Food for the Journey

This morning's Eucharist was one of those occasions when the Spirit's presence was so tangible that one could almost have imagined it as a cloud filling St Peter's nave, like the cloud in 1 Kings 8.10-11 at the dedication of Solomon's Temple. I don't know that there was anything, any occasion, to explain it, but the action of the Eucharist became a holy ordering, a dance almost, with all of us as parts of that greater unity, the music seeming only to make audible for a moment the flowing pattern beneath the words and movements of the liturgy.

This was a pilgrim Eucharist, too: a moment on the path of each of us when the compass is reset, the course laid in. Our priest distributed the bread with the words, "The Body of Christ, food for the journey..." and the tiny, holy thing lay in the palm of my hand like a letter from home, bearing directions, and the very presence of our Companion.

The Action of Prayer

...[W]e have been looking at making action more contemplative, finding a contemplative dimension in our actions. But there is a real sense in which prayer is itself an action, an action whose fruit and extent cannot be measured or assessed; its ways are secret, not only secret from others but also secret from ourselves. The greater part of the fruit of our prayer and contemplation remains hidden with Christ in God.

The autobiography of St Therese of Lisieux culminates in a celebration of this power of prayer: she compares it to the lever of Archimedes which is able to raise up the world... This power of active contemplation belongs to every Christian, is realised in every Christian who participates in the fullness of the Christian vocation... 

Prayer is opening oneself to the effective, invisible power of God. One can never leave the presence of God without being transformed and renewed in his being, for this is what Christ promised. The thing that can only be granted by prayer belongs to God (Luke 11.13). However such a transformation does not take the form of a sudden leap. It takes time. Whoever persists in surrendering himself to God in prayer receives more than he desires or deserves. Whoever lives by prayer gains an immense trust in God, so powerful and certain, it can almost be touched. He comes to perceive God in a most vivid way. Without ever forgetting our weakness, we become something other than we are.

Mary David Totah OSB, Deepening Prayer: Life Defined by Prayer

I was so pleased to discover Sister Mary David's comments here. As I have proved on this blog over the years, it is hard to write of the life of prayer without seeming to assume a kind of sanctity or something which I most definitely lack, or without seeming (as sometimes in a Quaker context!) to be making excuses for not getting out there in the real world among the muck and brass of politics and protest. But there really is more to it than that.

The problem seems often to be that when writing of spiritual realities one is simply dealing with things that cannot be proved or demonstrated. The life of the spirit is not like that. When George Fox wrote, "and this I knew experimentally", he didn't mean that he had tested his propositions according to the scientific method: he meant that he had experienced the presence and guidance of Christ directly.

I am coming more and more, exponentially really, to discover that persisting in surrendering myself to God in prayer is the centre of all that I am called to do. But in order to do this without coming apart, as it were, I do need to be part of a eucharistic community, in literal fact. Just as the life of prayer opens one "to the effective, invisible power of God", the Eucharist is the making of that power real in a way that the heart can rely on, rest in, be fed by. Besides,

The liturgy is a great school of prayer. It is part of the environment of prayer and can provide the structured means by which a prayerful life is supported. We are initiated into prayer by the prayers, psalms, hymns of the Church, the Mass of each day, the great poem of the liturgy which spreads itself throughout the year. The Liturgy of the Hours has been compared to a drip putting a steady flow of nutrient into a person's system.

ibid.

Without this environment, this structure of support, this continual nourishment I am in danger of drying up. Practically, something must be done. I have at times described myself as "Quanglican"; it is becoming urgent that I put that into practice as a regular way of life, rather than as an occasional refreshment. What this will look like in practical terms I am not yet certain. I do know that, for me, it is fast becoming an indissoluble part of the surrender to which I seem to find myself increasingly to be called.

Surb, surb

Surb, Surb by Jan Garbarek with the Hilliard Ensemble. Some of the most glorious music I know. The translation is as follows:

Holy, Holy Lord of Hosts. The heavens and earth are filled with your glory

Bless all the works of the Lord, Praise the Lord.

Hosanna in the Highest.

Advent!

Peace Made Flesh—courtesy of Green Patches, here are some superb Franciscan resources for Advent from the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Name.

More thoughts later, I hope—it’s nearly time to leave for church…

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast off the works of darkness
and put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
so that when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit
one God now and for ever.
Amen.

(with thanks to Liturgy—Worship that Works, where you can find more excellent Advent material)

This is true…

I thought this was wonderful—Country Parson attributes it to the Iona Abbey Worship Book:

It is not true that this world and its inhabitants are doomed to die and be lost;

This is true: For God so love the world that he gave his only Son to that everyone who believes in him shall not die but have everlasting life.

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction;

This is true: I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred shall have the last word, and that war and destruction have come to stay forever;

This is true: For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given in whom authority will rest and whose name will be prince of peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil that seek to rule the world;

This is true: To me is given all authority in heaven and on earth, and lo, I am with you always to the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the church, before we can do anything;

This is true: I will pour out my Spirit on all people, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, and your old folk shall dream dreams.

It is not true that our dreams for the liberation of humankind, our dreams of justice, of human dignity, of peace, are not meant for this earth and this history;

This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshippers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

Living within the liturgy…

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. Above, all, enter into the Church's liturgy and make the liturgical cycle part of your life—let its rhythm work its way into your body and soul.

Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions Press, 1961, p.216.

Back at Holy Rood, I am coming once again to appreciate that sense of the liturgical year as a place to live, and in which to work out one’s own path, within that open space of the Church’s life and worship over all these years.

I’m returning to Hilfield Friary for a few days tomorrow. I’ll try and catch up when I return…

The Spirit and the Word, and the paradox...

Sometimes we experience a terrible dryness in our spiritual life. We feel no desire to pray, don't experience God's presence, get bored with worship services, and even think that everything we ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is little more than a childhood fairy tale.

Then it is important to realise that most of these feelings and thoughts are just feelings and thoughts, and that the Spirit of God dwells beyond our feelings and thoughts. It is a great grace to be able to experience God's presence in our feelings and thoughts, but when we don't, it does not mean that God is absent. It often means that God is calling us to a greater faithfulness. It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

 

In paradoxical language if you try to rest on one side and forget the other, you lose the truth.

We've seen some Christian cultures that are entirely centered on the Cross and they lose the resurrection. In wealthy countries like our own we have a desire for victory theology as it is called - all resurrection and almost no reference to the pain and suffering of the world.

You've lost the mystery as long as you do that.

Richard Rohr, from Great Themes of Paul

Somehow for me these two quotes just came together. Not only is it paradoxical, in Rohr's use of the word, that when we feel ourselves most abandoned by God, he is about to do his greatest work in us, but it is, as Nouwen says, that as we remain faithful to "our spiritual discipline", our regular times of prayer, our form of office, our set Psalms and readings from Scripture, that we are set free to grow, leap sometimes, into a new intimacy with God.

As Rohr says, we in the "West" have lost sight of much of this. We cannot accept paradox, and we call it "contradiction". Many of us, especially in churches where "victory theology" is paramount, think of regular discipline, rules of life, liturgical forms of worship, as stultifying, formal, lifeless "religion" that can be distinguished from "Spirit-filled, Bible-believing worship", where we can be "free in the Spirit" to "worship as we are led". But "you've lost the mystery as long as you do that."

For thousands of years now the Spirit has worked in people's hearts and minds, to give us the strong, flexible framework for life and worship that is found in liturgy and the daily Office. God is present in these words too, just as much as in those transcendent moments of inspired Charismatic worship - and unlike Charismatic worship, those words will still be there in our driest times, when we are alone, and heartbroken, or worse, bored stiff. They will still be there when our minds wander, when we are filled with lust, and anxiety, and greed, and we can hardly lift our heads to see the page.

God does not abandon us when we can't, or even when we won't, sense his presence; and the words of the Office in particular show us that, in the concrete form of ink and paper, or even pixels on a screen...

All those long years ago, the anonymous writer of the great acrostic Psalm, 119, knew just what all this was about:

Your decrees are wonderful;
   therefore my soul keeps them.
The unfolding of your words gives light;
   it imparts understanding to the simple.
With open mouth I pant,
   because I long for your commandments.
Turn to me and be gracious to me,
   as is your custom towards those who love your name.
Keep my steps steady according to your promise,
   and never let iniquity have dominion over me.
Redeem me from human oppression,
   that I may keep your precepts.
Make your face shine upon your servant,
   and teach me your statutes.
My eyes shed streams of tears
   because your law is not kept.

(Psalm 119.129-136)