When is God present to us?

God is always present to us: closer than our breathing, closer than consciousness itself, and closer than our choosing. The reality is that Creation was not a long ago event, but is happening this instant. God’s love is totally faithful. God is creating us every instant of our lives. God’s love is ongoing and forever. Father Thomas Keating wrote that the monumental illusion we have is that God is absent. Maybe we have misinterpreted the phrase in the Lord ’s Prayer – Our Father who art in heaven to mean that God is far away. It does seem to me that perhaps this means here and now we live in mystery and do not see God yet. We are aware of self, but when we arrive at adulthood without any awareness of God, we can be tied up in feelings of guilt, of fear, of resentment, of anger, of loneliness, of greed.

As we are born in a completely helpless state and learn little by little, almost entirely by imitation, we also imitate the desires others have. And often those desires are for things that are replacing the real inner desire. That is we get to be overwhelmed by desire to be the center of attention, to have many possessions, to be in control of others or of situations, to be praised, even the desire to get even, to retaliate. These are all false programs for happiness. Also in this early helpless state and along the way of our first few years, we may suffer other traumas, such as neglect, meanesses, the false expectations of others.

When we are led by God to some awareness of his presence and then his love, we turn to God for what Keating calls Divine therapy. Think of how Christian Meditation is Divine therapy.

We sit down in silence and make that act of faith in the reality of the Presence of God and in the Love God has for us. Then we repeat our prayer word or mantra and in this way let go of our thoughts and images and feelings. And into this silence the Divine therapist is free to heal the wounds of a lifetime. Little by little. It can take along time by our schedules for God to heal us. So right away we need to make an act of faith in God’s loving care of us. It is not necessary to have great feelings about this. Just make the act of faith. We need to acknowledge to God our belief that God is with us, intimately. That God has care of us, mysteriously. Let us pray.

What does the word ‘abide’ mean to you?

When I was growing up, the whole family sang songs together, sometimes just the seven in our house and sometimes with the cousins nearby so that there were thirteen altogether singing around the piano. That is where I first heard the word “abide” and it was in the song Abide with me. “I need thy presence every passing hour…through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me. Or “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”

Actually we read in the Bible in John 15 that Jesus is saying to us:
"Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. . . . .. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit"

Jesus tells us that God is within us, looking to be our companion, always available. How shall we be available to God? When Jesus says go into that room, I think he also means that inner room of our heart, our inmost center where we are not identified with a role or an emotion and are beyond activities. Rather it is so deep within that all that is going on is abiding – that is, companionship with God.

As we say a simple prayer word or phrase over and over, we re letting the Spirit of God pray in us. In a way we have to listen within to the word we are saying. So that when thoughts arise, or images, we move back within and say our prayer word again. That repeated word is a symbol of our consent to the abiding Presence of God and to whatever God wants to do in our depths to heal us and draw us into more intimate relationship with Him. To abiding.

We don’t have to fight off obsessive thoughts and feelings, we just have to let them go for a while as we come back to our prayer word.. We trust that by abiding in us. God’s loving is going on in us.

There are many good ways to pray. And they are for other times of day – like the walking prayer, like devotional praying, or petitions for others. This quiet prayer is a transforming practice. Thomas Keating says it good to show up for your time with your Divine therapist twice a day!
Let us pray. In silence call to mind that God is with us and within us. Sit up straight. Close your eyes and introduce your prayer word. Keep saying it within and with attentiveness until your 20 minutes timer dings! Close within by saying the Our Father.

CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH GOD

“Half measures avail us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked for His protection and care with complete abandon”

Years ago a dear friend of mine, sister Mary who attended OA meetings said to me that it was great awakening for her when she pondered those words ‘the care of God’. She said to me just think of that. God cares for us, takes care of us, nothing is more important than believing that.

We walk by faith, not sight. Whatever it is that we believe about God, it is an act of Faith. That is why every day, every time I start to meditate I say, O God, I believe you are here and I adore you profoundly. Teach me to do your will for you are my God.

For, in the words of St. Paul: In God we live and move and have our being.
We are more immersed in God more than a fish is immersed in water. And when we say that, I believe we are immersed in love. Foundational to our lives is the belief that God is the creator of heaven and earth. Is this just a past event? Do we think of God as out there some where? Really God is sustaining us in life even as we sit here.

TRY this: Try saying in your own mind and heart and with eyes closed, what I am about to say, phrase by phrase, closing your eyes for a moment between each phrase. AS I sit here, the beating of my heart…the ebb and flow of my breathing…..the movement of my mind…the sensations of my body…are all signs of God’s ongoing creation and care of me…it is God who sustains me in life…I pause for a moment …and become aware of the presence of God within me…If I do not feel this way…I make a simple act of faith in the reality of the Presence of God….I believe that You, My God are here with me…I entrust my life and all my concerns to you, my God.

Many through the ages have called God the Ground of our being. Then Father John Main, in the book, The Way of Unknowing, writes that we need to adjust to the reality that God is the ground of our being. This means that we are invited to adjust to this reality. God is with us. And God is for u. As it says somewhere in the Bible, if God is for us who can be against us…

Remember that beautiful Psalm 23? The Lord is my Shepherd., there is nothing I shall want.. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. My Mother told me in later years that when we were little my brother Joe and I used come home from school along a dirt road in the city of Yonkers New York and we would be saying in a singsong way: Thou are with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.


This valley of the shadow of death comes from not only our own sorrows that we have had, but the sorrows of the world. While some suffering such the death of a child or young person comes from an illness, most sorrows are caused by unloving, power struggles, hatred, unfogiveness, retaliation, cruelty, endless put-downs, resentments and petty criticisms. In lesser ways all of us know we are not 100% forgiving or encouraging to everyone we meet and know. Yet here we are believing that God has care for us, for every least person on earth. God loves us for nothing! God has first loved us that is how we can afford to turn our lives and wills over to His care.

“Meditation comes to put an end to all the dullness, the fear, the pettiness, all the lack of love in our lives as we return to it each morning and each evening, with an absolute seriousness and deepening joy” John Main
Our real life is a journey into love; our life is going to go on forever, We do not have a limited supply of life. I may be old and gray and falling apart, and not have more the 15 more years on earth, but then my life is not at all ended, Life is changed not taken away.. What we are invited to do in this human journey is to improve our conscious contact with God who gives us life forever.

How then do prayer and meditation improve our conscious contact? The first thing to remember is that we walk by faith. This faith is prompted by the witness of others and sustained by the sense of belonging, which is totally real.

And we long to be totally real.

So let us talk about prayer and meditation and looking only for the knowledge of God’s will.

How shall we let prayer become integral to our every day life? Well, one way is to take up the practice of a walking prayer. Another is pondering our sacred scriptures. And of course, Meditation. Ways of praying may differ but the call to pray is an invitation to live more intimately with God. and to do the Will of God.

We are not at all taking about techniques. We are talking about the inward journey that makes us real. There is so much more to us that the outward..

Since God is our constant companion then trying to be attentive to God’s presence is certainly not a technique, but a way of love. A way of love and a work of love.

“Awake my soul…”

In two different psalms we cry out “Awake my soul…awake O harp and lyre. I will awaken the dawn”. Ps. 57 and Ps 108

It is a matter of waking up to the reality of who we are. and what really matters. Jesus says to us as to those early followers: I no longer call you servants, I call you friends. He has taught us to call Gopd our Father, so we are also the children of God. He has told us that he loves us..Love one another as I have loved you. So each ne of us is also the Beloved of God.

So we need to wake ourselves up. I wale myself up physically with an alarm clock, the kind for the deaf that vibrates under my pillow. The way to wake up spiritually is to start right away to make a habit of greeting the Lord as you get out of bed, and in the shower, and getting dressed. Could there be anything more important? Perhaps greeting your spouse first? But nothing else.

Then after making sure you start the day with greeting the Lord, follow the practice of Thomas Merton. Here is what he says: strictly speaking, I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centered entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and his love. That is to say, that it is centered on faith by which alone we can know of the presence of God.”

There can be no dearer friend than Jesus. This is the feast of St. Bernard who says much about the love of Jesus. IN repsonse to stay awake to this reality, we try to thread prayer through our day by what I call the walking prayer or what Father Keating calls the breath prayer. Some short word or phrase of love or petition. St. therese: Jesus my life, Jesus my love, Jesus my all.

And John of the Cross tells us – that yes God has so loved us, and the reason he has loved us is that he can make us happy and so that we can arrive at the fullness of Love. So why not wake up ever more?

Fear, the enemy of Faith

I found a few notes from Father Richard Rohr in which he talks about fear as the enemy of faith. Not doubt. He says we could feed all the starving people in this world if we were not so afraid that we spend a fortune on arms and on war. It is something to think about, isn’t it? So much of what humans do all over the world is controlled by fears, petty and large. And yet we hear Jesus saying ‘Do not be afraid.” And the foundation of the call to be truly human is there in the first beatitude. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. And yet the economic life of our country is run by people who want to get very rich. Why? Because they are afraid. Even that petty fear that if they are not rich they will be unimportant. Yet God looks upon every single human with Love. Yes, Jesus wept over Jerusalem because like everywhere on earth people were doing unloving things. But nothing prevents our God of love from loving each and every human on earth. Wasn’t it love that causes Jesus to weep then?

It is well to ponder that first beatitude which is the foundation for the other 7 beatitudes. The poor in spirit. One way to this is going to the Holy place within ourselves where God dwells. When we meditate, we open our hearts and our minds to the Light of Christ. We let Light shine within. We do not need to tell God what we need, we just come before God and pray in great simplicity.

When we do this dally, little by little it becomes easier also to maintain a walking prayer so that prayer undergirds all that we do each day. And fear drops away little by little. Of course, we may experience fears but we can get so we recognize them as such and name them and this is a big step toward losing fear. A fear can be as simple as my fear of falling which hs come upon me in my 80’s. Because I have fallen. So I take a practical step. I carry a cane. Or I take someone’s hand. There are practical steps to take. (When my brothers and cousins were jumping from a hill onto a new flat garage roof. My younger brother Joe and I were afraid and did not jump. My even younger cousin Roger jumped and broke both arms)

So we know that when Jesus says Do not be afraid, He is not asking us to do foolish things. Just asking us to rely on God in great faith. And that faith grows when we persist in daily prayer. Pondering Scripture, Christian Meditation, the walking prayer. Giving our attention to the depth of Sunday Liturgy.

When we meditate, we offer ourselves utterly and joyfully to the Love which God has for us. Infinite love indeed. Let fear go. Walk in faith. Let us meditate twice daily for 20 minutes.

“Knowledge is power.”

Father John Main tells about going to the school of Oriental and African Studies in London and seeing in large letters: knowledge is power and being horrified by this sign.

The other night on the Lehrer report there was a section on giving children money rewards for passing to let them know that getting money and more of it wil be the fruit of doing well in school. And we we believe that the movers and shakers of this world are those with knowledge. Well, I certainly wanted to be able to earn a living and that was why I wanted to go into nurses’ training. And it is true that good education usually bears fruit in the power of a good job. But we also have to ask ourselves whether that is the main goal of human life.

In the Baltimore Catechism I learned as a child that the goal of life was to know love and serve God in this life and be happy with Him forever in heaven. And then we hear St.Paul telling us: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, 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. And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:

And Jesus saying: Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest for you souls.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. The Divine Energy or power that God wills for us has nothing to do with power over, or control of others or of situations. it has to do with the power to love. It has to do with loving relationships. It has nothing to do with getting even, retaliating. And yet so prevalent is the belief that knowledge is power that we have trouble discerning what is unchristian or worldly from the way of the Lord.

For me that is a good reason to meditate. We let God decide what to do for us. We entrust our lives to God We come before him without an agenda except to be with him as attentively as we are able. We choose a prayer word (maranatha or other), we make an act of faith in the reality of God with us and we gently repeat that word for 20 minutes, coming back to it whenever we realize we have other thoughts or even when we realize silence. In this way, we let God empty us of our false self, our ego that needs the power to control others or situations. We let God free us to love.

The Transfiguration

A wondrous event in which Jesus is not doing something but that in his prayer something happens to Him. As Peter tells us
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.’ 18We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. 2 Peter 1

And what they saw was Jesus shining.
And he was transfigured before them. And his face shone like the sun,and his clothes became shining white. Suddenly there appeared to them, Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Mt. 17

And they never forgot. I have always loved this story about Jesus. And it certainly strengthens my faith. For it is a big act of faith to sit and meditate. To believe that in the silence of meditation we are just letting God do as He wills within us. Other times of prayer we thank, we adore, we ask forgiveness, we ask help for ourselves and others and the world. But in this time we just let God’s love transform us as love does.

And it is good to remind ourselves that God is love. And love is far more mysterious than we imagine. It is the whole meaning of our lives from beginning to end. We are called into life by the Love of God, sustained by love and called to live by love. When we enter into silence to meditate we are entering into God’s love.

We meditate by repeating a prayer word and listening to it inside of ourselves, and coming back to it whenever we are aware we are thinking. Try 20 minutes (or less if you find that too ong)

Behold I make all things new. (Rev. 21:5)

ONLY PROFOUND PRAYER, A CRY FROM THE DEPTHS OF OUR HEARTS, WILL MAKE THIS A NEW DAY

Remember the Gospel story of the storm at sea? When the disciples wake Jesus up and say to him Lord we are perishing? Jesus stops the storm then and there.

These people with storms in a boat and storms all about them
and probably within too. And fear! They were smart enough with faith to cry out, from the toes up, to Jesus.

We all experience some fears. There are many disguises of fear. With me I shout! My MOther and I were in the subway one time when it suddenly stopped with a crash. We were "strap-hanging". I said to Mother, 'someone really yelled'. She responded: 'that was you'! Each of us has a way of fear: comfort-seeking, collecting, condescension, complaining, gossip, preoccupation with the faults of others, sarcasm, withdrawal. We can get swallowed up in disguising fear. It is our human condition.

But there is another way. The way of compassion. As John 23rd said “I do not believe in the prophets of gloom.” Instead, it is crying for help that opens our hearts to the healing power of God. to the Divine energy of Goodness and Mercy.

We cannot afford to take prayer for granted. Let us always enter into time for prayer by expressing in faith our desire for mercy, our desire to do the will of God, our faith in the reality of the Presence of God. Like those people in that storm with Jesus, we can cry out “wake up Jesus, doesn’t it bother you that we are drowning” We may be drowning in troubles or we may be drowning in apathy, or a feeling of dullness of life or fear. In that storm at sea Jesus answered their cries by saying 'Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?'

The Good News is that when life is at its worst or at its dullest, we are still totally loved. God is inviting us into the mystery of the other side, which we do not yet know, but which we know is there because of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Remember Job? He cried to God with all his being. And then what? Life became more mysterious. Yet he was content because he had indeed the profound experience of having been heard by God.

I always liked it that in the course of his praying he said “Have I not wept for those whose life is hard.” God had given him a compassionate heart. Then we see that God led Job beyond a narrow sense of justice connected with retribution into a sense of the freedom and love of God. We learn from Job that the language of the prophet must be grounded in the language of worship and contemplation. Rock bottom for both prophet and contemplative is the Presence of God. From Job’s intimate exchange with God, Job has changed his mind about gloom and entered into a new day! *

Let me read to you the words of Luis Espinal, a priest murdered in Bolivia: “Train us, O Lord, to fling ourselves upon the impossible, for behind the impossible is your grace and your presence. We cannot fall into emptiness, Our future is an enigma, our road covered with mist, but we want to go on giving ourselves, because YOU continue hoping amid the night and weeping tears through a thousand human eyes.” It is not that we are to be silent in the face of human suffering. Rather we enter into silence of meditation in order to entrust all to the amazing love that God has for us - the many sparrows. Not even one falls to the ground with out the attention of our Father in heaven. Who raises us up. Let us pray.

*Gustave Gutierrez: On Job: God-talk and the suffering of the innocent. 1988. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY

Consent to the world as a whole

“Neither happiness not contemplation is possible except on the basis of consent to the world as a whole “ pg 106, Josef Peiper: Happiness and Contemplation. St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, IN 1998

And this consent is based on the great gift of faith: faith that the world even as it is this moment is redeemable. That all is gift. That Jesus, true God and true man experienced in Gethsemane and on the cross what human suffering is like and yet he trusted. Remember? If it be possible, let this chalice pass from me, yet not my will but thine be done. And our faith tells us that all the suffering Jesus then endured was not at all the end of the story. Jesus rose from the dead.

This is the mystery in which we live. This is the mystery to which we give our consent. We do not deny human suffering, human wickedness. Perhaps we weep over it all as Jesus did over Jerusalem.
We find ways to help alleviate suffering. We are indeed called to works of mercy, in some way or other. But in the end by the gift of faith we give our consent to the world as a whole. And in this consent we are able to live ever more contemplatively.

Living more contemplatively means living ever more attentive to the reality of the Presence of God. We are ever in the Presence of God. In Him we live and move and have our being. Can we of ourselves make ourselves more attentive? I do not think so. But as God gives us the desire, so God gives us the path to follow and bids us come along.

One great way is the gift of Christian Meditation. When we meditate we let go of running our own lives for 20-30 minutes. We just rest in God. And we let God bless us as He wills. And for sure one gift given is the gift of faith in the reality that we are always immersed in God. that God is ever with us.

When we meditate, we are mindful that God is with us, loving us. We let go of all our imaginations, thoughts, worries, feelings. We just sit and repeat a prayer word or phrase as a way to focus. It is a word of faith. It is a time of faith. It is a time of consent. Let us pray.

'love dwells in ourhearts.'

“Nothing will shake us from our conviction that God is, that God is love and His love dwells in our hearts.” , pg 8; The Way of Unknowing. John Main. OSB; The Crossroad Publishing Company; 1995

One of the good fruits of Christian Meditation is the growing awareness that God is love. It is not a matter of how we feel but of an inner conviction of this reality. The very fact that we meditate is an indication that God is at work in our hearts for Jesus has told us: “Without me you can do nothing.” John 15.5

You know we are just common sinners and yet we are so loved. I was delighted when I came across something by Richard Rohr OFM in which he said that redemption precedes everything including repentance. So when by the gift of God we decide to take time to be silent with God, we are willing to let God do the great divine work of love in our hearts. And God is so trustworthy. We can always say with Jesus, in the Garden of Gesthemane, not my will but Yours be done. Or with Mary: behold the servant of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word.

The 12 steps for alcoholics are really profound and based so much on this truth that all is gift, all is grace. And the 11th step leads right into the possibility of the practice of Christian meditation. “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him. Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry it out.”

This is why it is always a good thing to begin every session of meditation with a very conscious act of faith in the presence of God and in his great love for us. It can be as simple as saying as directly as possible to God whom we do not see or feel, I believe you are with me, I believe in your great love for us all and for me here and now. You could add, help my unbelief!!

Let us enter into the silence with the conviction and God is, that God is love and his love dwells in our hearts. Let us pray.

Review of How to Meditate:
Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert. After your act of faith in the reality of God present with you. Interiorly begin to say a simple word or a short phrase. We recommend the prayer phrase ‘Maranatha’. Recite it in four syllables slowly and listen to it as you say it. You can use another word or phrase instead. Some say the holy name of Jesus. Or Abba. Or come Lord Jesus. I know someone who says O God be my Guide. When I started, in 1951 I used the prayer repeated by the desert fathers and mothers: O God, come to my assistance, O Lord, make haste to help me.(Ps 70) but shorter may be better, Do not think of anything or imagine anything at all. Not even holy thoughts. If thoughts come just gently return to your word. If you become aware of silence just start your word. Meditate twice a day.

TheConsolation and Challenge of the HOly Spirit praying in us

We know from Romans 8:26-27 that the Holy Spirit of God prays in us, with groans and sighs:
"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."
However we are praying, in our weakness or our blindness or our selfishness, the Holy Spirit is praying In us according to the will of God.
This is a great consolation. What matters is that we pray, whether it be a groaning prayer, a rote prayer, any way of praying. We can trust that our prayer is transformed by the Spirit to be in accord with the will of God.
I love the words in Psalm 86:
Teach me your way, O Lord,
that I may walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere your name.
I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name for ever.
For great is your steadfast love towards me;
you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
(11-13)
There is also a challenge to us to open our hearts and minds to let God heal our divided hearts. We can spend some time each day praying without an agenda, without seeking to achieve anything, without intending to look good in our own eyes. We sit and say a simple prayer quietly, even repeating it slowly, so that we are open to what God wants to do with us. We accept the mystery that God is truth and beauty and goodness and we entrust our whole being into the hands of God for this short prayer time.
Let us pray.

Awaiting Ascension

Fix your minds on the things that are above, and not on the things of earth. Col 3.2

For you have died and your life is hidden with God.

This suggestion about how to live our lives is preceded by this: If then, you have risen with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Col 3;1

Seated at the right hand of God. This image is from Psalm 110 which I never paid much attention to until I realized that the phrase is threaded through the New Testament. (Mark 12:35-37; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20; Hebrews 1:3,13; 1Peter 3:22 It is in our creed.

We hardly pay attention to it. Perhaps it expresses a mystery too deep for words? St. Thomas Aquinas O.P. writes that it does not mean a physical place at all. But it means the glory and power and love that is God, which Christ shares because he is True God as well as true man.

And having said this we are still dealing in mystery. But the additional thought of Aquinas is that the glory of God and the reality that God is love means the Jesus shares this and so will we. In fact he goes on the say the we have this gift from Baptism. By Baptism he says we have risen with Christ. In another place in the New Testament it says that Jesus having joy before him endured the cross. I guess this is true for us when our faith is strong. We are able to endure sorrows confusions and miseries because we are sure of God’s love, which is the source of all joy.

As Rene Voilaume wrote: Joy is the instantaneous fruit of a look of faith at Jesus. When we start to meditate let us always call to mind that

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice. Phil.4:4

April 2, 2008
This is the theme of these 50 days of Easter, and really of any Christian life. For by His Resurrection, Jesus has shown us that love and goodness are the real powers on earth. That is why Jesus could say to us: Have confidence I have overcome the world.

By his resurrection Jesus had released us from three great burdens.
1.Fear of death because we know we have a future. Death is only a phase of life. I remember going to the beach one time and we passed some swings where just one boy was swinging. As he was swinging he was saying in a sing song voice: “I’m going through a phase, I’m going through a phase.” am reminding myself of this as I realize that I am aging.
2.The burden of guilt – guilt over what we have done and what we have failed to do. How released? By the 100% forgiveness granted by Jesus. His rising to new life confirmed his words of forgiveness.
3. The burden of self-centeredness. Released by the power of the love of God pours into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

What can we do to become more attentive to these realities? To wake up to this great love? Pray always says St. Paul.
We usually pray on Sundays with the community for that is a practice right from the beginning after the Resurrection of Jesus. We pray with the Scriptures. We seek the help of God and ask for what we need. But we also need to just sit in silence and let God do with us what He wills. This is what we do when we meditate or center. We sit without an agenda, and repeat a prayer word or phrase. Whenever our mind wanders, as it will, we just come back to our prayer quietly. Let us meditate.

Quietness and trust will be our strength

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30

This quote is in a chapter where God is berating the people for trusting in any group or people or in possessions of any kind to save them. Good quote for Lent.

First, returning. A time when traditionally we “give up” something for lent, when we let go of some attitude or practice that we have come to realize is not good

Then Rest. I wondered how this fits into Lent, but then I thought how many of us are either overextended in all kinds of busyness. Or our minds are like monkeys always chattering, so rest could mean we seek to give our brains a rest and just take up the practice of a walking prayer,

In Quietness. There are two aspects of this that could help us and one is that we provide ourselves with more quiet time, when we set aside time for prayer or spiritual reading, or just star gazing! The other is that we actually pray!

But the best is trust. to affirm to God that we do indeed trust in the love that God has for us. That we know that God wants only what is for our good. That we let go of anxiety and substitute a prayer of trust whenever we feel ourselves anxious.

We do all of this when we take the time for Christian meditation or centering prayer. Twice a day is best. We set aside the time. We sit and call to mind the reality of the Presence of God who is always present, always sustaining us in life by his love, never far off no matter how we feel. We choose a simple prayer word like Maranatha, or the Holy Name, and just keep saying it and come back to this prayer whenever we realize our mind has wandered off on anything else at all.

We are just entrusting our lives to God as Jesus did when He prayed: Into your hands I commend my spirit.

Quietness and trust will be our strength.

Rooted in God who is Love

Thomas Merton sometimes wrote about how we are caught in a kind of collective hypnosis. Because mostly we look at life through the eyes of others. It is how we learn as children. But at some point in life we are invited to look at life through the eyes of God. Looking through the eyes of other humans what we see is given value by them. Looking through the eyes of God gives us a different view. One way to do this is to pray with the New Testament. Another way is by Christian Meditation.
When we take up the practice of meditation or centering prayer, we are letting God lead us in ways we know not, but we go in trust.

What gifts are entrusted to God for the space of 20 or 30 minutes?
our ability to think
our capacity to love each other
our creative talent
Our imagination

What difficulties are we entrusting to God during this time?
all our worries and concerns
our fears about ourselves and our families and our world
All our physical miseries

What do we let go of?
the illusion that my own mind, so gifted, can figure
everything out
the illusion that my own good will by itself can cure
anything
the illusion that I am the master of my fate
the illusion that humans can bring about peace and justice on their own
the illusion that humans will always have the right views for me

Taking the attention off ourselves for 30 minutes in this way of praying "may not be exciting, but it is rewarding. It may not be dramatic but it does take courage. It may not challenge our mind but it challenges our fascination with ourselves." (source unknown)
Why meditate? So to entrust our lives to God that we let God have a free hand in our inmost being where God, in His wondrous love, works to transform us into love.

"Attentive to what is – the supreme reality of God’s Presence."

One message of the Benedictine John Main is that to be aware and attentive to the Presence of God, we must learn to stop thinking about ourselves. That is why he so strongly recommends Christian Meditation. As we sit in silence and repeat a prayer word, we give our attention to the prayer word as a way of taking attention off ourselves. All the while, as we have made that act of faith in the reality of the Presence of God, we are just letting God work in our hearts to wake us up to the love which God has for us.
This is a journey for everyone!. It is simple. It is an act of trust in the love that God has for us. And it is good to remember that St. Paul has told us that the Holy Spirit prays in us. Often with ‘groaning". I remember one time after my mother was in her 90’s I heard her groaning and I rushed to her room. She just said: Oh I am all right, I was just having a groaning prayer.
So whenever we pray and ini whatever way, the Holy Spirit is praying in us and for us. We do not need to fear. What we need is persistence. Say your chosen prayer word or phrase, over and over and come back to it whenever you find yourself thinking about anything! This is the journey of our whole life. To go from self-concern to God-concern, to profound trust which flows from faith in the love God has for us.
I want to share a well-known prayer of St.Ignatius. He wrote it first in Latin and often said it in Latin so you will see a difference from the one translated from the Spanish. I might add also that early Church Fathers thought grace was relly the uncreated Energy of God What a gift!
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and all my will, - all that I have and possess. You, Lord, have given them all to me. I now give it back to you, O Lord. All of it is yours. Dispose of it according to your will. Give me love of yourself along with your grace for that is sufficient for me.

the presence of freedom

"However great be the beauty of something from God, it is not acclaimed if freedom is not present." 6th century Syrian Catholic Poet Jacob Sureg

Until the 7th century, the Syriac language was widely used among the early Christians. It was the language closest to the Aramaic that Jesus and those with him spoke. Lately we have had some of those early writings translated into English and we see a fascinating way of telling about the Gospel stories. They sang hymns in Church that were dialogues between people in the Bible. So in one dialogue song about Mary we see her in a dialogue with Gabriel and we see that these early Christians "understood Mary’s obedience to mean that she made her choice by her own intelligent free will." For example in one song, God gives advice to Gabriel, "Do not stand up to Mary or argue. For she is stronger that you in argument, Do not speak too many words to her, for she is stronger that you in her replies….If she starts to question you closely, disclose to her the mystery and then be off.
Yes, Mary had freedom of thought and speech and this was paradoxically combined with her unwavering acceptance of God’s word. "Behold the servant of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word." God, in wisdom, needs our consent. In Mary, God who had so graced her, also found this freedom to say Yes to the work of God
A great prayer to say before we meditate. This is a way to say Yes to God!
Now St. Augustine said to God: "our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O God." this is the reality we seek: to experience the mystery of God. And yet we need to be very sure that it is not ourselves who create or can give ourselves this experience. All is grace. That is, all good is given to us gratuitously. Unearned, unmerited, unachieved, without our control. Mary freely chose. It is amazing that we are indeed free to say yes to God. Remember how St. Paul says: one plants, one waters, but only God gives the increase.
How shall we open our hearts to the gratuitous giving by God? One good way is to meditate daily. We are busy people. We have responsibilities. Yet we have come apart for silent prayer. We also may have many intentions. People we care about for whom we pray. The world in all its warring and hatreds and imagined needs for getting even. So in need of the blessing of God and yet so often not ready at all to hear. Our own need for forgivenees, our need to learn to trust in God.
How shall we be receivers? How shall we let go of preoccupation with ourselves as the Pope said.
One way is to make the time and take the time for Christian Meditation. We set aside two periods each day. When we sit down to pray, we must indeed remind ourselves that God is with us. Not just the written prayer, but an inner personal acknowledgment of the presence of God. As Ps 23; thou art with me, thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Here with attention to the reality of the Presence of God, we let go of all preoccupations. We entrust all to God. we do not bring an agenda to God. We simply say with Mary: Behold the servant of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word.