Fill All Things
Brothers and sisters: Grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it says: He ascended on high and took prisoners captive; he gave gifts to men. What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended into the lower regions of the earth? The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. Ephesians 4:7-10
“[The gardener] said to [the master] in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.’” Luke 13:9
Piety
Chapter 19: The Discipline of Psalmody
We believe that the divine presence is everywhere and "that in every place the eyes of God are watching the good and the wicked (Proverb 15:3)." But beyond the least doubt, we should believe this to be especially true when we celebrate the divine office. (Rule of St. Benedict for October 26, 2018)
Study
How appropriate this passage from the Rule of St. Benedict is for the daily
St. Paul describes gifts from God to the Ephesians this way: And he gave some as Apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God.
Those students who have read and attempted to practice Fr. Thomas’ prayer method know that he was one such teacher-pastor-gift from God. Fr. Thomas died at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer where he had been abbot from 1961 to 1981, and where he began his role as one of the chief architects of what is now known as centering prayer. Fr. Thomas passed along his method for entering into the divine presence of the Lord through the practice of centering prayer. Speaking in a video documentary, Keating provides an insight into his overall sense of the divine.
"The gift of God is absolutely gratuitous," he said. "It's not something you earn. It's something that's there. It's something you just have to accept. This is the gift that has been given. There's no place to go to get it. There's no place you can go to avoid it. It just is. It's part of our very existence. And so, the purpose of all the great religions is to bring us into this relationship with reality that is so intimate that no words can possibly describe it."
According to Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, “If indeed we walk in the womb of God, the reflection on the meaning of every action and the end of every road is the constant to which we are called. There must be no such thing as the idle decision, the thoughtless act. Every part of our lives must be taken to prayer and the scrutiny of scripture must be brought to every part of our lives because we believe ‘beyond the least doubt’ that the God we seek is there seeking us.
Prayer in the Benedictine tradition, then, is not an exercise done for the sake of quantity or penance or the garnering of spiritual merit. Benedictine prayer is not an excursion into a prayer wheel spirituality where more is better and recitation is more important than meaning. Prayer, in the spirit of these chapters, if we "sing praise wisely," or well, or truly, becomes a furnace in which every act of our lives is submitted to the heat and purifying process of the smelter's fire so that our minds and our hearts, our ideas and our lives, come to be in sync, so that we are what we say we are, so that the prayers that pass our lips change our lives, so that God's presence becomes palpable to us. Prayer brings us to burn off the dross of what clings to our souls like mildew and sets us free for deeper, richer, truer lives in which we become what we seek.[i]
Action
Once, when I was going through a particularly stressful time at work, I would get to the parking garage early in the morning and play a recording of Fr. Thomas and do some centering prayer before heading upstairs to discover what fresh chaos the world might have in store for me that day. Those 15 minutes in the divine presence gave me a strength to tackle whatever the world threw in my general direction. Thomas Merton described his practice of Centering Prayer this way: “You rest in [God] and He hears you with His secret wisdom.”[ii]
Following on the call to repentance in Luke 13:1–5, the parable of the barren fig tree from today’s Good News presents a story about the continuing patience of God with those who have not yet given evidence of their repentance. Let God cultivate the ground around your life and fertilize it through the daily practice of Centering Prayer. From it, we may bear fruit in the future if we will rest in God’s “presence in the present” and he fills all things needed in our lives.
Maybe today would be a good day to try 15 minutes of Centering Prayer. Keating and his partners define it as: “Centering prayer is a remarkably simple method that opens one to God’s gift of contemplative prayer. Its practice expands one’s receptivity to the presence and activity of God in one’s life. It is a distillation of the practice of monastic spirituality into two relatively short periods of prayer each day.”[iii]
Fr. Thomas (Keating, not Merton) suggests only four simple guidelines for practicing centering prayer:
Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.
Sitting comfortably with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently and introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.
When you become aware of thoughts, return ever so gently to the sacred word.
At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.[iv]
Today, the sacred word I chose is “presence” because the divine presence is everywhere.
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