By Leon Bent –
Saints, broadly speaking, are all people who follow Jesus Christ and live their lives according to His teaching. Catholics, however, also use the term more narrowly to refer to, especially holy men and women who, by persevering in the Christian Faith and living extraordinary lives of virtue have already entered Heaven. The holiness of everyday saints, said Rome’s Pontiff, “gives holiness to the church and that gives hope!”
The fact that these same people make mistakes and sin, Pope Francis said does not destroy their witness. “If sometimes one of these Christians commits a serious sin, but repents and asks forgiveness,” that too is a sign of having a faith founded on the rock of Christ.
We are all sinners, we are weak, but if we put our hope in him we can move forward. This is the joy of a Christian: knowing that in him there is hope, forgiveness, peace and joy.” Faith in Jesus, he said, is the source of hope, not “things that are here today and gone tomorrow.”
Contemplative Spirituality is Slowing Down to be with Jesus.
In contemplation and mysticism, I speak to God, and when God speaks, I listen attentively. I dwell in God and God lives in me. Most people pray with the mind: saying prayers, and ask God for what they and others need. The deeper mystery of prayer is to do so with the heart. It consists of simply being with God – “at-oneness”. The Holy Spirit is the relationship of love between Father and Son. It is this Spirit Jesus has breathed into every human heart.
Contemplative and mystical union is not the privilege only of monks and nuns. It is a dimension of prayer to which we are all called. We must go to the depths, to where the spirit of Jesus himself prays in our hearts, in the sheer silence of his union with our Father in the Holy Spirit. Meditation is the work of finding and becoming one with stillness, which is the hallmark of the Holy Spirit. It is the total openness to and oneness with the prayer of Jesus. It is being silent, still and simple.
Silence is truthful. It is healing. It pacifies our inner turmoil. It is a cure for destructive anger, anxiety and bitterness. Silence in prayer, as between two people, is a sign of trust and acceptance. In its essence, it is nothing less that “worship in spirit and truth” (Jn.4:23-24).
God is simple – love is simple. Meditation and prayer are simple. It means passing beyond self-consciousness, self-analysis and self-rejection. This means the repetition of a single sacred word faithfully, and lovingly. This word is called a mantra. Take for example, the “Jesus Prayer!” This is a very ancient Christian form of prayer: one utters the name “Jesus” or a sentence, preferably comprising not more than seven words. Please say it with great composure, without haste, and expecting anything to happen. Listen to the mantra with your whole being.
The Mantra
The meaning and sound of the word are both important. The mantra slowly, but surely, becomes a part of our very being. It leads us by faith. Listening to the mantra, with faith and love is the ever deepening work of a journey to God. The silence of the vowel sounds, for example, gives the Name, YaHeWH, a sense of reverence, awe and wonder! It points to the Passionate, Personal and Profound Divine Presence (cf.Ps.116:8).
The mantra clears a way through all the thoughts of past and future to reveal, in a thought-free state, the radiant reality of the here and now: the moment with Christ!
Chanting the Name of Jesus
The seemingly ceaseless recitation of the name of Jesus (Philippians 2:9), the name above every other name, offers a devotee the most meaningful vibration of the Spirit. Chant the Jesus Name in lengthening mellifluence, and it will resound with cosmic glory. It is like the soothing, scintillating, sound of ten thousand temple bells, which have long since stopped ringing. The faint echo and echo, in the heart, never stops. It releases into the air, a sense of transcendence, majesty and mystery – trance-like. A mantra or chant represents God in His fullness.
These two forms of prayer help us discover the absolute wonder of the presence of God. Secondly, the ordinary is shot through with the extraordinary.
Married Couples and Communion with God
Married people have many innovative ways to deal with their individual needs for solitude, stillness and silence, and growing desire to alter social activity. One married woman described her solution for obtaining quiet time as follows: “I take time each day when my husband is at the work-place to be in the presence of God. This turns out to be three hours or more, usually. When he’s home we often sit together and look at the ocean for long stretches of time. Our thoughts are centred on Jesus, not on community or money matters, certainly not on gossip.
Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich
Author and researcher Duane Elgin calls this “voluntary simplicity,” a “contrast community.”One man insisted: “I’ve simplified my life, so that, I’ll have time for long walks in the woods, making pottery, gardening and writing. This has brought me much spiritual maturity and wholesomeness. As a woman, a wife and mother of two children put it: “I feel a person who says “Yes” to all requests for partying, running off to malls, involving oneself in unnecessary routines, is pulled in all directions at once. Research shows that many spoke often with a lingering glow, of parents, ex-spouses or friends who chose “outwardly simple but inwardly rich lives.” This calls for a radical and fundamental option for closeness with the Most High God: tat tvam asi; where “I” and “Thou” merge into the “One I-Thou”! (VJTR, July 2017).
The Call to Saintliness is a Mystery
The great mystic Thomas Merton tried and tried, again and again, to be in touch with God, but failed. He ultimately found God, through the latter’s intervention, in a remote, long-forgotten, rustic place, in a wet field in Sri Lanka. Surely he stood still, with God, fully enlightened, in solitary splendour. St. Ignatius was converted from a delinquent to a great saint, by just watching the river Cardona flow by, in gentle, serene, ripples. Finding God and becoming a saint is a mysterious, full-of-surprises, mystical call from the Lord, for us, ordinary people – indeed, everyone.
For example, a woman and her husband realized about the same time that, they needed to improve the quality of their daily lives, and decided on spending Prime Time, not leftover time, with one another. They wanted better, more natural surroundings, fresh air and water, trees, hills, more opportunities to just “gaze vacantly at nature,” (William Wordsworth) it’s symphony of sounds, it’s refreshing smells. They wanted to grow their own food, and the like in the hope that they would be divinely blessed. These are “counter cultural” truly prophetic people, in a world of “conspicuous consumption” (Thorstein Veblen Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, p.64).
Discernment is a Necessary Ingredient for Saintliness
A man in his seventies said that he had to make a break with conventional living. He wanted to be God-centred, with plenty of time for Bible study and reflection, to be in communion with the Lord and to search for a non-violent way of life, with all its twists, snarls and intricacies. He prayed that he make the right decision in the eyes of the Lord. He discerned how he should not be mistaken as a why-try, humdrum lethargy. Discernment is putting oneself in God’s shoes. It is “to listen to that silent, still, small voice within”. It is the “pearl of great price,” to buy which, the merchant had to sell all his goods….It is costly grace which must be sought after again and again….a door at which the person must knock. Such grace is expensive because it cost a man, Jesus, his life. It is grace because it gives a man the only true life (Dietrich Bonhoffer, The Cost of Discipleship).
And, now, the stark surprise and this final flourish! “Sinners make the best contemplatives,” according to the Cloud of Unknowing, the medieval spiritual classic. To listen to the silence of the heart, is the silence waiting for us beyond the orbit of our noisy narcissistic world. This heals us and makes us whole again. And, to be whole is to be holy (Christian Meditation, Laurence Freeman OSB).
The last word: “Contemplating is looking at Jesus, just the way Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, looking at him with love” (Lk.10:38-42); it is “contemplating Jesus in the Mysteries of his Life, “Seeking Jesus in Contemplation and Discernment,” Robert Faricy, S.J.).
Leon Bent is an ex-Seminarian and studied the Liberal Arts and Humanities, and Philosophy, from St. Pius X College, Mumbai. He holds Masters Degree in English Literature and Aesthetics. He has published three Books and have 20 on the anvil. He has two extensively “Researched” Volumes to his name: Hail Full of Grace and Matrimony: The Thousand Faces of Love. He won The Examiner, Silver Pen Award, 2000 for writing on Social Issues, the clincher being a Researched Article on Gypsies in India, published in an issue of the (worldwide circulation) Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, New Delhi. On April, 28, 2018, Leon received the Cardinal Ivan Dias Award for a research paper in Mariology.