I am writing this to you from Bath, England. Yes, I'm sitting in a pub and nursing a pint. The retreat is over and I am, I have to admit, relieved. Not that it was a bad experience. Far from it. It was one of the most intense spiritual experiences of my life. I am just not used to meditating three times a day, keeping silence at every meal, and wrestling with the Spirit for several hours each day. I have been on silent retreats before, to be sure, but never of this intensity. I'm prayed out!
The leader of the retreat was Dom (a title of respect for a Benedictine abbot) Laurence Freeman, the current leader of the World Community for Christian Meditation, a group founded by Freeman's late mentor, Dom John Main, to promote the use of Christian meditation, a form of contemplative prayer long cherished in the monastic tradition, but little known outside monastic circles until the 1970s, when Fr. Main in England and Fr. Thomas Keating in the U.S. helped to found a worldwide movement to spread the use of contemplative prayer and awareness of the mystical tradition of the Church within the broader Christian community. Their work was greatly assisted by the writings of Thomas Merton and Basil Pennington, two highly articulate advocates of contemplative practice beyond the monastery walls whose work continues to have wide influence, as well as by Vatican II and the Ecumenical Movement.
Today the practice of contemplative prayer and Christian meditation has spread well beyond the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church. There are contemplative prayer and meditation groups in almost every mainline denomination and the movement is even beginning to gain notice among more ecumenically minded evangelicals. The retreat I attended was dominated by Anglicans, but included a Methodist and a Presbyterian, as well as a handful of Roman Catholics. It was evenly divided between men and women and included three Americans and three Irishmen. Most had come to Christian meditation or contemplative prayer through contact with an active group of contemplatives within their communities. For some, it was a relatively new discovery, while others had been practicing for decades.
The retreat, which was specially directed toward priests and ordained ministers, focused on the need for silence in a world filled with constant stimulation and interruption, where it is hard enough to hear oneself think, let alone hear God. Solitude and silence were sought by Jesus for his own times of prayer, in "a lonely place" apart. While we have no direct knowledge of how Jesus used his solitude, it seems quite plausible that contemplative practice has its roots in Jesus' prayer life, since the post-apostolic Fathers and Mothers of the church who first described contemplative prayer insist they received the tradition from the apostles themselves and those who knew them. It may be that Jesus' instruction to "go into your room and close the door" was a figure for entering into a silent place within yourself, as the Greek word used for "room" (tamieion) is an odd one, referring to a store room in a villa, not the kind of room most of Jesus' disciples ever would have used. Its location suggests interiority, depth, darkness, and quiet.
The practice of contemplative prayer or meditation is deceptively simple. The practitioner chooses a "sacred word," perhaps the name of Jesus or "peace" or "love". It can be a single word or phrase with meaning for the meditator, but should not be too elaborate. Fr. Laurence suggests maranatha or some other Aramaic or Greek phrase, so as not to make the associations so immediate as to start a chain of thought too quickly. (I like eirene humin, "peace be with you.") This word or phrase is silently repeated whenever thoughts enter the mind, gently nudging them aside. The aim is to free one's mind as far as possible of conscious babble so you can wait on God and become more sensitive to his promptings.
Contemplative prayer is not intended to displace other types of prayer, such as intercessory prayer, confession, or prayers of adoration. It is, instead, a complement to them. Most other forms of prayer entail offering our words to God. Contemplative prayer opens us to receive God's word in our hearts. It is a way of listening, rather than a way of speaking, in the holy conversation that encompasses all prayer.
My own practice of contemplative prayer has helped me find a still point in my life, a centering point where I am able to re-orient my mind and heart to the things of God. I have come to realize through contemplative prayer and meditation just how noisy and cluttered my interior world is and how little room there is for God to get a word in. It is not that I suddenly hear God's voice rumbling in my head when I pray this way. Rather, it seems to have sensitized me to God's subtle presence throughout my life and kept me from sinking into that sort of dull materialism that seeks only stimulation and sensation, so prevalent in the modern world.
It is not an easy practice. Anyone who has ever tried to keep silent for a minute, stilling the "gerbil wheel" of thought that constantly churns in our minds, knows well how much of a struggle it can be. But it is one that bears a surprisingly great amount of fruit when practiced with any reasonable regularity.
At St. Thomas, here in Lancaster, we have a contemplative prayer group that meets every other Sunday at the home of Marianne and Harrison Gordon, both of whom are practiced contemplatives. Mildred Lorch has extensive experience in contemplative prayer as well. In short, there are resources available for anyone in the parish who would like to learn more about this life-giving form of prayer. It is my hope that, in the near future, more people in the parish will have the opportunity to discover how fruitful Christian meditation and the contemplative path can be.
P.S. Anyone wishing to know more about contemplative prayer and Christian meditation should check out the following websites:
