Contemplative Haven

Blessed Savior, I thank you that this operation is safely past, and now I rest in your abiding presence, relaxing every tension, releasing every care and anxiety, receiving more and more of your healing life into every part of my being. In moments of pain I turn to you for strength, in times of loneliness I feel your loving nearness. Grant that your life and love and joy may flow through me for the healing of others in your name. Amen.

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Grant me a quiet night, O Lord
and give me rest,
for I am tired and need sleep.
Watch over me with love
in the silence of night
and let me rest in you
like a child in its mother’s arms.
I place my trust in you,
my God.
Amen.

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Almighty God, you know my inmost being, the secrets of my body and soul. Fill my heart with trust, even as I fear, and bless the surgeons and nurses and all who work to help me with gifts of healing and care. Be near, gently sustaining me, and supporting them in their skills. Amen.

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O merciful Father, who have wonderfully fashioned man in your own image, and have made his body to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, sanctify, we pray you, our doctors and nurses and all those whom you have called to study and practice the arts of healing the sick and the prevention of disease and pain. Strengthen them in body and soul, and bless their work, that they may give comfort to those for whose salvation your Son became Man, lived on this earth, healed the sick, and suffered and died on the Cross. Amen.

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Lord,

You invite all who are burdened to come to You.

Allow Your healing hand to heal them.

Touch their souls with Your compassion for others.

Touch their hearts with Your courage and infinite love for all.

Touch their minds with Your wisdom, that their mouths may always proclaim Your praise.

Teach them to reach out to You in their need, and help them to lead others to You by their example.

Most loving Heart of Jesus, bring them health in body and spirit that they may serve You with all their strength.

Touch gently these lives which You have created, now and forever, Amen.

(Adapted from a prayer of the Priests of the Sacred Heart)

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A little change in plans.

Impressions of those in need of healing have been heavy on my mind and heart since late last week, and some of them have been confirmed. I will be devoting extra time to prayer intentions for the next while. If we may continue the contemplative dialogue next week, I invite you to join me in prayer for the next few days, for any and all for whom you wish to pray.

I will be posting some prayers for the sick and prayers for healing.

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I was off work on Friday, and so had the chance to attend morning Mass. Something from the First Reading, from Hosea, caught my attention, and has been on my mind since. From Chapter 11, the Lord says, “…but they knew not that I healed them.”

How is it possible? Is it so with us?

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There are kindred spirits, and then there are kindred spirits. Please, everyone, go see Terry’s post of yesterday at A Catholic Guy.

Personally, I think we were twins separated at birth.

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(See post, “My Sacred Heart Anniversary”, June 8, 2006)

JUNE 8, 2005:I am not where I intended to be. This evening, He brings me here, to the adoration chapel. It is the Year of the Eucharist, to which I am not paying much extra attention. I already love the Eucharist, and I do not know what I do not know, nor how profoundly I do not know it.Above the Tabernacle is a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He wears the Crown of Thorns, and is bleeding. The Heart is surrounded by a rim of white light. I do not know that the painting is there for a reason; I do not know there is a strong connection between devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Eucharist.

I desire a piece of His Heart, and have desired this for a long time. Just a little piece, I always ask Him; just a little piece would be enough.

It is twilight. The setting sun enters through the stained-glass windows. All the votive candles along the wall to my right are aglow. I am alone, focused on His Heart.

Isn’t it beautiful, I think, how the orb of light around His Heart grows in size, then recedes - how it pulsates. It must be the effect of the flickering candles, yet how real it appears. But the candle flames are not flickering; there is no wind here, no draft. I am drawn into that pulsation, into that expansion and contraction.

Gradually, very gradually, the Heart changes. The base of the Heart elongates, becoming stemlike, and from the bottom of the stem a base forms. I see, in what I think is an instant, but is not. I see, I know. A quiet knowledge, very simple. “Oh, His Heart is a Chalice.” The surrounding orb of light becomes a Host.

Then it comes flooding in, this One that has enveloped me ever since. This flood of One - the Sacred Heart, the Precious Blood, the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist - they are One. And He makes me understand that I don’t have to ask for a little piece of His Heart, that He gives me His whole Heart with each Holy Communion, and even more - His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

Dear Jesus, I am so ashamed that I did not know what I did not know, and how profoundly I did not know it. But He sweeps me up into His peace.

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One of the questions which triggered this little series (see my post, “A Little Outline”), was whether or not people could be disappointed if they desired to be contemplatives and then discovered they were not.

This is a tricky area, and I would welcome other opinions, but I would lean towards saying no, it is not possible in the truest sense. As we saw in the quote in my post, “How Can You Tell”, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing states that the gift of contemplation and the aptitude for it are one and the same, that you cannot have one without the other. He also states that one would not even have an awareness of contemplation or a desire for it, unless God had given you that grace and that gift.

But having said that, I believe there are at least a few possibilities as to why people may feel disappointment.

There could be a superficial desire for contemplation, a kind of “intellectual” desire to be a contemplative, rather than a true desire from the heart, out of love for God. I think the corresponding “disappointment” would be equally superficial, and pass fairly quickly as the person moved along to other intellectual pursuits.

There could be a sincere desire to live what one perceives to be a “contemplative life”, without truly understanding what a contemplative is. There are people, for example, who enter contemplative orders, drawn to the tranquility, the seclusion, and a life of intercessory prayer. They are then sincerely disappointed when they discover they are not contemplatives. I believe it is to these people St. Teresa of Avila may have been speaking at one point in The Way of Perfection, when she reassures some of the nuns in her community not to be disappointed, but to offer up their work in the convent to the Lord, as their own particular path to God.

There is also the explanation that the disappointment is very real, but entirely unfounded. It is a fact that some people are contemplatives and don’t even know it. In The Way of Perfection, St. Teresa spends a good deal of time with one particular nun who thought she did not have the gift of contemplation. St. Teresa watched her in prayer, observed the way she said the Our Father, and was able to reassure this nun that she was, indeed, a contemplative. It is sometimes easier for an experienced contemplative to spot another contemplative than it is for a beginner to know it himself/herself. I remember reading somewhere that the contemplative Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, was able to tell that someone was a contemplative simply by the way the fellow shut a door!

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