St Richard, Haywards Heath Commemoration of St John of the Cross 14 Dec 2022

 Introduction to Mass

Today, with some deference to Advent season, we commemorate St John of the Cross who lived in Spain during the 16th century and helped reform the Carmelite religious order. As a contemplative he wrote ‘It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others’. As we begin Mass by calling to mind our sins we might recall our failure to refrain from judging the remarks, deeds and lives of others. Such refraining, however difficult in the judgmental culture of the 21st century, is part of loving our neighbour. As we reflect we might recall another saying of John, ‘In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone’.

Sermon

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled, I form the light and create the dark’ (Isaiah 45:6) Those words of prophecy spoken through Isaiah in our first reading capture something of the spiritual invitation of today’s saint. Spaniard John of the Cross was a man of his times, the troubled times of the sixteenth century with reformation and counter reformation shaping the Church. With his near contemporary Teresa of Avila John was about shaking Christians out of complacency, even Christians living under the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. It's almost unbelievable that his attempts to reform religious life led to his being imprisoned by fellow monks in a tiny cell in Toledo for nine months!

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled’. John saw this and taught the need for Christians, even monks, to work for detachment, emptiness and poverty, before God. ‘Desire to possess nothing’ he taught, ‘in order to arrive at being everything’. God is the greatest good to which all other goods must be subordinated. Through worship, prayer, study, service and reflection we are to shake off inordinate desire for trivial pursuits and see growth in our desire for God’s agenda in our lives and the working out of that for the good of the world around us. As a smartphone user I am challenged by that teaching on detachment as, like many, I feel the grip of electronic media as a world of sensory addiction tantamount to bondage. I try to break this bond, especially as part of my Friday fast. St John of the Cross encourages decisive action here. The soul that is attached to anything however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union he teaches. ‘Whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken the bird cannot fly’.

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled’ writes Isaiah. ‘I form the light and create the dark’. A second aspect of St John is the insight he gives in his mystical works: ‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel’, ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’, ‘The Spiritual Canticle’ and ‘The Living Flame of Love’. Complementary to his call for detachment from worldly concerns we read here invaluable teaching on purification of Christian aspiration towards God. His teaching gives unique insight into times of spiritual desolation. What do we make of times when God seems absent or far away? ‘I form the light and create the dark’. To Saint John of the Cross times of darkness - and he had a lot of them - are God-given and can be precious times if we keep looking to the Lord. His poem title ‘The dark night of the soul’ has entered Christian vocabulary. Through faithfulness in times of hardship, looking to God for being our loving God rather than for the consolation he gives on many occasions, we prove and we forge our love for God. 

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled, I form the light and create the dark’ May the prayers of St John of the Cross help deepen our dependence upon God through consolation and desolation, summer warmth and winter chill.

St Peter & St John, Wivelsfield Trinity 6 (17C) on prayer 24 July 2022

 

Lord, teach us to pray they asked Jesus. I want to look this morning at four aspects of prayer, of looking to Jesus: listening, friendship, recollection, and lastly empowerment. [ask children about what’s best and worst about school eg listening - we’re all being schooled]

Prayer, looking unto Jesus, is listening.  You can’t look to Jesus unless you give ear to him, unless you attend to him.  Our whole life depends on right listening – to other people and to ourselves at times – but chiefly to Jesus.Through prayer we hear from God.  We catch his inspirations for our life and for the world.

How do we look to Jesus in listening? A discipline of time offered to attend directly to God. 

Michael Ramsey’s quote – he prayed for 2 minutes but took 30 minutes to get there.

Scripture (show) is a means of looking to Jesus through listening to his Word. There is great power in imaginative listening to scripture. One way you can do this is to make the words of scripture more personal by changing the case of the pronoun in the passage. Take that Colossians passage. You could make it into a This is the Word of the Lord about John or whoever you are. It could read: When I John was buried with Christ in baptism, I was also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when I was dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of my flesh, God made me alive together with Christ, when he forgave me all my trespasses. As I read the passage like this it reminds me how God sees me and how I should see myself, as one dead to sin and alive to him. There are times when such an observation can be very powerful. This sort of exercise is about experiencing what we already possess as Christians, seeing ourselves as God sees us in his word. You read through prayerfully until God touches your Spirit and then hold yourself at that point once such a prayerful impulse has been given to you.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is secondly about friendship.  We seek our friends’ attention and he seeks ours. [children - are you looking forward to seeing more of your friends in the holidays?]

When friends meet they light up and so it is with Jesus and ourselves as we come before him in contemplation. When did you last sit in quiet before the Lord?  What is it that keeps you from doing so? Could you imagine Jesus, your friend, doing you any harm?

Contemplative prayer has been described as ‘spiritual radiotherapy’. St Augustine once said that the whole purpose of life is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen. Heart surgery of the Holy Spirit: the melting of coldness within cf heavenly microwave. A major barrier to contemplation is the way our minds get so distracted which hinders our hearts from contemplation. This is where the repeating of short words that engage and focus the mind can be helpful as in the Orthodox Jesus prayer. This involves repeating again and again the gospel prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. The value of the Jesus Prayer mentioned on is commended all through the Christian tradition.  

Please don’t hesitate to talk to me afterwards if you want guidance on the Jesus Prayer as I’ve written a book about it (show). Not that I’m expert - any expertise I possess is to know that when it comes to prayer we’re all on the bottom rung of the ladder!

Looking to Jesus in prayer though, to summarise the second heading, is about building friendship, about lighting one another up so that in the words of Nehemiah (8v10) the joy of the Lord [becomes] our strength. 

Looking to Jesus is thirdly recollection, prayer that takes stock of your life and celebrates what God has done and is doing and looks forward to what God is going to do in us and through us.

The value of prayer journaling (show). Tis grace both led me safe thus far … and grace will lead me home. A good exercise is to look back over your life and recollect with Jesus the five biggest spiritual milestones along the way, your five most powerful desires, your five worst fears. Recollection is about such reminiscing or calling to mind.  It is also about ‘collecting again’ or recovering control of oneself. Through looking to God we gain self-possession. 

Attention to God, mindfulness of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian life.The recollected woman or man inhabits her or his words, is able to be present to Jesus at all times so that Jesus can be in them and show through them.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is lastly empowerment. As we heard in the Gospel: If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13).

Well we did ask for the Spirit - or others asked, at baptism and confirmation, the birth of our Christian commitment and in the receiving of Holy Communion - but we need to keep inviting him by asking regularly for the Holy Spirit.  Prayer is an empowerment especially by the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we pray we can at times feel God’s touch upon our heart, see some sort of vision or be led to some particular scripture verse as we look to Jesus. This is charismatic prayer, literally graced or given prayer in which our looking to Jesus and waiting before him is answered by a heavenly gift.

Looking to Jesus in prayer then is listening, friendship, recollection and empowerment. It's also as today’s Gospel reminds us about intercession which could provide another sermon!

For now though, may the Lord turn our eyes more and more upon himself so that our earthly pursuits may lose some of their enticement as we see more of him through seeking him in prayer. 

So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Patronal Festival 27 Dec 2020

Our patron Saint John is a timely figure for his gifts of contemplation and discernment. He ranks among the Twelve Apostles and Four Evangelists but is alongside Our Lady, Saint Peter and Saint Paul as foundational to the Church.

Whereas Our Lady, by her maternity, St Peter by Our Lord’s charge and St Paul by the Damascus Road commission are noted for action St John, is on the record rather for being with Our Lord, the beloved disciple, contemplating, discerning and sharing his contemplation with us through the inspired writings that take pride of place in the New Testament. 

As our patron St John invites us to make use of quieter time after Christmas Day to be with the Lord as his beloved disciples, to contemplate and seek the gift of discernment as we look forward to a new year. 

How do we see St John? Today’s feast is of St John, Apostle and Evangelist and the Collect reminds us how we are ‘enlightened by [the Apostle’s] teaching so we may [see and] walk in the light of God’s truth’. The consequence of welcoming Christ, John the Evangelist teaches is to ‘attain to the light of everlasting life’. No writing in scripture puts the invitation of the risen Lord Jesus Christ more plainly than that of St John in his Gospel, his letters, and his association with the Book of Revelation.

Today’s entrance antiphon summarises our patron: ‘This is John, who reclined on the Lord’s breast at supper, the blessed Apostle, to whom celestial secrets were revealed and who spread the words of life through all the world’.

Over my years I have been privileged to visit places traditionally associated with St John. Galilee where the Lord called him from his work as a fisherman. Mount Thabor where he was privileged to see Jesus in glory. Jerusalem’s Mount Calvary where he stood with Mary under the Cross as represented here above us. Ephesus where he lived with Mary whom Jesus entrusted to John until her passing to heaven. Lastly Patmos where one Lord’s Day he received the text of the Book of Revelation which ends our Bibles.

Textual critics find evidence of a variety of styles in the three sections of John’s writings, the Fourth Gospel, the three letters of St John and the Revelation to John. This variety evidences the so-called Johannine school which worked with the Apostle to secure his copious grasp of the things of Christ got into print. I have here an icon (show) I bought on the Greek Island of Patmos which shows this process. You might be able to see John’s head in contemplation inclined to our left where lines descend from above symbolising his discernment of the book of Revelation. The text of this book he is relaying to the scribe on the right who puts his words onto scrolls copies of which have descended to us. These scrolls were made part of the 1600 year old Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum, the earliest Christian Bible, a text from which this morning’s passages from Exodus 33, Psalm 117, 1 John 1 and John 21 were read out.

The last two of these four passages link directly to the contemplation and discernment of our Patron who describes his closeness to Jesus: ‘We declare to you... what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life - this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us’.

In these quieter days after the Christmas Feast, what we call the Octave or eight days of Christmas, we have an invitation to see Jesus with St John, to look to the Lord, to touch him in the Bread of Communion and to welcome what he has to say to us as ‘the word of life’. As our Patron leaned on the Lord physically at the Last Supper we should have an expectation that we too can set apart some time in the days before the New Year to lean upon the Lord, now risen and present not just to the original apostles but to all who will so welcome him by his Spirit.

Holman Hunt captured the force of this invitation the Lord gives us in his painting of The Light of the World (show). It illustrates one of his most powerful invitations in scripture mediated through the Revelation to John with the words from Chapter 3 verse 20 at the bottom. They capture the nearness of the Lord to each one of us which we recall at this season:

‘Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.’

To contemplate Jesus we need faith that he is always at the door of our soul. He is looking towards us. We need to pull off the ivy, so to speak, over the door of our heart, and open up by being quiet so we can come close to him in contemplation. We recall, as today’s collect reminds us, the Lord who ‘casts bright beams of light upon us’ scattering all darkness of heart and mind. 

‘I am the Light of the World’ Jesus says through John; ‘he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life’. 

So be it as we contemplate the Lord in these privileged days and grow the fruit of that contemplation in our lives. 

May such fruit be gathered from us by those who engage with St John’s Church family in the coming year as so many have benefited from the contemplation and writings of St John the Evangelist whose prayers we entreat on this our patronal feast. 

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.

All Saints Festival at St Bartholomew, Brighton 3.11.19

Christianity is about contemplation, communion and change.

As a cyclist I give energy to my bike hub which is transferred through a set of spokes to get the wheels moving.

Today’s Festival of All Saints is a challenge to get more on the move for God through deeper recognition of the hub of prayer and spokes of fellowship in moving us forward on the road to glory.

A few thoughts under these three headings: contemplation, communion and change.

First, contemplation which is as much at the heart of reality and Christianity as it is at the heart of All Saints Feast. St John describes the ultimate purpose of our lives as purification so as to be capable of seeing God in the population of heaven. ‘Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.’ (1 John 3:2-3)

At the hub of reality is God whose Son, as God and man, draws human beings into God’s own self-contemplation, the Father of the Son in the Holy Spirit, catching us into God’s own life so as to be energised. On earth contemplation of God is sporadic, by you and me, people of faith, in the midst of the uncoordinated chaos of life. In heaven saints purified from self-regard gaze in coordination upon the perfect goodness, truth and beauty of God. Through them, through the hub of their contemplation and intercession, God’s power flows into the world. 

Words crack in talking of such things. Because of the incarnation the heavenly hub of contemplation draws mortals into God’s praise and service through, with and in Jesus Christ. Heaven is the depth of earth seen by faith so that our prayer is always  allied to the powerful hub of contemplation we celebrate on All Saints Feast. It’s power is captured by Paul in his second letter to Corinth: ‘All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.’ (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Contemplation leads to change, to transformation, from the image into the likeness of God, ‘from one degree of glory to another’. Today we are reminded of the thousands beyond this world who possess such likeness and glory and the unclouded vision of God.

They are, to enter our second consideration, in communion with us, spokes carrying an overflow of energy from that hub of the contemplation of God to get the world moving heavenwards. ‘You have knit together your elect’ All Saints Collect says, ‘in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord’.

Just as the power and direction of a bicycle flows to the wheels through spokes so the power and direction of the Holy Spirit energises the world through the communion of saints in heaven and on earth. ‘Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we proclaim God’s great and glorious name’. Our contemplation, like that of the saints above, is never on our own. Paul asks in Ephesians that we may ‘have power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth… of … the fullness of God’ (Ephesians 3:18-19). In other words we only see God fully together with others. 

‘A heaven of souls without Christ would not be heaven’ Austin Farrer writes. ‘Could we not say the same about a heaven of Christ without souls? Christ is not only God in man, he is God in mankind; God in one man isolated from all others would not even be God in man, for a man in isolation is not a human possibility’. 

All Saints Festival is a feast of humanity put into its right mind. Against the individualism of the age the Church presents this unvarying challenge: in the last resort there are but two options, to have God in communion with the saints or to have nothing but yourself. 

It’s a troubling thought, isn’t it, that we will need to shelve judgmental thinking to take our place with the Saints. That great Christian thinker Thomas Merton puts this reality of heavenly communion in a hopeful way writing: ‘The saints are glad to be saints, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else’.

Contemplation, communion then thirdly change. If the hub of Christianity is contemplation, its spokes are the communion of saints. Through the corporate prayer of saints in heaven and on earth the power and direction of Christ’s Spirit moves wheels - in us, around us, energising, changing the cosmos. 

All Saints Feast is a day of obligation for attendance at the Eucharist because it is in worship we best learn from and find transformation from engaging with the adoration of heaven. As we look to the Lord in this action of taking, blessing, breaking and sharing our lives are taken, blessed and transformed. 

The eucharist like a bicycle draws power and direction from the hub of Christ’s contemplation of the Father. This energy of adoration is conveyed by the spokes of a fellowship meal. It’s consequence is the transformation not just of worshippers offering ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies’. What we are about at All Saints Mass, or at any Mass, is changing the world, looking as written in Revelation 11:15b for ‘the kingdom of the world [to] become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ’.

This morning as we contemplate God in communion with the saints we are changed - and so is the world weighing on each of our hearts. In pleading  this memorial sacrifice of Christ’s death and resurrection we are lifted into the heavenly hub of adoration, in communion with the Church in paradise and on earth, to effect the consecration of all that is to God’s praise and service.

I end with the last paragraph of a sermon on heaven by Austin Farrer: ‘There light spills evermore from the fountain of light; it fills the creatures of God with God as much as they will contain, and yet enlarges their heart and vision to contain the more. There it is all one to serve and to pray, for God invisible is visibly portrayed in the action he inspires. There the flame of deity burns in the candle of mankind, Jesus Christ; and all the saints, united with him, extend his person, diversify his operation, and catch the running fire. That is the Church, the Israel of God, of which we only exist by being the colonies and outposts, far removed and fitfully aware; yet able by faith to annihilate both time and distance, and offer with them the only pleasing sacrifice to God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; to him ascribing, as is most justly due, all might, dominion, majesty and power, henceforth and for ever. Amen.’

Ascension, Haywards Heath on Prayer 1 July 2018

Our individual prayer time is foundational to our spiritual life along with our gathering Sunday by Sunday on the Lord's Day, in the Lord's House, with the Lord's People around the Table of the Lord.

One of the most important things about our daily prayer is in fact the time we give.  Whatever we feel or don't feel at prayer the offering of 5, 10, 15 minutes daily is pivotal.

Archbishop Ramsey's quote – when asked how long he prayed for each day he said about two min but it sometimes took him half an hour to get there.

Time matters.  It is also important to offer Our Lord what we might call ‘prime time’.

We will make way for him better when we are most fully ourselves.  Some say the morning is the best, avoiding that burned out feeling at night, and I am one of those who prays in the morning, with more of a nod to God at night.

Time, and then secondly, place.  We might set apart a prayer space at home. We need then to be quiet, but perhaps not too quiet so we keep our feet on the ground. In a household there needs to be agreement.  (My own set up). We need perhaps to be comfortable, not so much that we fall asleep. Prayer invites attentiveness.  Some people say a hard backed chair gives you that business like feeling.  

Then what - now we move onto the real business of prayer and for that we enter on a number of options as starting points.  Prayer is a lifting of heart and mind to God and there are many different ‘airports’ for lift off. Wherever you ‘lift off’ from you have to be ‘there’ to get a lift.

Story of Theology professor Tom Smail’s sharing about prayer. God beating him on the head to get his religion from his head to his heart - the vital 14" - to be ‘there’.

So I’m there, ready. Before the start of my prayer I decide how my prayer will set off.  

Shall I choose a bible passage? Or am I so tired it would be better to sit looking at the Cross? Is there a piece of paper with some prayer biddings that I could start from? Or something that struck me in that sermon on Sunday? Or that spiritual book I’m reading? Shall I get my rosary out? Or say the Jesus Prayer to empty my mind of distraction? Today I will say Common Worship Daily Prayer and stop to contemplate wherever the Spirit underlines something. Or - it’s about time I did a thorough self-examination so I’ll get out a sin list or read the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians and see where love, joy, peace and all the rest are growing in my life. There was something terrible on the news this morning so I’ll look up Job 38-40 and think how God is so wonderful and beyond us. I was asked to pray for that lady whose son’s on drugs so I’ll start with them before I forget and see where my intercession leads. Or – what a lovely view through the window this morning – the sun on the leaves. Let’s start there.

I say Let’s – prayer is something we do with God. It’s also a human discipline.

It helps to have a decided basis or presupposition, so called, as you start your prayer.  It also matters to hold yourself to it eg. holding the bible for all 20 minutes to keep the focus.

Confession of sin before you pray is important – the bottom line for prayer is honesty.

Scripture is important - read through prayerfully until God touches your Spirit and then holding yourself at that point once such a prayerful impulse has been given to you. In prayer we talk to the Lord – and we listen! Scripture is so often God’s mouthpiece to us through which we hear his guiding voice. Listen so that you can do what Jesus says!

Story of my own use of Luke 7.11-17 The Widow of Nain (my mother) - ‘he gave him to his mother’.

Explain how the expectation of scripture speaking to me had been raised by spiritual direction over a retreat and how I had experienced spiritual direction and we have the same opportunity 16-22 September down the road at St Richard, Haywards Heath.

For Christ to dwell in our hearts we need to be exposed to his radiant love. Christian friends, holy priests, spiritual directors all of these help – but nothing can replace our own individual business with God, particularly silent contemplation. When did you last sit in quiet before the Lord?

Contemplation is a true refreshing of the soul. There is a story of how the Cure d’Ars, that great French saint of the 19th century, kept seeing a peasant sitting every day in church before the altar. What are you doing? He once asked him. ‘I look at him and he looks at me’ the peasant told the priest.

I’ve heard such contemplative prayer described as ‘spiritual radiotherapy’. St Augustine once said that ‘the whole purpose of life is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen’. The Chapel with the Blessed Sacrament reservation and its light is a particularly graced place when we can come into church between services. ‘I look at him and he looks at me’

A barrier to contemplation is the way our minds get so distracted that our hearts are hindered from contemplation. This is where the repeating of short words can be helpful as in the Orthodox Jesus prayer - you may be interested in my book (show) on Using the Jesus Prayer.

The Jesus Prayer is ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’. It combines Peter’s act of faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the prayer of the Publican, ‘Lord have mercy on me, a sinner’. It's simple yet profound, a biblical prayer we can trace back to the 4th century with a gift of settling the mind towards God. It’s always been central to Eastern Orthodoxy and the Orthodox influence on the Anglican monastery I visit in the woods at Crawley Down was my initial encouragement to use this form of prayer at all times. This monastery by the way always welcomes visitors.

I have found the Jesus Prayer contains the power of Jesus’ name and draw pray-ers more profoundly into the faith of his church and to deeper value scripture, sacrament, creed and commandments.

The simplification of anxiety and mental distraction sought in Buddhist type mindfulness exercises is found in the Jesus Prayer as, if you like, ‘God-given mantra’. Above all the Prayer helps relate worship to life and builds indwelling in God’s merciful love.

Prayer is a lifting of heart and mind to God. It’s a forgetting of self and a remembering of God. Because of our fallen nature that’s not natural. Though prayer’s a gift it's also a life-long struggle. That struggle is against self-love, self-pity and self-will in all its guises and disguises. It's a resolve to consecrate heart and mind, body and soul into God’s praise and service and not our own.

Through the discipline of prayer our aspirations, affections, resolutions, searchings, and strivings get directed away from ourselves to God. Our bodies are pledged to work for him in full health and ability. Our hearts open to enshrine the love of Christ as the principle of our whole being: life in remembrance of God, forgetful of self.

It’s been said that the Church of England is like a swimming pool.  All the noise comes from the shallow end. The Ascension is not a noisy Church as far as I can tell. Pray God, we have a depth about us and we want to go deeper.  We don't particularly want to be 'intelligent' Church or 'with it' Church, ‘low’ or 'high Church' so much as 'deep' Church - do we?  

Christianity is the gift of Jesus but it involves us in the task of prayerful devotion. Through that devotion, renewed in us as individuals, may others catch on to what Jesus is doing and be drawn to him through us.

When the church becomes a house of prayer it’s said the whole world will come running!