TEN OBSERVATIONS ABOUT CATHOLICISM FOR THOSE NEW TO CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE (3 of 10)

A “Catholic” way to look at reality is the template Jesus left those of us between the Ascension (Pentecost) up to, and including me and you as individuals. I am flabbergasted to think that all of this creation, all the complexity and consciousness, exists simply for me. Rather, as one who exists uniquely in all reality, I simply find myself opening my eyes and wondering, “What is the purpose of all this stuff?” My Catholicism provides me with the opportunity to speak to God (using God’s language).

THE GOD WHISPERER SPEAKS SILENCE

What follows is my interpretation of all that is or was (not all that is to come), using those experiences and lessons learned (good and not so good for my spirituality) to craft something that makes sense for me and answers the purpose of how all things fit together, and my 84.11 years I have to find that answer.

My journey takes me to a place no one wants to go (in the upper room of my inner self), where I sit alone and ponder all the “stuff” going on around me and try to make it fit. For the most part, it doesn’t fit, so I am slowly sloughing off that baggage that weighs me down without adding to my perspective. Over a protracted period, I have come to realize that the place I don’t want to go to has its own unique language and conditions. Three conditions I have detected are:

What I need to do is to invigorate the spiritual dimension of my persona. I access this not by any human language but through my free will (faith informed by reason), sitting next to Christ on a couch and waiting in silence. Contemplative practices and mindset of the Cistercian chasisms allow me to have a language that permits me to address the Sacred in my upper room with its language not my own. And what is this language? Silence. How can language be silence itself? It seems like a contradiction, if not a conundrum. My humanity has been used to accessing meaning and values from the physical and mental universes. I have no experience with the notion of simplicity and the lack of those symbols that language translates concepts and ideas into reality that I recognize. This is one reason why proving God with science is flawed, not the whole process. I don’t know the language of science all that well, nor do I know any language of communication other than English (and they by making many typos in my writing and speaking). Who is there to teach me (and you) a language that is foreign to human communication, such as silence, where I can have the opportunity to be in the presence of another nature (God) and receive knowledge, love, and truth, just by being silent in the presence of pure energy. This simple silence satisfies the hungry heart, or, as St. Augustine put it, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” All it takes is the use of my reason and free will to choose that my answer to the purpose of life comes from outside of myself, even if the only way I have to access it is by being true to my humanity. Being Catholic with the help of Cistercian spirituality is but one way I have found to force myself to sit down next to Jesus in silence and solitude and wait, however long that might be. My image of this is me sitting alone on a bench in the dead of winter and longing to see Christ, but unable to do so. It is bitterly cold and I wish I could go inside and warm myself, but I might miss Christ coming by. Gradually, I realize that Christ has been sitting next to me all along, but I could not see Him until I got rid of my clutter and just waited in silence for Christ to speak through the Holy Spirit.

The second condition is that I must be in the proper frame of mind to be able to accept silence and get past the notion that all this makes no sense. My humanity sends up red flags that my approach makes no sense. It does not make any sense, using the assumptions of the world or physical and mental reality. I must sit there in silence and abandon my reason and free will to embrace another set of values, those having boundaries my human nature could never proscribe. My Catholicism and Cistercian interpretation of the way, the truth, to live a life of humility and obedience to a God who has no boundaries but who loved me (and you) enough to put this grand economy into existence so that I (and all other humans) have a chance to move to a deeper level of their human, one that does not make sense to mere visible reality.

Third, I must do something with what I have received. Matthew 22:39 has Jesus telling those around him that the purpose of life (Deuteronomy 6:5) is to know, love, and serve God with all our hearts and strength, plus to love our neighbor as ourselves. It is not enough for me to receive energy from Jesus, but I am entrusted to share it, just as Christ shared it with me in Lectio Divina and all the times I voluntarily abandoned my selfish inclinations. Faith without works is dead. Good works are not good if I horde them for myself and do not open myself to the ontic possibility of the manifest ability of those around me. I can’t just pray my way to salvation, but if I use Faith properly, by believing with all my heart and soul and loving my neighbor as myself, I now focus on love and service, which makes Faith energetic.

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