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December 31, 2017 - December 27, 2018
He makes us see that we persistently fall back on ourselves, rely more on ourselves than on God, and are inclined more to love of self than love of God. So we remain in darkness.
All these experiences of the heart may remind us of God’s presence, but their absence does not prove God’s absence.
All mystics stress with an impressive unanimity that prayer is “grace”—that is, a free gift from God, to which we can only respond with gratitude. But they hasten to add that this precious gift indeed is within our reach.
On the contrary, a word or sentence repeated frequently can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness, and thus to listen to the voice of God.
Such a simple, easily repeated prayer can slowly empty out our crowded interior life and create the quiet space where we can dwell with God. It can be like a ladder along which we can descend into the heart and ascend to God.
The practice of contemplative prayer is the discipline by which we begin to “see” the living God dwelling in our own hearts.
is not that we see God in the world, but that God-with-us recognizes God in the world. God speaks to God, Spirit speaks to Spirit, heart speaks to heart.
The divine Spirit alive in us makes our world transparent for us and opens our eyes to the presence of the divine Spirit in all that surrounds us. It is with our heart of hearts that we see the heart of the world….
Although it is important and even indispensable for our spiritual lives to set apart time for God and God alone, our prayer can only become unceasing [prayer] when all our thoughts—beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful—can be thought in the presence of the One who dwells in us and surrounds
God’s presence is so much beyond the human experience of being together that it quite easily is perceived as absence. God’s absence, on the other hand, is often so deeply felt that it leads to a new sense of God’s presence….
Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was most profoundly revealed.
Above all, prayer is a way of life that allows you to find stillness in the midst of the world where you open your hands to God’s promises and find hope for yourself, your neighbor, and your world.
In the end, a life of prayer is a life with open hands—a life where we need not be ashamed of our weaknesses but realize that it is more perfect for us to be led by the Other than to try to hold everything in our own hands.
“The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), Jesus said. The prayer of the heart takes these words seriously. When we empty our minds from all thoughts and our hearts from all experiences, we can prepare in the center of our innermost being the home for the God who wants to dwell in us.
And then we can realize that it is not we who pray, but the Spirit of God who prays in us.
had a very vivid realization that I must create some free space in my innermost self so that I may indeed invite others to enter and be healed.
Compassion, therefore, calls for a self-scrutiny that can lead to inner gentleness.
Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.
Perhaps there will be fear and uncertainty when you first come upon this “unfamiliar terrain,” but slowly and surely you will discover an order and a familiarity that deepens your longing to stay home with yourself.
Silence means rest, rest of body and mind in which we become available for him whose heart is greater than ours. That is very threatening; it is like giving up control over our actions and thoughts, allowing something creative to happen not by us but to us.
wanting to grasp the ultimate meaning of our existence, struggling with our identity?
Without silence the Spirit will die in us and the creative energy of our life will float away and leave us alone, cold, and tired.
Prayer creates that openness in which God is given to us.
John Eudes* talked about that moment, that point, that lies before comparison, before the beginning of the vicious cycle or the self-fulfilling prophecy. That is the moment, point, or place where meditation can enter in. It is the moment to stop reading, speaking, socializing, and to “waste” your time in meditation.
In meditation we can come to the affirmation that we are not created by other people but by God, that we are not judged by how we compare with others but by how we fulfill the will of God.
The contemplative looks not so much around things but through them into their center. Through their center he discovers the world of spiritual beauty that is more real, has more density, more mass, more energy, and greater intensity than physical matter.
Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and ask him more directly to give you joy, peace, and a pure heart.
You will always continue to have feelings of depression, anger, and restlessness, but when God dwells in the center of the storm, the storm is less frightening and you can live with trust that in the midst of all of the darkness you will be led to a place of joy and peace.
your meditation you can ask yourself, ‘Where is the glory of God? If the glory of God is not there where I am, where else can it be?’
believe that true prayer makes us into what we imagine. To pray to God leads to becoming like God….
The more we come to depend on the images offered to us by those who try to distract us, entertain us, use us for their purposes, and make us conform to the demands of a consumer society, the easier it is for us to lose our identity. These
Listen to your heart. It’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus who dwells in the very depths of your heart.
But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you’ll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it.
Prayer allows us to lead into the center of our hearts not only those who love us but also those who hate us. This is possible only when we are willing to make our enemies part of ourselves and thus convert them first of all in our own hearts.
Celebration is not just a way to make people feel good for a while; it is the way in which faith in the God of life is lived out, through both laughter and tears.
Joy can be caught neither in one feeling or emotion nor in one ritual or custom but is always more than we expect, always surprising, and, therefore, always a sign that we are in the presence of the Lord of life.
This desire for solitude is often the first sign of prayer, the first indication that the presence of God’s Spirit no longer remains unnoticed. As we empty ourselves of our many worries, we come to know not only with our mind but also with our heart that we never were really alone, that God’s Spirit was with us all along.
This experience of God’s acceptance frees us from our needy self and thus creates new space where we can pay selfless attention to others.
Every time in history that men and women have been able to respond to the events of their world as an occasion to change their hearts, an inexhaustible source of generosity and new life has been opened, offering hope far beyond the limits of human prediction.
In praying for others, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found by the divine love that holds the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace.
Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.
And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer….
Those who can sit with their fellow man, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life into a dying heart.
Somehow, if you discover that your little life is part of the journey of humanity and that you have the privilege to be part of that, your interior life shifts. You
When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.
Cure without care makes us preoccupied with quick changes, impatient and unwilling to share each other’s burden. And so cure can often become offending instead of liberating.
To care for the elderly means then that we allow the elderly to make us poor by inviting us to give up the illusion that we created our own life and that nothing or nobody can take it away from us.
When we have emptied ourselves of false occupations and preoccupations, we can offer free space to old strangers, where not only bread and wine but also the story of life can be shared.
We will never be able to really care if we are not willing to paint and repaint constantly our self-portrait, not as a morbid self-preoccupation, but as a service to those who are searching for some light in the midst of the darkness.
Caring is first a way to our own aging self, where we can find the healing powers for all those who share in the human condition.
