by James Martin
4. Action: What Do You Want to Do Based on Your Prayer?
Finally, you act. Prayer should move us to action, even if it simply makes us want to be more compassionate and faithful. Entering into a relationship with God will change us, will make us more loving, and will move us to act.
Now that you’ve read the story of Jesus in the synagogue, have asked yourself what God is saying, and have spoken to God about your reaction, it’s time to do something. Perhaps you resolve to be more courageous in standing up for that person at work. Or you decide to forgive someone who has hurt you. Or you feel that you still want to pray more about what to do. But let your prayer move you to real action.
In my case, the attraction to Jesus’ freedom encouraged me to speak out about that issue. It was a difficult thing to do, and it provoked the ire of a few individuals, but I felt that I was trying to follow Jesus’ example. That helped me through the tough times and gave me confidence. And, in the end, there was little to fear: no one threw me off the brow of any hill, literal or figurative.
Those are the four steps of lectio: read, meditate, pray, act.
ANOTHER, SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT, WAY of praying lectio divina is to dwell on a single word or phrase, and, as Ignatius said, “relish” or “savor” the text. For people who feel uncomfortable with imagery in their prayers, this works very well. And it works especially well with the psalms.
In this method you read the Bible passage meditatively, pausing on any word or phrase that seems meaningful.
This was something that greatly appealed to Ignatius. In his Second Method of Praying, he says that one should pause on words and phrases, “as long as meanings, comparisons, relish, and consolations connected with it are found.”
Let’s take Psalm 23, which begins with the phrase “The Lord is my shepherd.” The next line reads, “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” Perhaps you might find yourself drawn to meditate on what it would feel like to rest in that “green pasture.” If you’re a busy person—or feeling swamped—you might simply rest with God. Maybe all God wants to do in that prayer is to give you rest.
Or perhaps you read “green pastures” and find yourself unexpectedly sad and wonder why. Maybe you can’t see any green pastures in your life. You could share your sadness with God and may feel a new closeness with the God who wants to console you.
Or you may feel joy. This might be the time to share with God your gratitude for “green pastures” in your life. Or maybe God is simply asking you to pay attention to those “green pastures” you’ve been overlooking. Your prayer may be one of gratitude. All this from a simple phrase in the psalm.
Ignatius stresses the need to relax during lectio. There’s no need to rush and no need to look for any earth-shaking “results.” Prayer is not about producing. Take your time. As Ignatius writes in the Exercises, we need to slow down:
If one finds . . . in one or two words matter which yields thought, relish, and consolation, one should not be anxious to move forward, even if the whole hour is consumed on what is being found.
Pay attention to any phrase that repels you too. You might read about the “darkest valley,” and feel fear. You want to rush over those words or even feel physically uncomfortable. You might be tempted to move on, but places of resistance may be precisely where God wants to meet you. Resistance is another fruit of prayer, like emotions, insights, and memories.
Resistance is often an invitation to pray or think more deeply about those feelings. Why do I feel resistance? Are you being called to be free of whatever holds you back from a deeper love of God? Why am I frightened of those dark valleys? Is it because you don’t trust God to care for you? Perhaps you can recall dark times in the past where you were cared for—by friends, family, coworkers—and see God’s hand in this too. Your attention to resistance can lead you to a new level of trust or self-knowledge.
This resistance always reminds me of massage. Every few weeks, because of some chronic pain, I visit a massage therapist. Often she focuses on a sensitive spot on my back. That spot needs attention because that’s where the most “energy” is, as she says. It’s an important spot to pay attention to.
It’s similar in prayer. When you feel reluctant to pray about a particular topic, it may mean you are resisting looking at something urgent, or a situation or memory that needs to be attended to. Maybe God wants to comfort you in that place or release you from some un-freedom or “disordered attachment.” That’s the reason there’s so much “energy” around those passages. In these moments, God offers us the chance to stop resisting and let ourselves be healed. And freed.
CENTERING PRAYER AND THE THIRD METHOD
A little theology will help our discussion of “centering prayer,” which has become popular in Christian circles.
Like two great rivers, two traditions of prayer flow through Christian spirituality. One is called “apophatic” and the other “kataphatic.” Apophatic, from the Greek word apophatikos, which means negative, is an approach to God that moves away from images, words, concepts, and symbols. It is more “content free.” The underlying theology is that God is beyond our comprehension, beyond any mental images we might have, unknowable; and so one seeks to find God by emptying oneself of preconceived notions of the divine.
Harvey Egan, S.J., a professor of theology at Boston College, noted in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Michael Downey, ed.) that this tradition is rooted in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Book of Exodus, God dwells in “thick darkness” (20:21) and appears to Moses as a “cloud” (34:5). Moses cannot see God’s face when God passes, which is another way of expressing the divine “otherness.” St. Thomas Aquinas said that one can only know that God is, not what God is. The best known writer on this stance is the (still anonymous) author of the fourteenth-century work The Cloud of Unknowing, who speaks more of what God is not, rather than what God is.
The other stream is kataphatic prayer, which comes from the Greek word kataphatikos, meaning “positive.” This tradition seeks to experience God in creation and makes overt use of images, concepts, words, and symbols in prayer. Kataphatic prayer is more “content rich.” The theology here is that we can begin to know God through all of creation.
This method is also firmly rooted in Scripture. The Old Testament stresses that God can be understood through his visible works—that is, the natural world. In Christian theology this is made even more explicit: God is known as a person. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John (14:9), “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” And Aquinas—now arguing for the opposing side—says that although God is ultimately unknowable, we can seek God through the things that are “known to us.”
St. Thomas might be accused of a certain duplicity—arguing both sides of the argument. But he’s right in both cases: God can be known through his works (kataphatic) but not known fully (apophatic). Both approaches are authentic. Both have been used by believers over the millennia. Moreover, many find themselves using these two different approaches at different times in their lives.
You’ve probably guessed where I’m going: Ignatian contemplation, with its emphasis on the imagination, fits squarely in the kataphatic tradition. So does lectio divina.
Centering prayer, a practice that seeks to find God at the center of one’s being without the intentional use of images, is closer to the content-free way. In a recent conversation, Father Egan said plainly, “Centering prayer is apophatic.”
As a result, centering prayer is not often associated with Ignatian spirituality. Instead most people align it with Zen Buddhism or yoga. But there are clear echoes of centering prayer in the Spiritual Exercises.
At one point in the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius talks about the “Third Method of Praying,” which he describes as done “according to rhythmic measures.” You take a single word (he suggests words from the Our Father) and concentrate on the word while breathing in and out. “This is done in such a manner that one word of the prayer is said between one
breath and another,” he writes. This Ignatian practice is remarkably similar to Zen prayer as well as to the more contemporary centering prayer.
But before going any further with comparisons, let’s talk about what centering prayer is (rather than, apophatically, what it is not) and how it fits in with the Ignatian way.
Bear Me Away
Jesuits pray in many ways. Sometimes they compose their own prayers. Here is one from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), the French paleontologist and theologian, asking for the grace to age well.
When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes
in which I suddenly awaken
to the fact that I am ill or growing old;
and above all at that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only my faith is strong enough)
who are painfully parting the fibers of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow
of my substance and bear me away within yourself.
The three men most responsible for introducing centering prayer into contemporary Christian circles in the English-speaking world are John Main, M. Basil Pennington, and Thomas Keating. Main was an English Benedictine monk. Pennington was, and Keating is, an American Trappist monk, like Thomas Merton. Pennington wrote that the term centering prayer was inspired by Merton’s use of similar phrases in his writings.
Pennington and Keating wrote a brief book called Finding Grace at the Center along with Thomas E. Clarke, S.J. Before his death in 2005, Father Clarke, a quiet and gentle priest, resided at a small retreat house in a rural area north of New York City. He offers a concise introduction to the method: “Our theme is the center” he wrote, “the place of meeting of the human spirit and the divine Spirit, and, in that meeting, the place where the Christian at prayer meets the whole of reality, divine and human, persons and things, time and space, nature and history, evil and good.”
Who can do that? I thought when I first read his words. But Tom’s point is simple. Centering prayer is a move toward your center, where you encounter God. But it’s not simple navel-gazing, nor is it simply about God and you alone. For any encounter with God will lead you to the rest of creation.
God is within us and . . . we are in Him, and . . . this presence of God is a great motive of respect, confidence, love, joy, fervor.
— St. Claude La Colombière, S.J. (1641–1682)
This simple framework may strike many people as suspicious. Initially, I was more suspicious of centering prayer than I had been about imaginative prayer. If Ignatian contemplation sounded ridiculous, meeting God within you sounded arrogant. Who was I to say that God dwelt within me? Some Christians also think centering prayer is suspect because it’s “dangerously” close to Zen Buddhism and other Eastern practices. (The misguided idea that Christians couldn’t learn anything from Eastern spiritualities was a great source of consternation for Thomas Merton.)
But the more I read about centering prayer, the more foolish my objections seemed—for the idea of God’s dwelling within us is a foundational Christian belief. For one thing, most believers recognize conscience as the voice of God within. For another, multiple images of the indwelling God appear in the New Testament and in the early church. St. Paul said one’s body is a “temple of the Holy Spirit,” one place where God resides. St. Augustine wrote that God is intimior intimo meo: closer to me than I am to myself.
Centering prayer moves us to our center, where God dwells, waiting to meet us.
Three Steps
Father Pennington’s essay in Finding God at the Center breaks down centering prayer into three steps.
One: At the beginning of the prayer we take a minute or two to quiet down and then move in faith and love to God dwelling in our depths; and at the end of the prayer we take several minutes to come out, mentally praying the Our Father.
“Faith,” Father Pennington points out, “is fundamental for this prayer, as for any prayer.” Moving to the center, you trust that you’re moving toward the God who is intimior intimo meo.
Two: After resting for a bit in the Presence in faith-full love, we take up a single, simple word that expresses our response and begin to let it repeat itself within.
In other words, you find a mantra or prayer word such as “love,” “mercy,” or “God” to help you focus. Don’t concentrate on the meaning of the word. Rather, let the word anchor you in the presence of God. As the author of The Cloud of Unknowing says, “It is best when this word is wholly interior without a definite thought or actual sound.”
Three: Whenever in the course of prayer we become aware of anything else, we simply gently return to the prayer word.
Distractions are unavoidable in prayer. Even Ignatius mentions them. (“I was disturbed by someone whistling,” he once wrote, “but not so greatly disquieted.”) The prayer word gently recalls you to the presence of God.
And that’s it. Centering prayer is simple in theory. In practice, it can be difficult for beginners, especially if your life is packed with “content.” The notion that you could meet God without “doing” anything may seem bizarre. But centering prayer is not about producing or doing or achieving. It’s about being. Or rather, being with.
As Margaret Silf says, “In the eye of the storm is a center of perfect peace, where our deepest desire is embraced by God’s own desire for us.” Or to use Father Barry’s analogy of friendship, centering prayer is like a long silent walk with a good friend. While you’re not speaking to one another, there may be a deeper type of communication going on.
THE COLLOQUY
In Chapter Six, we touched on the idea of “speaking” with God by imagining God, or Jesus, in front of you. And I confessed that I’ve always found this a difficult way to pray. But for Ignatius it was an essential part of the Spiritual Exercises: he wanted you to come to know God, and Jesus. Conversation, or what he calls a “colloquy,” was one way of doing this. For many people who travel along the way of Ignatius, this is the most enjoyable way to pray.
At the end of most meditations in the Exercises, Ignatius recommends that we imagine ourselves speaking to Mary, Jesus, and God the Father. At one point during the First Week, Ignatius asks us to speak with Jesus on the cross and ask ourselves, What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I do for Christ?
Sometimes this prayer has worked wonders for me. On a recent retreat, for example, I imagined standing before Jesus and asked myself, “What am I doing for Christ?” and started to grow angry. That anger was an obvious sign that something was happening deep down. “I’m doing way too much!” I complained to Jesus in prayer, and then listed all the unnecessary projects that I should have declined. And I felt Jesus say to me, “I’m not asking you to do all that”
Most of the colloquies in the Exercises are of a freer form, that is, they are not attached to specific questions like “What am I doing for Christ?” Often in the Second Week, when you are reflecting on the ministries and miracles of Jesus, a retreat director will ask you to imagine speaking to Jesus, or one of the disciples, to review what happened during the prayer. Ignatius recommends that you imagine speaking to God, doing so as “one friend speaks to another.”
Colloquies can be simple. One Catholic sister whom I directed on a retreat spent four days sitting on a bench and imagining Jesus sitting beside her, while she told him what was on her mind. “Jesus and I had a great afternoon!” she said one day.
Again, what you “hear” in prayer needs to harmonize with your religious beliefs, what
fits with your understanding of God, and what you know about yourself. In other words, Does this make sense? In time, you will be able to better discern what seems authentically from God.
OTHER FORMS OF PRAYER
This is not an exhaustive book on prayer. “By no means!” as St. Paul would say. But I don’t want to leave you with the idea that those forms of prayer above are the only ways that Jesuits pray, or the only methods in the Ignatian tradition. Or the only methods recommended by other saints, theologians, or spiritual writers. So here are some very brief explanations of a few other ways to pray.
Communal prayer can happen in any group where participants are focused on God. For Catholics that includes the recitation of the Daily Office, as practiced by monastic communities and other groups; communal recitations of the Rosary; and the worship par excellence: the celebration of the Mass, called the “source and summit” of the church’s life.
Other Christian denominations come together for Sunday services in which Scripture readings, songs, and preaching lift the congregation’s hearts and minds to God. For Jews, the Friday evening Shabbat service reminds them of their covenant with God and their responsibilities to the community. For Muslims, the five-times daily call to prayer, which is often prayed privately, but many times in common, reminds them of their reliance on Allah, the Guide, the Restorer, the Gentle One.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that God meets us in groups, not simply when we’re praying alone. “The funniest thing happened yesterday,” said one young Jesuit recently. “I felt really moved during the Mass, almost to the point of tears.” We both laughed at the tendency to overlook group worship as a way of interacting intimately with the Creator. Communal prayer is as much an occasion for the “Creator to deal directly with the creature,” as Ignatius says, as is private prayer.
Rote prayer, like the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Rosary, the Jewish Shema (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God . . .”), and the psalms serve the believer in many ways. For one thing, they provide you with a ready-made template that is helpful when it is hard to find words to pray. Christians who pray the Our Father (or Lord’s Prayer) know they are uttering words given to us by Jesus. It has been called the “perfect prayer,” moving from praise to hope to petition to forgiveness. For another, rote prayers connect you with believers across the world. Rote formulas also help you lose yourself in prayer. As David’s mother said about the Rosary, they can help you look at God, and God look at you.