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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We can learn a lesson from Our Lady, because she certainly was a true contemplative and found God within Herself.  She could be described as simply an echo of God.  God spoke a word . . . full of depth and beauty, which was . . . the intimate name of Mary.  And out of nothingness, out of complete lowliness, the perfect echo of that word cam back to God Who spoke.  That echo was Mary saying “God” in a Marian way with all her soul.  That precious soul came, beautiful and with free will, from the creative power of God.  There was nothing in Mary that was not a deliberate willed reflection back to God of all that He said in naming Her.  God was Her beginning and Her end.  She was and is a pure, lucid, beautiful echo of God’s word, and She knew it.  Our Lady did not think that She had built herself up in order to come close to God.  “He that is mighty has done great things for Me,” She said, and She saw Herself as the little handmaid of the Lord. . .

You are in fact nothing but an echo of the voice of God.  You are made of nothing; that is what God made you out of.  As long as God speaks, the echo of His word persists, but if He became silent, then the echo would simply be nothing.  It is very wonderful to be an echo of the voice or word of God.  God says your own intimate, individual name, not only as a label to say who you are, but as a resounding description of what He wants you to be, and so that is what you are.  He lovingly calls you Mary or Elizabeth or Michael or whatever your personal hidden name really is, and He means you, through and through, and out of . . . absolute nothingness, you pop up into existence . . . as a living echo of that lovely developing word. . .
           
You are all echo.  If you hold on to yourself as being your own property, if you hold on to anything you possess as your own, if you claim full possession of anything you do, in all these cases that part of you ceases to reflect back to God.  It is not an echo of God.  It ceases to be part of your true self and becomes a blemish or imperfection or false growth on the self that you ought to be.  Everything must be referred back to God, offered to God to Whom it belongs, because we are echoes of Him.

Everything you are and everything you have and everything you do must be sent back to God, and then you are a sweet sound singing out the Magnificat to the Lord.  If we have complete poverty of spirit, holding on to nothing as our own, and return everything straight to God, then we become very rich, and God does great things for us.  The echo and the divine voice are united. 

A contemplative is so aware of his nature as an echo, . . . so conscious of being nothingness resounding to God’s voice, that he is aware only of God’s voice when he looks at himself.  Far from feeling substantial and that he has built himself up, the contemplative looking at himself in the depths of his consciousness is only aware of God creating him and loving him.  Knowing himself deeply by self-awareness, he sees right through himself to God. . .

Each of you is there at this very moment because God is calling out with love your most intimate personal name, and you echo back to Him all that He sings out.  You do it by being what you are and being glad to be that . . . deliberately for Him.  You do it by having what you possess as personal gifts . . . and doing what you have to do . . . only for God, to give Him glory, to please Him.

Be then a pure echo of God.  Be the true sound of that particular poetry that God speaks in describing and creating you.  And for your prayers, which are the closest reflection of all that you give back to God, remember that they themselves do not really have you for their ultimate source.  Your prayers are the Holy Spirit praying in you, and you echo back to God the lovely things He says. 

No wonder Christian life is a life of joy and confidence and thanksgiving.  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He that is mighty has done great things for me.