing nothing but communing with our Father who is in heaven, His stillness to our stillness, His silence to our silence, His love to our love.

Although it is convenient to think about foundation and superstructure it is only an analogy. There are threads that weave their way through all of our aspects of life in Christ. There is, I think, no part or stage of the Christian life where we cannot offer up this heartfelt prayer which St Catherine of Siena has given to the Church-
"Lord, unmake me, and break the hardness of my heart, that I be not a tool which spoils Thy works"
May each one of us join ourselves to this petition and may the Good God in His mercy answer us.
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The painting is Pilger ins Heilige Land by Alois Niederstätter

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.

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

Jesus-Why Bother?

In an earlier blog (Repentance-Why Bother?) I looked at reasons for making a fundamental decision to change your life, to 'die to self.' Here I will consider why, that decision having been made, you should make Jesus the focus for your new direction. It might be asked 'why look to anyone else at all?' If you are an intelligent adult possessed with the ability to reason should you not be able to work out your own destiny for yourself?

The difficulty here is that by accepting the need to radically transform your Self you have acknowledged that the problem is not something which is external. The thing which is broken cannot repair itself unaided. Archimedes is reputed to have said "Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth." Granted that you necessarily have a share in your own rebirth you still require some kind of partner, catalyst or teacher. Christianity proposes that Jesus is the place you can stand upon in order to move the inert globe of your dead self.

There is a passage in the Gospel according to St John which, I think, is relevant here-
-I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved: and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pastures. 
-The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.
-I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep
(John 10:9-11)
This contains three clear propositions.

1. Jesus is the gateway through which the new self or kingdom can be entered.
2. In Him we will experience life more fully than ever before
3. He demonstrates a self-sacrificing love for us of a kind that cannot be exceeded.

If we were to become convinced of these three things then we would have no reason not to accept Him as the place upon which we can stand with perfect confidence and hope.

That Jesus is the door is a large claim and calls for some significant proofs. It is in the nature of the thing that such proofs can only have a persuasive not a compulsive effect. That is to say, for Jesus to be our gate we require to have a freely entered into relationship of love with Him and love requires the freedom to choose not to love. Since the Christian thesis is that our Lord is both fully human and fully divine you would expect such proofs to exist in both physical and spiritual dimensions. The material basis for believing in Him can be found in the miracles He performed, in His rising from the dead and ascension into heaven and in the subsequent unbroken history of miracles associated with His body the Church. Many people fancy that these things only appeal to the credulous and that we live in a hard-headed age where such phenomena are discounted. We are not however as original as we might think; St John tartly observed "whereas he had done so many miracles before them, they believed not in him." (John 12:37) No amount of demonstrable facts can persuade a person to believe in something which they do not wish to believe.

Nonetheless for many of us the proof can only be an experimental one i.e. we need to try Jesus for ourselves and learn from that if we can go in and out of the sheepfold as promised. He offers salvation which, insofar as it refers to our eternal state, cannot readily be proved in this life. What He says here though is "shall be saved" which combines the notions of a present benefit with those of a future state. The idea is that by entering through the door of Jesus we will be kept safe from the wolves which threaten us. In relation to repentance these wild beasts are our own unchained appetites "the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches" (1 John 2:16) These parts of ourselves should be subordinate to our reason but very often our reason is subdued by our appetites. The proof that Jesus is the door to safety comes when aided by Him our reason (and our compassion and love) win more victories over our lusts than before. The question of just how we can "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh." (Romans 13:14) is something I hope to look at in a future blog The Catholic Church-Why Bother?

That life is experienced more abundantly with Jesus than without is also an experimental proposition. To get the full benefit of that, I would argue, you have to be immersed in the life of the Church but you can, by the grace of God, get intimations of it before taking that step. As an experiment I would recommend spending time reading the canonical gospels. Do not approach them as if they were like any other book because they are a unique literary genre. Read slowly, re-read. Open yourselves to what they contain.It is certainly possible to read them analytically and to, as it were, argue with the characters in them. Do not, however, make that the main way you read them. At times just open yourselves to them, suspend analysis and just try to get a feel for the man Jesus, let Him seep into your consciousness, into your bones.

Alongside that there is the way of prayer. There are as many different ways to pray as there are people who want to pray so I won't propose a single model. Experiment for yourself but remember, its not all about you. Listening is an important part of the process. And if what you hear is silence then go with that. When was the last time you silently listened to silence? Its not as easy as you might think. If the thought of being silent and alone worries you ask yourself why? What makes it uncomfortable?

More controversially perhaps I also suggest that the use of images will help you to bring Jesus into your life. Allied with prayer and/or gospel reading just sitting looking at an Icon of Christ or a crucifix (as opposed to a bare cross) can help you. Hold in your mind while you are gazing a few words of Scripture or a short prayer and see what happens. If you make up your mind to try these things every day for, say, six months then you will be in a better position to know whether or not you are living life more abundantly because of Jesus.

The final proposition is that Jesus is worth responding to because He demonstrated towards each one of us the maximum possible love, a total self-sacrifice for us not because we are His friends but because we are His enemies. It is sometimes said that the motif of a dying and rising god is an ancient trope that the Christians just borrowed from surrounding legends. What this misses is the unique selling point of Christianity which is the doctrine of Incarnation. Jesus "though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness" (Philippians 2:6-7)

He was not a god living among men or an avatar of divinity. He was a person at once fully human, the Son of Mary, and fully divine, the Son of God, who chose to live in poverty and obscurity and to die a shameful and agonising death in order to effect a reconciliation between all that is far from God and God Himself. He emptied Himself to become a man and He was emptied, betrayed and abandoned to become a corpse. And all of this He did for your benefit, to help you empty yourself of your jealousies and envies, your anger and greed and to allow you to fill yourself with His riches freely given "I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.’" (Psalm 81:16) It is a generous offer. What prevents you from accepting it?
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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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Praying to Saints?

                                                            Venerable Margaret Sinclair

When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant
Luke 7:3

Enemies of Catholicism suppose (or affect to suppose) that Catholics pray to Saints instead of praying to God. Those who are merely uninformed think that Catholics pray to Saints as well as praying to God. So what is the situation? The idea, briefly, is that Christians on earth ask Christians in heaven to join with them in praying for this or that petition. The two challenges to that proposition which I have encountered most frequently are-

• Why not just pray directly yourself since Jesus is the sole mediator between Man and God?
• How do we know that Saints can hear our prayers?

As far as the first point goes there are several possible answers. One Christian asking another Christian to pray for them has been standard practice since New Testament times. The Apostle St Paul wrote You also must help us by prayer (2 Corinthians 1:11) We know that the Apostle prayed directly to Jesus so clearly he did not see intercession by others as detracting from that but rather strengthening it. As he put it to the Philippians  for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance (Philippians 1:19) Why this kind of intercession might be helpful is something that St James addresses The effective prayer of a righteous person has great power (James 5:16) Which, by the way, raises the suggestion that in the eyes of God some people appear more righteous than others something which more hardline Protestants would deny absolutely. But I digress, the point is that asking others to pray for you is not a sign of your lack of faith in Jesus it is a frank recognition of your own failings. Because I suspect most of us reading this and myself writing it are very far from being righteous it is more than helpful to us to invoke the aid of those whom we know or suspect of being nearer to virtue than we ourselves are.

Does it somehow offend Jesus if we thus ask others to present our petitions to Him? The episode of the Centurion's Servant (or slave) in Luke (Chapter 7:1-10) indicates that far from being offended He is absolutely delighted. The story is that a Centurion has a servant (or slave) whom he loves and who is gravely ill. It is worth noting that as a Roman the Centurion is not only not Jewish but is actively involved in perpetuating the hated occupation of Palestine by a foreign power. So he sends Jewish leaders to Jesus to act as his advocates. They commend his petition for these reasons He is worthy to have you do this for him,  for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue  (vv4-5) That is both his charity and his works are presented to Jesus as being sufficiently meritorious to earn our Lord's goodwill. The argument seems persuasive enough insofar as our Lord and his entourage then set off to the Centurion's house. However the Roman then sends out a further bunch of advocates, his friends, who say to Jesus Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. (v6) And he makes the point that our Lord can simply command that the servant (or slave) be healed and that would suffice to make it happen, which of course it did. Did Jesus get het up because the Centurion chose to appeal to Him in this fashion? What He said was turning to the crowd that followed him,[He] said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” (v9) 

I think that much of the confusion surrounding this issue stems from a misunderstanding that equates the role of mediator with that of advocate. Jesus is the sole mediator between Man and God in the sense that all reconciliation proceeds through Him and only through Him. Yet although this reconciliation is freely available to all not all will finally avail themselves of it. Some are estranged from God through lack of explicit or implicit faith in the Saviour. Others are estranged through sin which presents a barrier to grace though they may formally acknowledge the importance of Christ. Seeking to overcome these barriers through the assistance provided by the prayers of those who are in a state of grace is not replacing the mediatorship of Christ with that of the Saints it is a seeking by those with an imperfect faith to enter fully into the inheritance promised to those with perfect faith. That is, they certainly place their hopes in Christ, which is wise, but not in their own merits, which is also wise, thus they ask those whose merits are known to Christ to add to the sum of their own prayers and as it were tip the balance from justice to mercy a kind of accountancy that Jesus always smiles upon.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that the equivalent episode in the Gospel According to St Matthew (8:5-13) presents the story as if the Centurion and our Lord had actually met and engaged in a dialogue. I think that this can be explained by the different purposes underlying each Evangelists narrative. St Matthew was writing in the first instance for a primarily Jewish audience, his priorities were to emphasise that Jesus was a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies and that these transformed the religious mission of the Jews from a national project to an international one with the renewed Israel becoming a beacon to the world-

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
    to raise up the tribes of Jacob
    and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

(Isaiah 49:6)

St Matthew then, as it were, bigs up the encounter between the heir of King David and the gentile in order to emphatically put Jesus' imprimatur on the mission to the gentiles which is why he includes this passage which is absent from St Luke's account

" I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

(vv11-12)

St Luke had different purposes and his account of our Lord's mission is often called "the Gospel of Prayer" (don't believe me? Google it.) Therefore he describes the episode with the Centurion in the way that he does precisely because it bigs up the prayer aspect, that is to say, the intercessory prayer aspect. One can easily reconcile the two accounts by considering that the words spoken by the advocates really were the words first spoken by the Centurion which is precisely what you would expect when Saints intercede for you with the addition, as St Luke notes, of extra material highlighting whatever merits you may possess.

                                                            St Margaret of Scotland

Granting that asking people to pray for you is not displaying a lack of faith in Christ but is actually being obedient to the plain sense of the Scriptures people still doubt whether it is legitimate to add Christians in heaven to our list of people that we ask. The question is do they hear our prayers. One school of thought is that when people die they enter into a 'soul sleep' which is to say that they literally snooze their way from death to the final judgement without any sort of awareness of their surroundings. The basis for this idea is the frequent references to people who die 'falling asleep.' But this, I think, only refers to the physical half of the equation, a dead person resembles a sleeping person when we look at them. There are, by contrast, numerous scriptural references to post-mortality people being very much alive to the eyes of God. Here are some-

• And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Said to the 'good thief' on the Cross.
• "Have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:31-32) 
• The Parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31 which portrays Abraham, Lazarus and the rich man as all being spiritually alive and aware after their mortal death. It might be argued 'its just a parable' but it would be an extraordinarily misleading one for Jesus to use if there is no spiritual life and awareness among those who have passed on.
• The Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8) which includes- there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. (v4) Now, Elijah had been assumed into heaven but Moses had unequivocally died and been buried. If Moses could hold a conversation with Jesus clearly he was both spiritually alive and aware of what was going on. I have heard it argued that 'it was just a vision' and not the real Moses but, again, it seems an extraordinarily misleading one if the scriptures want us to believe in 'soul sleep.'

So granting that intercessory prayer is scriptural and A Good Thing and granting that Christians after death are spiritually alive to God and aware what warrant do we have for assuming that they can hear our requests? Sacred Scripture offers no explicit guidance on this subject, asking Saints to add their prayers to ours is certainly not contrary to Scripture but neither is it affirmed by it. What we can say is that it is an ancient practice of the Church. It began with invoking the aid of martyrs whom the faithful have excellent grounds for believing to be in heaven. Protestant critics of Catholicism offer various competing dates for the time when the Church supposedly fell into apostasy. What we can say about praying to Saints is that it predates all of them. The Church which defined the Nicene Creed was a Church that prayed to Saints. Therefore anyone who accepts the one has no logical grounds not to accept the other and practically every Christian denomination does accept the Creed. It cannot surely be the case that the Holy Spirit guided the Church to be so profoundly right in these central matters of the faith but was entirely laissez faire about the prayer life of Christians. The practice then is not contrary to Scripture and is entirely consonant with the beliefs and practices of the Church from practically the get go. Individual Christians may not feel the need to invoke Saints, thats up to them, but they have no grounds to criticise others for doing so nor to suggest that it is somehow non-Christian or displaying a lack of faith in Christ our Lord and Saviour.

Finally, as with faith itself, the greatest proof is experimental. If you ask the Saints to join their prayers to yours then you will yourself discover the wonderful benefits which flow from the practice. Above all invoke the aid of Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mother of Christians, Mother of the Church and you will find that where, perhaps, grace once abounded now it will abound all the more. Going to Jesus through Mary shows no lack of faith in Jesus but at once is an affirmation of your own littleness and of that indescribably huge reservoir of love that flows between Jesus and His mother. There is nothing that He will refuse her and there is nothing containing virtue, charity or hope that she is not bold enough to ask from Him.

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