In the Divine Presence
15
Friendship with Jesus
Contemplative reading of the Bible is the art of dwelling in the presence of our limitless God within the rich, complex, immense and beautiful universe of Scripture. It’s not simply that we stop talking, stop listening or stop doing anything. Contemplation is more a shift of perspective: rather than focusing on our prayer, our meditations, our reflections or even on what we hope God might say or do, we allow our focus to settle on God himself, and we allow ourselves to rest attentively before him. The psalmist captures the idea marvelously:
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
(Ps 131:1-2)
We often come to God like babes who are not yet weaned, clamoring for gifts and attention. “O Lord, listen to me! Hear my prayers! Do this, do that, give us the other! What should I do about this situation, this person, this problem? What is your purpose for my life? Would you bless me, heal me, touch me, renew me, enrich me?” But the weaned child has ceased all this pestering. It has learned to be confident that nourishment and care will be provided; it is able to rest in its mother’s love. All it desires is to be in the presence of the mother, to be held in her arms, to hear the beating of her heart.
Contemplative prayer is the soul similarly at rest in our Father’s arms, listening to his heartbeat, rejoicing in his loving presence. It is no more complex or arcane than this.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that other forms of prayer are somehow inferior, the prayer of lesser Christians who have not yet achieved some kind of spiritual maturity. There is always a place for voicing our worship, the praises of God; always a need to pray for others; always a time and place for lamenting and weeping before God, seeking his intervention. Contemplative prayer doesn’t supplant other forms of prayer, it completes them.
Imagine a married couple sitting together and talking over the dinner table. The conversation ranges widely. She tells him about a funny experience from that morning. He reminds her of a commitment they have made for later in the week. She talks about a book she has been reading, and how it has affected her. He asks if she’s heard from a friend who has been ill. And so the conversation meanders along as they share their lives—being thankful, expressing concerns, passing along news. In many ways, much of our prayer is like this, a conversation with God in which we express our delights and concerns, and listen for his response, his guidance, his reassurance.
Now picture the scene an hour later. The dinner table has been cleared and the summer sun is setting outside. He suggests that they sit out on the porch swing to watch the sun go down. They pour two glasses of chilled lemonade, step outside and sit together enjoying the warm evening. What now do they talk about? It hardly matters. Perhaps they simply sit in companionable silence while the day draws to a close. The point of the dinner conversation was to share thoughts, ideas, experiences, worries. But now they just want to be together, to enjoy one another’s company. No words are needed.
That is the nature of contemplative prayer: simply enjoying our friendship with God. It may be entirely silent, it may not. We may pray for hours or scant minutes. The difference is not in these externals but in the focus of the prayer itself. Our attention is on presence, not conversation; on God himself, not on the prayer.
There are no special readings to work through at the end of this chapter. The whole of Scripture constantly seeks to offer us the gift of this presence. It attracts and entices us, informs and stimulates us, corrects and guides us, always so that it can draw us closer to the divine author, God who has breathed his life and Spirit into the text. We hear the voice and sense its power. We see that there is something undeniably unique about this book, as peculiar as a bush that burns without being consumed. We hear words that speak of the history of God’s people, of God’s compassionate salvation, of liberation, of a new life. But among the words and pages we begin to sense something more: the presence of the one who speaks. And in the end, this is the foundational message of Scripture: take off your shoes; you are on holy ground.
In the Divine Presence
The crumbling Victorian church had largely been stripped of its furnishings. The darkly stained pitch-pine pews still stretched themselves across the broad distance from aisle to wall; a tall, imposing pulpit seemed to lean against one stout pillar; solemn stone monuments clung to the walls like stubborn limpets. Weak winter sunlight brought a pale, diffused glow to the deep blues and reds in the stained glass. But the interior of the church was warmed by the lively, dancing light of hundreds of flickering candles ranged across the east wall: candles tall and short, guttering and bright burning, some in glass holders of red or blue. Among the flames knelt a figure, bent over and utterly still, deep in prayer.
I was visiting the Little Brothers of Nazareth in Bristol, a city in southwest England. The Little Brothers are one of the smallest religious orders in the Catholic church. When I arrived, I asked the brother who greeted me how many brothers there were in all. “Just three,” he answered. I apologized for not being clearer. “Not how many here in Bristol,” I clarified; “I wondered how many of you there are around the world.” He offered me a tired smile. “Yes, I understood. Just three.”
The brother showed me around their center for the homeless. He was dressed in a traditional monk’s habit—traditional, that is, except for being made from blue denim. He noticed my questioning look and must have been used to it. “We’re a working order,” he explained, “so we need a hard-wearing habit.” I quickly came to understand what he meant. As we walked around the extensive center, I saw day rooms where homeless people could gather, talk and eat. We looked around the night shelter. There were showers, kitchens and offices where people could get help with welfare benefits and finding places to stay or live. An army of volunteers scurried around us as we talked. It was an extensive operation.
Finally, we walked the short distance across to the church. A former Anglican parish church, it had finally been declared redundant after the local population had moved out from the city center into the suburbs, and the congregation had slowly dwindled into oblivion. The brothers had offered to take it over as the heart of their community life, and to run it as a Catholic parish alongside their ministry to the homeless. The sense of the presence of God inside was palpable; I stood in silence for a few moments just drinking it in. The brother who was accompanying me stepped forward as though to show me around. I stopped him. “Look, perhaps we should come back,” I said, gesturing toward the lone figure among the candles. “Someone’s praying here right now.” He smiled again. “There’s always someone praying here,” he answered.
And then he explained. The Little Brothers centered their life on perpetual adoration of the blessed sacrament. Which, for those unfamiliar with the Catholic tradition, roughly translates to a practice of 24/7 loving prayer in the presence of Christ, a prayer which finds its focus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Every hour, day and night, someone was in that church practicing the presence of God. Sometimes it would be a volunteer from the center or a worshiper from the church, but almost always it was one or other of the brothers.
I stopped him. “Wait a minute,” I objected. “There are only three of you. That means each of you would have to spend around eight hours every day in here.” “That’s right,” he replied. “But how is that possible?” I asked, amazed. “How can you do all this? How can you run this center, raise all the money you need, coordinate those volunteers, run a parish—how can only three of you do all this when you spend so much time in contemplation?”
He answered me very softly and quietly. “My friend, how do you think we could have done all this unless we spent so much time in contemplation?”
We walked a little way down the aisle together and moved into one of the pews. The candles flickered gently while silence wrapped around us and settled into our hearts. And, for a while, we sat with God.