Fr. John Keep: Thoughts on Spiritual Reading

The Garden of the Soul
(continued from a June 4, 1972 conference)

Let us make, or let us renew our firm intention to be men and women of prayer.  Nothing can stop us if we really want to be, above all else, dedicated to glorifying God, drawing down blessings on the world, and purifying ourselves by prayer.  Perhaps the biggest step to take is that of making a really effective resolution to give a definite minimum amount of time to prayer, and to nothing else.  This resolution should be so firm that even if we feel completely unable to pray or concentrate or do anything prayerful, we will still keep that period of time empty of anything else.  Neither anxiety nor boredom nor restlessness nor anything else must make us violate that time set aside for God.  One can adore God by keeping at prayer even if it is a prayer of boredom or anxiety or restlessness.  If you do keep it up, the time comes when boredom gives way to peace, and anxiety becomes dissolved in an unexpected experience of trust and confidence, and restlessness changes into regret that you cannot go on praying forever.

            Giving God the time and one’s undivided attention is, then, the most important effort we should make in becoming really absorbed by the desire to pray.  When God responds to our persistence, we shall no longer have any difficulty in praying a great deal, but shall regret that we cannot be at it a great deal more.

            Having fixed the external framework for progress in prayer and in peace and in finding God more intimately by making resolutions about the quantity of time for prayer, we then try to learn how to improve the quality of our prayer, to spend the time at better prayer.  The whole of one’s daily life is the background to prayer, and a fussy, noisy life, full of gossip and curiosity is not a good remote preparation for quiet and loving, undistracted prayer with God.  In fact, as one’s use of prayer time is improved, so the distinction between prayer time and the rest of the day becomes less.  There grows a quietness of spirit and a kind of calmness and warmth through all one’s daily activities.  One ceases to be over-involved in the temporal affairs of life, although they are still looked after as conscientiously as ever.  One begins almost unconsciously to see everything in God; one sees everything under the eyes of eternity.  A really prayerful life will give us not only an immense reverence for the lovely majesty of God, but a reverence for all created things too, for they the works of His hands, and He made them lovingly and with a wonderful purpose. By persevering prayer we come to give glory to God for all creation and to find a harmony between all things.  The peace of God, which does pass all understanding, brings with it as well a kind of peace we can understand, a harmony with all that is.  All creation was made for prayer. . . .

            If only we could realize what it is to be in the presence of our loving Father, paying attention to Him alone.  If we realized what He does to us at such moments, whether we feel it or not, we should at least double our times of prayer and regard the loss of them as a greater loss than almost anything else.  “Awake, north wind, come, wind of the south!  Breathe over my garden to spread its fragrance around.  Let my Beloved come into his garden; let him taste its rarest fruits.”   Let us cultivate the garden of our soul; let us keep its rarest fruits for Him.


 
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There are many ways of picturing the path to God. . . . One of the pictures we find in the psalms and elsewhere is that of a person climbing a mountain.  “Who shall climb the mountain of God and stand in His holy place?”  The various qualities of such a person are often given:  a faultless life, justice, purity of heart, and so on.

The mountain, at the top of which we find God, is in our own soul.  For although in many ways we can see God in various external things and events and must serve Him in other people, real union with Him takes place in the secrecy of our own hearts.  If we live up to all the beautiful things Our Lord taught us, we do in fact overcome ourselves, surpass ourselves, and climb to the top of the mountain within the soul. . . . As we climb this interior mountain, our awareness of God grows stronger and deeper.  It is an inner awareness and very intimate.
           
There is a peculiarity about this mountain.  The higher you climb up it, the more humble you become, the more you ascend, the lower your estimation of yourself becomes.  For although you are growing greater and greater, it is the greatness of God that is growing in you, and you come to see this more and more clearly.  You come to see clearly in the thin mountain air that God is everything and you are nothing.  Illusions disappear. . . .

We have to keep two truths in mind.  One is the truth that of ourselves and left to ourselves we are nothing.  If we have the grace of deep self-knowledge—and this is gained as we climb the mountain of the Lord—we shall see ourselves as being in ourselves inferior to anyone else.  For we shall be vividly conscious of how little we can do, and how many great graces we have resisted or misused, and how many great opportunities we have missed.  We shall be deeply contrite.  There will be a clear self-judgment, but we shall feel quite unworthy to judge anyone else.  So the truth will make us very humble as we go up the mountain of God within our self awareness.

The second truth we have to keep in mind, however, is that the grace of God, God living in us, has made us exceedingly great and important.  We have in our souls, at the top of that mountain, at the summit which is at our innermost spiritual center, the greatness of God.  He lives in us and we are lit up by His presence.  This is the greatness of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—within us, making us great by His life, His light, His power.  We are His living temples.  This is a very great, a very holy thing to be. . . .

St. Paul tells us several times to keep our eyes on heavenly things and not on those of this earth.  We should do this within ourselves, keeping our eyes towards that peak within us where God dwells, where even now we are united with Christ Who loves us.  We should live recollected lives.

In spirit we are in heaven with God, with Jesus, and with all the angels and saints.  We have a real spiritual communion with them through this summit of Mount Zion in our souls.  The base of the mountain is on the earth, but its summit is in heaven, and it is all within us.

With God’s help and by constant interior prayer, with faith and humility, we can gradually climb this mountain in our soul and come to be conscious of the light, a light that is there even when we do not see it.  Faith gives us joy in it even now, but the sight of it will give us something the eye has not seen, nor ear heard, something prepared by God for those who love Him.

We carry a very, very great treasure within us, and it really is ours.  Is it not worth selling all we have in order to buy it?  For when you are clearly aware of it, all the things of this world fade into insignificance, and self-love dies.