It’s all I have to bring today-
This, and my heart beside-
This, and my heart, and all the fields-
And all the meadows wide-
Be sure you count—should I forget
Someone the sum could tell-
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
–Emily Dickenson
“The Word is, by definition, immanent in the divinity and active in the world, and as such the Father’s revelation. A revelation of the Father without the Logos and his incarnation would be like speaking without words.”
― Karl Rahner, The Trinity
“The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental of our faith. On it everything else depends and from it everything else derives. Hence the Church’s constant concern to safeguard the revealed truth that God is One in nature and Three in Persons.”
—FATHER JOHN A. HARDON, S.J
“The Father is from no one; the Son is from the Father only; and the Holy Spirit is from both the Father and the Son equally. God has no beginning; He always is, and always will be. The Father is the progenitor, the Son is the begotten, the Holy Spirit is proceeding. They are all one substance, equally great, equally all-powerful, equally eternal.”
–Fourth Lateran Council, 1215
“The Father is entirely in the Son and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Son is entirely in the Father and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is entirely in the Father and entirely in the Son. None of the persons precedes any of the others in eternity, nor does any have greater immensity or greater power. From eternity, without beginning, the Son is from the Father; and from eternity and without beginning, the Holy Spirit has proceeded from the Father and the Son.”
–The Council of Florence, 1439
The Father, Who is Justice, is not without the Son or the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit, Who kindles the heart of the faithful, is not without the Father and the Son; and the Son, Who is the plenitude of fruition, is not without the Father or the Holy Spirit; they are inseparable in Divine Majesty.
-Hildegard of Bingen
The quieting, mystical experience of Taizé Prayer.
“Since my youth, I think that I have never lost the intuition that community life could be a sign that God is love, and love alone. Gradually the conviction took shape in me that it was essential to create a community with men determined to give their whole life and who would always try to understand one another and be reconciled, a community where kindness of heart and simplicity would be at the center of everything.” Brother Roger
“God is love alone” “When we try to express communion with God in words, we rapidly reach the end of our capacities. But in the depths of our being Christ is praying for more than we imagine. Compared to the immensity of that hidden prayer of Christ in us, our explicit praying dwindles to almost nothing. That is why silence is so essential in discovering the heart of prayer.
Although God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never wants to impose anything on us. Often God’s voice comes in a whisper, in a breath of silence. Remaining in silence in God’s presence, open to the Spirit, is already prayer. It is not a matter of trying to obtain inner silence at all costs by following some method that creates a kind of emptiness within. The important thing is a childlike attitude of trust by which we allow Christ to pray within us silently, and then one day, we will discover that the depths of our being are inhabited by a Presence.”
― Taizé, Songs and Prayers from Taize: Accompaniment Edition for Cantor & Instruments
This is one video in a series of 31 hour-long talks by Thomas Keating that make up his foundational video teachings, “The Spiritual Journey with Fr. Thomas Keating.” All of these talks are now available on YouTube. Fr. Thomas was an internationally renowned theologian, speaker and author of dozens of books including “Open Mind, Open Heart.” Fr. Thomas co-founded Contemplative Outreach, which offers this series and supports Centering Prayer. Along with Fr. William Meninger and Fr. Basil Pennington, Fr. Thomas began the Centering Prayer movement in the 1970’s to renew the Christian tradition of contemplation.
Go to http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org for more information on Centering Prayer, including retreats and local chapters that offer support to practitioners at all levels in the U.S. and around the world.
Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God.
God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful.
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship.
Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering end up disconnecting our suffering from God’s suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through.
The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results.
People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.
Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom.
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained – through prayer, study, and careful analysis – to manifest the divine event of God’s saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
“If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.”
“How strange God’s ways are! He calls us to a union we do not understand. He calls us to a place of encounter which we cannot find. We search and search. Our silence reveals to us not a garden of delights but an awful nothingness. God leaves us in an awful emptiness. All our initial enthusiastic notions of prayer deteriorate into an acknowledgement of our utter superficiality and lack of authenticity before God. We can only throw ourselves completely on his mercy. We can only wait in the darkness and cry out for our salvation. We can but trust that God’s love is such that our sinfulness does not even matter. We can only have faith.”
“The solution Merton suggests is that we should quit keeping score altogether and surrender ourselves with all our sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ.”
“All that we can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable manifestation of his presence.”
Fr. Carl Arico Recordings – Contemplative Outreach and Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer is a receptive method of Christian silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God’s presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself.
The Guidlines
“When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered. You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and belonging.”
“I would love to live
like a river flows,
carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding.”
“We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.”
“One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.”
“All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time.”
“Our Lord does not so much look at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.”
“Let us love, since that is what our hearts were made for.”
“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”
“Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but simply surrender and gratitude.”
“If a little flower could speak, it seems to me that it would tell us quite simply all that God has done for it, without hiding any of its gifts. It would not, under the pretext of humility, say that it was not pretty, or that it had not a sweet scent, that the sun had withered its petals, or the storm bruised its stem if it knew that such were not the case.”
“Holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.”
“Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love.”
“When I die, I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens, I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.”
“Time is your boat not your home.”
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“Silence is God’s first language.”
“However softly we speak, God is so close to us that he can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of him, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate him within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there.”
“In the inner stillness where meditation leads, the Spirit secretly anoints the soul and heals our deepest wounds.”
“Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing.”
“Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction.”
“In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.”
“To reach satisfaction in all
desire its possession in nothing,
To come to the knowledge of all
desire the knowledge of nothing.
To come to possess all
desire the possession of nothing.
To arrive at being all
desire to be nothing.”
“Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent.”
“Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of Divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly.”
“A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things.”
