Spiritual Attentiveness

Wednesday of the Third Week in Lent

Deuteronomy 4:9

Take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children.

As we cultivate the friendship of Christ, a point comes when we too may move beyond the particular words of the gospel to the person who is speaking, the eternal Word incarnate in Jesus and disclosing himself to us in the text. 

. . . When we are alert to the person of Christ speaking to us through the text, we have reached a point of spiritual attentiveness. The purpose of every true devotional practice and method of prayer is to bring us to a person-to-person, being-to-being relationship with Christ. This involves relating not just to the words of Jesus or to the details of his physical presence, but to the person of Jesus, the eternal Word in human form.

Little by little, spiritual attentiveness--this not knowing by means of concepts and emotions--becomes habitual. The presence of God insinuates itself into our
awareness in prayer and continues to unfold. It is at this point that the Fathers of the Church offer their teaching about the spiritual senses to help us understand the riches hidden in spiritual attentiveness. They spoke of the initial experience of the perception of God's presence as perfume. This they attributed to the spiritual sense of smell. Smell, as one of the external senses, is the attraction or aversion that one experiences when a delightful or disagreeable odor is in the neighborhood, It does not take long for the olfactory apparatus to say yes or no to a particular scent. If it is wisteria or perfume, it is charming; if it is garlic or something unpleasant, you move to another room.

~Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love

Prayer

Holy Spirit of God, You fill the earth 
and all creation with Your Presence. 
Make us feel our oneness with all that You have made.

Interior Silence

Thursday of the Third Week in Lent

Psalm 95:7-9

O that today you would listen to his voice!
    Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah
    in the wilderness, 
when your ancestors tested me,
    and put me to the proof, though 
        they had seen my work;

In human relationships, as mutual love deepens, there comes a time when the two friends convey their sentiments without words. They can sit in silence sharing an experience or simply enjoying each other's presence without saying anything. Holding hands or a single word from time to time can maintain this deep communication.

This loving relationship points to the kind of interior silence that is being developed in contemplative prayer. The goal of contemplative prayer is not so much the emptiness of thoughts or conversation as the emptiness of self. in contemplative prayer we cease to multiply reflections and acts of the will. A different kind of knowledge rooted in love emerges in which the awareness of God's presence supplants the awareness of our own presence and the inveterate tendency to reflect on ourselves. The experience of God's presence frees us from making ourself or our relationship with God the center of the universe. The language of the mystics must not be taken literally when they speak of emptiness or the void. Jesus practiced emptiness in becoming a human being, emptying himself of his prerogatives and the natural consequences of his divine dignity. The void does not mean void in the sense of a vacuum, but void in the sense of attachment to our own activity. Our own reflections and acts of will are necessary preliminaries to getting acquainted with Christ, but have to be transcended if Christ is to share his most personal prayer to the Father, which is characterized by total self surrender.

~Intimacy with God.

Prayer

O Holy Spirit,
we have no capacity 
to perceive You as You really are. 
Be Yourself, the continuous revealing 
of the Mystery of Your Presence.

The Great Commandment

Friday of the Third Week in Lent

Mark 12:28-31

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

What Jesus is saying to this young scribe is that his abstract understanding of the primary precept of the Old Testament is "right on" and that if he pursues that course, the values of the false-self system are gradually freed from their fascination with pleasure, power, and security. One then moves into the awareness of the presence of God within. With that movement comes the capacity to love God with our whole mind, heart, soul, and strength.

By accessing the mystery of God's presence within, we are capable of perceiving the presence of God in others. The presence of God in us recognizes the presence of God the movement from the tyranny of the false self through the desert of purification into the promised land of interior freedom.

There is an intriguing second section to this text. Although Jesus approved of the first commandment and its corollary to love one's neighbor as oneself and congratulated the young man on his insight, he also said, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." In other words, the kingdom of God requires something more than to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love our neighbor from the perspective of the true self, as one possessing the image of God, is a great insight, but it still is not the fullness of the kingdom of God according to Jesus.

A new commandment characterizes the Christian faith that carries the insight of the scribe a step further. It is to love one another as Jesus has loved us. This is much more difficult. This is to love others in their individuality, uniqueness, personality traits, temperamental biases, personal history, and in the things that drive us up the wall, to love our neighbor, in other words, just as they are with each one's grocery list of faults, unbearable habits, unreasonable demands, and impossible characteristics. The new commandment is to accept others unconditionally; that is to say, without the least wish to change them. To love them in their individuality is the way Jesus has loved us. He gives us the space in which to change and the time to confront the obstacles that prevent further change.

~Awakenings

Prayer

O Holy Spirit, 
whom the Father has sent to instruct us in all things,
teach us to live our ordinary lives with extraordinary love.

The Sacred in the Secular

Saturday of the Third Week in Lent

Luke 18:10-14

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income." But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.

The parable of the publican and the Pharisee reinforces one of the central themes of the parable of the good Samaritan. The coming of the good Samaritan down the road to Jericho signals the end of the social landscape and map of the kingdom of God as perceived by Jesus' contemporaries.

The two men described in the parable manifest their relative places and status in the accepted culture of the time. One belongs to the sacred precincts of the temple and is an insider. The other belongs to the secular world and is an outsider. The social map calls for him to pray apart from the Pharisee, who represents the holy. Thus from the text there is no evidence of merit or blame in the conduct or prayers of the two men.

The storyteller stuns the hearers with his conclusion: "The publican went home to his house (to the secular world) justified. The other man did not." These words come like a peal of thunder to the crowd. Luke attributes this statement to the humility of the publican and to the pride of the Pharisee, but the publican did not even make restitution for his extortions . . . and the Pharisee thanked God for his good deeds, as was customary in the prayers of a devout Pharisee of his time.

Thus the main point of the parable emerges with stark clarity. The social map of the time is being abandoned and the kingdom of God is no longer to be found in the temple. The holy is outside and the unholy may be inside. The activity of the kingdom of God has moved from the sacred precincts of the temple to the profane area of the secular world. The Pharisee represents well the piety of the temple. The publican represents well the secular world. The sacred place is no longer the place of the sacred. The sacred has moved to everyday life.

~The Kingdom of God is Like . . .

Prayer

Holy Spirit of God,
may Your divine Love, so firm and yet so tender, 
purify our inmost being to its very roots
and bring us to true humility of heart.

~~~~~