St Wilfrid’s talk on contemplation 9.12.20

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

Taking up that invitation is what Christianity is all about - the regular putting aside of worldly concerns to contemplate the Lord Jesus Christ and enter his rest.

The task of prayer and contemplation is one of heart and will. The mind with its reason and language can take us to God but only the heart can drink of him – by love he is holden not by thought as a medieval writer puts it.

Contemplation, like prayer as a whole, has few absolute rules other than truthfulness. As C.S.Lewis wrote: The prayer preceding all prayers is “May it be the real I who speaks.  May it be the real Thou that I speak to”. Any yearning for contemplative prayer is inseparable from the openness to God we express in penitence for sin and also the readiness to allow all our images of God to give way before the sense of his Presence, a sort of ‘iconoclasm’.  

Spiritual guidance is important in all of this. Talk to a priest if you want help finding a spiritual director locally

Contemplation links to the whole of life. Thomas Merton wrote his great book Seeds of Contemplation show book which I deeply recommend. He was also a passionate advocate against the Vietnam War, nuclear arms and racism.

Activism and prayer are essential to our Faith, though many recognise it is the neglect of the latter, transcendent element that most weakens the church in our day. It is significant that meditation and medicine are words with the same root – we need healing of spirit as well as healing of body and mind.

The Italian writer, Carlo Carretto, inspired by the spirituality of Charles De Foucauld wrote: The closer you come to God as you ascend the slopes of contemplation, the greater grows your craving to love human beings on the level of action.

Much of what I have said about contemplation refers to prayer of all kinds – we are bound to confess, thank and intercede as well as to contemplate – and some of us are bound to the liturgical office.

Now a little advice on the nitty gritty of the prayer of contemplation.

We need a place that is quiet – not too quiet, some say, since a little amount of noise around us helps balance the inner noise we all suffer inside of us!

We need agreement from our family, unless we live alone, for a set time apart from them. 

We need some form of preparation before we sit or kneel to pray. There are various what I call ‘springboards’ to dive off towards the Lord.

We can prepare something to read from scripture or a passage or prayer that has struck us from our spiritual reading – you can’t be a contemplative without living close to scripture and the writings of Christians through the ages.

Some find being before the Reserved Sacrament in Church a helpful aid, or the time immediately after say a quiet weekday Eucharist when they can dwell on Christ in us the hope of glory Colossians 1:27b. Icons, similarly, can serve as a springboard for contemplation.

It is possible to contemplate springing off from natural beauty, even on what I call a ‘prayer walk’ though spiritual writers recommend a constant posture of the body, straight back etc. as a helpful basis for the spiritual exercise involved.  Walking at a constant pace on a known route can serve.

A decision about which means to use as a basis for contemplation is important before you arrive at the place of prayer.  Sometimes, very often, we pick up on where we left off the day before, which is the value of a spiritual journal show.  It helps to pen a couple of lines after your daily prayer to help monitor your work of prayer.

When we finally sit down or kneel there is value in an act of offering of the time to God and an invocation of the Holy Spirit to anoint our contemplation.  Some of us will want to fit self-examination, thanksgiving, intercession and the Office alongside the higher prayer of contemplation into our major daily prayer offering.

Relaxation exercises for the body which help prepare for prayer are well dealt with in Tony De Mello’s writings, especially Sadhana and Praying Body and Soul show.

The choice and use of a  mantra or holy phrase to settle the mind is another feature that may need attending to before we get going in our prayer. I use the Jesus Prayer for this - Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Show book

Then we contemplate. Distractions will assail us. We stick at a set posture and duration, resisting the natural desire to quit or change direction unless there is a clear lead from God to do so.

Michael Ramsey when asked how long he prayed for each day was said to answer ‘a couple of minutes’. He added that it usually took half an hour to get there! In many ways the duration of time and the discipline to stick with it is pivotal to a life of contemplation. God bless us all in our response to the invitation in today’s Gospel: 

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.