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lectio’s depths

"Lectio is a practice in which you slow down, creating space in which you can gently learn to seek, and discern, God’s presence hidden in the sacred text and in the subtle stirrings of your heart and mind.

“By opening up to the divine presence through the written word, you simultaneously open yourself up to the deeply relational nature of the Christian contemplative life, which is indeed the heart of the mystical path.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, pp. 256-257.

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good news

“The good news of mystical Christianity offers a new way of thinking about God, and especially of experiencing God. It’s good news for everyone, especially for anyone who is seeking a spirituality that is anchored in love, compassion, community, justice, and higher consciousness.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 116

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benefit of Christ’s suffering

“We must give ourselves wholly to this matter, for the main benefit of Christ’s passion is that man sees into his own true self and that he be terrified and crushed by this. Unless we seek that knowledge, we do not derive much benefit from Christ’s passion.”

Luther, Martin. “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion” (1519) Luther’s Works Vol. 42. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969, page 10.

Comment: Here Luther says that the main benefit to us of Christ’s passion is the crushing of the Law. It comes down to the fact that if I had not sinned then Christ would not have had to suffer and die. The grace only benefits me after that.

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losing focus while in prayer

“In my day I have prayed many such canonical hours myself, regrettably, and in such a manner that the psalm or the allotted time came to an end before I even realized whether I was at the beginning or in the middle. … But, praise God, it is now clear to me that a person who forgets what he has said has not prayed well. In a good prayer one fully remembers every word and thought from the beginning to the end of the prayer.” 

Luther, Martin. “A Simple Way to Pray” (1535) Luther’s Works Vol. 43. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969, page 199.

Comment: Our minds wander all the time. Even when we are in prayer or at worship or during a sermon. (Try especially not to let that happen when you are leading prayers and worship, or preaching!) In prayer times, if you get to the end – however you are measuring that – and can’t really remember what you said, there is good reason to question just what you’ve been doing. This may well mean that you shouldn’t pray for too long a time. It could be like advice for study or exercise: repeated short periods of time are usually more helpful than long stretches.

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one Catholic theologian’s view

“Under the direction of Pius IX, an emotionally unstable man untroubled by intellectual doubt who evinced the symptoms of a psychopath, the medieval Counter-Reformation Catholic fortress was now built up against modernity with all available powers. The chill of religious indifference, hostility to the church, and a lack of faith might prevail outside in the modern world. But within, papalism and Marianism disseminated the warmth of home: emotional security through popular piety of every kind, from pilgrimages through devotions for the masses to the May prayers to Mary.”

Küng, Hans. The Catholic Church: a Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2003, page 161.

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unmoored from the old

“Even where the contemplative is not expressly forbidden to follow what he believes to be the inspiration of God (and this not rarely happens), he may feel himself continually and completely at odds with the accepted ideals of those around him. Their spiritual exercises may seem to him to be a bore and waste of time. Their sermons and their conversation may leave him exhausted with a sense of futility: as if he had been pelted with words without meaning. Their choral offices, their excitement over liturgical ceremony and chant may rob him of the delicate taste of an interior manna that is not found in formulas of prayers and exterior rites. If only he could be alone and quiet, and remain in the emptiness, darkness, and purposelessness in which God speaks with such overwhelming effect! But no, spiritual lights and nosegays are forced upon his mind, he must think and say words, he must sing ‘Alleluias’ that somebody else wants him to feel. He must strive to smack his lips on a sweetness which seems to be unutterably coarse and foul: not because of what it aspires to say, but simply because it is secondhand.” (p. 77)

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, page 77. (NOTE: Merton wrote this text in 1959)

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image and likeness

“In Christian scripture, following the Septuagint tradition, tselem was normally translated by the Greek term eikon (see Col. 1:15, etc.). ‘Likeness’ was rendered by homoiosis or homoioma and their cognates, a linguistic fact that would bear difficult fruit in the great Christological controversies that split the early Church between Orthodoxy and Arianism. Eikon, of course, is the same as ‘icon’ in English, and still refers to the sacred image. It is worth noting that the centuries-long dispute in the Eastern Church, as well as later in Puritan England and New England regarding the propriety of sacred images, has its roots in the apophatic rejection of any representations of the unseen, invisible, incomprehensible God.”

Woods, Richard. Meister Eckhart: Master of Mystics. New York: Continuum, 2011, p. 141.

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missionary pilgrims

“It is true, of course, that many of these pilgrimages brought Irish monks into inhabited places where the natives were willing and ready to receive the Christian message. The monks then became missionaries. The main reason for their journeys was not the missionary apostolate but the desire of voluntary exile.”

Merton, Thomas. “From Pilgrimage to Crusade.” (1964) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 189.

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varieties of service

“To love, one must be free, and while the apostolic life implies one mode of freedom in the world, the monastic life has its own freedom which is that of the wilderness. The two are not opposed or mutually exclusive. They are complementary, and, on the highest level, they turn out to be one and the same: union with God in the mystery of total love, in the oneness of His Spirit.”

Merton, Thomas. “The Monastic Renewal: Problems and Prospects.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 399.

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changes in solitude

"It is even possible that in solitude I shall return to my beginning and rediscover the value and perfection of simple vocal prayer–and take greater joy in this than in contemplation.

“So that the cenobite may have high contemplation, while the hermit has only his Pater and Ave Maria. In that event I choose the life of a hermit in which I live in God always, speaking to Him with simplicity, rather than a life of disjointed activity sublimated by a few moments of fire and exaltation.”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958. (pbk ed 1999), p.110.