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.

We often think of God as if He were above us in the sky, and there is no harm in this, although we know that God is everywhere and is within us, in our hearts. Jesus raised His eyes to heaven when He prayed, we are told, so it is not wrong to picture the path to God as one that goes upwards. We have to climb a mountain to get to God. In fact we work out our salvation through two main things, namely, hard work and the troubles of life. Of course everything in life done for God helps us to heaven, but work and troubles are particularly uplifting, and we should make full use of them. . .

St. Paul had far more than his share of troubles and trials and set-backs, and yet he felt forced by his love for God to work himself almost to death to spread the knowledge of the truth about Our Lord. But St. Paul was a very joyful man because he knew Jesus and lived for Him. He was able actually to rejoice in his sufferings and infirmities. He knew by experience the truths we know in theory, truths that would have made Job thank God for his trials if he had known them. Work and trials boost us up to God. God is with a man in trouble who trusts in Him. . .

There is no path upwards, no salvation for us without work. When we offer the bread at Holy Mass, which is to become the Bread of Life, we say that it is made by human hands, and we call the wine we offer the work of human hands. It is the work of men’s hands that contributes to the Bread of Life and to our Spiritual Drink. Without our work there is no Sacrament of Life.

Your daily work--and you have some, even if you have retired-- is also in the Mass, although you did not grow the wheat or grapes or produce the bread and wine from them. Nor is it only the work of those who prepare the chapel or the altar that contributes to our salvation through the offering of Holy Mass. The people at Mass are more important than the chapel or the altar, and you are the people, and your life for God is supported by your work and daily round. . .

Sometimes we feel rather like Job and wonder how we can keep going, but we know where help lies. Like Job and Saint Paul and Our Blessed Lord, we have to work and keep going through the ups and downs of life, and it is especially the downs that give us the opportunity of rising closer to God. He is close to us when we feel down, even if it doesn’t seem so.

We do not and cannot live our lives alone, and while one man is having the ups of life, another is having the downs. We are meant to help one another no end. God asks us to help each other. We should be especially anxious to help those who are depressed and upset and tired, even if we feel somewhat the same ourselves. The friends of Job made things worse for him by telling him his problems were all his own fault, which they were not. And the relatives of Our Lord tried to take Him away from His work, thinking He was out of His mind. Let us always be good friends to those in trouble and help those who work in difficulties. . .

Jesus is the answer to our troubles and our work in life. He lives in us and we live in Him, and he gives us His strength, and our work and our troubles lift us up to heaven, for they become His, and He is in heaven.