Daily Postings

The journey through daily meditation and contemplative prayer is the most efficient path to learning to know and understand the mind and heart of Jesus and to grow in likeness to him in one’s own soul and in reflecting his love and goodness to others.  Contemplative prayer intensifies the pilgrim’s intimacy with Jesus and a deep awareness and understanding of the Father and the Holy Spirit and the interrelatedness of the three persons in God.  Imperceptibly the soul begins to sense and distinguish the role of each Person of the Trinity in his or her own life, and automatically talks to each differently when praying. The Father gives us Jesus, and watches over each of with unimaginable compassion and care, as it also watches over the Church which He will never abandon or forsake. The Holy Spirit guides and plans our lives as He molds us into a more perfect image of Jesus, in much the same way as He molds and directs the Church gradually into a more highly developed expression of Jesus’ light to a civilization trying to find its way through a world that seems bent on living in darkness.   The battle is not merely with obstacles due to human weakness and resistance to divine inspiration, but with insidious evil forces from hell itself, which confront not only the Church trying to understand and be faithful to the Holy Spirit, but also the individual soul struggling to maintain its intimacy with the divine presence within itself.  The wiles of the devil are insidious and the human mind without the Holy Spirit’s heip is no match for Satan’s far superior angelic intelligence.  That is one reason why traveling through the pathway of contemplative prayer can at time be dangerous and frightening because the struggle is not as simple as the struggle of a soul that lives on the surface of its life.  In contemplative prayer and in the contemplative way the pilgrim lives much closely united to the presence of God which is threatening to what is evil, and the encounters between good and evil are more intense, but so is the pleasure of intimacy with God.  Knowing and experiencing daily the power of God’s protection and love provides a peace and calm within the soul knowing that the power of God is a powerful shield from any possible dangers.

The knowledge and understanding and wisdom a pilgrim gains from intimacy with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Father provides a strength and confidence in the world outside where he or she has to deal with people of all kinds and types, both good and dangerous, and the wisdom to treat all with grace and kindness and understanding, without revealing what he sees them to be really like underneath their appearances.  That was what people saw in Jesus.  He knew and loved everyone even though he knew what they were like beneath the surface.  He described that unique trait when he advised the apostles to be “simple as a dove but sly as a fox.”

There are some souls who are experiencing this path towards deep intimacy with God who may wonder just what is happening.  Without an experienced guide through this interior jungle of unknown experiences and happenings that have no parallels in the external world, all this could seem like a trip through fantasy land, an experience both frightening and exciting, but because of the spiritual pain and sometimes depression, a very scary journey.  This alone is enough to lead a person to abandon the journey and return to the ordinary life in the external world where the senses feel much more comfortable and at home.

Not everyone has the persistence to endure the rarified world of the life within.  The Dark Night of the Senses is a frightening experience and though for most it may be only moderately painful and uncomfortable, and of short duration, for some souls whom God may be preparing for extremely difficult tasks later on, the Dark Night of the Senses, and later on, the Dark Night of the Soul, can be terrifying experiences lasting for many years.  Only a hidden strength from an unknown Source can give the soul the courage and grit to endure such spiritual pain.  But, the ones who endures it will later on realize that that phase in their spiritual journey was the most rewarding and enriching and enlightening time of their whole life.  The soul learns more about God, about the world of faith, about religious experiences, about people and the life of the soul and the soul’s relationship with God, and the nature of God and his relationship with his human children and the world of nature than could be learned in the most intensive theology or scriptural or psychology courses.  The reason why this is so, is because during that journey of many years, was lived inside one’s soul, where the pilgrim has a veiled and extended encounter with a sense of God’s Presence.  It is difficult to explain in words what it is like but, when it is experienced the person realizes that it is clearly a real life experience, and not imaginary.

When God does draw a person into this interior journey, the person should not be frightened but should feel honored, and allow God to gently lead him or her along the way.  God is a gentle God, and deals gently with us, especially if we need to be treated gently.  The rewards of this journey are well worth the exercise and the adventure, and the intimacy with God that they will find during the lifelong experience is filled with a joy and peace one could never imagine.   I will never forget an incident that took place three days before my godson Joey died.  He was sitting on my front porch during lunch break from our working in my vegetable garden.  I looked at him and saw he was deep in thought, so I asked him what he was thinking.  He said, “Fahd, I have always felt Jesus with me all the time, but today I have the strangest experience of Jesus’ Father holding me close to Him and telling me not to worry, that He is with me.  I have never had that experience before.  If people only realized that the high you get from being close to God is much more beautiful than any high you can get from the most powerful drugs.”   God was obviously preparing Joe for something that Joe never told me.  But three days later God took Joey home.

There is no clear delineation between the various stages of contemplative prayer.   While the Illuminative Way is in progress that does not mean that the soul has passed completely through the previous stage of the Dark Night of the Senses, where the soul is purged and purified.  That process of purification persists all through the phases that follow.  And though we talk of God sharing his lights and insights into mysteries, these are not daily occurrences ordinarily unless God is using the pilgrim as a prophet to share messages with others.  Most of the time these insights or flashes of revelation come at irregular intervals, while the ordinary life of the soul is still following the steady course along which the Spirit is guiding it.  Part of that ordinary course which is part of the purifying process are continuous flashbacks to incidents of the past where mistakes and sins return to haunt the soul stirring up guilt especially concerning things done or things that should have been done which were not done, and which were given little attention at the time.  Now these things come back with the full realization of their seriousness and arouse great guilt.  They may have confessed and forgiven, but were not fully appreciated at the time, and now that the soul has been drawn so close to the Holy One within, the pain of guilt causes great suffering.  The quiet assurance of the Holy Spirit that those things are long past and have been forgiven still does not bring peace to the now troubled soul.  This is partially due to the unwillingness of the pilgrim to forgive himself or herself, and has a need to punish himself even while the Holy Spirit is trying to bring him peace, assuring him that what is past no longer exists, and what is past is just that, past, long past, and should not be made present again.  And then a flash of insight to finally bring peace: a path was being made all through a forest during the warm and rainy summer months.  The animals and birds that moved along that path kept dropping waste all along the path through the whole summer and fall.  In the autumn the leaves fell and covered the trail.  Then the winter came and the rain and snow fell all along that trail.  Finally spring arrived and as the snow melted there were beautiful wild flowers that sprang up where all the animals had dropped their fertilizer during all the previous months.  That fertilizer is like the things we do wrong which hurt others.  Once we express our sorrow for what we have done, God brings healing to all those for whom we have caused pain along our way through life.

During this whole mystical process of contemplation, life within the soul is a fascinating drama that is played out each minute under the constant direction of the Holy Spirit, and makes life outside our souls seem boring and dull by comparison.   If people only realized how exciting this life in the Spirit really is, many more people would enter into this wonderful kind of prayer, to which we are all called by our baptism.   As Christians we are all called to be mystics, to live in the heaven within our souls, where the Trinity dwells.

As we are drawn more deeply into our life with Jesus, the soul develops a sensitivity to what displeases Jesus, as well as what wounds or hurts or causes pain to others.  When we were children and we disobeyed our parents or told lies or were mean to our brothers or sisters we felt bad because we were told we offended God, and we were told that it was a sin, and that we should go to confession and tell the priest that we had sinned and offended Jesus.  That was important because Jesus gave the apostles and the priests the power to forgive us the bad things we had done.  And in forgiving us, Jesus brought us back into his love and his friendship.  And it was very important that we do not offend or displease Jesus because he loves us so much.

It was all so simple, but now as we are deeply involved in a much more profound and intimate relationship with Jesus in our contemplative meditations, our relationship is at the same time more complex and more simple.  More complex because we have become much more sensitive to what is offensive to Jesus which makes us aware all day long of the many situations where we have many chances to be humble in our opinion of ourselves and in the way we treat others, and more aware of how often we can be offensive to others by our strong opinions and intolerant of others who disagree, but then also more simple because we know without thinking that what we are about to say or do is going to be offensive to God, which deepens our grief after we have decided to go ahead anyway.  And simple in another way, too, because we realize the Jesus is ready to forgive us if we turn back to him, and then assures us of his love and forgiveness when we receive him in Holy Communion.

That simplicity in the context of our newly found mystical relationship with Jesus in contemplative prayer is a gift we could never is something we would never have dreamed of when we were younger.  The beauty and joy and comfort as well as the simplicity of that new adventure with Jesus is a gift of God that we would have never thought possible.   While our interior life is becoming so sophisticated by becoming aware of justice towards others and the needs of others which cries out to us for caring and love.  Even though our prayer life is so profoundly inward, we are constantly of the need and desperation all around us, and a corresponding need to reach out and help.  At the bottom of it all is a new sensitivity to all that is important to Jesus, which we now try as sincerely as we can possibly be to show Jesus that we are trying our best to be more like him in the way we care, in the way we love, in our attempt to become more perfect images of what he is.                                                                                                                                                          

What is taking place in the soul of a person who is faithful to his practice of meditation is similar to the normal struggle for identity in every one of us.  What is different in the soul of a person who has drawn closer to God in contemplation is that the process is not being carried out by the person, but it is the work of the Spirit of God within the person.  And what takes place is much more thorough and revolutionary than what we would undertake solely on our own.   What takes place under the divine grace is a gradual and complete reordering of motives, and the laying down of a whole new set of priorities, and values.  The natural world is taking on a new meaning.  It is now not just “nice outside today,” or “What a beautiful sunny day!”   It is now a mystery to be contemplated as an awesome gift of a God who loves us beyond reason and gave us this beautiful universal and all of nature close by for our enjoyment and pleasure and nurturing, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. It is a gift to be treasured, appreciated, studied, and to understand so we can care for it properly since it functions in such precise and fragile balance.

And it is not just in those areas that we are being retrained.  It is in our own personal values.  Prayer is no longer a litany of all the things the pilgrim wants or needs, or even a thank you to God for favors bestowed.  It is an intimate meeting with a divine person who is present in the depth of the soul and the prayer becomes a profound recognition of the person’s nothingness before God and a sincere and generous openness to God, and recognition that he belongs to God and neither wants or needs to be independent of God, but has reached a point where he is ready to make the generous act of total commitment of his life to the living presence of Jesus living within him.

This commitment is often put into words, “Jesus, I now realize I belong to you, and from the beginning of my existence, if not before, you created me to accomplish something special which you needed done.  I once had my dreams and my ambitions, but I realize not that you created me for a purpose and gave me all that I need to accomplish that purpose for which you created me.  So, I now offer my life and my heart and all my energy to you so you can use me as an instrument of your divine plan for my life.  All I ask if for the grace to follow where you lead and the couraqe and patience never to give up.”

We may look out at the world around us, and look up at the sky at night and sense the vastness of the universe, but the world inside us is far more vast than that of the external world.  The pilgrim is just beginning to sense a tiny part of length and breadth, height and depth of the world that lies within.  It is not limited by the dimensions of our body.  All that the pilgrim knows at this point is that he or she is on what is turning out to be an adventure, a voyage into the unknown, which reveals new and exciting happenings as each day passes.  What is clear is that it is never boring. As something new is revealed about the mind of God, a corresponding light is focused on a particular human limitation or weakness the person sees within himself or herself.  The new light revealing some new facet of God takes the pain or embarrassment out of finding a new sin or shortcoming in oneself.  To become suddenly aware that you are hypocritical in your judgment of others, when, at the same time, you see God in the accepting ways of Jesus when he is in the presence of people who are known sinners.  He is always so gracious, so careful not to embarrass a sinner, as he makes them feel comfortable, while we are so ready to pounce on a person or make a mental judgment that that person does not at all act like a Christian.  Sinners always felt comfortable in the presence of Jesus.

Though the pilgrim may not have the emotional comfort of sensing the divine presence, there is a peacefulness that pervades the person’s soul, a peace that is different from the emotional warmth of the previous phase. This peace it just there though its cause or source is unknown.  The peace alone is sufficient to place the soul at rest, but along with it is a restlessness and an uneasiness in the realization that you are not as good a Christian, or a follower of Jesus as you would like to be.  An added problem is that there seems to be no one with whom you  can share your problem, because you have no way of telling whether there is anyone who would even know what you are talking about.  The pilgrim then also realizes how alone he is. He or she may not feel lonely but that aloneness give rise to an unexplainably strange feeling that you are in a new and strange world where there does not seem to be many who can speak your language.  Instinctively, you reach out to Jesus but he is not there, or if he is there is no way you can find him.  The soul calls out to him but there is no answer.  The pain is sharp but deep down you sense he is there, but hidden from you for a reason you cannot understand.  Then the nagging question arises, “What have I done to prompt God to leave me?”

Another phenomenon which takes place during the night of the senses and the enlightening phase of our contemplative development is the reshuffling of our values and priorities. Previously there was little order to our thinking and little direction.  Now this focus on Jesus in our daily meditations and awareness of his presence in our life acts as a compass, in which everything, important and seemingly insignificant, things have a place, and seek to find their place.  A drunken bum lying in the street is no longer a drunken bum, but a pathetic, despairing image of Jesus lying there, and you wonder what you could, or should, do.  A friend, many years ago, told me that one night he went to pick up his girlfriend who worked in a restaurant, he saw a drunk lying against the wall next to the back door of the restaurant.  Disgusted at seeing the bum lying there, he picked him up and threw him in the dumpster to be picked up with the garbage the next day.  This would never occur to a pilgrim who now is conscious of the divine presence within the soul of each of us.

Very few things happen with drama.   The life within the pilgrim’s soul moves slowly, imperceptibly and persistently in the direction guided by the divine Spirit within.  Each person encountered is a unique and special individual, with a calling and a work to do that no one else can accomplish.  Maybe for the first time the pilgrim will not feel envy, seeing greatness and something special in another, because he or she also knows that he or she is special, too, in his or her own way, so there is no room for envy.  He might be tempted now to imitate what a Hindu friend might do, press his hands together in front of him chest and bow to the person in honor of the divine presence within that person.

Interestingly, praying is not easier during this phase of contemplative development.  In fact, it is even more difficult to pray.  God still stays at a distance and does not allow his presence to be felt.  As a result, there is nothing like in the previous phase where a warm feeling of Jesus presence called together all your thoughts and wandering distractions and focused them on prayers.  Your thoughts are now nothing more than unwanted and unwelcome and humbling distractions, many of them being humbly temptations.  All that one can do under such circumstances is talk to Jesus and tell him that these are the things that bother you all day long.  “These are the things, Jesus, that concern me and trouble me.  Do not be offended by them, Lord, but look upon them as expressions of my wants, my needs, the many things that bother me all day long.  Look upon  them as my soul’s plea to you for help.”

Even in this difficult time of reshuffling of values and needs, we are still moving forward in our intimacy with God within us.

Another interesting phenomenon that takes place during this phase contemplative prayer is that the light that deepens our understanding of things previously hidden, also shines on our inner life, on our motives for doing things and our attitudes towards others, and a keen awareness of those parts of our life that are unworthy of person who is supposedly close to God.  It is what happens when Jesus becomes alive inside of us.  When “Joshua” was first published, the book was being read by most of the staff at the publishing company, many of whom were Jewish as well as persons from various Christian groups.  They called to tell me one day that the atmosphere in the office had changed as everyone kept asking themselves, “How would Joshua look at this situation, or how would Joshua treat this person, or what would Joshua’s attitude be about a particular issue.’  It is that same phenomenon that takes place within the consciousness of the pilgrim who has opened their heart to allow Jesus to enter in.  That consciousness of Jesus sheds light on all those aspects of our life that need to be conformed to the mind and heart of Jesus.

This is different from a person who is merely pursuing goodness or perfection just for the sake of being righteous. The motivation for wanting to be good now is so the soul can be pleasing to Jesus who is now the love and center of your existence.  This purging process ordinarily would be painful if performed for other motives, but now it is a pleasant task because the change is being made out of love or deep friendship. The soul also is becoming more aware of how many unnecessary distractions are complicating the pilgrim’s life. The person begins to see how important it is to make life more simple so the soul can concentrate on those things in life that draw us into a deeper intimacy with God. 

At the same time there may still be actions and motives and things that we do that are sinful.  This bright light of the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and gift of discernment makes us painfully aware of how sinful we still are which humbles us in our own eyes and prevents us from looking upon ourselves as holier than we used to be, or God forbid, more saintly.  This searing light prevents that from happening, and makes the soul painfully aware its unworthiness of God’s special love and friendship.  What is interesting, however, is that new self-knowledge, as revealing as it is, and as indicting as it, does not have a demoralizing effect on the person’s spirit, but is rather an encouraging stimulus to want to be more pleasing to the divine presence within.  There is always something peaceful and gentle about the delicate way God works within us.

A most remarkable change that begins to take place during this phase of your relationship with Jesus is your understanding of God.  Previously you may have looked upon God as all-holy, all-just, all-righteous, distancing himself from evil people.  Then one day you hear of a notorious sinner whose life had changed dramatically and the person becomes a model of goodness.  An example is Moses, whom all history has revered as the great lawgiver of our civilization, a man specially called by God for such an awesome responsibility.  And then you find out that Moses was a murderer with a warrant out for his arrest for having killed an Egyptian soldier, and you read about his years of wandering through the lonely Midian desert, alone and friendless, and struggling to survive.  He had fallen from a righteous life to a lonely, desolate human being.  And in a flash of understanding you see that God needed a person humbled by a broken spirit over a horrible sin of destroying another’s life, that prepared Moses for his responsibility to become the great lawgiver of civilization, always conscious of his unworthiness because he had broken the greatest of those commandments by destroying a human being.

Immediately your idea of God begins to change, as you see God working intimately in the life of great sinner, as again you see him working in the life of another great sinner, David, the king, the author of many of the psalms, a man after God’s own heart.  You now see a God who works intimately with sinners using them as instruments to profoundly affect the lives of vast numbers of people.

This change in your understanding of God shocks you because it is so different from how you have always viewed God.  At this point there are some who become nervous of this change in their image of God. It frightens them as they become insecure.  Change in thinking that is different from the God they were taught about as children is upsetting and they retrench.  It may be that this change tied in with other changes in their thinking is too much for them.  They feel a need to back to their previous understanding of God that they feel comfortable with. That is unfortunate because they are putting an end to their growth in understanding of God that is necessary if a person is going to grow under God’s guidance.  There are some personalities who find change almost impossible, and as a result find it difficult to grow in a mature understanding of God, an understanding that will be destined to grow deeper and deeper with time. That process is for them too unacceptable, and they end their daily meditations because they feel they are wandering too far from the God they were taught about by their parents and their religion teachers.

What many do not realize is that to grow in spirituality, change in understanding God is necessary.  Growth means change and we cannot be afraid of that change.  Our idea of God is not changing.  We are merely getting to know God more deeply.  It is like being in love with a human being.  As your love grows you notice your understanding of the one you love also grows, because you are learning more about your lover which you were not aware of previously.  That is what is beautiful about love; it can grow

But, if the pilgrim persists in following the daily meditations, the person will gradually become more and more aware of their own sinfulness, and will understand, with a new humility,  how kind it is of God to be so condescending as to choose such a sinner for special intimacy.

While our relationship with Jesus is growing our external life goes on as usual.  There is no difference from before, no noticeable change.  If there is a change it is inside.  We may notice that we see differently things happening around us.  We are becoming aware that we are now viewing events in a different light.  It may occur to us at times how Jesus might view certain things in the news that come across the television screen, like Christians killing Christians, or just people killing one another.  Before it was just the natural way life goes on, but now it strikes you for the first time that this must be grossly offensive to God seeing his children killing each other, as a way of solving problems.   And the thought crosses your mind, “Why can’t people settle their differences without killing each other.

Though you see things differently, you do not feel comfortable speaking to others about what you see and how differently you feel about things that previously you saw as just that’s the way life is.  For the first time in your life you are beginning to feel separated from others, that you don’t fit, and that you feel strangely alone.  For the most part, there is no dramatic change inside, as there is no clear cut difference as you move from one phase to another.  As God shares his understanding and his insights with you so you can see things through his eyes, you are still not free of the darkness of being cut off from the intimacy of your former warm sense of intimacy with God.  This is good.  God is only too aware of how we would react if suddenly we passed from the darkness into the light of God’s vision of things and happenings, and we became aware of how wonderfully different and enlightened we had become.  We would soon begin comparing our new superior understanding to the shabby way most people view happenings in the world around them.  That was the problem with the gnostics in early Christianity.  They looked upon themselves as the elite Christians, with special knowledge that Jesus had not shared even with the apostles.

The Holy Spirit is much shrewder in the way he guides us through the various phases of the contemplative life, so we do not fall into the trap of superiority to others.  We are kept humble by the darkness we still feel with God keeping his distance from us, and merely sharing with us insights, which do not come in rapid succession but, one at a time, once every three or four weeks or even more rarely, so we get a chance for the others to drift into our subconscious and overlooked.  The new insight, however, remains as second nature.

And during this time, things happen that cause pain and bewilderment.  The person struggling to keep up with God, and still remaining faithful to his or her daily meditation, notices that things are happening in his or her life that are troubling.  A friend dies, a dear friend. The shock is painful, and the adjustment difficult.  A reversal in business takes place and causes havoc in the personal life of our pilgrim traveling the lonely road with God.  Or the person undergoes a serious sickness.  This is extremely painful, because such things are not easily understood or easy to accept when the person is trying so hard to be close to God. “If God is close to me why does he let things like this happen?  I haven’t done anything to deserve this kind of treatment.”

It is not easy to accept these things graciously, much less gratefully, but it is still part of the process of purification of the pilgrim’s soul, as the Holy Spirit draws the person away from the things of this world into closer intimacy with himself, even though that intimacy cannot be felt.  In fact, the person feels just the opposite, a further alienation and isolation from God.   But, the pilgrim still remains faithful, with a much stronger faith and deeper trust in God’s love and care.