Our egoic compulsions keep us restless; Jesus gives us real rest.
How often do you take a vacation? Where do you go? What do you do while on vacation? Now, what is it like when you get back home? Often, “getting away from it all” doesn’t really work. We get back to our normal lives and we still have all our problems. Even more, while on vacation we take all our problems with us because it is not so much circumstances that create problems as our interior state. Even if we are on a gorgeous beach surrounded by gorgeous people, we still can be restless. Wherever we go, we bring our tiresome egos with us.
Our egoic compulsions keep us restless. Needing to arrange my life in a certain way to feel in control or micro-managing relationships to feel secure are but a few of the ways we try to squeeze happiness from life. But, they are compulsions. The ancient Christian monks have a fair amount of wisdom to offer our restless world. One, Hesychios, says, “A donkey going round and round in a mill cannot step out of the circle to which it is tethered.” His image describes our captivity to a compulsive way of thinking and behaving. We are tethered just like the donkey. In other words, our compulsions trap us, preventing us from fully enjoying life, love, and God. Our hysteria for work, consumption, experience, and entertainment locks us in a frenzied world of distraction. No wonder we are so restless.
Our souls need the teaching of Jesus in today’s Gospel. He invites us to rest. Rest in Latin is quies, which is the root meaning of our English word quiet. The rest to which Jesus invites us is the quiet, silence, and stillness of contemplation. St. Gregory the Great said contemplation is “resting in God.” We rest from thinking, where our compulsions reside, and rest in God. Contemplative prayer is a lot like falling asleep. Evagrius Ponticus, another monk, says, "Just as when we are asleep we do not know that we sleep, so neither when we are contemplating do we know that we have passed into contemplation.” Pure faith in the Infinite Mystery of God lies at the center of contemplation, which means God is not some-thing to experience. We may never feel God in contemplation.
Contemplation is also like the rest of sleeping in that the more we try to fall asleep, the further from sleep we get. Just so, the more we try to be silent and stop thinking, the more thoughts invade our spirits. The solution is to let everything be, all one’s thoughts and feeling. One of the ancient monks, Abba Poemen, has a colorful saying about this spiritual strategy. He says, “If someone shuts a snake and a scorpion up in a bottle, in time they will be completely destroyed. So it is with evil thoughts: they are suggested by the demons; they disappear through patience.” Without engaging our thoughts, without talking to them, we remain in silence and allow them to pass through. The contemplative does not interfere or meddle with the thoughts but lets them be.
Interior rest is called hesychia in the ancient desert contemplative tradition. It means interior silence, inner stillness, and the quiet nothingness deeper than thinking that is fully centered on God. It is this state of mind that refreshes the soul and purifies the mind. There is an Italian saying I learned while travelling there, “La dolce far niente.” It means “the sweetness of doing nothing.” We are so fast-paced and addicted to productivity that we forget the pleasure coming from a life of rest and silence. Doing nothing is an art, and, even more, absolutely necessary to cultivating a relationship with the Holy Mystery of God. Contemplation is doing nothing and being nothing for God. It is opening our souls to the Holy Mystery and finding rest there rather than in our egoic compulsions.
Hesychia, the contemplative state of interior nothingness, un-self-consciousness, and God-centered-ness, ought to be a goal every day of our lives. It is the rest of Jesus, the relaxation of God. I never realized how good a full night of sleep could be until I had children. Now, I never seem to get enough sleep! Still, I can get the rest I need by setting aside time to relax in God, to practice contemplation. And, heading out into the world I have a standard: silence and stillness. Evagrius says, “Be like an astute business man: make stillness be your criterion for testing the value of everything, and choose always what contributes to it.” He also says, “the practice of stillness is full of joy and beauty.” To rest in God is to know God, and with God comes the joy of salvation.