L.J. shares the following reflection on Sunday's reading from the Gospel according to Matthew:
Christmas is an invitation to know and love God through contemplative prayer.
The Son of God became flesh to turn us into children of God, too. The message of Christmas is God coming to us, as one of us, to reveal how we can escape our fear, our loneliness, our malaise, our indifference, our injustice, and our selfishness. The feast of Christmas is about God humbly bending low to embrace all of us in love. In Jesus, God became a vulnerable, little baby. God became one of us. Now, this God in flesh means God is accessible. We can find God in the ordinary moments and routines of our lives. God is available, ready to be enjoyed this very moment. To know God is to experience salvation from the negative experiences of life as well and to enjoy a fulfilled existence.
The reason for Jesus is so we could enjoy a transformative relationship with God in love. God became human so we could commune with God. Through the feast of Christmas God calls each one of us to contemplation. Love is the reason, and contemplation is all about knowing and loving God. God became flesh out of love for us and to free us from sin, fear, loneliness, and injustice. We may be suffering from these experiences because God is not real for us. We may not have experienced God. Contemplation is this very experience we need to trust God and to be liberated from fear.
Contemplation is a mysterious encounter with the mystery of God. This experience means knowing and loving God as God is, not as we think or imagine God to be. Contemplation is letting God be God within us and not imposing our ideas upon the divine reality. Thus, contemplation means transcending all thinking and even emotions to realize oneness with God in silence. One cannot discuss contemplation without discussing silence. Thomas Keating says, “Interior silence is the state in which we are detached from our thoughts. We are not attached to any perception whatsoever. Keep in mind that God's first language is silence. Prepare yourself for silence in this prayer.” Contemplation is the divine gift of intimate oneness in the silence of thinking, the silence of the self, and the silence of God. The mystics have multiple metaphors for contemplation. Meister Eckhart says contemplation is “loving God mindlessly,” and “sinking down out of something into nothing.” John Tauler describes contemplation as “being engulfed in the oneness of God beyond difference.” Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite says it is “plunging into the truly mysterious darkness of unknowing.” John of the Cross names contemplation as a “general loving awareness of God” that takes place in “darkness” and “silence.” Angela of Foligno says contemplation is “seeing God in darkness” and “seeing All and Nothing at once.” All of them agree that contemplation enables the soul to love God with God’s love. Through it the soul is absorbed in the Holy Mystery and thereby transformed. The soul tastes and sees the goodness of the Lord.
Contemplation is not a part of a Christian’s life. It must be the center, for it was the center of Jesus’ life. He would often go out into the desert or a deserted place for silent communion with God. Jesus couldn’t do what he did without a deep and abiding oneness with God. We cannot follow Jesus without this abiding oneness either. Contemplation, then, isn't some special part of life, but the center and unifier of life for it means God is our center and not the ego. This life of prayer, silence, solitude, and detachment comes together in a practice of meditation, but is not limited to the practice of meditation. Without contemplation at the center of life, there is no fruitful action nor any real transformation of the world.
The practical implication of a contemplative life and of contemplative prayer is, simply put, that we pray. God wants us to spend time in the divine presence. Broadly speaking, intentionally being in God’s presence is the essence of contemplative prayer. There are numerous practices one could use. There’s Centering Prayer, Christian Meditation, the Yahweh Breath Prayer, the Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina (a way of praying the Bible), or even the Rosary prayed in a simple and gentle fashion. The key is to choose one and do it every day. Often, the teachers of these methods advise us to practice at least twice a day for twenty minutes each time. So, pray! Whoever loves contemplation cannot fail to be free of fear, and know the infinite bliss of God.