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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Although we have the most wonderful and powerful source of grace in the liturgy of the Mass and the Sacraments, these sacred events in which we share do not by themselves give us as much knowledge of Our Lord and of His earthly life as we need.  We have to make use of all the other opportunities we have of getting to know Him better.  We all have such opportunities, not only by thinking deeply and long about all we have already heard about Our Lord, but also by listening to sermons and conferences, by reading good spiritual books and above all the Bible, and by turning over prayerfully and lovingly in our minds all these things we hear and read and know. . . .
           
Meditation has always been something faithful followers of Our Lord have practiced ever since Our Lady pondered over Her Son’s life and sayings in Her heart.  The more we think deeply and lovingly about Our Lord, the better.  We may do this pondering over the mysteries of Jesus during our mental prayer if that is the kind of prayer that suits us.  It does suit us if we find we can do it lovingly in the presence of God and that we come away from the prayer with good resolutions.  If on the other hand our mental prayer is much more filled with acts of love than of thought, or is spent in silent and almost wordless adoration, then it will not be during mental prayer that we shall do these meditations about the life and death of Our Lord.  If we do not do much thinking during our mental prayer, then we should at some other time of the day, or even almost habitually, all the time filling our minds with thoughts and considerations about Our Savior’s life and death and resurrection.  We can do it especially during our slow, thoughtful, prayerful spiritual reading.  In any case we must think about all those events in Jesus’ life on earth and why He did them, and about His words and what they mean and why He said them. . . .

The events, the mysteries, in Jesus’ life are not matters for interest only.  His purpose in living through those events and in doing those things was all the time, not only to please His Father, but also to benefit us in a concrete way. . . .

            It ought to give a great deal of firm confidence to a person who loves Our Lord to know that not only has Jesus experienced the same things we do, but that His experience of them links Him to us as we experience them.  We can confidently expect His strength and help in our lives, not only because He loves us and answers our prayers from heaven if they are confident prayers, but because He has lived our life for us, so that we may live it in Him.  There is always a timeless mystery of Our Lord for us to share in in all the events of our lives.  It was for us men and to give us supernatural life that He became Man and lived our life.  All the mysteries of His life and death and resurrection, all the details of those things He did and suffered, are for us; they belong to us; we can appropriate them as we live our similar events and experiences.  Why, He who was sinless even lived through real temptations for our sake! . . .

We can, as a matter of fact, distinguish three reasons why all the mysteries of Our Lord’s life are our mysteries.  Again, the first reason is that He lived them for us.  It was His will to live them for us.  He would not have lived them but for our needs and the riches He intended to give us in our lives.  The second reason why His mysteries are ours is that in them He gave us an example to follow.  He is our model and we are to imitate Him.  We are to have the same mind as was in Christ Jesus as we live the various phases and events of our lives.  But there is a third and much deeper reason why those mysteries of Jesus belong to us and are significant for us in our lives. . . . It is in Christ that God chose us to be holy and spotless and to live through love in His presence.  We have been born with Christ; we have been buried with Christ; we have risen with Him. . . .

We are linked with Christ in all things if we live as we should and have made His mysteries our own.  In Christ we are born, we grow, we suffer, we rise again.  And we can make these mysteries our own . . . in two ways.  Firstly, we imitate Jesus, have Him before our eyes as we live, seeing how to act by seeing how He acted.  Secondly, we are deeply linked with His mysteries and receive the grace of each one by meditating prayerfully, by contemplating each one lovingly. . . .

So it is important, not only to live good lives, but to contemplate the mysteries in the life of Jesus and all the details we know about them.  When we are joyful, we may benefit most by looking at the joys of Our Lord.  When sorrowful, we may draw comfort and virtue by contemplating His sorrowful mysteries.  We unite ourselves in whatever state we are in with Our Lord in that same state. . . .

What great riches God holds out for those who love Him, that is, for those who love His Son.  God has blessed us with all the riches of heaven in Christ, that is, if we live with Him.  And since it is His dearest wish to live with you, if you want to live with Him, you have only to ask this grace and do your best, looking at His mysteries with love, imitating Him in your prayers and works and thoughts and even in your rest and recreation.  And above all, share in the Paschal mystery which embraces all the different mysteries of Jesus’ life in the Holy Mass.  A faithful life is a preparation for that and a thanksgiving for it.

No one on earth is as rich in opportunities and gifts as we are.  We are daughters and sons of God in His Son.  And no one has ever loved anyone else as much as Jesus loves you individually.  Do respond to that love.  Unite yourself to Him by imitation and by contemplation, both of which are ways of making His mysteries your own.  True life is life in Christ.