Posted on by Kurt Bodling

benefits of regular prayer

“The duration of prayer influences its quality, because a longer period of time helps the body assume a deeper prayer stance. In addition to this irreplaceable prolonged prayer, it is important during the day to consecrate the present moment by reciting a few invocations. One of them, the Angelus, has a long tradition in the Church. … Moreover, even in very different places, knowing that at that precise moment all are praying with the same formula strengthens our awareness of being interdependent in Christ.”

Okumura, Augustine Ichiro. Awakening to Prayer. Translated by Theresa Kazue Hiraki and Albert Masaru Yamato. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1994, p. 64.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

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)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

including the Church triumphant

“We are to be informed by the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus; by the leading of the Spirit; by the wisdom we find in scripture; by the fact of our baptism and all that it means; by the sense of God’s presence and guidance through prayer; and by the fellowship of other Christians, both our contemporaries and those of other ages whose lives and writings are ours to use as wise guides. … Part of the art of being a Christian is learning to be sensitive to all of them, and to weigh what we think we are hearing from one quarter alongside what is being said in another.”

Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006, p. 191.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

divine presence

“Since the reigning presence of God is within us, any approach to exploring the mystical life will naturally include exercises and practices such as meditation and contemplation, intended to help us become more open to the hidden (mystical) presence of God within. As worthy as such practices are by themselves they are incomplete. Our journey to divine union also needs to be nourished by participation in some sort of community of fellow seekers who are trying, as best they can, to figure out what living and following Jesus is all about.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 203.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Thomas Aquinas and exclusion

“Thomas already makes that fatal statement ‘that to be subject to the Roman pope is necessary for salvation.’ In one sentence he is excluding the whole of the eastern Church from salvation.”

Küng, Hans. The Catholic Church: a Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2003, p. 103.

Comment: …and many others as well!

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the Church’s teaching authority

“The truth is that the saints arrived at the deepest and most vital and also the most individual and personal knowledge of God precisely because of the Church’s teaching authority, precisely through the tradition that is guarded and fostered by that authority.”

Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 146.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

contemplation in community

"And it is unfortunate that even in communities whose observance is supposedly designed to favor contemplation there are elements which seriously frustrate it.

“The regular communal life is usually lived at the tempo of those who are active and extroverted. Impatient of interior subtleties and intolerant of all that does not bring tangible result, these good people want to know, at the end of the day, that they have done something in the service of God. Hence their life is geared to reassure them. The day is divided up into many exercises in which prayer is measured by the clock and by the exactitude with which the ceremonial is executed. Attention is concentrated on exterior performance.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, p. 113. (Merton wrote this in 1959)

Merton was, of course, writing about monastic communities which – if you notice the date – had not even at that point been opened up by Vatican II. It seems to me that the same things could be said about Church-related colleges and about every local congregation: things are lived there “at the tempo of those who are active and extroverted” and not at the tempo of those who are contemplatives and introverted.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the Church paradox

“The biggest paradox about the Church is that she is at the same time essentially traditional and essentially revolutionary. But that is not as much of a paradox as it seems, because Christian tradition, unlike all others, is a living and perpetual revolution.”

Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 142.

There are so many paradoxes (or apparent paradoxes) in the spiritual life. This is just one more: the Church – that is, Christianity – is traditional and revolutionary. It is liberal and conservative. It is active and contemplative. And it is one.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

true solitude

“There is no true solitude except interior solitude. And interior solitude is not possible for anyone who does not accept his true place in relation to other men. There is no true peace possible for the man who still imagines that some accident of talent or grace or virtue segregates him from other men and places him above them.

“God does not give us graces of talents or virtues for ourselves alone. We are members one of another and everything that is given to one member is given for the whole body.”

Merton, Thomas. Seeds of Contemplation. (NY: Dell, 1949), page 36

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the Holy Spirit, mystics, and Church

“It can be said at once that the inspirations of the Holy Ghost are seldom completely at variance with the sanely traditional norms of religious societies. However the history of the saints is full of examples when those led directly by God fell under the furious censures of professionally holy men. The trial of St. Joan of Arc is a case in point.

“The life of a contemplative is apt to be one constant tension and conflict between what he feels to be the interior movements of grace and the objective, exterior claims made upon him by the society to whose laws he is subject. The tension is heightened by the realization that false mystics are always ready to claim exemption from social norms on the basis of private inspiration. And the society itself, speaking through its most articulate members, will not be slow to remind him of the fact.”  (pp. 76-77)

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003. [Merton wrote this in 1959]