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.


 
Home : LinkThoughts On Prayer : LinkStations Of The Cross : Linkaudio
  

Why do so many souls have to undergo purification in the merciful fire of Purgatory before being fit to see God face to face in heaven?  The immediate answer is that nothing defiled can enter heaven because it is a state of incredible union with God Who is infinite Love.  Anything with imperfections in its love will necessarily be scorched when it approaches that divine Love.  Only a soul perfect in love can itself be in full union with God.  Man is made in the image and likeness of God, but any faults he commits against God’s love defile that image, and it cannot enter heaven until it has been perfectly restored.  God does not carry out this restoration by an instantaneous and painless miracle as we die.  The progressive purification which we did not complete on earth continues in a much more intense form in the after life.  When it is complete we enter heaven.

The reason why souls go to Purgatory, and the reason why holy souls on earth suffer severe interior trials as they become saints, is that they do not love perfectly as they approach God.  The command we have received is to love God with our whole heart and whole soul and whole mind and all our strength.  If there is anything at all which we love that is not what God wants us to love, then we quite certainly do not love Him with the whole of anything.  We are holding part of our love back for our selfish desires.  We are attached to something or someone that comes between us and God.  And how very many things there are to which we are attached in this way, if we could only see clearly as we shall in the next world.  If we loved God wholly as He commanded us to, we should never commit the slightest deliberate sin or fault; we should be entirely forgetful of ourselves, and we should love and choose the way Jesus chose, the Royal Road of the Cross.  But we do not do that, at least not entirely.  We have a very long way to go before we are fit for immediate entry into heaven.  Only a real saint can enter heaven, and if we do not become tempered into the quality of saints on earth, we shall have to be treated after death before we enter God’s glory. . . .

What we urgently want, then, is the quickest and most efficient method of getting perfect starting right now. . . .

In fact, the simple and simplifying answer to all our good ambitions in the spiritual life is to practice Christian love. . . .

So what is love? . . . Love is the measure of how much someone means to you. . . It is the measure of how much you would be willing to do for him, how much you would be willing to give up for him, how much you would give up of time and pleasure and comforts for him. . . . It measures your relationship with others. . . .

If we are going to take the simple, uncomplicated path of growing in love, then what we are going to do is to grow in concern for the interests of others, and for God’s interests first of all.  If you are not concerned with God’s interests, you do not love God even if you have ecstasies whenever you think of Him.  One of God’s interests is that we should love each other, show concern for each other.  So we cannot love God if we are not concerned with our neighbor’s interests.   If you want to love someone more, you do not have to go and sit down and force yourself to feel warmer about him.  If you want, out of love fore Jesus, to obey Him by loving your enemy, you do not have to sit down and force yourself to feel that you like your enemy.  All you have to do is to be concerned about his interests, to take care of him, to do good to him.  Do good to your enemy because you love God, and you are loving your enemy; you are concerned about him and his welfare because God is concerned about him and his welfare.  Your love is genuine even if your emotions make you feel you cannot stand the sight of him. . . .

So love is the measure of how much we care for someone.  If we have it, we shall serve that person.  Love and service go together.  If you love someone you do things for him.  Even God’s love is like this, you know.  Jesus said on one occasion, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” . . .

We can show how much we care for God’s interests from morning until night, and when we take His gift of sleep with thanks, we love Him then as well.  We can give Him glory in eating and sleeping and in all our activities, and so we should. . . .

Let us follow the advice of St. Therese [the Little Flower] and give Him a very large number of very small sacrifices.  We can do our daily work and all the day’s round for God conscientiously, and to make it a real expression of great love, we add to it innumerable little sacrifices.  Jesus said that He wanted His followers to deny themselves and take up their cross each day; so we show our care for Him in each little sacrifice.  We can make innumerable little prayers of love, very short and very sharp.  We can be especially faithful to our mental prayer.  We can be moderate in eating and drinking and sleeping and taking recreation.  We can treat each moment of life seriously for the Lord.  We can increase our love for God and our neighbor in very frequent and very many little ways.  Sacrifice is the food of love, and we want to grow in love. . . .

Read what St. Paul says about charity or love in the thirteenth chapter of his first Letter to the Corinthians.  Read it carefully and take in every word, and see if after reading it you are satisfied with your own love. . . . [Paul says] love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence and is not resentful; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. . . .

God is love and has care for us. . .  Follow Jesus and you will be all love.