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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To be a Christian is to be someone of immense depth and dignity.  We are sons and daughters of God in His only begotten Son.  And if we live in Christ, we bear very much fruit, as He told us.  If we are members of Christ, if we are the fullness of Christ, if we are the branches that make up the Vine that He is, then how wonderful our life is.  Our lives are hidden with Christ in God.  How this truth ought to color all our actions and thoughts and everything about us.  What delight and confidence and satisfaction it should infuse into our prayers.

We are, and we know we are, the children of God.  We do, and know that we do, share in the Divine Nature by living in Christ Who is God.  It is very necessary for us to be extremely humble because all we have and all we are and all we are capable of is due to the gift of God.  But I think it is equally important for us to realize our dignity and importance and significance as members of Christ.  It does not matter how trivial the things we have to do in life are; we do them as members of Christ.  The things we do are acts of Christ Who lives in us as we live in Him.  The greatest thing we ever do is to pray.  Praying in the Spirit of Our Lord is a world-saving activity.  We can all pray, whatever else we can or cannot do.  And Our Lord has told us to pray always.  A Christian at prayer is Jesus at prayer.  A Christian doing anything that is God’s will is Jesus doing that thing.  Our Lord embraces in His own life all in our lives that is for God.  And everything in our lives ought to be for God.

When Jesus said He would be with His Church all days even until the end of the world, He did not mean that He would be available like someone at the other end of the telephone.  He did not mean that we should be able to get in contact with Him if we wanted to.  He meant much more than that.  The Vine and the branches are always in contact; they form one whole living organism. . . . We are His Mystical Body.  We are not His physical Body, but we are fed and nourished by His physical Body in the Eucharist.  We are not just a group of people associated by thoughts and ideals with Our Lord.  Our connection with Him is one of a shared life.  He lives in us and we live in Him. . . .

As we are members of Christ, we must love all men as He loved them.  As we are His members, we must forgive anyone who harms us as He forgave them.  As His members we must speak the truth with conviction, with the authority of the Church behind us, and that is the authority of Jesus Himself.  We cannot spread God’s love, which is the only kind that matters, unless we hold fast to His revealed truth.  Jesus taught with authority, and His Church teaches with authority.  He taught infallibly, and His Church teaches infallibly.  If any Christian teaches that doctrine does not matter, he has not taught the truth.  However much love he has, it is very much weakened because the only love that matters is God’s love, and we find that kind of love in Christ by union with Him, and we cannot have union with Him if our faith is not in what is objectively true.  He is the Way and the Truth and the Life.  To be a living member of His we must follow the Way, believe the Truth, and live the Life, which is love.  They all go together.

Let us keep our eyes on the face of Jesus and keep our hearts where His Heart is.  Let us make believing in Him, trusting in Him, living in Him the one consuming passion of our life.  We were made for Him. We belong to Him.  He knows His own, and His own know Him.  And having loved them all, He loves them to the end.  He loves them not just to the end of His earthly life, or to the end of their earthly lives, but from end to end of the infinite love of God, which has no end.  He loves us with an everlasting love.  If only we would realize that!