ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING CONSISTENT AND CONSTANT WHILE SILENT IN PRAYER

I am surprised that some unexpected and unintended products keep cropping up as I get older and simply resign myself to letting go (abandonment) and waiting to hear what Christ has to say to me today, right now.

To reach this stage of spirituality, and I reiterate that I speak only for myself, requires effort and breaking old habits of thinking to introduce new possibilities for growth. Two of the many skills I have utilized are consistency (repeating a task) and adaptability (adjusting to an ever-changing schedule).

To break old habits, I need something to replace them (new skins for the new wine of Christ). It must not be what I have to slough off but something entirely new (yet consistent with what is already there, like a blood transfusion from God to this worn-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit. What I replace in the energy of the spirit comes not from me but from the source of all creation, pure energy, pure knowledge, pure love, and pure truth.

Being Catholic, far from being the easy way to love God with all my heart, mind, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5), the problem each Catholic faces is taking up the cross each day and meeting God where they are and as they are. Each day means both a recognition of the work and the focus it takes, both in consistency and the tenacity to have less and less of the consistency needed for God to fill up whatever is in my cup (see above). Like AA, I must do this every day, not only to do religion for the sake of religion, but to realize that I am the only one who can say, “Open my heart, Dear Jesus, I come to do your will,”

Catholic spirituality, at its deepest, bears the marks of the scourging at the pillar of everyday living, those scars of past battles won (and lost), but with the Hope that with Christ, all things are possible. Having problems with an institutional church that is full of politics and sometimes duplicity? That is our church. Having reconciled the sinful human in each of us (and thus the church), but still can’t shake the sign of contradiction that God alone is Holy and only Christ (and Mary) are without sin. Yet, those who run the apostolic dimension of the Church Universal are plagued with sins and failings? That is not only our Church throughout the ages, but also me. The battle signs are the crown of thorns, scourging at the pillar, the marks of the hands and feet of Christ, and the crucifixion. Only when I abandon my reliance on myself to be fulfilled as a human can I move to that deeper level of humanity, the realm of the Spirit.

Like Christ, I must learn to be consistent and have in me the mind of Christ Jesus constantly before me as my center. Lay Cistercian spirituality is the way I have selected to die to self each day so that my humanity can attain that which it was denied in the Garden of Eden.

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