PRAY·ER

ABHISHIJ{TANANDA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Swami Parama Aritbi Anandam: Memoir of Fr. J. Monchanin
(out of print) ,,,
··. NEWEDIDON
Saccidananda: a Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience
translatedfrom EVEILA SOI-EV£JL A DIEU
Hindu-Christian Meeting Point-within the Cave of the Heart
The Mountain of the Lord: Pilgrimage to Gangotri
In Spirit and Tru(h: an essay on Prayer and Life
The Church in India: an essay in Christian self-criticism
(out of-print)
Towards the Renewal of the Indian Church (out of print)
Guru and Disciple:. an Encounte·r with Sri Gn71.n71.nanda,
a contemporary spiritual master
The Further Shore
The Secret of Arunachala: a Christian hermit on Shiva's holy
mountain
Ascent to the Depth of the Heart: The Spiritual Diary of
Swami Abhishiktananda

ISPCK
2001
Published ~Yi~. Rev. ~,¾nos of the Indian S<>.ciety
Cl)ristia_oKnowledge(ISPCK), Post ]}ox
for Promoti,,ng,,
1585, Kas~Jiab,, Delhi-,110006.

Origuial ~~ edition 1967 CONTE.NT S

ReprintediQ4.~~ 1969, 1972, 1975, 197~
New and ~ed edition, 1989, 1993, 1999, 2001
. . .

Page
Reprinted 2001 •• I Author's Preface ....... vii

1. The Holy Presence 1·

2. A Mystery of Faith 12
0 Abbi.;~~~ Society, 1989 3. The Universal Theophany 25
4. The Call Within 38
5. The Sabbath Rest of God '48
6. On the Way 62
7. Silence ~ Yoga 68
ISBN: 81-721,4129-7 8. The Word of God 85
9. The Prayer of the Name 95
10. OM! ABBA! 110

Printed at Academy Press, E-40, Sector Ill, Noida.

 EDITOR'S NOTE
PREFACE
~ter. the ~f~ printing of 'Prayer in India (and separate edi-
tions m Bntain and the U.S.A.) it was thought that it would be
RECENTYEARS have witnessed a far-reaching "return to. the
wc:>rthwhile to make available a translation of the fuller and
more freely expressed version which Abhishiktananda later sources" within the Church. This·:is what brought about' the
~te for his French publisher. The present edition of Praye'r Vatican' Council, and equally the post-conciliar turinoil. The
ts transfatedfrom·Eveilasoi-eveil aDieu.· . latter questions everything that has been•carried down to us by
the stream of history-'-no.t only the contribution of
Scholastidsm and·theMiddle.Ages'or,the heritageof Gree~
Roman. antiquity, but just as much· the ,whole cultural t and
religious world of Palestine, the very context in which the first
Christians awoke to faith in the risen Christ and in which Jesus
himself used human language to tell of his experience. as God
incarnate. :··
This movement· is undoubtedly legitimate, for in. the last
resort there should not be ~ny intermediary between Christ arid
the peliever. Through .the Spirit the believer should participate.
in the· very experience of Jesus himself: Of course, there ar~
bound to be intermediaries at ,the external level, because· our
life is ·set in history and in time, and moreover it is essentially '
livedin community. However, these intermediaries, of whatever
type they may be~for example, other· people, ideas .or
institutions-all exist with a view to bringing aboutthe personal·
.meeting and direct contact between·man and God ..They .ought
to be. entirely -transparent to the mystery, lest they ;become
 viii Prayer
idols like those from which throughot1tIsrael's· history God
· sought to free his people through the teaching of the prophets.
If this return to the sources, which is taking place equally in
the spheres of history and canon law, of theology and liturgy,
is to have its full effect in the Church and the world, it is
essential that it-be, accompanied by an inward renewal, and
that the Church should_more and more .feel the necessity for
meeting with Christ at"the level .9f contemplation and deep
. experience.
The Council has reminded us. that the Church·is the people
. ofGod·and th~ Body:ofChrist;The Church.is.the-veryniyste'r(
of Christ himself, which·in the course. of ages spreads froW
one people to,another, reaching as the r Psalmist says p2i8)
''From sea-to sea and.:.to the ends of the,earth". The·.Cburch.
is,.that communion in Jove which unit~s all those whom the
Spirit has made to sharein the experienceof fo~_us. ,TheChurch,
as a:visible society, has •no other purpose than. to prepare
mankind for this experience and for the universal communion
which it implies:r.
·In the time after the Council Pope Paul VI laid a ·greater
stress·than ·any of his predecessors on .the need.for: a renewal
of contemplative life in the Church; and indeed, without this
inward renewal,.there is a serious.danger that an the present
turmoil may degenerateinto a mere questioningof the.structures
and formulas.~hich have been .inherited from the past, and the
substitutionin their place,ofother structuresandformulas,which
would.,perhapshave even less value than the old. ·, -·
··The·renewal of the Church -shouldreach as far as the centre
.of our being, to•,our hearts; and, within the··heart of-Christ,
should be. united to, the. Source from which,the Spirit.wells
up--c--preci~e.ly where:Jesus constantly abode in the Father's
Preface ix
presence; and where he loved.his fellow meg with the same
love with which he loved God and was loved by him,
In these days everythi9g is .:beingq11estioned~ begipning with
the basic identity of the individ.ualand of the Christian,:whether
priest .or layman. None of the ideas ~nded dow.nby tnidition
are any.longer felt _to.besatisfying. Even the idea of God is
under ~ttack, .and so -too.are the concepts which sougµt: to
.define.thedivine-human mystery of Christ.and of the Church.
From now on.the real and definitiveidentity of the__ individual
and of the.Christian will .only.be found, on the further side of
the idea of the person and of his perceptible ~onsciousness, in
that depth of his spirit where he awakes to himself on emerging
from the·hands of his Creatorwith'a simple loving gaze directed
atGod his Father-indeed, at the very point where he receives
the new and secret name which expresses his etem,a:lidentity
in Goa;·. . ',,. ' , .
Long before Jesus appeared on the earth, and even before
the time qfthe great prophetsof Israel/Iridia's religious intuition
had been irresistibly drawn tow11rds' thatdepth· of being and
'awareness iri whiSfiw'ererevealed irisepaiablyin their ultimate
truth the'triystery of riian and the·mystery'of God-in ·vectic
language, brahmaw,··aiman, 'and purusha:Thereby at one stroke
their whdle'religion was renewed ahd setfree, just as later on
thtfteaching'of'Jesus·freed Judaism; and with it the _western
world.;'from the Law anfffrom the religious forms which,.had
overlaid the.direct relation between God and man. From then
on the secularization of the world was..set in motion. All at
onceeverything'became secular,profane; but at the very same
moment the·'sacredness of'everythi~g was. tediscov~red-no
longer the symboli9 .saci:~,dnessattributed by, rrien,lP: d11ngs,
but the essential sacredness Whichis the universal radiance of
 X ·Prayer Preface xi

the divine mystery, as it 'is manifested in the world and in his comrade not to _growweary on the way and constantly
history. reminds'him of the mountain top where God awaits hiin.
Only this. experience
. .
of the-depths
.
of. man and of God..is
\.
The book was first written in ·English2 at the request of
able in :these days to provide·the world and the Church with Christiansin India. Then a few years later friends in Europe
the intui~ons, .which are needed in order -to•·completethe asked for it to be publishedin French. In that edition the text
dangerous transition, already.under Way,from the ·world·of was somewhatexpandedand supplementedwith an additional
symbolicsacredness .
to that of the sacrednessof the Real.
I
The essay3 which had been written some time previously with a
solutionof the presentcrisiswill onlybefound in the deepening similar aim.
of contemplativelife-at the-heart of the Church:- 1 . May it help people to find the inwardpath and to make their
way to ..the heart's centre", wher~in awaking to ourself, we
* * awake to God.4
book is to help Christians10;their .
The purpose of,this li!tl_e.
inner ~newal;:and1tomake them increasingly,attentiveto .the
call of the,Spirit.:who,from the -deptbsof their spirit; invites
. them to pray "in truth"·and"withoutceasing",accordingto the
verywords of Jesus in the Gqspel.The bookwas writtenQeside
theGaµges in very;close;contactwith-thespiritual~xperiem;e 'k
of the Upanishads,.alluded:to above,and.innoless close.eon~ct
with:the mystical traditionof the Chµrch,apove all.with what
the Gospeland its firsthe,arershavepassedon .t.9us ~onceming
the.innermostmystery of.the soul of Ch,rist . ..
In this J:,ookthere is nothing technical,and the theologi_cal
basis which it presupposeshas been,giye.nelsewhere) It_seeks
rather to be a travelling companion.on the road .that .leads
within, to be the often repeated word1ofa friend, as he helps

1. Especially .in Saccidananda:a ChristianApproach to Advaiti,;,E,cperi-

. ence.It has not seemed necessary to reproduce _hereth~ numerous quo-
tations from Chri~tian and other mystics include4 in that book,which 2. · Prayer, is.P.C.K., Delhi, 1967 and following editions.
would have· illustrated the themes worked out below. Reference to 3. Now published separately as "In Spirit and Truth".
Saccidanandais made here once for all. a a
4. A reference to the French title, Eveil soi-eveil Dieu, Paris, 1971.
xii Prayer

pee~cin the cave of the heart CHAPTER I·

' Y. ' 1·1 i .
is brahman, for ever alone,
· ''' the unique I, the unique Self,•
THE HOLY PRESENCE.
Enter, 0 man,
JEsus often urged his disdples to pray and to be constant· in
into this depth -of thyself, prayer. He himself set them an example.:The Father's name
with thought 'turned within, was always on. his lips, and at night he.used to go ~way to
with mind sunk in the Self, some solitary place where, as St Luke says, he "continued in
prayer to God" (Luke. 6: 12). . . · ·
at peace,
"Watch and pray", he told his friends; "take heed, watch, for
fixed in the Self, you do not know· on what day your Lord is coming" (Mark
having become thyself! 13:33; Matt.24:42)'. .
After the Master, St· Paul gav:e thesame teaching to the
OM
Church; "Pray constantly." ''Pray alhiltimes in the Spirit with
all prayer and supplication. To th~{¢nd keep alert with ~•
Sri Ramana Maharshi persev'erance." (1 Thess. 5:17; Eph. 6:18): '

*
Prayer is not a parHime occupation: which only belongs to
certain moments in the day. Still less could there be two classes
of devout people; some whose vocatioi:t is to devote their whole
life to· prayer-whom we might ·call .".full-time contempla-
i. tives"-and others whose time is mostly taken up with
professional or family activities, or even witli a pastoral or

2 Prayer
teaching ministry,'and whc therefore can only be "part-time"
in their prayer.
. To suppose.that a faithful believer could be satisfied with
being a part-time contemplative would show a total
misunderstanding of Christian life. Just as it is unthinkable
that anyone could be a part-time man, so equally no one could
be only a part-time ,Christian.There is no p~ of our life1in
which we can escape the mystery of God which fills our whole
being, anch:qWihichthe€hristian has been::'uniquelyconsecrated_
in his baptism. In ·fact, from the day when we committed
ourselve.sto Chris~~d acknowledgedhim as·Lord and Master,
there.i~ !}Qta sm,.glem<>mentof our ~e-whether we vvake
or sleep, walk, s'it,.w<;>rk,.
eat oi-piay-which is not indelibly
marked by the claim of .God upon us, and which does not have
to be li~ed wholly in the name ofJesus, under.t:qeinspiration
of the Spirit,to tJ,leglory of the Father. .· ..·· ,. . . everywhere he is Himself,in his unique fullness! There is no
To live in, constant prayer, to lead a contemplatite life, is
nothingelse.than to live in the actual presenceof God. Everyqne
indeed, 1>,ytpevery fact that he exists, is alr~d~ iµ the presence
of God. To exist at all, tobe. a human being, to be this p~cular
h~man bei~g. }s on~ p6ssibl~ becau~ of Presence.
tfils This
is, if possible, 'evenmor,et:ru,eof the C~s~n, ,whoby God's
grace has been called to know the ultimate secret of the divine
life, and has been empowered by his faith in Je~us to become
the child of God (Joitn 1:12). · ,their mutual and undivided gaze oLlove.
TQ live in ,UJ.e,presenceof God should be as natural for. a
Christian,.asto breathe the air which s~und~ him. Further-
more, to live conscioµsly aµd w:9rtliilym this presence-in
other w~rds, to pray_:_shouldnever have for him even the
appearanceof a duty which he i.~bound to perform in.obedience
to some ~xtemaj law. No, for him to live in God's.presence is
· The Holy Presence 3
not a duty; rather .for him; ;as.for every human being,ijt i~:an
inalienable birthright, written .into. his very nature. It· js ,tbe ·
most spontaneousdesire,ofhis being, the most direct e'lpression
iof,his love for God,, whose child he :is.
* * *
Whether we like it.or not, we are always present to God: it
. is utterlyimpossible not tp be in his presenc(i.There is no time
artcl·ilt>
place.inour daily.life,,no.occupado.n_,
h~w_e.
ver seemingly
trivial;iil 'Whichwe are not before.God. It 1s.eYr,nwrong,to say
-i . that there·aretimes or occupationsin which God is more pre~ent
~ to us and we are more directly in touch with ;~im. God in
,himself:is.essentiallypresent.to llimself, always Md invari3bly
the same, .ttie Eternal, the.Infinite;·the Ahnig~ty: He .neither
changes nor ,moves, neither comes nor ,gqes; ,Always. mid
sense, either symbolical or mythicaj.,ifl; which lly,,9anbe :more
"here" or· less >'there''.,since heis indj~is,ible.
In truth, it is to himself alone that Go4is.present. From all·
eternity he is i!}hitnselfand exists,for..himself.,<Hee11joysfor ·
ever the unspeakable,,bliss of his .Presence. to, himself; the
·presence ofthe Father to the Son and of the Sonto .the.Father,
the even more mysteriouspresence of each .to the Spirit ~d-of
the Spirit to each-that -Spiritwhich is as it were the fruit of
..The very ,reason for the coining on earthof Jesus the Son
of God was to share with mankind.;that·divine experience
which was eternally his. He came to reveal to us what we are,
each·of us, in the personal call of the,Fatheno each one of us.
By means of his words which sprang. out of his own
 4 Prayer
experienc(}-"he. himself J)eing· the. eternal- Word ,and .the
Expression of this essential experience within the. very.heart of
. God~he sought to awaken, in. us this unique experience ,of
depth; he imparted to usthe Spirit, his· own Spirit, to open our
hearts from within to ~his divine communion and to this
Presence.
* *
· Creation is simply the manifestation and the communic~tion
by God in .total freedom of this unique and essentiaLPresehce,
of. the .mysterious life of God in himself. Everything that exists,
every being that lives and thinks, does so by sharing in his
being, his: divinelife and· hi~ presence to himselLit is from
and ithtough this: very Presence of God to himself that all
creatures e:{ist, that living creatures are .bQrn, grow and
reproduce· themselves, that the individual thinks, knows and
becomes• ,aware ·of himself, ihus · attaining to. the dignity of
being a person, ·endowed with a personal calling and destiny
for timf and eternity. ,
Alone'aniong'earthly c~eatures, mankind,ttas the priyilege of
b'eing';'aware of .this .:divine: presence a!ld· of, responding
personally• to it; by offering to God in return the same gift of
being· ''present",which God.,gives .of his··own presence. By
virtue of our calling as human beings, we are summoned to be
present to God .in the same· wav ·as ·God has· made himself
present to ·USin creating us, in•the same way as; .:within the
mystery of the divine Persons, the Father is present to the Son
artd the Son to the Father; This mutual presence of Father and
' - Son is moreover the root cause of our being present to each
other. within the human community. ,
The 1:1
oly Presence 5
Je.sus himself has assured us that our relationship, with him, ·
and through him. with tQe .F~ther, and equally our h11man
relationships, are mode,ll~d on his ownrelationship with .the
Father: · ··
I .
. I know my own, and my own know me,
as the F~ther knows me; and I know the Father.·
. (John 10:14-15)
./. as thou:, Father, art in me, and I in ·thee, ' ..
thafthey may be one in us ...
. : : that they may beone, even as we are qne,
J in·them, and thou in me... (John 17:21-23)
'. ' The life of prayer and contemplation is simply to realize
God's presence in the deptfr of our being, in the depth of eiery
' being; and at the same µme beyond.all beings,' beyond all that
is within and all thatis without. 1 It IScertainly not way of a
life th~tisre_servedfor those feidndividuals who specially are
caJJ•ii'to ~capefrom the world and take refuge in a desert.
· Conteniplhtion and prayer are the very breath of life, not only
for itie true disciple of Jesus, but for 'everyone who has
recognized.his· callmg to be human. -.-
* * *
Here we meet the problem which·troubles so:many devout
people: How can I remain constantly in prayer? How can I
make myself present to this Presence?
' . '
1. · ."Without Illovlng, he is swifter than though~ the mind darts forward, but
.camiot_reaehhim; standing still,he outstripsall who run•.. He moves, he
moves not; he is far, he is close at hand; he is within all that is,-and equally
he is' outs~d1f(Isa Upanishad, 4-5).
 6 Prayer
_Andyet this question,thoughasked in all sincerityand often
. with real anguish~is in many cases derived from the notion
that ~pie· have of prayer, one which if not mistaken,is at
leastmadequate.And at a deeperlevel,it is connectedwith the
psychologicalattitudewhichis so commonamongWesterners
(~d th~efore among Christians),whose primary concern is
with.domgand acting,with tangibleresults,wiih experienceat
the phenom~nallevel.Po the otherhand,althoughthepassivity
of the East ~sundoubtedlya serioushandicapin the sphereof
~umanetµc1ency,nonethe less,at least whenlivedintelligently,
•~allows a· greater degree of inner freedom to receive very
s1mi:,~y
,fromGod the gift of beingwhich.he cons~dy bestows
:o~ us~ and to savour it with disinterestedjoy and .without
w~rryi,iga~ut immediatelyemployingthis grace of be,ingfor
some action or other. · . '·
..13~.thalas it may, too m~y people imagihethat in order to
~Y m:id, as they say,.to enter the presenceof God, they first
~ve to ~~ their minds from thinking abouf any material
things,and msteadform mentalpicturesor ideas aboutGod .or
so-~ed s~iritual things, and then strugglesaliantly 'to fix
therr attentionon these new objects.
of
Yet is_it not obvious that none the ideas or pictures of
?od. which we ~alee for ourselvesis God himself?They all
me:vitablyr~mam for ever only ·what we ourselves.think or
imagineabout God. . ·
. The pictures and ideas.of God with which many·believers
seek to fill their minds have muchin commonwith the statues
an~icons with,whichmany Christiansadorn their homesand
~err churches.A crueifixor a picture of Christ.is not Christ
himself; nor are the.icons of saints identical.with the saints
that theyrepresent.Theirprimary functionis to arrestand hold
The Holy Presence 7
~e imaginationwhich is always_soready to .be carrjed off in
its own ceasele.ssflow.,Byrecalliqg19the faithfulthe presence
of.God or of his saints,·theykindle thek love and help their
devotion.We may also accept in faith that when they have
. been rituallyblessedand consecrated,sol!leadditionalhalo of
,the divine presenceis impartedto them. .
· The satne:has to be said about the mentalimagesand ideas
. that we Useiin.recallingGod and•meclitatingabo11thim. They
too are\signs.They·pointto the Real,.theyreach Ollttowards·
the ,Realwith their whole.being as signs, which only exist to
.,pointbeyond themselves;but they remain for·ever in~pable
of attainingthe Real in itself.or of expressingit adequately.
, God's essentialand infinite alonenesskeeps him beyond the
reach of all human tho1;1ght or imagination.
· Among these signs and symbols.there are certainly.some
whichare pre~eminent-namely,thosewhichcome to us•from
divi11e revelation,or at least arise fromthe.spiritualexperience
of sagesandsaintsin differentreligioustraditio~~- J3eingindeed
no mere human inventions,they are a mo,stpr~tous aid_in
leading us to .theverge of the mysteryapd.in giving us some
foretaste.of the nearnessof the Presence~But we rmistii.ever
forgetthat eventhe noblestof thesethought~and·imagesalways
remain .at the level of signs. The momentw~ try, even
unconsciously, to identify them with the Real, they become
idols~and mentalidols are no less vanityand·nothingness,no
le~s sources of distraction,than those which our hands have
made.
The mostperfect.prayernecessarily makes use of signS-:-so.
long at least as it has not been fulfilled in pure silence- ·
.becausethe_human• mind has ~n .createdsuch by God. But
true prayer ·uses signs .witq·..complete freedom and perfect
 8. Prayer
detachmen,t,supported by them but' transcending them; carried
on by the mighty pull of its inner call to~ards That which is
beyond all, the R_ealin itself. · in the bosom of the Ij'atber, and whom none can kn.ow hut.
*
For a fe~ years Je~us, the Son ofG~d, gavy his darshan2 t~
his· disdples. He readily allowed himseff,to be touched, seen
and heard•by thernultitude. However:that darshan.which he
gave through the outward sen,seswasnot to last for ever. The
real and definitive knowledge of Jesus could only be received
from tfie Holy Spirit. Mary ¥agdalene earned'.his· rebt;lke·on
. Easter Day{'•.vhen,she tried.to touch his feet. Aweek later,
Thomas also was reprimandedby Jesµs who declared::'JBlessed
are thosehvho have no ,n~d to see in order to belkwe" (John
20:29)/ . the apostles to the thought of his departure:
.'Yetalittle while, and the world willseerne no more,
but yoti will see me; . for if I do not go away, the Spirit will not come to you.
because I live, you will live also. (John 14:9)
. r11ave yet many things to say to you,
brtfyou canriot bear them now. '
When the Spirit of truth comes; . . .
h~·w~l.}guide you into all trfith. (John 16:12,13) ·
Flesq an~
blo9d. cannot reach the goal, they are unableto
possess theKingdpm (1 Cor. 15:50). ''Itis the Spirit that gives
life, the flesh is· of no avail" (John 6:63). The Spmt alone
searches '.'the.. depths of G9d" (I Cor.. 2:1Q)-,-a11d _ofman
' ' ' ' ' " ,, ,·, ' '
2.
'
darsham: Jisio~; si~t (hence 'also: phiiosophicai'. system); the blessed
.· · presence of ·God, of a holy person, or of sacred images or places.
9
lik:ewise.He _alonecan give the true darshan of hi.mwho lives.
those to whom the Father has revealed him in the Spirit (John
1:18; Matt. 11:27)•., ' . . . . . .
. The human manifestation of Jesus is itself a sign (Luke
2:12) and has to be left behind (2 Cor. 5:16). To reduce Jesus
to what .bis, fri~nds remembered about. him would lead in
. practice to our considering him and treating him as.an historical
object whkh we can manipulate as we.like, and so to denying
his;mystery._Scripture and Church are nothing but Jesus, but
Je.sus is beyond both Scripture and Church, because in his
.divine Persol'lhe belcmgsto that Beyoi:idwhich God essentially
i.s?
·That is the very reason why Jesus little byJittle accustoµied
It is to your advantage that I go away,
(John J6:7)
Onthe eyening of Good Friday the mortal body of Jesus
was withdrawn for ever from human-eyes.by the stone ~hich
closed the tomb. When Jesus reappeared pn Easter morning,
he did so in a totally new way, perfectly free, himself
3. This i~ also true of every human pers_on,who always transcends all that
. can be sitjd or known of him,.and also all ,that he is capable of revealing
about himself. At. the deepest level of the. hu.man person, and so in that
which constitutes himas a person, there 'ir the very mystery of the abso-
luie Person which God is. In fact, the .one.who "seef'. does.not seek to.
apply to God anything that he perceives in this. w9rld; rather, h~ begins
with God, God in his mystery at once' transcendent and immanent, and
fr~m that viewpoint he looks at everything-himself, the world, the
Church, and al). that signifies or manifests God. ·
 ..
.10 Prayer
determiningthe time and mannerof his.appearances,released
· anyoneto removehimselffroni
from all physicalconditioning.The AscensionsymboUzedeven
mote vividly his ·departure·from the earthly stage. He was
lifted up, as we are told in the Acts, and a cloud took him out
of'their sight, and no humari eye could follow him to the ··
mysteriousabode to which he returned.But who would dare
to s~y that Mary and the apostles losf'anythirigat all, when
their eyes of flesh w~reno longerable to contemplatethe face ,
of Jesus,.their ears to hear his voice, or their hands to touch
him? The grace of Pentecost was far greater than any that
Jesus.couldhave bestowedcm his friendswhile living among
them ir1.his mortal body. His datshan in the Spirit Was his
ultimateTransfiguration,for whichhis wholelife had been the ·
preparation,arid.of whteh the revelationon Mount Tabor·was
only the promise and foreshadowing.
11
The Holy Presence
presence!·And as if, on the otherhand,it was possible fot
God'spresence!To be out of
God's presence,if thatwere conceivable,would mean not
merelyphysicaldeathbuttotal disintegrationandannihila,tion,
a paradoxicalretumto a non-beingwhichhadnevercome to
be.
Do we say,"14 us firstthinkof th.eair whichsurroundsus,
ana then,<lra,w breath"?Willingly,unwillingly,consciousiy,
unconsci<5tisly;
·we breathe and continueto draw air into our
lungs, so .thatwe may remainalive. So it is also with the
divi~ePresel).ce,whichis still more essentialto ourlife, to our
very·being, than is the air to our bodies.

* * *
God's presenceto us and our prese~ceto him;or better, our .
awakeningto the fact that he is here,have nothingto·do with
any particularworkingof our sensesor/our -mind.God is here
that isall. If we ourselvesalso are here, we are here precise!;
iri the "being-here"of God. It is in him that we are present,
here and now, at this moment of time and this point -in the
universe.·
. Yet there are still too many forms of ptaye(in use among
Christianswhich,areliable to mislea(lbeginhersJriprayer and
to bring them to a dead end;Forinstance;<some oid catechisms
used t6 begin momirigprayerswith: "Let us :pla'~eourselvesin
the presence ofQod, and adore him.'' As #,anyone had the
right by his own act and at his fancy to place himselfin God's

CHAPTER 2
. . . I .
A MYSTERY OF FAITH
To.pray is an act of faith. This does not mean that, in order to
pray, we must:first confess our faith in ·more oi less abstract
terms.· No indeed; true prayer is based on the faith, the
conviction that God is here, that he is everywhere, that he is
jn. everything, that he is the source from which everything .
comes and the end (at once immanent and transcendent) to
which everything is ort the move.
To pray is to take for granted that we live in the mystery of
God, that we are immersed in it, and that this mystery envelops
us and at the same time extends beyond us on every side-"In
ham we live and move and have o~ being" (Acts (17:28). To
pray is to realize that the divine mystery in its infinite fullness
is at once within us and outside us, that it is totally immanent
to our innermost being, and at the same time infinitely
transcends it.
. But what is meant by this expression, "the mystery of Godn?
We entirely miss the point if we imagine some high Power or
· sovereign Personage, who sits enthroned far off beyond the
. sky, governing the universe and the worl~ of mankind at his
pleasure-and so one who could te more or less exactly
described in terms of a myth or a set of ideas. The mystery of
A Mystery;oJFaith 13.
God, as it was revealed to us by Jesus, is the very mystery of
the divine life, welling up eternally in the Father, and eternally
poured out in the Sonand the Spirit, a mystery at once of unity
and duality. . · · .·
· The mystery of'God is first of all ,the eternal call of'. the
Father to the Son-the call in which Father and Son ess~nttally
are:«You are my Son" (Ps·. 2:7; cp. Mark 1:11). It is also the ··
response to this call, the eternal cry of the Son: "Abb~,
Fatherl''_:..the ceaseless prayer·of Jesus both on earth and m
heaven, a prayer which expr:esses. both the source and the
fullness of his love, his sacrifice and his unending intercession.
. The mystery of the divine life is also the universal and all-
pervading presence of the Holy Spirit of God. The. Holy Spit:it
is in us, as he is in God, the mystery of unity, ofnon-duality.1
He is in us as coming from the Father, as sent ·to us from the
Father, as pouring out in us the eternal love of the Father and
the Son. He .dwells in us in the innermost recesses of our
hearts "more intimate to us even than we are intimate to
oursel~es", as Augustine well says. And this. presence of the
Spirit within the heart of each believer make~ them direc~y
present to each other and to every human bemg-present m
their very depths, at the very soµrce _of their existence, long·
before any thought, either toying or divisive, could possibly
L Here we may n:call the long ending of liturgical prayers: "Through our
Lord iesus Christ who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy
Spirit ... " Toe w~rd "non-duality" transfates the Sansk?t advaita. This .
word, being negative in fonn, has the advantage that 1t saves us fro~
confusing the transcendental unity of God and of all that belongs to his
mystery' , with ihe numericlll unity which is •ti).eobject of h~an ~rcep-
tion and thoughL Toe tenn "monism", although often used m ~s ccm-
nection is a distortion of the true sense of advaita, at least ·when 1trefers
to _the~perience of the sages and the teaching of the· masters.
14 •· Prayer
come into their hearts. Iri the Spirit each one lives.in the yery
depth of every other person-in the same way as the F~ther
and ·the Son live from each other ~d in each. other, thur
"circuniincession"in theological language.
The Spirit is present in the whole creatiori,preparing it(cp.
Rom. 8:20-23) for the final gathering up of all things in.Christ
(1 Cor. 15:28; Eph. 1:10). He.is present at the core of each
being, at the centre of the ~uman heart, as.a ceaseless1Cl;lll.and
· an irresistiblednvetowards this unity and this final koinoma.2
In the Spirit; who is ·the foretaste of future bless~ngand the
guaranteeof our inheritance{Eph.•1:14),the elect truly possess
the things to come and.already enjoy the.m.For everything is
already present irtthe· eternity of God, and he wh~ has the
Spirit possesses with him all that belongs.to the Father and,the
Son.
* * * which at first appear insuperablecan all be resolved by faith;
2. Koinonia, a Greek word, the etymological equivalent of the Latin
communio,which frequently occ_ursin the New Testament and Patristic
writings. It expresses (better than does "communion", whose sense is often
debased) the "being-together" of Christianin Christ and the Spirit, which
is modelled on tlte'"being~together"in the Trinitarian mysiery of the Father
and the Son in the SpiriL This "being-together" extends to every level of
being, from the ontological foundation pf the hpmim person to its most
, external manifestions. This.'.'cornmunity", "being~in,,cornmon", is only
Qiristian becaus.eit is in the first place human; since Christ came above
all to r:estoreour fallen human nature. Apart f~ this human "commu-
ni!,y"the .Church, would have no meaning, ~ince.its ess«;ntial role is to
• ·•promote .this.co.mmunity and to lead the way towarils its eschatological
fulfilment in the Pleroma of ChrisL Cp. the. Koinol]ia of we Spirit, which
St Paul desired for the (aithful in Corinth (2Cor. 13:14)-:-a forynula now
adopted in the new Roman liturgy.
A Mysteryof Faith 15
;' Christian life is simply i life offaith. The'life of faith takes
s~riously the divine statiis·.towhich we have been raised by
our baptism-for in baptism we have become "partlkers oft~e
divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4); It takt,s equally seriouslythe call
which the Spirit .rinceasingly·addresses to the heart of eafh
one, that "living'water which ~ries;out; Come to the Father,"
as Ignatius'ofAntioch wrote to the Christ~ansof Rome (7.2).
3
Christfuri·life is ,a life of faith from beginning to end; arid
this'·faith so permeates our activities that it affects even the
lowliest details of·our existence. ''The righteous shall live by
hi~ faith," as Paul asserts (Rom. 1:18), repeating the words of
. the prophet Habakkuk (2:4), but enriching them with a new
meaning',gained from,his own experienceof faith in the risen .
. · and glorified Christ. . ·· . . ·
. When faith is deep-or better, when it is simply true-there
any
arenever insolubleproblemsilrChristianlife. Difficulties
. tel quote Paul again: "In all these things we 'are more than
ccinquerorsthrough him who loved us" (Rom. 8:37; cp. Heb.
fl). That ·doesnot mean that there is no place in the Christian
life for suffe~ng and sacrifice, as ,so·many would like to
persuade themselvesctoday; on thecontrary, the'Christian life
is essentially·a sharingiO:thecrossofJesus. But faithis precisely
thatdivine powefwhich upheld Jesus iri Gethsemaneand on ·
Calvary, and brought him through to the triumph of the
Resurrection. ·It is in the power of faith that the Christian
6ver6bmesall i:heobstacles which arise from his·own nature,
. ' : .
3. Ignatius, bishop of Anti~ in Syria, ma~red at Rome about A;~. 110,
who on his-way to martyrdom wrote seven seven letters to ~ifferent
1.' '-,':Chrit'CheS~ · · ·. ', ,. · '
16 Prayer
always so resistant to the leading of the Spirit,and,obstacles
;hich come.fromthe worid or the devil: " ... for he endured as
seeing him who is invisible"c(Heb.11:27). : .. .
· . ·' faith belongs to· afi altogetherdifferent level,.which is at once
''Where there _islove, there is no toil," to,quote Augustine
again. For one who has faith the.circumst{lncesof human life
are never beyond his strengtl}.In1allthat he does on earth he
is awafe of the divine~s('}.nce?he h_yru;s th~call w,hichthrough
things and events continually comes to~im from the Father,
just.as Jesus heard it throughouthis life, apove all in his agony
in the Garden of plives. In all ~at he does, _heallows the
Spirit freely to p~rform in,,himthe work .of love which the
Father is expectirigJron:ihim. .: · . . ,··.·(the eleventh chapter..of the Letter to the Hebrews: And here
In the·New Covenant tltere is no longer any room for the
Law, as St Paul never cea~ed to impress on the churches.
•~Perfectlove casts oµt fear," as St John in his.turn_.expresses
it; "for fear has to do with punishment,and,he who fears.is not
perfected in .love" (1 John 4:18). The gift of th_eSpin.tat
Pentecost made the covenant of Sinai obsolete, and alsQ.the
Law which was its sign. Henceforwardthe Law is. the ,Spirit
himself, who dwells in us and works.in us (Rom. 8:14ff; cp.
Jer; 31.31ft),who transformsthe whole life of the clisciplesof
Jesus-their physical and mental life, ~d~uaily their social
relations-into the .very life. of the Son of God, Jesus, the
firstborn of creation,and,also the first of those who triun:iphed
over death (Col. 1:15, 18). . .. . ,and:~ontrite heart. Furthermore'.Godis.a Father whose heart is
Faith, in short,.is to recognize and accept tltat we are fi\ce
!]lepr~~i;iceof that fundamentru,
to face with our God, to,rtlf:llize
love which makesus to be, and opens up in God immeasurable
abysses of grace and mercy. We must however.understand
clearly that such a recognitionhas nothingto ·dowith anything
that can be perf:eivedateithe(the sensibleor the psyfhological
'AMystery of Faith
as
'lhvel, for example, when we 'areaware of the sun which
. ')givesus light and warmth,or wlieri\Ve'areaware of themental
· \(;processeswhich take place in our minds. The awareness of
hlore real and much deeper. It tak~splace_attheorigin atid the
very centre of~our awareness ~hat we are ano that: we are
'ourselves, fat beyond .anythingtharwe' can become ·awareof
\ ' ~t the JeveI'ofjerceptfon. ' .,
* * *·
..,Faithis directedtowardswhat is invisible,as is explainedfo
,:theword invisible,applies to what is beyondthe range of mind, ..
as well as to what lies beyondthe range of our externaLsenses.
,· ii"No ori~.hasever seen God," declaresStJohn (1:18; cp. 5:37).
··, ·''No man 'can see God and live,",wasaffirmedcenturiesearlier
:in the Law of.Moses (Ex. 33:20), "Trrtlythou art a God who
· hidest thyself,'.'confessedthe prophet Isaiah (45:15).Yet God
. ds not hidden in the sense that he deliberatelymakes himself
. Jrivis~bleto us_,or that h_echooses ~ with~aw fr?.~~s -~~ giff
. of his presence. God does not ,, move . The. gomg and
,, "coming"that is attributedto God in the Bible is only intended
·"to convey symbolicallythe sinner's refusal of God on the one
hand, and .onthe other the rettim ofthe periit~Iitwith a humble
.rf~ll of love for us his children.His dearest wish,-ifwe may put
''ittn humanterms, is to haveusasnear to himselfas possible-
,:~d forGod all things are p6ssiple. •· •..· , . . .
· ·· ' ~f God is. hidden, it is because he is in himself beyond-all
,, that we can perceive,even with our minds. If tlrisw~renot so,
 18 Prayer
~e would simply be one <>fthe possible objects that cap .be
known, just lik~ everything else in the univ~rse,as indeed he
was regarded by the. Gr~ek p~ilosophers. Tl)is was equally
unacceptable to Jewish.and Hindu thought alike. God "does
not .in any sen.sebelong to ili,eworld of objects among whic;h
man orients lljmself through·thought;'.4 No doubt our .reason
can recognize..that he .existS;.and for their·.part the inspired
Scripturesreveal to us truths about God which human thought
united to faithnever tires of exploring.'Yet, once mor~.however
marvellousmay be the symbols,however sublimethe thoughts,
they are, when our minds are enlightened by· God himself,
only like those·light clouds which pass before ·the·sun .asthey
cross the sky; they reflect the light of the sun with all that they
are, but at the same time, even the most dazzling of them veil
from us its· direct and immediate presence. ,, ..
God loves us too. much to .allow us to· be satisfied.with
··simple signs and pictures ·of his Presence, like the material
icons which delight our eyes, or the mental concepts which no
'4. "For the Greelc'it is ... axiomatic that God, like other objects of the world,
can be examined by the thinking obseIVer;.that ~e!ll can be.ia theology
in the exact, immediate sense .... Judaism has'.from the beginning a dif-
ferent conception of God; he does not in an:,, serise belong to the world
of objects about which man orients himself through th~ught .... In real-
ity, Greek thought always regards God in the last analysis as a part of the
world or as identical with the wqrld, eve!) when, or rather specially .when,
He is held to be the origin and. fonnative p1'inciple which lies beybnd the
world of phenomena. for here too; God and the world form a unity within
the glilsp of thought .. ;" (R. Bultmann,Jesusand theWord,iv. 1; Fontana
edn, 98-99). Th~Hindu experience God is in this respect quite akin to
the biblical, and. both of them are absolutely irreducible to the
conceptuali:zation and objectification of God which have; too often pre-
vailed among those who have been influenced.by Greek philosophy-
.,.cp. Pascalls "God of the philosophers".
A Mystery ofFaith
less enthral our m~ds. It .is to his most secret and hidden
. abode that God calls his belovedchildren~beyond and equally
within the cloud which c.overedMount Sinai, .like that which
receivedJesus, as he rose up into his glory.:Thedesireexpressed
by Jesus ·on the eve of his death is· no less the desire of his
Father, since all th~t is willed by the Son is already what the
Father wills (cp. John 5:19; 8:28): ''Father, I desire that they·
also.•.may be with me where l am!" (John 17:24; cp. 12:26).
Children are entitled by birth to a place in their father's
•.•·
house.The mission on earth of Jesus, the Son of God, was just
thiS-,:.....to
summon mankind to :their eternal home and carry
them-Offwith himself to that very place which belongs to them
by inheritance, to the bosom of the Father. He came to this
world, says St ,JQhn,to give believers the power to become
"c.hildrenof God" (John 1:12; cp'. 14:3).
,.God is hidden in pis owri mystery: No ,one has ever seen
ltitn,as St John says again, except He who is in the bosom of
· the Father, eternally one .with him. Only faith can attain to
God in his true being, a faith founded on the revelation of
·himself
..
that God .gives to mankind in the cosmos.and the
· inspired Scriptures; and this faith becomes ·more and more
· 'luminous and penetrating,as it increasinglyreflects the glory ·
Q{th~Spirit who Jightsit up from within.Faith is the only way
. by· which we can enter into.the hidden abode of God, which
is at once the highest heaven and the deepest centre of the
' · heart. It alone can lead us beyond anything.that can be seen,
· heard or thought.5 We are told by the apostle Paul that what
· Godhas preparedfor those vyhomhe loves can neither be seen
.'.l>yJhe
' ~ ' '
'
ey~·.nor. uttered by the lips; the very thought•of it could
"
S. cp.KenaUpanishad, eli,. 1 ·and 2; see below p. 51.
. 20 Prayer
never even enter man's heart (cp. 1 Cor. 2:9). Faith alone
enables us to penetrate into the mystery of God-and therefore,
also of ourselves, at that point where ti> each of us is revealed
.that new and .secret name which speaks of his own special
calling at. the heart of divine love (Rev. 2: 17).. It is truly in the
uttering and hearing of that name that God?s chosen ones reach
the bosom of the Father, and also the very depth. of their own
being.
Such is the mystery of what_is at the same time .within and.
beyond, immanent and ·transcendent, which only faith can
discover, andwhich ultimately it "tastes" in the eiperience of
Wisdom;6 It wassurely of this that the Spirit:granted an intuition.
to the Upanishadic seers when they sang, for example:
He who knows. brahman attains the highest ...
hidden _inthe secret place (the cave of the heart)
·and in the highest _heav~ns. (Taittiriya Up.,2.1)
•. 6. The exp~rience of wisd~, in which faith is [>t!tf~ted, clearly seems.to
be based psychologically on precisely that "experience of the self' ~hicli
. is also the summit of India's ascetic'discipline and conte~plation. 01ice
this intuition is reached, there is no more any danger ofcOl)founding God,
the supreme Self, the supn~meSubject and.Person, with any thing.orobject
. ,wh~tever.There is then no question of "super~im11osing"our human inyths
and abstractions upon the absolute and transcendent God-'-and conse-
quently upon the self, upon the mystery of the conscious person, which
is the very image of God. This "super-imposition", as it is called in In-
dian philosophy, immediately ceases when the inner Llght (iirunanent to
' the consci()USself, as it is to every being) is filially perceived in its infinite
cast
splendour. \\'.hen the'sun is·at its zenith, objects no longer any shadow
on the·ground. This sense of the divine_Presence, always at the same time
immanent ~nd transcendent, is the determining fa_ctor in all Indian
approaches to theological and spiritual problems. (Cp. "An Approach .
· to Indian Spirituality", in The Cl(!rgyReview, Feb. 1.969). And see pp.
n~ . . . .
·tlMystery. of Faith
,',; .. •
21
Now, that light whi~h is higher than the firmament, .
which shines beyond. everything,
beyond the highest worlds,
truly that light is the very same
' which shines in the human heart.
(Chandogya Up., 3.13.7)
As. vast. as the· space outside
is that space at the centre of the heart;
withinit are all the worlds, heaven and earth,
. fire and wind, sun and moon, lightning and· stars·.. ,
everything... (Chandogya Up., 8.1.2}
* * *
To live by faith is to have the mind open and awakened to
~e mystery of God-of God in himself certainly and first of
all,,.::ut no less to the mystery of his manifestation in the
..universe. .
· :: Trµly there is nothing in the created universe, in all time
: ~cf ~(space, which does not manifest God and reveal his
/gJ~ry; to mankind. In creating us God bestowed on us
·totelligence and reason, thus making us able to rec<ignize thj.s·
manif~station in the world and. in events, so that we might
resporu(to it in love. St Paul tells us in his_Ieiter to the Romans
.:(1:20)thatGod made himself known to mankind,by ineans of
those things which he created, that is, through/this universe.
We cah take this to refer, not only to what God created all
alone in the beginning, but also to all that he continues to
create throughout time, working through countless secondary
causes, and equally to all that he brings about through human
. , cooperation.
 22 · · Prayer'
In thatsame passage
Paul speaks sternlyabout those Gentiles.
who choose to ignore the Presenceof God and his manifestation
in creation. How much more do his words condemn those
many Christian who remain blind to the cosmic presence of
God, and live virtually without acknowledgingthe mystery of
creationand the universeas the primary reveJationof the divine
, glory. Yetit is they who have had the privilege of hearing
. from God and about God more than prophets and sages ever
· had the good fortune to know, what "prophets and righteous
men longed to see... and to hear... but did not see or hear"
(Matt.13:17) •. · · . . · of the presence of the Spirit in everything, everywhereand at
As we have already said, faith. is not merely a part of die
Christianlife. Faith and prayer are not the part-time occupation
• of people who at other times are engaged in quite different . ·.
· occupations. Failli belongs to a· level in human life which is
· nolcommensurable with our material or intellectualactivities.
It does nofconflict with any occupation whatever, nor can it
.be compared·with any of ..them~.Rat!ter it encompas~ ·.each
and every human aclivity, penetrates all ofthem from within,'.·
and imparts to them'new value and dignity. Thus, transfo~ed .
by faith, our different aclivities become totally meaningfuland : ·.
. are directed· to· their true end, ·winch is at the· same time our.·
own spiritualdesliny and thatof all humaruty;for all arecalled,
in allthat they do, to contribute to the never-endinggrowth of
the mystical Body of Christ on earth and to the completion of·
his Pleroma1 irl die Kingdom to come. . .
1. Pler--m important Pauline term: fullness, totality (cp. Sanskr,it
piirnam). It refers in the first place to the fullness or totality of deity
(theotes) whichbelongs to Chiistand dwells in him "bodily"(Col. 2:9;
cp.1:19); and then the communication of
by grace this fullness to his
Clnm:h(cp., for examp]e,Eph.3;19). Tueofogic:al languageusespleroma
III
A Mystery of Faith 23
'Faith, prayer. and contemplation underlie all the external
. 1.
· actions of the disciple of Jesus. to each of them they give
· authenticity and spiritual value. The Christian is the one who
knows,the evamvidof the Upanishadicliterature,the one whose
eyes have been opened wide to the divine Splendour, the one
in whose heart has shone ".the light of the kno~ledge of the
glory of GoJ in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Co"r.4:6).
* * *
.·.Faith, prayer and contemplationare simply the recognition
every moment. Faitµ and prayer are the realization that
''everything originates from the eternal love of the Father, that
'·everything is held in being in the lordshipof Christ-by whom
· all things were made (John 1:3) and in whom all things hold
together (Col. 1:17)-and that· everything is impelled at its
very core by the mysterious moving of the Spirit.
The.life of every individual,and especiaJlyof the Christian,
is one of prayer and contemplationspringing from faith in the
,, · holy P.resenc~.Th.is faith is the very life-breath of spiritual
. ·:' people. In ..~ Spirit their spirits live and breathe, as their
·.bodies live and breathe in the air that surrounds them. In each
of their acts; whetherphysicalor mental, they as it were breathe
. in and·breathe out the Spirit who fills all things within and
· without; they continually draw him in, and continually give .
.. liun'out,for human life means the constant acceptance of the
<\ ··.specially to refer to the fullness and "fulfilment" which the Church,- as
the mystical Body and Bride of Christ, is in relation to its Lord (e.g., Eph.
1:2~; Col. 1:24, 3:11, etc.), in whom it ceaselessly grows to its "full stat•
ure" (Eph. 4:12-13).
24 ,-Prayer
gift of God and equally the constant offering of this same gift
to God and to each other; for, no less than the life of God
himself, our human life is in fact wholly given and wholli
shared.
"The wind blows where it wills," says Jesusin St John (3_:8),
and no one knows "whence it comes or whither it goes.'" Yet ..
one who is spiritual ought surely to be able to discern the
Spirit (1 Cor. 2:lOft). We may indeed believe that it is first of
all from the heart of saints that the Spirit is breathing upon our
world, beginning with the hearts of those who are "filled with
the Spirit" (cp.Luke 1:25; Acts 6:3; John 7:38), having received
the Spirit from him on· whom he was bestowed "without
measure" (John 3:34). And that it is towards the perfect
communion of all the saints in the very heart of God that he ·
carries everything along in his own unique activity. For the
Spirit is that strong gale which began to turn the world upside
down on the day of Pentecost. He takes hold of everything in
his irresistible driv~-all that is and all that happens. on the
earth; every particle of matter, every manifestation of life,
every human thought and act, every event in history and in the
lives of individuals-and guides them all to their fulfilment in
Christ at the end of time. The end will come, as St Paul explains,
when the Lord has recapitulated all things ,and su.mmed them
up in the person of his Son. Then the Son will make the
perfect oblation of everything to the Father, the completion of
all the sacrifices and offerings which in the course of time and
in every place have ever been lifted up to God (1 Cor. 15:28).
Then God wifl be everything to everyone,, time having passed
into eternity.
CHAPTER 3
.THE UNIVERSAL THEOPHANY
PRAYER can never be for us an escape from the work that God
has .entrusted to us during the time of our earthly pilgrimage.
Everyone has the duty-innate, so to speak-of collaborating
with-God in the work of developing the universe and its
resources, applying it more and more ev_eryday to the service
.of mankind, and making it more capable of ensuring their all-
·round growth.
Each of us has to serve God in the person of God's children
who dwell on earth. We have to develop our own personal
abilities, whether of body or mind, with a view to this service.
We have to fulfil all kinds of obligations, professional, family,
' social, and indeed religious. None of these activities is "profane"
in the strict sense of the term, because all that happens in a
human_life truly takes 'place within the mystery of God and
should rightly contribute to the growth of the Body of Christ.
Even though we may be forgetful, even though we, ~in, it is
impossible for us to escape being enveloped in God's presence.
If we sin, it mean~ that of set purpose we are egotistically
diverting our activity towards ourselves, towards our petty ego,
-1 'trying somehow (though in vain) to hold up at ourselves the
stream of things and events on their way .to God, their true
11
26 Prayer
end. That is what makes sin so hateful and, strictly speaking,
unnatural: nothingness attempting to assert itself at the expense
of being. And yet, nothing is ever able finally to obstruct the
plan of infinite Love, for no mortal can thwart the working of
the Spirit.
Still less is there anything really profane in the life of one
who has been redeemed and is in the state of grace. As the
Scriptures tell us, such a person has been taken up into the
holiness of God. "You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God,
am holy" (Lev. 19:2); "You are a people holy to the Lord your
God" (Deut. 7:6). And the letter of St .Peter enlarges on this:.
"a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own
possession" (1 Peter 2:9).
A Christian is no less a Christian, a child of God, when he
· attends to the most ordinary needs of his body than when he
is in church, singing the praises of God, meditating in silence,
or even taking part in the Eucharistic banquet. His whole life
is filled with the divine Presence, and continually, in all that
he does, he radiates its splendour all around.
* * *·
The Presence is always shining on us and giving us light,
just as does the sun, which from the.height of heaven sheds its
rays everywhere upon the earth. Sometimes we raise our eyes
to the sun· and look directly at its brightness. But even when.
we transfer our gaze to the earth and the objects upon it, it is
thanks to the light of the ·sun that we ·are able to ·see these
things; to recognize them and tell them apart, for it is only the
sun that gives them the colours which meet our eyes. When
the sun has disappeared behind the horizon, it still continues
27
give its brighblessto the moon so thatit can illuminateom
mghts. And when on dull days·the clouds preventus from
·· it directlyeven at midday,thesecloudsthemselvescan
be seen by us becausethe sun is penebJitingthem from
with its rays.
* * *
Prayer is to see God, to recognize and adore his presence
and his glory in everything~in every being, in every human
being, or in any other creature with whom time and the
succession of events puts us in contact.
God has no form. He is. beyond every form. Precisely for
thatreason, being free ,with respect to every form, he can
~eveal and manifest himself under any form or appearance that
he may choose. While no form is capable of signifying him ·
completely, thereis no form which he may not adopt in order
· to reveal himself, and under which he may not at some time
to be recognized. Those \Vho mock at those divine symbols
the form (for example) of rough stones or of animals which
wevalued in certain mythologies, only show thereby that they
themselves are still at the stage of idolatry in their religion,
since, they link the representation of God to particular forms.
* * *
· Everyone whom Providence causes to crossmy path, whether
as'.
ll companion on the way or as a simple passer-by, is for me
a'sign and manifestation of God. He is the means used by God
precisely ~ that moment to make himself known to me and to
call me to himself.
28 Prayer,
That is so, because that person is:-as God is; his very / I
existence' depends on the Being of God, for his transitory being
exists by sharing in ·the being that is ·eternal. That person not ·
.only is and is alive, but he i_salso aware of the fact, for withiq
his spirit there is ail "awakening to self' comparable to God's
"Awakening to Self' within the mystery of the Trinity. The
awareness of being, and of being this particqfar being, which
defines his personality, is a sharing in the infinite awareness of
being which God is in himself. That person who is before me
has an infinite and eternal calling and destiny, being called to
enjoy for ever the immediate vision of God. God loves him
with a unique love. God has called .him to eternal glory,
addressing him with a ''Thou" which he alone can hear, giving
him a name_which is known only to him and to the Onewho
calls him. It is impossible for me to forget that the Father, who
reigns in highest heaven and loves this person, is the same
God who dwells in the centre of my heart, the source of my
own being as of his.
This does not necessarily mean that the man whose path at
this moment crosses mine will be personally endowed with
each and all of the marvellous qualities which we are
accustomed to attribute to our representations of God, that he
will be a perfect image of'the divine Majesty, a striking sign
of the Presence. But then, what about ourselves, ~ w¥ look
doubtfully at this man? Do we ourselves perfectly mirror the
Lord in our bodies, our hearts and minds, our behaviour? What
matters in our meeting is not the quality of the image that he
and I present of God, still less any reflections upon this quality,
. but precisely the setting free of that image in his depths as in
mine.
The Universal Theophany 29
It is truly in these encounters, in the communion of the
children of God with each other, that more than anywhere else
the ~eepest secrets of the love of God are revealed.
~e life of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery of communion,
of meeting, of one coming to the other, of one being from the
other and for the other, within the indivisible unity of the
Spirit. The purpose of our creation was simply that we might
share in this life of God, which is signified by our communion
with each other. Every human relationship is shot through with
the Trinitarian mystery. God is everywhere, and God alone is
everywhere, at the same time hidden and disclosed in his
manifold self-manifestation, It is God, and only God, who
gives, God who receives, God who loves, God who is loved ...
It is God, or more precisely, God in the mystery of the
Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the unique Lord, who comes to
meet me under the form of this or that human brother or sister;
On the day of his resurrection Jesus presented himself to his
own-to Mary Magdalene, to the couple on the way to
Emmau~nder forms which they were least expecting. In
this way· he meant to teach them-and us with them-to
recognize him ~hind all the different likenesses that he would
assume in his."return" to us. In theform of the one 'who stands
. before me-no matter if he is about to strike me or to offer me
his hand-it is Christ who comes to me, Christ who seeks thus
. to grow in him and in me, to make his Church more beautiful,
more truly his own Face, to bring nearer the· coming of the
Kingdom. In this person itis God-who comes to me; requiring
of me that, through my respect and love, through any bumble
service -I may possibly perform, I should help this person to
dra~ out of himself the potential for divi11elife which is hidden
in the depth of his spirit. ·
 30 Prayer
Such a person may be coarse, rude, even wicked. I may
have to protect myself, physically or spiritually, from a too
close contact with him, so as to avoid the possibility of being
infected with evil. I may have to refuse what he asks of me,
to rebuke him, or to claim what is my due from him. However,
l can never forget that deep down there is in this person at
least a spark of divine love, and human warmth. I cannot forget
that, if this man seems to me repulsive or wicked, it is less his
fault than the fault of a ~ociety which has "marginalized" him
and denied him love; it is less his sin than that of his fellow
men-of whom I am one. I cannot but adore in him the divine
face of Jesus, marred by dirt, blood and spittle, and waiting for
a Veronica!1 God needs in some way my love and respect for
him, in order to release in him the love of which he is capable.
That is in fact the theological and spiritual foundation which
underlies the theory and practice of non-violence; we are to
manifest such love towards an approaching enemy, that the
warmth and fire of this love may burn up his egoism and in
the end cause the love which is ·dormant within him to burst
into flame.
* * * themselves the privileged place where God himself 1s awaiting
, There is no need to describe here in detail the very varied
. ways in which God comes to meet us in all the possible
circumstances of our life. Our faith above all has to be alert
and vigilant Of itself it will throw light on our circumstances,
1. Veronica, according to tradition, was a pious woman who saw Jesus on
his way to Calvary, and wiped the dirt and blood from his face with a
cloth. · 1:6), and the whole treatment of "truth'' in John 8; also Eph. 4:15).
The Universal Theophany 31
and will indicate to us the right attitude to adopt and the right
action to perform.2 Faith is a frui.t of the Spirit, as St Paul
reminded the churches of Galatia (Gal. 5:22). And, as he also
said (2 Cor. 3:17), "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom"-freedom from all egoism, from all the mean desires
and attachments which bind the heart and hinder it from
ailowing the Spirit to raise it up and carry it off to the height
of God's heaven, where all things are judged by the standard
of truth.
A few examples will be sufficient to start the train of our.
thought.
For one who is called to help others by teaching and educating
them,. prayer will first of all be to recognize in children and
pupils the mystery of the holy Presence shining at the centre
of their being, but calling for this teacher's help in removing
· what obstructs_ its radiance-ignorance, selfish instincts,
indifference to truth. His, prayer will also consis~ in helping
his pupils to grow in their knowledge of created things,
including all the natural and human sciences, to marvel at the
works of God's hand, to adore and give thanks; finally, it will
be to help them to grow in self-knowledge, to become awake
to the deepest centre of their' consciousness, and. to discover in
them:
The real prayer of the professional doctor or nurse will
not primarily be those brief petitions which they may
perhaps mingle with -~heir work; it will be the work itself,
the actual service-tests and medical treatment-done for the
2. Compare the Johannine expression to "do the truth" (John 3:21; 1 Jobi'.
32 Prayer
sick, their efforts to restore in their bodies the strength
needed for effective cooperation with the work of God; and
at the same time to give them friendly support in making .the
best spiritual use of their present condition with patience and
joy.
For those whose calling in the world is to serve their
fellow-citizens in the social and political sphere, prayer is in
the first place the work which they do to make society more
human, to obtain for their fellows living conditions which are
Jess at variance with their dignity as human beings and as
children of God, and to help them to liirect their tho~ghts and
actions with a view to the growing up of all together in the
Lord.
Prayer is the meeting of husband and wife in the whole life
which they share in common, including the most intimate acts
of their being together. Prayer is every kind of human meeting,
whether temporary or prolonged-of parents and children,
employers and workers, rich and poor, merchant and customer,
civil servant and ordinary citizen, bus driver and passenger,
and so on.
Prayer is the smile, the friendly gl<lOcedirected at some-
one else-maybe a stranger passed in the street or met on a
journey-which tells him without saying a word, that to me
he is no stranger, buLis recognized and loved as a brother.
Prayer is the act of faith which leaps up from the heart of
Christians, whenever their eyes meet the eyes of another,
whenever their ears hear another's voice, or their bodies
somehow come into contact. All such external contacts are
actually related to the mystery of Christ's holy Body; and
when refined by faith, they cannot fail to catch something o(
the sacramen_talradiance of that Body. In the plan of divine
The Universal Theophany 33
Providence they are intended to foster the inward contact and
the mutual intimacy of our spirts, and to kindle in the depth of
our hearts that Love which is the very life of God, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.3 •
:fi
* *
Every event in our life is intended by God to arouse in us
an act of faith, and to reach fulfilment in prayer and
contemplation. Whatever it may be, everything has a place
in the divine plan for the growing up of the .Body of Christ
until its final consummation in the Kingdom. But prayer does
not mean speculation about these events, or attempts to
understand how each of them actually fits into this plan
and contributes to the Fullness of Christ. Prayer is in the first
place to make a simple act of faith in which, before any
thought arises in the mind, we bow and adore the mystery of
God: "Yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will!" (Matt.
11:26).
3. God is•Love, as St John explains in his firsi Epistle (1 John 4:16J. St Paul
even hints at some kind of identity between being and love, wlien he says:
"If I have no love, I am not!" (1 Cor, 13:2). A verse of Tirumular, the
Tamil mystical poet, will show that this Christian intuition is based on a
profound insight of the human spirit:
The one who says that Shiva and.Love are two,
verily kn~ws notlting ! ·
Who indeed will ever understand
what is Shiva and what is Love?
Only he who has discovered
that Love is Shiva and Shiva is Love ·
attains to Peace,
one for ever with Shiva-who-is-Love.
 34 . Prayer' . • The VniversalTheophany 35
. .

As Jesus says in the same passage of St Mathew, the king- · Father, and was'possible alsofor J~us his First-born, whose
. dom of heaven is in fact often hidden frpm the wise and prudent divine glance hasfor ever blessed the sun.4 ,
of this world, and even from. those· who sincerely regard
.. .them·selvesas religious and spiritual. .They are too rich (Mark • - • . •• • • • . . •· _I. • • ~

10:22) to accept the gift of himself which God is constantly 4. . Vedic prayersare often addressedto the Sun, or more precisely, to the
mystery.of light,ofµfe. of Order and universal Energy, of which this
offering them thrQugheverything. They are too intelligent to an
heavenly bodyis incomparablesymbol: .
be able to say "Yes; ·Father''with the babes·(Matt. 11:25), and 0ml theglory of Savilri, .
above all to'sayit, not with'resignation~but with the pure and the wpremeobject of ourdesire!
• innocent joy of the simple-hearted.;...:,,.the
samejoy. as filled the we meditate on.his divine mystery; . . .·
may he inspireall our·tfuughtsl (Rig~Veda,3.62.10)·
' heart ofJesus iilhis continual discovery of the Father's good
pleasure.· . . . Thatrooming; Light whi~ we see
. · proceeding frtm the primalSeed,
. For one who has faith, everything comes from· theFather which.shinesbeyond the fiinuunent,.
and everything leads to the Father. Health, sickness; Wealth, which piercesihe.~ess! .• . ..
the
· poverty, success, failure, all alike are expressions of good By contemplatingIbismost high Ligln,
we auainto ..ilie Light supremef(Sama-Ved;l20)
pleasure of God. After all, was God showingJesslovetoJesus,
· Withav~~.pf~!>ld· .....
.his dear ..S011,when he allowed }Jipi:to be condemned by· is hidden the face ofTriith.
Caiaphas and PHate,and scourged and crucified by the Romari ·o Pushali;·~coveri~
..: .
soldiers, thait when. he entrusted him as .a child to Mary's that lmay.beholdit! . . .. .. . .
ioving care? ·· S~ outand·gatherthy .1ays,
thai iheLiglit,.
I may belii>ld < .
dthee. theloveliestformt:(Isa
.. . . -. '
Up:,. 15~16)
. ',

Cluist is the supreme

* *
When w,eraise our eyes to the sky and contemplate.the sun
and the stars, we are surely praying in truth, if this acf is
enlivened by faith anci enables·.usto discover th.e Presence
and· 1ove of God in ·them.. For it was· indeed·.their. slow evo-.
lution throughout cosmic ages th~t prepared the earth to be
the cradle of humankind and ·the place .chosenbyGod for the
incarnation·of his Son.It is thanks to the light arid heat of the
sun that life on earth.is possiblefor the children of the heavenly
manifestation 6fGod.ciuistian faith also.dis-·.
CCIDS his mystery in all dleVllnOUS manifestationsofGod 'iii thJC0$111QS •·
andin history. J~s himself~ .useof the image of Light in' order to .
hd.p his dulciplesto "recognize'.' him: '11dthe early Christians,meeting
at the going downof the·smi, used to sing his.prais~as·~eTnietight"
· in their evening hymn;the PluJshilaron;How~er; Christian diought is··.
· sometimes so ovc:rwheJmedby Qod's in_atiifestation in the .biblicalhis~.·•
tory, that it aim~ forgets.the glQry. of his ~estion.in the CO$m9s. Yet . ·
~ is the Loni of the wii.verseno·t¢ss than hekLord·of history; in~·..
deed we may~v~ say dialhe is:only th~.iuler·of history becauseiri the
first place he is the i:reatorandground.of.theuniverse,the.originalImage
from whom allimages derive their eiistence. That is why the.cosmic
Jcligions. despite their ignorance.ofChrist as lord of history, do not fail
to acknowledge him:Qndervarious lllllJlesas the •Lordofthe•cosmos. •

36
To "lookwith eyes of faith at trees and plants, fruit and
flowers, birds and animals, all created ~o assist.mankind in
their ascent towardsGod-this also is to contemplateGod in
the mystery of his manifestati<>n: There·is•indeednothing·on
earth or in the w~ole universe whqse impact ~n our senses
shouldnot blossominto prayerwhenfaith is present.So it was
with Jesus; whereverhe.looked, he con~emplated. the Father,
as he saw everythingfirst ofall "in the Father'!.We might well
say also that, throughouieyes and alLoursenses,God himself
is contemplatinghis own creation and rejoicing to find tnat
everythingin it is "good... very good"•(GerCl:10-31).
* *
To pray withoutceasingis much less to think about God all
the time than to act continuallyunder the direction of his
Spirit. It is to. live;:.and'act "in .Christ"_(Gal. 2:20); or be~r
still, it is to allow Jesus freely to live in us hislife as Son of
The·universalTheophany 37
Prayer.
to each one of us withinthe Thou ("Thouart my belovedSon")
in which he eternally begets his Son. If is to answer with•
. Jesus, "Yes, Father",full of faith and love, in everyconscious
act of our life. ·
Everytime,indeed,that we act consciously-in otherwords,
act as humanbeirlgS-:.-we)neyitably. act either for or against .
God. Either we .!t:8po~~ to the Prese~ce of Gptl by being
·ourselvespresent'to God, or we refuse ouiselves to him-
whatevermay be the mentalsymbols.under whichwe express ..
our perceivedrelationto the Absolute. Eve11when wetry to ·
fle~.fi:omthi~P~senc~, the Presence.foll~ws.usr~morselessly.
and pursues.us in every place where we try to hide. Thus it .
·waswithCain, the frrst of the sons of ~~rnwhri,. according:.
to Scripture,refusedhimselfto God in ,.-et'using himself to his
brother. No darkness'indeed1sable to hide am~ from,the,
gl~ry ~hl,ch,fpC.PIUf~ses h1m~s,139:P-H). ,,,,,· · ··
,1',•·,1

God. It_is to be looking out for the Fatheri who comes to us

by any path he may choose.5 It is to hear in everycteature and .
every event me Thou whichtile Father mysteriouslyaddresses·

5. · Compare Tagore, GUanjali45:

Have -you not heard his silent steps?
He•comes, comes, .ever comes. ..
Every momenund every age, every day and .every night,
· He comes; comes,.ever comes .• '. .
,r:"
In the _fragrant days. of s~y ·April thro!lgh the fore~t path,
· He comes; comes, ever comes .. · .
In the rainy gloom ofJu.ly nights on the thundering chari<>t of cloud,
· . He c01I1es,i;omes, ever.comes.
In so~~ after s&row it is his steps that press upon my heart,
• and 1t 1s the golden touch of his feet which make my joy to shine.
 The Call Within 39 .

respond wonhily to the love and the Presence of God?

We havethe Spiritof Christ,we have}'themindofChrist",as
Paul so boldly asserts of himself.and of every Christi~
(1 Cor.2: r6). How can we developin ourselvesthis "mindof
Christ,;in sucha way that.itmay be alwaysonly Christ~lto
lives andacts'in'uf·throrigh his Spirit(Rom;8:14);thatin' the
CHAPTER4 eyes of the Fatherwelnay simplybe Jestis~gazing at·him arid
THE CALL WITHIN doing his work?·· . . _· ' .. . -~,. .
Sometimes'G&Hakesiton himselfto awakenthose who are
asleep,(Eplt 5:1:.i:q,. John 11:11), and ·10 rtiake _themaware
EVEN a.part·from those octasfon'i'wh~n.we.deliberate!~r~fu~~.. . ·.·df his Presence bf suddenlyinteriuptirig'thetoo easy life into
to make a lovingrespohs~to'God;there are still ~u-tbb'in~ny, · whichthey:badsettlecI-:-when a.tleast'he loves·therri'too'foticli
momentsin dur life.when we are forgetfui)bothof '<tti,dandof_·· · toIeavithemany longer in i:heirdeep·siumbe:f(Mark'l4:37-.
ourselves/when we"~ctj>ractfoafifwithout ariy'referenceto .. · . 40). Manyindeedhave futdexperienceof thafviolent·awakeiiliig
the fact that \ve'are;huinanbeingsan'i:fchiidreriofthe heaveriiy ' which turned their life upsitle down/'cuttirlg themofffrom
Father;· :·: ,... ,· · ;~ · · ··. · .. ...,: · ·.
everythingon whic~Jhe:f liad.so,fa.r·relied;an&·makilig them
The habit of living entirely by jaith/as\Iescri6ed abo~e,< ii stand alone before 'God- sometimesin the very solittideof
only acquiredby constanteffort.Like.everythingelse in human stiipp&I'cii
God <himself......:.nak&t''.'iiid ~as
evefyiliirig;'i'fhill:
existence,it developsin the courseof time. It is only with time God' f \Vliy'of dealingw1thPaul,
0
Augustine,'Ftaniis.of J\ssisi;
that we becomeable to realize the possibilitiesof our·nature )md·so nianY others:.In a:momenthe·plunged·them foio the
and to experiencemore and more truly the divine life which teality·of his ·Presence;;' leaving·them no way'of escape, and
is ours at the centre of our being. riiatkirig dieir lives \\1tha brand that would never heaLiohn .
We no doubt have faith from the day of our baptism, or ~f the Cross, for his part, haS'spoken'of those annihila'tirig
from that day whenforthe first.timein our life we said to God: fouches of God in' the ·souh· which purify. Wall .·themore
"Even so, Father."But it talcestime for this faith to grow and •. •. tically;since all talcesplac~ beyondsens~tion~r thought:
to penetrateall our sensesand faculties.Such an achievement '' ere are in 'fact few'.'iiuman'lives in ~hicl{ GoddQesnot
is certainlythe fruit of grace and the gift of the Spirit; at the fu.111~
t~r~el!-.e own,,'way ...provided.at·. least ithat ,we .are
same time,it is no less the result of the effortswhichwe make ciently alert to recognizehis. com~g; But eve~,so;,1God
under the inspirationand in the power of this same Spirit. IJCCtsthis ofea.ch ofus tha(:.w~ nev~ ~la,fkehoui'efforts to
Our problem therefore is this. How can we develop this .yelQp,the,.lifeQi iiµt:h .of
~d: th~sen~ ~Presence~ These·
sense of faith to the point of being able at every moment to fforts, however, will simply .be the: entirely·spontan~us
40 prayer
41
expression·of ·theburningdesire of a heart for ever dissatisfied
pleasedwith the fact th,athe is meditating;where does that get
with all that it knows or tastes of God•.-
· him,apart lhem stre~gtheninghis ego?" ·
/ .For them, in fact, no!hiog._.exists .apart_from the .Presence:
* ~d. therefore to set aside a. few moments.or hours.for an
·exercisedesignedto makeon~lf aware~fthe Presencestrikes
'' .
. ..The development of our sense of,failh ~ nonnaJ.Iy.go
hand i~·~d with our·s~dfastness in.fixing our attentionon them as artificial.lbere isno ~oment in life whichshouldnot
the Presence in itself-at least when no genuine duty obliges be .held inCCm~taµon";.in every nioment mere should be a
us to ·live the, mys~ry qf thi$ ~Jlce und,erthe outward conscious~li fc,r~ rem, ~eifthrough~ that is done,,th~ght
form of ourwork or of our social obligaµons. Indeed. sin,ce or sai«LX et ev:ento them,it sometimeshappens that they ~
we ~, so con~titu.,tc;d th.at it. is wefl high impossi~le to .·-
s<>ove~hel~ed by the_awarene~s of this Pr~ence-by
achi~ve any
goal without special discipline, it is advisable to .wlJatevername they maycall it---4hat.they are no longer 1tl>le
to pay,any a~ntion ~ ,what are pnly its signs, that ,is,to say,
fix.~ ,<laysor certain timeswhen, free from any obligation,
including,even ~ocal prayer a11dcommon worship, we are . to externalobjectsor tp wluitis perceivedby sense orthoughL
content ~ply iobe,.;withour.g~ bimed inwar<lsand our -Thelight of th~ sun on the·snow~,can be so ~g that
ears attun~ to inner silen~. attending to one thing only, that .we no longer discern them.-. •. _..- "' ·:
God.is. . ·, ; Iµ any c~; whe~er they me th~ resui~ as it we;e1~f,an
Su~h times set apart exclusivelyfor contemplation~ ilot, Jon~ c,oµipulsion,qr a.re 4elibera,telyso~ght through inner
of. course,,apsolu~ly. necessary in themselve11. ·,111e..-~t (Jiscip~. the hightimes 9fpmyer:are undoub~y those~hich
jniims 1 of India, for mstance,;tlo not feel any ,nee4 to devo~' ,are devoted to the con,~lation of th.e niystery of qcxiin
any particular.~ods. in. their daily rqutine •to .this kind of 1~~lf. ,)"hen_ every·faculty.of mind or· ~~se is rq!uc¢, to ,
exerci$e.. There ..are even smne, .like ·Sri~ Maharshi, • t~nce. ·.'111~.is indeed.11()_doubt.that,the.regul~ practice of
who arefrarlldyscepticalabout their,value: as he once said of :,~Uf4.silent conteinpialion·~ )h¢, shortest and surest way to
a disciple: ..He meditates~.he thinks he is m~tating, -.he is :iTeaeh the state of.constant attentio~.to.that,.~esenre which
reveals itself everywherein the world and in human society.
Jniini, fromjniina, ~ (cp. Greek, gnosif): ooo,~bas.~~ This is the meaningof God's promise
0

1. to the prophet Hosea.

inner mystery, the self.The path of jniina.which crown
is .tbb of the paths •.·In his invinciblelove for the soul, and despiteall her infidelity
(miirga) of devotion(bhakh) and 'works(/ramrii,wtiether in the perfor-
. mance <ifruu,Iw~l!ip or in ~e se~ o(irumltjnd),bas nothing to do . and frailties,he woul4,~me to takehe.,:away, leadingher into
with the discip1¥1eof intellectual ab~on .whichiis Greek equiV$nt .•the wilderness andfencing off allJhe pathsbywhich she used
. · might suggest, and still less withthe esoteric fantasiesof Gnosticismin : to run after her ''lovers"~ the,thoughtsand desires of this
iis bistoricalmanifesialion.Jniillais the path of ~al experience,with world-and wc,>uld Iq:ep 'her there, all alorie and face to face
-whichthe whole.of.this~ is cooc:med. ·
with himself (cp. lfusea 2:6f · ·· · > . • · ··-.._. .
 42 Prayer Th~
Call Within 43
~'' ' ·,, ' .;, . '.,·,,:.'·:,'•>. .:';, ./'' : " ' . ·. , ' ··-,; .. _'i .•
speaking,therei~'of Qouistfrfo
Strictly" "outside"or ',!inside" ·.Ii is indeediri this experienceofJhe ,untqqePrese°:cetbat the
to themysteryof Godandof his Presence;Howeyer,the miilcl Chri~tianrealize~th,eab~,olti~~aloe elf. th~ ~owmwidment'of
is sOfascinated·by sensible objects that the·firsf essential ' t '. 1f ,

.. of t~~t:new· Test~ment: A:new

Io-ye, th~ pnlY,.,;'11i1':Y''.
• ·' ,. • ' '' ': . · .-,,)· · '., ' ''·~~: './ .. ' •

discipline·in the spirituallife is to freeoneselffrom the appeal c9mmand~ent,.sai9 Jesus (Jphn1.B:3:4); a_ndyet an old
of the externalwodd;2This is whythe masters"of the spiritual c::ominandm~rit~i>ps¢i-y~s ..~t John;for.it the ~gjn~ing; w~fr9111,
life insist ori the necessity for·recollection~d for bringing and,~as its ,sollf~ein'the recy origin df.our b,eingin th~h~t
back to their centre and origin all the thoughts arid desires ' ,Qf'o'ocl'.
',..;'./ · :. ' .. , · : · - .· .:.,· ·
which from·every'side ceaselessly'floodintOthe,soul.That e
'. VI can in .fact only JrulyJove o.ur neighbour ~ ou,rself,
was, for example~ the kind of stistaiiled 'meditation ·whe~'w/ha~e r~1i~ed·in the deep expenince of I>resertce the
Sn
recommendedby ~aria Maharshi; ·whicfr,heealled."the that·all ·QJ~an.beings we C>ne ip·.the .uni.ty,ofJhe_ Spirit, .ariq
search:for'the self', contrastingit with'conventionarpractices
of meditaii<>n. 3
. In fact, it is only.when our spirit' ha,$':;been
ih.a'i ther~fore,no,onecan'~- stranger'tC> ~l,se.N9,9ne a ~y.one
can understand that the '.IQYe,of Gog ,and tqe 'lilv~,q(~he
iolill{litup bfthe gloryofthe PiesenceOthat 'werealize."that ,,,

neighbout one arid.

)

the
'

are
'•,

sam,eloye,e~~~P,l
'

µiose)VhO_
•·

th_J;oqgh
' :••· I'•, ·,. ,', ' ,,,-, ., .. ,', • ... , .. ·--:,• I

tfiisPresenceis a'boundlessoceanof glory,withoutshore'.or , . ,' •

this same experiencehave realized in the Spirit ,that'there,IS

,'~ '\, ; OJ .· l ,,., ( I :, .. •, L .,.,. , •·' ' -·" ', '(• •

horizon in any direction.In the blazinglight of this glory our only a single Son of God. ' · · ·.
very /, howeverpersonal itmay'be~finds it difficultto hold . Jesus is "the man for others", as weare often reminded
itselfapart from this.infinitude.Farbeyondthelimitsto which today. But in the first place·Jesus·is the. man for. God. He is
'iris restricted"b}' the'sensesofby intellectualunderstanding, the man for others preciselyin virtue of the fact that, as Man
it seems to be 'extendedthroughoutthe.universetandthrough ; and God _,, he
.,J has
•• , ,. "realized
,. • • ; ,• , in
, the
• .••,.,depth
. . , of his
' , own heartdhat
' all cr~tion; as rttuchoutwardlybeyondall tliirigs inwardly :as • ' .

Go~,.i,donejs,.,~,dthat:~e,is his opJy Son. There,,ispp within

' I

beyond itself. Ii seems to reach the' most ~nwardcentre of -.orwithoutiQthis,,expe~en~e-of.th~.Presenc~ w_~ichJesus h_as
evefy being; nothingin allcreation ailyloriget appeatsto'it-as ,come to..t~ch us a~cLto.. s,harewith us. As '3/ith.Jesus,,so \1/;,~th
"other", ariymore than ariy of God's workscanapj>ear"other". 'us,.it is ihe hearing.ofqod'.s uniqueWor~ that,m,ak~~ lJS~obe,
to him. · ,; .,:
,~d makesus aware that,God,is .everywhereand ln all things,
\1~d thati~the end God.alo~eis. . . . -..
, .. f. _,,

.•. ' ) ' .,_. ,,, .. ,•,!, ·1 ' ,., ...

'2. C<nnpaie
this vt;~e oftheKatha'Upimidwl
(4.1): ·_· . · · ... '
'ihe Cteator
piim:edoutwanl theopenings• (of the senses);.·
look11.oinwanl~d ntit mside on~., ,,;, .. · •,
·,; . therefore,QDe
,·i,,;,,.. ·.'· . - ·•.' .. : ~ . ,., , ,s . ,,; •','', ',' '.l ., ' •:/ •

·chii~t'.s re~.in ,~!?9'.will

,- _AccprQingto, the _s:c,i;iptures
_J)esµjµg immo~ty, a ?lrtain sage . .. , , .. , •· .
. mmeii'hlsgmiwithm, and sJiaightway beheldthe,$elf.'' 'bring about thesumffiingup of alf things in <3,bcL The whole
3. - See Saccidananda,chap.3, "Theinward Quest". • ' · ,i, • • 1 · evolutionof the universe,thewholehistoryof the human race,
44 frayer
is on the move.towardsthat final consummation;and tllis is
also true'ofeach,,one 'of us asr'egardsour individual'history
and our un.iqueper~onality.E~ch one is a microcosm.,and in
him the world is 'recapituiated'.:
In each consciousbeing Who
passes into 'God the wodd comes·.~· its 'fulfilment.For the
Christianthe Eucharistis the clearestsign that the fulfilment
''Thehour is coming/' say'desus; "and now
is alreadyPl'.e8en.t
is" (J~hn 5:25). In every moment of our Hfe, in. eyery act
performedwith <lueawareness,we are'
reaching our goal~
us'
which is God·alorie:-an4 with artdin.;us the world does
likewise.As sclon!·iis\ve'bear the voice of theSon of Man
(Johll 5:25);and with.it the 'voiceof the Father, \\fetogetber
withChrist,beyoridtimeand history,riceborn again,rls~from
the d~d."and 'reach the very place of out'odgin, the hifinite
glory of tf od. ' . . . Such times of silent--r~collection are 'Withoutquestion tb6
* b~yondthemseives;
There·is no one who.has not been called'.to' live there,
in the 'glory, at every:moment of his earthly life:' Indeed,
tliere are certain men and women who aj"e'.so fascinatedby
this Presencbthat it impossiblefor iheniiever<agairt to tum.
away thek'gaze from: it. This is a' sign at once of·the great-
ness 'and of the weakness'of hulllannature:''greatnessin•'its
origin and destiny, weaknessas regards·the .spirit which'is
blinded when the light is too strong.Those societieswhich;
as jn. India and the Buddhist'countries,and later on in the
,Qllri&Jianworld,. have recognized.an4 ,en~ouraged ~uch
~oqatiori~
. . '.
.tQ~e great silence,pro".etfl~rebythe depthof th~ir
spiritualinsight.
~' .
-.
· 'c
T~e Call Within 45
, .Yet i.tis riotonly monksand cloisterednuns who are called
·tQlive fact to face.withthis Presence.All the baptized,indeed
everycJ}Hdof God who liveson this earth;,;tllhavean eternal
and alreadyexistinghome at the heart of this glory (cp. Col.
33). ~ach·a'14eve,ryone of them shouldbe accustomed,at
least when:~e ~pqit d9es not bid themperformsome task in
the serviceof God's creation,to withdrawto the.secretplace
of their heart. And j~·there anyone so ~onstantly·occupied.in
. ,,,, ev~na few
'suchta~ksthat ,mom~ntscan not be sparedfor this
' .,'• ' .'
withdrawal?As R~bindr~ath Tagoresang:
I ask for a moment'sindulgence to sit by thy'side;
The worksthat I .have in hand I will finish•.afterwards;,·
(Gitanjali; 5) '
truest and· most eftective 'morttents· cWo\:tr'life: 1n thim
everything~isb is1focusbci;but thej theniseiveshave nh object
It would''betitterlyw:rorii'toiegatcftimes
of meditation,for example,merelyas a prep~atory.disciplin~.
to enable ~ to perform our.s.ocialduties, our 'work'o~ out
studies, more·'ca1irilyand·effectively~r· even to. assist 'our
progress;ill foimility 'or in ·the practice of other virtues.
Contemplationis w,orthwhile for i~ ownsake. It needsn<>
No
.·furiherjustific~tion. doubttheseliigh·timesqf silentprayer
'will hav~an influenceoh our life as a whole,'but again this
influenceshou1dneverbe 'made the object~f Ourprayer. Its
·effect is'l:bmpletely spontanem~s.A good thing',spreads its
. gdod~essa11around,'likf therosJ its scent, as in 'the Indian
as
proverb.Its"influenctt1sarnatritaf that of th(?sun,.whose
'light ant·h~t are contlmfaUy'radiated upon the earth and
· through'sp_ace: ,c · · '· ·, ' · ·• · ·· ' ··

.46 Prayer
Nevertheless,to contemplatethe mysteryof Godrevealedin
creationis not a lower good, when God leads in that direction.
The Manifestedandthe Unmanifested·aret~o complementary
aspectsofGod's self~revelation. Differentpeoplehavedifferent
vocations;and in ·fact no humanbeing is capable of realizing
in himselfall the possibilitieswithwhich·outnaturei:Sendowed.
· Somepeople,as muchby naturalinclinationas by grace,ate
calledto a life thafis chieflydirectedtowardsexternalactivity,
whethernierital·'orphysical;and ·so·ru-~ drawn to ·coriteinplate
the divine mystery above'all as 'ifis manifestedill the Worid
and human history. Others are called.to,a more secludedlife.
Theircontemplation will be aimeddirectlytowardsthe Presence
in its innermost mystery;No one has the right to belittle or
pass a superiorjudgement on .anot1'er's.calling. Besides, in
ev~ry~ctivelifet,hereis a place for the contemplationof,God
in hi~,e_ssentjal a
glory;,~d i~'iverysqlitary ,Iif~tiler~is place
fqr g1vmg$f1Ilk~ to pod for the.glory of his creation-::-"the
Hymnof tll~:Un.iverse"-::-andfor at least son;ieparticipationin
the work ofbtjngihg ;tQatcre~tionto its'fulfilment.,There,is no
he,nni~.howeverremote his hiding-plac~Jnthe.depths of the
forest, wh,ohas',tlieright ta forget that heJs,a' me'mberof\he
humanfamHy'.Even the simplest'attentionjhatl;lemust give to
the needs of his body .will.always,ren;iiµdhim.that he too.is
ma.de,of flesh, and sois part ofpie:::cre&te4• \1/0rldwhich
manifeststhe gloryand love of,th{Lo~d. ' f ' ' "C ' '
' Tllese two attitude~·and vocationsa,I"yi~ no'.way,pqJ1tra~ctory,
ex;ceptin their'eJU1ggerated forms''and'wheq they:are'!;:ho,sen
· for their own sake and not fpr God,.They ru:e,founcltogether
n~t oniy in the C:hm;ch of in :humamtyat large,b~tal~ono)es~
in every human life. Whatever'maybe our vocation,there are
times when we feel the need io withdrawourseivesfrom the
i'
The Call Within 47
extemaiworldand,forgettingeverythingelse,.tohide ourselves I
in the "unmanifested"glory of God. And there are others,
when we feel ourselvesmore drawn towardsour fellow men;
towardsthe earth, towardsGod·in his "manifestation".There
is in us a kind of ebb and·flow, which depends indeed on
grace, but also on the constantlychangingstate of our minds.
It is in fact good that this should.be so, for,it helps us to keep
a balan_~inq.ur spirituaLlif~no easy matter..:....and to.escape
the oppositepitfalls,on the one handof excessivewithdrawal,
and·on .the other of undisciplinedinvolvementin the world.
One who is truly spirit:ualis equallyat homeiii either ofthese
states. One who is awaketo the presence'of .Godin creatioh
will,whenthe time co~es. enter'quitenaturallyiri,toryeollection
with thought and feeling stiUecl,. And.equally,-one 'who has
truly passed beyond himselt ~nd found 'God 'in his b~n
innermostdepth,'will spontah~usl~ discover ari'd-realizehis
'presence:'.inall cre~tuies·ana'at the heart ..6f evei,ibei11g.
The children o(God. ha~e a.sovereignfreedom. When the
hourhas comefoi-themtogo aparttotheplace6f..meditation",
they depart with God's joy in their heart:But once the h~tiis
over, or even sooner, if some uilforeseencall presents itself,
then with·the same·divinejoy filling their heart they ;eturn,to
the worldof "signs''. Theyare constantlyattentive.to the Spirit
and availableto his'call. They are ready torerriain silen(and
forgetftil of everything .when God phinges them into his
mystery, aridare equally ready to apply themselvesto th.e
•service of others iri the joy of_thesame Spirit. , , .
 The Sabbath Rest of God 49
·cultivatethe earth and draw from'it the -Wealthit contains,and
then tninsfonn it to meet our needs. It.was tho~ made clear
from the first that a humanbeing can dbnothingalone, that we·
are not monads, isoJatedindividuals,turn.edin on ourselves
but that our whole life is ·one· or'telatlonship with othed, .
s
of associationin love, on ,the model of .God1 own trinitarian
CIIAPTER5 life.
A man' is not merelya workman,.homo
,. . '
Jaber,one who is
THE SABBATH REST OF GOD ensJaved'tt>·materuil tasks, literally and metaphoricallybound
to ihe soit'No more is arnarimerelya thinker,the homosapiens
ACCORDING to theBible, God created tqe wqrld iµ,sbrdays, and of anthIOpology.Just as his calling is not only to digthe soil
on' the seventh entered into his ''rest'\ Mankind is called.to and work on its prodQtts, soit is not only to gatlier·knowledge','
share 'at thesaine rest.
tilrie in God's 'acti~ity ru'idin his ...·.. . 10,~evelopevermore powerful compt1tets,to.be a technician,
.. God's' entering info his rest.did not, however~m~ that the or ~veil to passhis titne iir contempfatingthe Ideas; as PJato
work rif .creation was ended.. The. crt3tfon will only .be aridafttrhim se>many other thinkers in Meditemmean cou'ntries
completed'on the day when this-~ ~c(the ,hea~enswhj.ch dremned is
of doing. First of all~andabove all,•a man'a being
·our eyes behold have given place to the new heavens and the his
madein m~image <jf'God,tlie,'miri:ofof glory/one'who
new earth foretoldfirst by Is~ah ~d the~ by John,:the seer of like God~ aware that-he is~and.in this verfawakening to
Patmos (Is. 65:17; R,ev. 21.:1)._When God placed ,'\damin.the himself is capable of infinite bliss. :' ,, ·
'Garde_nof' Eden; he gave him the.·~ of tillfog_'
and k~pi~g On earth, ~ in heaven, we are,called to enter God's perfect
sabbath-rest,ancl ~ share·in his eternal peace and joy .. •
t~e garden (Gen. 2:1~,that is to say, of so~g the earth and
the universe,that they' piight produce all t1µt1:'isnee~ for promise,
The therefore; still holds good, that we ate to
the support and well~b~i~gof mankind.Ev~;'o~e of ·US, both attain God's rest. •• Qod's people have a'sabbath ofrest in
~a\n~_mber of the hri~~ fapiily and,a!SQ,~n his own account, · store for them; to .attainhis rest meansresting from human
is caUed to 'cooperate with God in the work of creation. labours, as God did from divine~We must strive eagerly,
. From Adam's body .God mad~ thatof .the Wom~! ,and ,to . . then, to attain that rest. (Heb. 4:1; 9-11; tr. by Ronald
both of them he ent:nistedtllp task of peopling ~e earth vv,i.tb · Knox). '
beings who would be .in theirown likeness, and so in the We no doubt have to work todether on building the earthly
likeness of God. It is only in a shared life that humanity can city, the substructure,so to speak, of the City of God. But we
survive throughthe procreationandeducationof children.It is can never forget that the City of God, our final homr.,i~already ·
only by workit1gtogether in common with others that we can
 50 Prayer
present "even now" (John 5:25), ~ince.the Kingdom is in the
midst of us (Luke 17:21). And ~s .God entered his rest on the
· very morrow of creating mankind, every human work on earth
·should. also manifest the divine rest. . we cannot grasp it, ·
From the beginning of our lives we are surrounded and
penetrated by the mystery of 'this ~abbath,, as we are by the
mystery of the Kingdom. To live in the Kingdom is to live by
faith and in the Spirit, to live as "sons of the. Resurrection"
(Luke 20:36), it is tp live the_life of God himself, for we are
"partakers ~f the diviile nature" (2Peter 1:4); _itis to posiiess
the glory .which God .gave .to. his ~on, and which the. Son·
imparted to us together. with all that he received from the
Fatller (John 17:22,'·16:15)·;it is to realize the mystery of Goo
in. the deepest recesses of our heart, beyoJ1d all thought, all
ilTiagination,beyond every' possiJ)le manifestati<>nof his glory.
God is. indeed presei:i~i!l every. one of his signs, ,an<Jyet he
remains for ever beyond all.sigps, beyond everything through
which he manifests his Presence, beyond everything in _the
, ,. , ' . , '.' l , , the eye blinks, Ah!
mental or material world.
No hymn can do 'YOU honour,
no word can tell , All these signs are the Spirit's call, urging us to advance up
or thought express your glory;
you are tile Source' of every word and every thought!
By what name shall I call you,-
you who have all names,
and whom no name can name!
"You who are beyond, beyond all"-
what other name befits ycm?1
1. ''.Hymnto God", ascribed to Gregoiy of Naziimzen.
The SabbathRest of God 51
Everything through .which God reveals himself to us is a
summons to go further, to go beyond.
.'.'Neti,neti," ''Not this, not that";
we cannot bind it
1
we cannot hold it. (Brihad~aranyaka Up., 4.2.4)
Other is it than the known,
other than the not-known.
There'where the eye goes not,
speech goes riot, rior ·hearing,
that which no word fells,
no thought thinks,
and· yet: that by which the word is ·spoken,
the thought is thought,
which is known when it is not-known ...
the Truth.,.
The lightning flashes, Ah!
· · (KenaUp., ch. 1;'.2,4)·
··..The sign. of God is this flru;hof lightning which. darts across.
the sky, not halting on its way, and which nothing can detain.
the stre~ of God's self-manifestation and to find the S~mrce
itself; from which all comes. The· spring reveals itself iri the
trickle of water issuing from the rock, and yet is always beyond,
infinitely beyond even that trickle which tells of the Presence.
God has not created us merely to work with our hands and
our brain, but rather to adore. in the deep silence of the heart.
Even beyond adoring him, we are called to plunge into that
infinite silence, to lose ourselves-there, unable finally to utter
a single word, even of ptaise or adoration; for no word can
 '' 1'

52 Prayer

express'the mysteryof God; our own mystiry face to face'with

God, the mystery of the Sortin•the eternal presence of the
Father, once this mystery7 which is a single mystery:.....has
at
last.been truly realized. Then the mind can neither think or
conceiveanythingat all. It is simplyoverwhelmed,reduced to
silence, to nothing, blinded by that Light-a sun which no
longer allows any other luminaryto be seen,in the sky, when
once it has reached the zenith. ..,.
God's creative work and his eternalrest are cqmplem.entary
aspectsof his mystery,and.it is the s~e w.ith;us-;-inGoclwe
work and we rest. In building up.the,~ly cit~u1\ong,:with
our brothers and·sisters, and equally in wi$drawing;~to the
silence of the heart, we experiencethe fullnessofgur calling
as the children of God. . / · .•.. . . ..•
The mystery which is present in my h~ is the mystery
whichis also presentin every humanheart. In .theplace where
God abides no one is separatedfrom his brothers and sisters.
At the very centre of his heart, where Godis and wqere.God
aloneis, he finds mysteriouslypresentthe wholehu~an f~ily
an4 all creation,All timesare pres~ntin that w9ipe~t·of wlli~h·
is
he consciously·. awar~all that was, alJ.that 'is;allth~t.will
bi,and also all that transcends.the three tfmes, as. says·the.
MandukyaUpanishad. There toois the very consummation
and fulfilmentof the universe,as well as its origin.2 Anyone
wh~ has made his home ~t ,his.owri,truecentre is by tliafy¢ry
"' , \ . . ' , , ,;,,,-1
2; · We recognize here one of the fundamental intuitions of die Upanishads,
. and before them of the Vedas: . . . .. .
The Purus>ia• is all ihat- ·
, All that was, all that will be;
the Lord of Inunortality •. (Rig-V¢a, 1.0.90.2)
(* Purusha:the cosmic, primordial, archetypal Man)
 54 Prayer The Sabbath Rest of God 55

more on behalfof mariki~d to build up in each itidi~idwilheart is. 1'the pea~e of God which pas!!esaJJ understanding"(J;>hil,
,~t c~~Y,hic~ ..w,ill,H.e".er pass ~way,than any work dOne'in .4:7); it is· the joy 'of.God. into which the ''good.servant~•is
,tlje wmJd .in_cons:tructingthe lu~manfoundations' of the I invited to .."enter'.'(Matt. 25121).·
·~n?~?~--or even,iri·'pr~parirg'directly for its comi11g in the It would be quite :wrong,to suppose that such graqes are
reservedonly for the chosenfew; The reasonwhy this opu,ion.
.~l~l!!tryotthe Chllfch,Wljer~. even in things conc~ing
..th~Kingdom,\Ve<>,nlinarily'wodc,through ourbodies and IJllnds is so widely held is that many people have.a mistakenidea ·
the·contem~latjveworks in the Rest ofGcxCThe "tool" :with about mysticaland contemplativegifts, which th~yrestric.tto
,_whi9h ~~ works,tf o~fmay ~ speak, is 'the Spirit, that Pc,wer the purely. psychological phenomena wl;lic.h.·sometimes
and
.of God so.of~p menti~n~ in the Gospels the lettersof the ;.accompany,but as a rule have.nothingto do with,.realmystical
.Al>?stles.'n ~e Spirit he. overpasses and
tilrte spac~.:he· is life. These.gracesbelongofright to every.Christianby virtue
,an
e".e~~h,~fe,presentto thingsarid·all_peopl~.With.the Spirit of bis baptism;indeed,one could say, to every hurpa,nbeing
.,hereac,Iies .fr~m one, erid of -'the'universe to, ..'tiie other..Thalis as a-birthright.Itwas surely.withthat i,ntentionth.atGodcreated
I ·, , . :,•, '\ .. . , .· · .... : .· . '.
t~~-Sl,ilt~'?f ,,th.~."s~ns '<?,f.~he Res_urrection".'-~he \~ery mankindin his own imageandli\ceness,and that is where lµ.s
c~gre~ucs of the timeto coine::tre alreadyessentiallypr~nt infinite love is calling us. . .,
(Heb. 11:l), guaranteedby the "earnest" of the Spirit (Eph. ·Moreover;.such·gracesare·notinfrequentlybestowedon thqse
1:14). The Messianicend;,tjmeis in fact already_f~filled inall who have never even heard mention of Cbrist's rev.elation. 3

those who have heard the voice of .theSon of Man(cp. John ..~is, is: an undeniablefact, despite the astonishmentfe_lt1:>y .
_10:2?),and have deci_ded to :followhint-even to the bosom·of ;')liaqy. Christiansiwhen they,come to•realize:it-,-jq.st, ,as faul
the Fatherwhe,re,in theunity, of the Spirit,he has returnedto •,wasamazedto-discover.thatGentilestoo were called to have
✓ • • • ' ' ., _,. ";' ·•«' .

-~isQ~ glory (John 17:5);and where he.hasprepm,-ecl.~place faith in Christ (e.g.,Eph. 3). Yet, if this is so, it-is another~nd
for his.own (John 14:2). . ··. . .. :.. . · ·· .·•·· .. .·evenmore pressing reason for believing-.thatevery baptized
Christianis certainlycalled to receive this grace.·Otherwise,

. 3. · The manner.in which these mysti~sspeak of their experienceis often far

..· 1bose who live within theRest of God are alreadyengaged
. on what wm be theiroccupationirrefomity.In it they receive,
as it ·Were,a foretasteof the life to come,whichindeed from
then on the_initennostmy~ttn' of ~eir i:>wnlife, the very life
of the Father and the Son in the unity of we. Spirit But we
must never forget.thatthis foretasteis something-whichcannot
be discernedby the'mindor by our·natunil consciousness. It
removedfrom the mental categorieswhich are used in traditionalChris-
. tianity. But we must never forget.that words lack thepower to lay hold
of God as he really is; Christianmystics too,despite iheit sincere desire.
is . ,~ remain within.theboundsoforthodolly;often make wordsexplodeand
. have to ~ak~ ,useof para'19J!: in thefr effortsto convey somethingoftheir
experience,.Contact,with attempts to formulate the expenence of the
and
mystery of in.an of God which differ from those developedin Chris~
tianity uriderthe '.influenceof Jewish ilnd Greek thought, is bound to be
very enrichingfor the Church:

_.,i.
·56 .• .,Prayer
how could we justify the work of missions among people whom 57
The Sabbath Rest of God
the Spirit is already leading to these heights;, if all it offers is
merely an outward ceremony ·-and the learning of 'a formal for in1 contemplaµon .the worshipper, fi~ally enters really and
·catechism? It is surely, therefore, the urgent duty -of the Church ' truly-,-the ,:e~t(reali~y) of which th~; sacrament is the sign-
and her pastors to help in every possible way each and all.of into. the divine: sphere, the. Holy of holies. I_mmersedin God,
Christ's disciples to enter that. sanctoary of the soul where the he is no longer capi;ibleof i;i,nyturning back,or1 him~elf. He)s
Spirit awaits tliem.4· !1.
not even able to say, think or feel that he is contemplating
Those;tnoments of our life which we,set apart for this prayer God, or tllat_he_has given himself wholly to him, He is so
of sileilce·are•1ndeed the·.best'offering that we can ever make 1
tot,ally-absorbedin the experience of the God,-who-is-here, tha~.
to God; the highesFfonn of'ispiritual worship" (Rom. 12:1). he is. sc~s;ely able any longer to identify his own self in the
They area kin:d of ''tithe"taken out of the time that is given dazzling light. of the Presence. ,
us. Iil .this why we recognize and acknowledge the absolute Everyone has some leisur.e time,, bu_tall too 9ften we spend
sovereignty of Gdd. Such times are thehighestkind of sacrifice, it pointlessly or ,badly. We. surely ..have s<>metime when we
for in them we offer and dedicate to God that which is greatest can. sit or kneel in thy Presence of the divine Majesty, not in_
and noblest in us..:..::not-
tner(?ly material things whose use and order to make requests or give thanks, but simply Jo be then~.
enjoyment is renounced so that they can be offered to him; but jn silence before him.
that· which is ours 'in the mental spheFe, the supreme joy
(humanly speaking) which,we take 'in.thinking and.knowing.- *
As the Psalmist says (Ps. 40:6~8);;God has no need ofofferings ·what is true for the i~di;idual i~ no'less true f~r s~ciety at
consisting bfour materiai goods; what he does ask of us:is the l~ge, Society has a
duty to take from itself "tithi( of a
··offering of ourselves, the sactifice of that which is our dearest humanity-some 'ofits,members who will ~~ dedicated, not
and most precious· possession.· . . ·. merely tp the service of the Worq or the. Ch~rch's ministry,
Contemplation is the crown and fulfilment of all worship. It but solely to •remain seated in silence in the ~resence. 5 In_tlie
' . ,, I ' . '

is ii:icontemplation
.. ,,
• . '.
that the Eucharist
.
produces
. .
its highest
.
fruit,
5. ''Your mission is to uphold the fullness of contemplative life in our days
4 .. See the'very-~xplici;tex,ts ofVatic~II,fi>r\xa~ple: .. ' . . and to give a'.fresh witness to it before the world ... The Church needs it
in. order to maintain and develop her o\Vn life, The Church, has a gre_at
. ' .. .~•All the faithful, whatever. their condition or state of life, 'are called
need of souls with a strong inner life, assiduously given to the practice
by Gi>d,each in his o~n ~~y. to ~at perfect holiness whfch is that of the .
··of recollectio~ i!i'God;,. If the souls' bf the faitlifulare not to wither, they
. Father himself' (LumenGentium, 11)'.'''Ip.ecall to fullness of Christian
need to be refreshed with the living water which springs up in the hearts
'life anci to perfect love· is addressed to all those who· believe iit Christ"
.of contemplatives ... ,Noteveryone accepts yo_urwitness;_the con~emP,la-
(CG., 40)."As thi>se who lead oihei-s'io perfecti6it, bishops should be
tive life is too near to the mystery of God. to be umierstoo~ by the world.
diligent in fostering holines~ among clergy, religious ,arid laity, each ac-
·Do not seek to be widerstood by men at allcosts. Be' simply yourselves ...
cording to their particular calling" (ChristusDoniinus, 13). .
Your apostolate is the hidden life; speak to 'u1e·wo'rfdby your silence.''
· , (Paul VI, Letter ,to the Trappists, Dpcumentationcatholique,A and 18
Mar,~ 1969). ' '
 'fr:
'V

l
58 Prayer !
\slThe
:/,l}''"
SabbathRest of God
' '
59.

case of anyone who is so chosen·;it willof courSebe the ' Ji'/iat. least somecare, on tile.011e_ h~d, f91"ptiysicaln~.>~d .th~;
res'Jjpnseto a persona.Icall"anda very specfalvocation.It will, Jpk~p ~f the house,;and.pnthe other,for'p~~~g'th~t ·1!1e~rru
however,be in the name of all his brothersand sisterslhat he • balance whichis so necessacyin such,~ Ufe)\\utthe ~!~e11-tia.l
will' ta1cethat plungeinto'the divine tnysteryfrom which there •· '.thingis that·any such activity should·c~ntribute,dii:~tly,:o/
is no return. . ' ' ' indirectly
1
,.to .an_unbroke~a.ttention ,.tothe mner myst~ry',whi,ch
Betweenthe life ofaChristian in the world; who seeks to is,the life-bloodofev~ry trulyco~telilplativeHfe; ' '
.•.• In •India tlntn1g)lqritthe, cerit.urie~die<>rd~r(iishrama)·.of
1

be led by the Spirltin theJerforinahceof his nonrialactivities

and responsibilities,andtha.tof the hertnil:who-departsto the ·s~nnyasa~ba's~1in"essed to this_'ca.n'tp pur~contemp!ationand
desert alone and unflinchinglyattends to the inner 'Nesenc~. to th~de~icationof humanityto theAbsohite. In the "1~st,
there is an a.lrilosdnfinitevariety·of callings;The Churchhas from the .earliestChristi~ c~Iituries,"this .ideal inspired the.
in fact institutionalizeda dertainnumberof thetn by fou~ding ' ermits of Egypt; Syria ~(other Part$!>{W~~te~A5ia., The
or giving recognition to the' different:ieligkius orders bi: ChM:li has never renouncedthe .ere01iticallife; b11tff c~,not
congregatioris1
• ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ·• ' ' ' be denied.that, since th~ period oftlte, fyfi9dl~:f\.ges,\,~ryfew
Thus, on the one hand, there are the religiousorders whose ~pie have ~11 drawn _toit. The pr~vio~~,~ode_~f;.C_~e>~
membersbusy themselveswith the educationof children,the .·...w even.seemedto e:x.c;lride it, l>y:definingth~?x:e)1gi~t1s life,
care of the sick,or otherformsof socialservice.At the opposite 'e
: (: ·;' ... ',': , ... · .

lifeconsecratedto God,as "life in commUIJlty,.

!'• ''YJ:
· ... ' . .• ,lt\

' It ~ a sign
1• •

extremethere are the·enclosed orders: and in between come a.· ./::;l.f .the
'·.)
times '
andi'
God;s grace that~
for
''•
the ,last
,• .'. ',..
few deca(lt,g
'. .
, .. . (.. . ' . ',. '. '·

multitude of what are called "mixed" orders. However one

shoulclhot suppo~ethat it is enoughfor an order to be striciiy
er.closedfor it t'omerit bei~gcalled contemp/iiti~~: E·spedally
in the early days.of the Church,the only form ciflife that
consideredas contemplative(in Greek,(heoria)wasth.~tof th_e
hermitswho were supposedto live in perpetualcontemplation
of heavenlyrealities.In our·days there'are very many monks
as
and nu~ who, despitetheir enclosure,arejust muchi11wlved
in physicalor intellect~alactivitiesas ,anyof their,brothersand
sisters in the world·outside.·Their life is undoubtedlyof the
greatestvalue,but even.io. itren1~11s, far fro111
the a:nderitideal
of contemplation,pr'tlieoria,Neverthelessii'is,clear'that,·even
in the most truly contemplativeestablishment,a certaintnini-
nium of "secular"activity~s to find a place. Therehas to be
Sannfea (from a Sanskrit root which means "to
f!l~Oun~"~:the.,~onas-
tic life according to Hindu tradition. Sann-yiist:the mopk;~ne who has
renounced the world (also, siidhu,muni).Ashrama:stage of life. The fow:
was classical ashram~s are: brahmacharya, the.(chaste) life of ..a student;
grihasta-iishrama, the state of married life,·with all its duties in the spheres
. Qffamily, sQcietyand religion; .Vflnaprastha-aslu;~,the sta~ of_one who
has departc:d~o the "forest", freed flOJDall profes~1~ obligatlons, and
devoting.his "retreat" to spiritualconcerns; sannyasa,the ~an~~~~t of
all ihe rights,anpeq1:Jally_ ih.~obligation~, of one who lives m. ~~1ety,
~ealedin an official and public ceremony (dtkshii) ,which corresponds tQ
h .solemn profession in ,qui~tian, monasticism. , ; , · , .
Code of Cano11,Law,Canon 487.Jn this howeverw~.can s~e a hintthat
~ .all institutionalizatl~, and ~at
, the eremitical ,life in itself is resis13!1t.
· at m~st Can~ 'Law should aiinat p~ting and safegum:dingit. but ~ot ,
, ;. iii any way at regulating ~t.his as.if.th~ i;remi!i~_life ~ ,tJt~ ~ctlon
.."mthe.Church of,being a standing ~der that tht: Spi~,,-h9 works
through all the different' forms instituted by men
or inspired by ~self.

I
II
60 'Prayer The SabbathRest of God 61
there has beena revivalof interestin this ideal and of vocations drink qeeply from the ever-flowingsprings of the Hindu ideal
toi[ff this1were'ever )~ekingin the Chmth~it Wouldcertainly of renunciation in .a life devoted to God alone. The Church
be a ~igh of ~'love'
(MatL 24:12).
growing cold";
. · .. .. .
aniark
.
of the end~tithe
...
waits in expectation till she attains that ultimate inwardness,
which will reveal to her the true depths of her own mystery,
Afnongth~ semi-eremiticalOrdersrecognized by.theWestern or rather will open for her hitherto·u_nsuspectedabysses in her
Church, two are specially worthy of mention. The
first is 'the contemplationof the inexh.austibl~ depthsof the heart of Christ. ·
Carthusian Order, even though it is still stronily marked by In our day, more than ever before, the Church needs this
the medie~hl·erriphasisorilitfu'gichl'worship.•The other is the testimony that God i~ beyond all, beyond every thought an?
Carmelite Order, whose primitive Rule upheld.the ideal of every word that seeks to expresshim, beyond every act which
abnosi oobri>kensoljtude and contemplation;·and,to.·this day strives to reach him. The Church needs this silence to give
the nuns of thi; Order regard their cells and the prayer of meaning to her woids, this n'cm~actibn to ~givelife to her'
sileoce as their most preci~' possession.8 , · •
activities, this beyond-sign'io iecove~ the,fulf tru* ·of the
There remains the hope that the Church of India one wilt sacramentalsign which she herselfis. · . ' . . ' , '
daycontributeto the universalChurchan authenticallyChristiab A Christiansarin~sa.will iiot, ho:wever'be .an order in the
sannyasaasth~ finestjewel of monasticlife.Thus the Chllll:h cii:nonicai·sense of \the wotd;. shice its essential spint is
will_recover after centuries.the purest tradition of the Desert incompatible with aJy kind of institution.Ids, iri·~e. frrst
Fathe:raand the Hesychast movement,9 and at the same time place, a spirit vvhoi ways ·oftiri challenge·tjurii_anwisdom;
,,,· is also sovereignly free with regard to all forms. (Since ~s was written,
and at the same.time, likethe,prana,the life-giving"breath"
the Code of 1983, Canon 603, has made provision for hermits.) .· of the Upanishads:it diffuses itself'everywhere.and penetrates
8; •; The Carthusian Order, named after La Chartreuse, France; founded in e~erytliingwith a new;'sovereign'and~ntrai:hmeHed l~fe.this
the eleventh century by St Bruno, in which the monks live a panly her-
mit life. . . . applies not only to the individualin which itreveals itself, but
also'to the human:groupwitl1iiiwh,ichit is I'adiafod.It is_l~e
The Carmelite Order, an Order originally of hermits, which fust ap-
peared in Palestine in the thirteenth century,and was later introduced into
the west, becoming one of the Mendicant Orders. St John of the Cross
that "living wa~r'' 'of which'Jesus spoke, welling up: thein
depths of the heart from tlie trariscendentexperienceof God;
and St Teresa of Avila among the greaiest members of the Order.
9. Hesychasm (from Greek,hesiu:hia;quietness, silence, solitude). A spiri- when the true self comes to bhth; 'a sprmg-whichat the ti'me
tual movement which developed in the Eastern Church .during the Middle appointed by GM will gush·forth beneith the very thres~old
'Ages, derived from the purely oontemplati~e tradition of the Desert Fa- of th~sanctuary,\aswas foreseenby th~ ~rophetEifkief in_his
. thers'. its important.
role in spreadirig the 'practice of the "Jesus Prayer"
,, · will be referred to in chapter 9. Ftitthermoie, the stress laid by some
final vision (ch. 47), and•fromthere wilispread far\and wide,
Hesychasts on ~ cootrol_and on cooi:entrating attention on given a bringing life and healing to the whole land of promise:
..
.
part
yoga: .
as .
of the body helps to'~tion,
. .
~ a point of similarityto Hindu
, / '
 63

who are engaged on philosophical or theological study it runs

the risk of being:·reduced·to· pure reasoning. This .kind· of
meditation seeks above all to establish in the tnind strong·
practical convictions, such as can irtfluencethe working of the
intellect and the will. Iri the last resort itis more an activity of
the mind concerning God than a real attempt at.contemplation
'CHAPTER·6
and: true prayer. .
;ON·THE}·WAY ··· HoweverFas a discipline it is certainly very effectiye. Many
of those ·who have contributed most 'to the growth•.and
development6f the Church in recent centurieshave been·shaped
AMONG the fotm; ~f mental prayer.'Yhich.are practisedin. the by this method of prayer-even though it could be argued that.
western .Churc;h;we may· refer,in.tp~ first place to what is
co~monly called "medifation"~not forgetting, however, that .
a
there may be connection between this kind of prayer and the
excessively:nqtional andjiiridical outlook from wh'ichthe post-
in writings which. refer to the Indian' tradition. the word tridentine Church has suffered so badly. It is also true that this
meditation (dhya~a)_usua11y stan~s for the.highest and purest : 1, kind of meditation'can be particularly useful in the early stages
form ofcontemplation. ·. . _ .. · i ofthe spiiihiaf life. Yet we cannot but fear that in the end it
.. In Chri~tian.practice ihis. way·of prayer essentiaily COQSists r falls far short of the real calling of a Christian, especially
I of meditating, that is~reflecting.upon God-his. existence, .his
I. when those who practis~it (as happens only too often), either
attributes,.Ms love-;-:-,'ofrecalling ,the memory of Jesus, of from ignorance or through the lackof'right guidance, remain
. I-4ary and ,tp~saints, bf's'toplctQg tfie mind with their thoughts indefinitely at its introductory stage and never try· to·develop
and examples, of 'exan1'ining one's spiritu~ condition, ..of it in the direction-ofmore silent and contemplativeprayer. The
co.nsidering. '
how. l _;
one, could . ,
i: '· '
or sh_oi,ldse.ryeGodbetter, ~d so
' ' .. .. . , ~ , , ' ' object of prayer, in fact, is not at all to think about Gbd o~ to
on. During the i~t four cen~ies, in parti~ular the wes~eni form ideas about hiin, however exalted-these may be. It is for
Church has been flooded with technical works on.this subject God himself,for God beyond all signs and every veil, that the
and
. s:
with \innumdrable.
,, . ·,· .;l.'.•.,·'
ex~ples
.,: ·,',.
~f:, such.
·
meditations;
; , , .'
. . ., soul thirsts, When once it has been nourished by the ·Gospel
This ..type of meditation is ffrtainly •a useful practice; b_ut and·the Spirit. It is God in himself that the soul would find,·the
even so, one .cannot fail. to note thadt is rather aprepapttion living God revealed to Patriarchs and Prophets, the God who
for,pray~r than prayer.its~lf in the ~e sense_:i~can hardly be hides hirrrselfwithin, and who is realized in·i:hecontemplation
maintained that this practice effectively place~ the soul inthe of saints and sages.
,l __
presence of the living God. In· fact, only too often it remains
at the level of the intellect, imagination or.ideas; arid for those
* * *

64 ,_P,::ayer
. Meditation of this type ofte~ develops into an affective
kirid of_prayer.which, while _deeperthan the previous kind,
often still remains.no less· distant' from the goal. .Affec.tive
prayer at first consists of fervent aspirationsinterspersedwith
mental considerations,.of cries to God from.,,theheart, of
conversati.ons(as they are called) withthe Lord wh.o itw...ells
the soul. With practice, and aided by grace, speculati n and
mental effort~.fall. more.and mo~ejnto..the bac:l.cgi;ou d, and
prayer tends to become.incr~singly a sjrµple outpouring of
,,
I the lleart, with ..the .Lord imagined as presen!,either within.or
_closeat hand. ,,
Here again we have an excellentpractice,and oqe wlii~llis
a moredirect preparationfor true prayer than the previousone,
provided at least that this use of the affectionsin prayer goes
not tµrn into sentimentalism or verbiage. _It cannp~ be
recommendedtoo strongly,so long at least as the soul has no~
discovered.thepath which.leads to the.mountaintop'.;ltjs ve,ry
useful also when,·on .accountof circumsta:r1ces,. t):lemind has
difficulty in concentrating itself and freei~g i~elf Jro111 .the
images with which it is .cluttered•.Yet wem,µs~never forget
that in this kind,of prayer it is most oftenwith a picture of God
of its own making :th~t the soul .is holding converse--:-for
exrup.ple,with the Babe of Bethlehemin_his mother's arms, or
with.the Saviour wtio died on the;'crosstwenty centuriesag().
But howeverlifelikethe.picture,and_howevervividlyr~alled,
it still remains tile)product of my imagination.And ~nfact,)~
is not .with an imagined Jesus of long ago and far away,that
I desire t<>have contact in my praye~,,but.with the Jesus whp
is alive now, and who belongs to my own time ~d,place; and
I want to meet him in prayer, not as an object of my thought
or my love; but as one whose presence here and now affects
On the Way 65
my whole bJing.1The God with whomI would hold converse
is not, a remote idea of God, but the one trlle _God.whose
.eternity.is entirelypresent in every moment of my existence,
in my own presence to myself. In fact I am always with him
and in him, and rny contact with him is more intimate than .
anything that my imaginationcould picture..But for my part,
,l still have to awaken to this Presence.
. · Such forms of prayer are like the outer courts of the Temple
.of the Lord atJerus~~m, the court of the Gentiles and the
court of the laity. But we are invitedto penetrateinto the court
of the priests, to the Holy place, and even·within the Holy of
holies itself. By his death on the cross Christ has broken down
all the barriers (cp. Eph. 2:14); he has torn _asunderthe veil
.1. God cannot be an object, because God is person, l!Ildthe relation between.
_pers911s, ~clud~s it~ circums'cription within a,ny mental category. Only l<i'\'e
can express it, alike in the heart of God and'in human hearts. That iswhy,
. ::,•. as the Gespelteaches, love is the only .way by which we can enter into a
.. , true,relationship with God _or with each other. Besides, it is only in the
'' ~velati~n of the Trinity that mankind has been able to receive the de-
'finitive revelation of its own mystery, at one and the same time personal
and relational, a sharing in the personal .and relation/II mystery of God
himself; so that it .is actually through living.in relationship w,ithhi,sf~llow
, men _thattl).e.C:hristiaJJ.has the most direct experience of the life of the
. ' , Trinity. In the depth' of each individua( ilild also of God, there is the
fundamental' mystery of the '-I'.and immediately confronting it,· the mys-
tery of the·'.Thou'-:-apart from which no'°I' coul,d ever be known or ex-
. pressed. This T can.nev.er be. ki}own either reflexively or objectively, but
only through the exp~rience of identity-the "experience of the Self' as
'' ' it is baned in the Up~shadic tradition. The 'Thou'. whether it be that of
God or of any humail-persort,whatever-the 'I' ofan other-:-is ·likewise
011).yto be met in the ~xperience, or non-reflex knowledge, w)tich each
.one has of himself; otherwise this •other' must always be for me 9nly' an
',;' 'obj~t. It is only in the in.tuition of ~y O\Vll 'I' that l can taste and re'alize
the 'I' of another human being, and in the first place, that of God.
. ,,/
66 Prayer On the Way 67
whichforbadeentry into the innermostsanctuary(Matt;'27:51; oµr spiritual needs and those of the whole Church, and also
•Heb;·10:20).We are all priests of the New Covenant.None of with the quite different needs of our fellow men living in the
God's children can be·satisfiedwith anything'shortof entering world, particularly those who suffer most ·and are the most
the Holy of holies.No true lover can be satisfiedwith merely powerless. Yet even so, it is a fact that this kind of prayer·
thinkingabout the one she loves, with.lookingat his picture or alwaysruns the risk of encouragingthe one who prays to turn
holdingimaginaryconversations:with him. No, she must hold back on himself,and also of being so preoccupiedwithworldly
him in her arms, look into his eyes, embracehim directlywith or spiritualanxietiesthat adorationand childliketrust are given
•her whole being: "Let him kiss me with the kisses. of his very little place.
mouth,"says the Belovedin the Song of Solomon,in the name To set before God our needs and those of our friends is
of all lovers of God. certainly an excellent starting point for the ascent towards
contemplativeprayer. But to save this prayer from becoming
* * an interminablemonologue,ithas to be continuallypurified,
and we have to strive constantly to press forward to a more
The prayer of petitionis very close to affectiveprayer. Here inward level. ·As time .passes, .the· prayer of petition should
we are not referring to those formulas which people repeat become,not so much the giving of information·to God, telling
almost like a magic charm to obtain their desires from God, , him whathe already'.lcriows·far better than we (Mau. 6:8),but
.but rather to that Simpleoutr,ouringof the soul which confides rather.anact of loving adoration,of trustinghope and childlike
its needs to the Lord, like a child pressed to its father's heart. submission...
It cannot be denied that this kind of prayer also is of great
value.. Anyone who dared to reject it, or eve11dispaiageit,
would thereby show his pride and lack of faith: Jesus strongly
encouraged his followers to use petitionary·prayer. On the
very evening of the Last Supper he_sai'd, to them again: "Ask,
and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (John 16:24).
The prayer of petition is essentially the recognition anci
acceptanceof our weakness and nothingness-'-anothingness
which only love can make good. God alone is our strength.
Without him we czu do absolutely nothing; we cannot even
confess that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor. 12:3)._Suchan attitude of
spirit is certainlyvery preciousin God's eyes, and is indeed to
be encouraged,above all when this prayer is concernedwith
 · ,~i1enceand Yoga .69

famous aphorisms(yogfl·Sutra)as "the airesti,ngof all mental

• ·, '' • ,, ' j ' ' _•, •

activity.,t .. . .. .. .. i. ...·. . . , . ..•, . . .

·..·Along~ith this',fuml~ental 'effect of yogic discipline,i~is
....
an' uriequalied method for attaining ~elf-mastery ancll':for
strengtheningtl}e will,w~ic~ is. now copied and ~<fup~ in
. manywesternhandbooks of psycholpgicaltraining.At the same
. .

SILENCE aND xo:(;A

··:-t:.. :.·,J:'.., ..
:,,.J~l ;,,.) )Ju.
·"··:··,
>:·;·,::.~ 11
-r,:P,i' :;.··,, .-.," <',:,h·,'.'r,~· ,1!
time it assis.Utt~e. harmonious developQJ.erii .of the body,
promotes good' health, .increases 'muscle-control,anci gives
. supplenessto limbs md mu~cle87nOtto mention the. wen·
,ofahe,East;and,es~j~ly, pfJ11di~,J1as
;;FimspirituahtraditieJ} know,i f~ts performed by yogis. ,, ,. .
,ibeensq sjro.ngly,drawntowards t}:!e:P,~y~r\.of
sileQ.~~,tlw.t
frQµi . These secondaryresqlts are probably the main cause of the
ither;begimiing,.it:has.stdven·,!Q:f~nd:,metb<XJs (whicb,.n9wa4,ays .presentpopularity.of yog~in weste,l'licoul}tries.'Itis however
! ,we:rwoulct'caJl.psycpo~.physiologic~l _tecJmiques)• wijjqlt:;ire. much to.be desiredthat those\VhOpracti~eYog~lnEµropeand
~apable'.of giv.ing•.aelp-, ,path:and of ,ep.sµrj.pgJ
001 th~::inW11t:q a America·shouldnot·confinethemselvesmerelyto thepostures
,safe:artival:at:the goal. IT'his;
gQal?is.'that•,ce,n,tt~:
of.,011e.self
ii,nd (asaria) and breathing'exetcises,but that they ~ijoulddevelop
:>afit(}bd--,. ,. "'' ,1.;,,
;:!, ;· :?.. a tas~ for exploring'ihe'immensepossibHities· bf this method,
whence.words recoil, together with the ~ind;· ·· and alleiw.ittobrilig'themto'that'inriervoid in which they will
unable to reach it-whoso knows '.discoverthe deepest level of their being and afthe same time
that bliss of Brahman has no fear... discern their trueidentity..
the·Iinperishable,the.Immortal...
. . (TaittiriyaUp., 2.4; Mundaka Up.·2.2) *
It is·,these techniques, of many diff~renttypes, which are ''Yoga is derlved.from.yuj,which means to harnessor yoke,
. !
I I commonlyreferred to in generalas yoga-:-"8-word which inclhe and also tojoin or fiL One.who practisesyoga, thy yogt, is one
'I
I course of time has come.tobe used meverwicter·applications, · who,having'yoked'.his sensesand his thought,isfully,prepared
and often covers every sort of asceticpractice.or spiritualpath. is
for reality.. ::1 In rajayoga (royalyoga),as it authoritatively
Genuine yoga is essentially. a meth9d, having both an defined in the aphorismsof Patanjali, there.-areeight aspects
inward·and an• o.utward·aspect, whose·.aim is .to .bring the · (or "members"); ·
mind to total silence..Pata11jali,the acknowledgedmaster •in
all that has. to do with yoga, defines it in the first of -,his
.J. Filliozat,
in L' lnde classique,
ll, sect, 1445; .
70 Prayer
yama and niyama,restraints arid disciplines (non-violence
non-theft, non-possession, truth; self-control, purity: .
contentment, austerity, meditatipn on Scripture, devotion
to God);
asana, bodily postures, and pranayama, control and
retention of breath; .· .
pratyahiira,withdrawal of the senses from perceiving and
acting;· · · · direction, or else the medley of sounds itself from which we
dhiirana,stilling of thoughts;
dhyana, meditation, or maintaining· the thought in this
stillness;
samadhi,"ensta:sis", or the ·attainment of pure awareness.
Hathayoga,,or "forced yoga", lays pra~tically all the stress
on the psycho-physical techniques, whereas ir1classical yoga
it is the last three aspects which are regarded as essential.
The fundamental aim of the yogic method is ekagrata,or the
concentration of the mind on a single point. This automatically
checks the mental flow, and the "thinker" or the "meditator"
becomes more and more independent and free with regard to
the continual promptings of tqe senses, the imagination and
the subconscious. As the Upanishads say, his freedom in the
end is no longer limited to one or other of the different "worlds"
in which his being n:ioves, but from the centre of the self and
of .the universe· which ·he has reached he is henceforth the ··
absolutely sovereign master of all.
The control of the positions or postures (asana)of the body,
and similarly the control of breathing (praniiyiima),·are
practised essentially with a view to this psycho-mental
conhntration. In th~ first place they bring about this
concentration, stilling and unification, at the physical and
psychological level; then, because of the psycho-physical unity
Silence and Yoga 71
.of human nature, they also establish in the psyche those .
. fundamental .dispositions which will.•come into· play. in the
· .exercises·of psychic conttol, strictly so called.
' Yogic concentration can be directed at any point, internal t>r ,
, external, real or imaginary, for instance, a sound (which again
· may be internal or external), one sound extracted from that
medley of sounds w~ich ceaselessly reach us :from every
: distance ourselves in the act of noting it,. or equally the sound
, which is heard internally when the ears are shut; or it may .be
directed at a stylized image, that of the guru, for e~ample. One
/ simple and specially effective method is to fix the attention on
( the breath as it is drawn in and expelled, or else on tbe muscles
of the nose or the abdomen, as they are tensed or-relaxed in
. _:timewith .the process of ~reathing: It is also possible to
i concentrate on .the beating of the heart, when the attention is
· sufficiently ·refined to perceive .it. Ii is also impottarit for
~ concentration to accord· with the axis of the ·•lxxty(hence the
1· need to keep the back straight); on. the median line which is
JheL to link the chakra,those centres through which the vital
:l'br psycho:pfiysical energy is released and makes its way
il,upwards. The chakras which are most favoured for
\foncentration and meditation,· depending on the aptitudes and
'degreeof development of the subject; are iliese: the centreat
the level of the heart (aniihata-cakra),the one between the
fJyebrows (ajna-cakra),.andthe one at the crown of the head
. (sahasrara-cakra)., In any c~, what is requirP,dis to discover
{Oneself
,J:; /,' •'·.
in
,
the hidden mystery of the guhil,2 that
.
interior
'
cave
::;of <>ne'sbeing which cannot be localized and is beyond .the
2.' guhii, from the root guh, to hide: cave or crypt. There are many passages
 .II
1,:1
11
,,
r n ··mrr r::r:n:rrrrr1··n:nr·r rrt T Wc·i 7 ·1ff!J)'t
::r:r ]tr
72 Prayer
level of appearanceand change, and no less beyond the purely
abstract level of reason.
In these days people talk glibly about "Christianyoga" This
is.an unfortunate expression·and leads to much confusion. In
iii 1
fact the word yoga is either being used in a very general sense
for any ascetic method, in which case one could equally well
11
talk oflgnatian or Carmelite yoga; or else it is used to refer
~
' i:
to the traditionalyoga of India, such as~hasjust been defined-
but then it is hard to see what kind of religious qualification
I.I it could possibly h~ve. In itself there can no more be a
''Christian"yoga than there could be Christianlogic or Christian
gymnastics. We can .·orcourse use certain detached elements
of classical yoga in Christian ascetic prac;tice;but to call that
"Christian yoga" is simply a misuse of language.On the o~er
· hand, we can use Christian·invocations in place of Hindu or
Bu~hist mantras (i.e., fonnulas, whose use is anyhow always
optional) in the course of various exercises, or even .use
.Christian pictures or symbols for ·fixing the attention when
practising concentration; but all that only has to do with a
very superficial level of yogic ·discipline, and .has no right
whatever to be called Cbristian yqga. Genuine yoga aims at
stoppingthe fonnation·ofconcepts'and immobilizingthe mental
flux, so that every 1image or thought may disappear, whether
Hindu, .Buddhist.or Christian. This indeed sets the Christian
theologian a problem from which he cannot ruii away: Is the
mental void to which yoga l~ds ·compatiblewith Chris"a.!1
in the Upanishads which.use gului, or some word derived f~ ~ ~ re-
fer to the heart,which is the mysterious centre at once of the mdivu;lual
and of the universe; Cp. the Vedic pada,in the sense so aainirably ex~
plained by L. Sil.bum·in Instantet cau.re,ch. 1. See also note 8 in ch. 9
below.
. I ··: ·: 17
· Silenceand Yoga 73
experience? This question further leads to a much more
· fundamental problem-that of the. relation between the
Trinitarianexperience of the Christian and the experience of ·
the Self towards which from the beginning India's spiritual
. quest has aimed.
* * *
The mental emptiness which is the object of yoga is..not,
i however, sought for its own sake. In the first place, if the
· emptinesswere an end in itself,it wouldno longerbe emptiness.
··.It would be "some thing", and so all would be lost-'-the
emptinessof whichyou can speakis no longernothing!Physical
emptiness itself is always only approximate,a limit which is
· never reach'oo.Neither void nor non-void, the ultimateexperi-
ence can only be thoughtof in paradoxes;or rather,our thought,
'· being incapable of grasping it, can only refer to it by indirect
and apparentlycontradictorysignswhichrevealits helplessness,
neither•being nor non-being,
neither from being, nor from non-being...
Be that as it may, this emptiness and this cessation are in
·fact an openingand awakening.One who practicesyoga knows
this·well, relying on his faith·in his guru and on an agelong
experience,recordedin the ancientScriptures.Once the mental
· processeshavebeen stopped and the mind emptiedof its volatile
.•.
-,contents,somethingseems to rise up from the depths of being,
··some inner power or else some source of light shining with its
: own radianc,e-these symbols attempt to express'the impact of
, _this~xperience on our nonnal consciousness .through the
':;archetypalimages of the psyche. It is like the awakening of a:
hitherto latent power, which little by little takes possession of
•allour dormantcapacitiesandawakensthem·in their turn-the
74 Prayer.
shakti3 of Indian tra<lition,whose nearest.equivalent in Greek
and New Testament language is probs.iblythe pneuma,We then
awake to what is innate in us, to that in us which is ~yond all
experience ·of becoming, ·to ,what .is beyond time, without
beginning or end,
that which was never born and. wili never die,
which has come from nowhere,
I stars, until rece11tly'by astronqmical. calculations, and. now
and does not become anything, j
unborn, ~teinal, for ever itself ... · (Katha .u~.,1.2.18)
. Y~ga,.then, is .silence.an(!immobility, the wou-wei,the non-
action of .Lao
Tzu, the hesychia,the quietness of theold Greek
monks, recollection within oneself, the return tothe source, to
the womb-,-whereas more and more our contemporaries live
with their thm•ghts set .on the future, on externals. Yet the
Gospel paradoxes have lo~t none of th.eir.force. Without a
"return to the worn~" it is impos!!_ibleto see the Kingdom of
God {John 3:3), •and the Kingdom is first of all that d~t
level of ourselves, where we are
totally free and have all the
rights of inheritance in God'.s house and Kingdom. Jesus also
said:· "What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and
forfeit his life?" (Mark 8:36)-so becoming the "slayer of the ·
self'' of which the tsha Upanishad. speaks .(v. 3). Jesus no .
doubt had in view ihe t!Schaton, 4
that •~'beyond time" which,
-'---'---"-'---.""'"· i
3. .shakti.is here used in its primitiveandfundamentalsense, withoutany
referenceto laterspeculationsor theluxuriantmythologywliichhasgrown
riparoundiL . . . . · . (Isha Up., 6; Chandogya Up'., 3:.14)
4; eschaton (cp. eschatology):the End;andalso whatis beyondthisworld,
correspondingto the "Re~m" of the Lord.Christianshoweverbelieve
.that,since the Comiitgof die Spirit,if not since the Incarnation,the "last .
times"a~ alreadypresent(see, e.g., .1Cor. 10:H; 1 John2:18)'.
Silenceand Yoga 75
inevitably but uselessly, we try to imagine in terms of· the
values and symbols of the present.' But the eschaton;the· last
hour, is truly this present moment itself, as Jesus also explained
(John 5:25). The eschaton is my discovery of my own true
identity within the mystery of God. So long .asone has nof
found himself there, what is the use of mastering and ordering
the universe?· Mankind · hastens towards· the planets and the
literally in spaceships. We may recall the question which was
constantly asked by Ramana Maharshi: 5 "Who is setting out
for the stars?" So long as anyone has not answered this
fundamental question, every thought and every step by wtiich
. he approaches the universe only serves to take him a little
further away from himself. T() use anottier •Upanishadic
expression, so long as anyone seeks for a supportin anything
else whatever, he never fmds himself, and is perpetually caught
up in an infernal ro.und, because the support and meaning of
the uni~erse itself is orily'found in himself, in his pure awareness
of b~ing-precisely at the point of his origin from the eternity
of God. It is only for the one. who has discovered himself
there, that the 'discovery of. the world becomes truly· worth
while,_:. · 1 •
the one who has found all things at the centre· of
himself,
and himself at the h~~ of all things.:.
within this heart's space,
as great as· infinite space ...
Cp. Saccidananda,36-37.
 76 Praye_r
So too that is the only way in which our actiqn on the world
and in the service of humanity becomes truly valuable and
effective.
· Christian spirituality should at least take one point from
yoga-:--itsseeking by one means or another to es~blish that
silenceof mind and thoughtwhich is the essentialprerequisite
for a full inner awakening.Only such a silence in fact allows
the Holy Spirit to act freely in the soul. It is indeed so difficult
for us not to be constantlyeither rushing ahead of or.lagging
behind the Spirit; we are always so eager to know and act on
our own and at. our own speed. Furthermore,this emptiness
and this silenceare in themselvesan appeal,the abysmalappeal
of the spirit for God-abysmal, b.ecauseit originates·in the
inf~nityof God's creative love.
This emptinessfr~s the mind, or.rather, the deep self, fropi
its attachment. to and self-identification.with the various
transitorycharacterswhose role it adopts one after another in
the eyes of other people and of itself. Henceforththe bonds-
those "knots of the heart" of which the Upanishadsspeak6-
have been broken, which tied it to the world of appearances
and enslavedit to its instincts.The wise man who has reached
this point no doubt thinks and wills like everyoneelse, but he
no longeridentifieshimselfwith bigacts..c,fthinkingor willing.
i He ri.olonger sees anythingor wills anythingin relation to his
r'I
'I
ii
limited ego. All is known and willed by him in the light of
6. •. For example, Mundaka Up., 2.2.8:
The knot of the heart is loosened,
all doubts are dispelled and all works abolished,
when That has been seen,
(brahmsn) the highest and the lowest.
Silence and Yoga 77
what is real-first of all, the.umqueSelf (as the Vedantinwould.··
say); or God in Himself (as the beHeverwould understand).·
He has thusrecoveredhis essenti~ freedom;nothingany more
now limits the infinitesummonstowardsGodwhich soundsin
the depth of his being. Nothing thereforeany more obstructs
the possibilitiesof the Spirit'·saction in him-the Spirit being
that _samepower which the Sages recognized as working in
themselvesas in the universe,and whosedivine characterthey
surmised.·The marvellouspowers a~tributedto yogis are no
more extraordinarythan the miraclesperformedby the saints;
the formerhave simplyreleasedwithinthemselves,as they put
it, the sameenergywhichpermeatesthe wholecosmos,whereas
the latter, as the GreekFathers.usedto say, have recoveredthe
blessed conqitionof Adam, when he emergedfrom the hands
of God, sovereignlyfree and master of the whole creation.
One has every right to question the psycho-physiological
theories which are often put forward as the basis of yoga, or
to challenge the interweavingof the psychologicalwith the
spirituaL.Butno one.candeny that yogic exercisesoften prove
an invalul:lbleaid to those who aim.at the p~ayerof silence.
Even so, it does not follow that yoga shouldbe recommended
to everyone indiscriminately ..It depends on the temperament
and also th~ spiritualcalling of the individual,as ·the genuine
mastersconstantlyremindus. With good reasqn they lay stress
above all on inner concentration,and .continuallyrepeat that
all the other exercisesare only valuablein so far as they lead
to this.concentration.Posturesand breathingexercisescertainly
assist .in controlling muscular disequilibrium and nervous
reflexes, while the practice of concentrationreduc;esmental
instabilityand frees the mind from its dangeroustendenciesto
dispersal.One who has never attemptedthe exercisesmay be
 78 P.rayer
misled by their ordinariness; but we should remember that
mental reflexes are· most often learnt by means that are
apparently far .fr<>m"rational", as those who have to learn
languages, for example, discover every day.
* '
* *
It is everyone's puty to keep his body healthy and strong,
and equally to develop his mental capacities. It is no less his
duty to prepare himself for the inner awakening at the deepest
centre of his being, since it is just there that the essential
meeting with God is supremely realized, in view of which he
has been called to exist. Quite apart·· from grace, which is
certainly never lacking to those who are sincere, the experience
of the self, as India calls it, is the greatest of humarl acts,
and without it no human development can be regarded as
complete.
Awareness of the self underlies the whole of out psycho-
logical life and activity, but cannot be identified with any of
the particular manifestations of this activity. In ordinary
psychological experience the awareness of ourselves is so much
fused with our perceptions, either .external or internal, that it
cannot be apprehended separately. However, it is clear that
beyond all these transient perceptions there is something in us
that' remains untouched and unchanging. Moreover, in deep
(dreamless) sleep we are apparently unconscious, and yet we
continue to be. The experience of pure awareness, which the
practice of yoga has in view, is the becoming aware of oneself
quite apart from all qualifications that can be perceived; it is
to be simply aware that one is, not that one is doing this or
that.
Silenceand Yoga 79
There is no doubt that this experience of the self is the
highest point to which man's psychological activity can attain.
It is the-substratum of any genuine mystical experience. It can
·even be said that in it mystical experience is found in its pure
state, no matter what forms it may happen to assume when
manifested jn th~ human psyche .. At other stages of
psychological life the divine mystery is only reayhed under the
veil of concepts and images. But only God. in'himself is ;able
to satisfy the deep existential thirst of humanity, ~ we are
vigorously reminded by St Thomas Aquinas (for example, at
the beginning of the Second Part of his Summa, 1-11,Qu. 1-5).
It is only at the centre of our being, in this experience of pure
awareness, that we can at least have a glimpse of the central
mystery of God in himself.
The object of all yoga is to attain to that pure Self-awareness
which God is, through the pure self-awareness whichwe
ourselves are, in the depth of our being, Until that point is
reached, God is thought of and understood as an other,but this
otherness is a simple projection of the otherness perceived by
our senseS-:-an otherness which does justice neither to God's
transcendence .nor to his.immanence. In the experience of which
we are speaking, God appears at that very point where
awareness (cit) is identical with being (sat) in the infinite bliss
(iinanda) of the Spirit, who is unique (a-dvaita, not two) in the
Father aud the Son, and equally so in God and man, being the
indivisible Saccidiinanda ...1
In one who is endowed with sanctifying grace this experience
of the_self can only be known in the power of the Spirit, as is
the case with all human activities-a subject which western
7. See Saccidananda,chapters 14-16.
 80 Prayer
Silence and Yoga 81
tl1eologystudiesunder the head of "the gifts of the Holy Spirit".8
God cannot be an object, ·because by definition an object
The highest of these gift is the gifts of Wisdom. ·By this gift
depends·on .a subject, who sets it before himself (ob-jicit) so
the Spirit acts at that central point of the soul where it is.
as to be able to look at it or deal with it, and so makes of it
nothing but pure awakening to the self, pure awareness of
a tlwu oni he, if not an it. We cannot rightly speak of God.in
being, beyond all that is perceived or thought The gift of
the third person, despite the. exigencies .of· grammatical or
wisdom enables us to have the experience that by grace we are
linguistic co~vention.God comesfirst. I am only myself in the
"partakers.of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), and to rejoice
tlwu which God addresses to me. God alone is the fir~tperson,
that the divine mystery is, as it were, "our own" by means of
in the proper sense of the term, fpr he is the fopnt of all
a kind of "connaturality" between us arid God, as St Thomas
discourse. Gen_uineexperience of' the Presence requires that
e~plains it .in his treatment of this Gift. In view qf this, we
God should.be met as the first person, as /. I never truly meet
surely have·a duty, both as members of the human family and
God when I thi.nkof him ·as object, but rather only in the depth
still more as Christians, to develop our mind's capacity for 1
of a purified experience of my own /, which is a :participation
silence and to hold ourselves in a state of constant wakefulness,
in the unique divine I. To be absolutely true, the Thou of my
waiting upon the Spirit. .
prayer should be grounded in the Thou which the Son
The Christian who is seeking for true prayer cannot be
etemally addresses to the Father, iµ the indivisible I-Thou of
indifferent to all th.is.Any prayer which, even unconsciously,
the One~in-Three. '
regards God as an object is not a prayer "in spirit and in truth".
So long as in our prayer we continue to think and feel, to
8. According to theologians, especially of the Thomist tradition, man ~s treat God "in relation to ourselves", it is certain that we have
natural capacities and _yi,rtues,even when assisted by grace, ~ot ,rise not yet entered the innermost"mansion"of the Interior Castle-
to that level of supernatural activity vyhich alone befits the. children of according to the imagery ofSt Teresa of Avila. Those whose
·God.To make him fully capable of being led by the Spirit (Rom. 8:14),
ihere ~ust be in him certain "passivities" which the Spirit .can use at his aim is God never.stopshort at anythingwhatever that is thought ,
pleasure. These are the traditional sevenfold gifts, distinguished from each or felt..no matter how exalted 'or uplifting it may seem to be.
other and given narnes by reference to Isaiah (11 :2). By .the gifts of un-
derstanding and knowledge the Spirit makes the human spirit capable of
Godis beyond. In the Book of Proverbs (30:15-16) it is said
understanding and inwardly hearing the message of God contained in
that there are three things-and a fourth-that never say
revelation, and before that, in creation. By the gifts of counsel and might "Enough!" But more than Sheol (the place of the dead), the
· he bestows on man the. necessary .prudence and energy to enable him. to barren womb, the parched earth, and fire, it is the spirit on its
behave as one.of the "sons of the Resurrection" {Luke 20:36), even in
I
I' I
I
the most testing conditions. The work of the Spirit in the soul becomes
way to God that ceaselessly c~es from its own depth: "Still
more and more powerful, as these "passivities" are released. His working not enough!" "Neti, neti/" 9 Nothing can satisfy it, save Goel
comes to its fullness when, in the experience of the self, man at last co-
incides with himself and transcends the limitsof his phenomenal con- 9. neti-Mti, a Sanskrit formula, often repeated in the Brihadaranyaka Up., It ·
sciousness. means "Not this, not that", and is intended to convey a sense of the inac-
cessibility of the divine mystery. Cp. p. 51.
82 Prayer
himself. Yet it is for ever incapal:!le of reaching him, so long
as it is not ready to le~ve itself behind and to be immersed
and losfln the abyss of God himself. Then only it under-
s.tahds that silence is the highest and truest praise: Silentiumtibi
laus.10 The soul itself is then simply silence, a silence to which
it has been brought by recollecting itself deep within arid by
stilling its inner activity; but· now a silence which the Spirit
makes tQ resound with the .eternal Word, a silence that is all
is
expectation, gazing at the One who there, pure waiting, an
awakening ...
* *
* of his own psyche for the moving of the Spirit. Thus he has
•This way naturally has its dangers; every spiritual path
that is truly effective is .attended by risks. No one should
enter on the path of yoga-at least, apart from the preliminary
steps-without the help of a sure guide; Such a guide is called
in India a guru-that is; one who has personally travelled by
this path and has at least glimpsed the goal to be reached,
someone who is also humanly and spiritually prudent, capable
of. leading others ·without ·imposing his own ideas on them.
"The guru is certainly not any kind of teacher; not a professor,
nor a preacher, nor an ordinary spiritual guide or director of
souls, one who has learnt from books or perhaps from someone
else. that which he in tum passes on to others. The guru is one
who in the first place ·has himself. attained to the Real, and
who knows by .personal experience the path that leads ihere;
one who. is capable of giving the disciple the essential
introduction to this path and causing the immediate and
10. "Praise for you is silence", based on the Hebrew textof Ps. 65:1 (cp. 62:1).
Silence and Yoga 83
ineffable experience,. which he hi~self has, to spring up directly
from and ih the disciple's heart..c_the lucid and transparent
awareness that he is." 11 The guru, however, never does more
than initiate; his only function is to make the soul receptive to
the Spirit. Once the Spirit has been inwardly recognized, the
guru disappears; or rather, he has never been anything but
the "visible manifestation of the Spirit" (cp. 1 Cor. 12:7), whose·
, purpose is to prepare the ·way for .the immediate meeting
with the Spirit. He has taught the basic techniques of
recollection, he has been careful to see that the disciple is not
confused by those "spirits" which stir restlessly in his heart,
and that he should not mistake wh~t may be only a. discharge
led him as .far as the "Interior C~tle" and has even brought
him within its outer walls. Now, like John the Baptist, when
once the meeting of the Bridegroom and the Bride has taken
. . ' 1' .
place (John 3:29ft), he steps aside-or better, withdraws into
his own mysterY,, ·
There is in fact no lack of guide~ for the roads leading to the
Castle; and even for its ante-chambers; for the outer courts of
thv temple of the soul. But' once you have entered, the only
. Guide is the Spirit. .Those who are already within may invite
you to enter-echoing the c;ul of the Spirit: ''The Spirit and
the.Bride say, Come!" (Rev. 22:17); but the last stage of the
pilgrimage and the discovery of the door to the innermost
shrine has to be achieved by each one alone. In fact, the doors
will open from within of themselves, one after another once.
11. Cp. Gniiniinanda,ch. 2.(Guruand Disciple, 28ff). See also the selection
of texts from the Upanishads about the guru in the same chapter.
84 . Prayer
faith and love are suffidently strong, just as John of the Cross
very truly expressed it (Dark.Night, 3, 4):
Upon that lucky night
. in secrecy, inscrutable to sight,
i went without discerning
and with no other light
except for that which in my heart was burning.
It lit and led me through
more certain than the light of noonday clear
to where One waited near
whose presence well I knew,
. there where no other presence might appear;
In the end there is only .one way and only one means: faith-
faith united. with hope and love. Faith takes seriously the
promises of God and the almost unbelievable revelation that
we have been raised by grace to the status and dignity of being
children of God-indeed, that it was for this that each one of
us was created. Hope, its companion, looks for nothing from
any human agency, but relies entirely on the One who alone
has called us; and precisely by its human powerlessness, draws
out the almighty power of God As for love, it cannot endure
that those who love each other should remain in separation;
rather, it impels them with all ·its forceful impetus to realize
the full truth of their mysterious ·unity, which is that of the
Father and the Son. in the mystery of the Spirit.
.
CHAPTERS
THE WORD OF GOD
ANcm."ITmonastic tradition laid .great stress on what it r.alled
1
lectio.divina,devout or spiritual reading, that is, reading done :
in the presence of God and in a contemplative spirit. In this
kind of contemplative reading, as was said by the old ~asters,
three persons are engaged: the one who is reading, the one
·'. whose words are read, and the Holy. Spirit, who is the bond
between them and the very environment in which they meet.,
This traditional kind of devout reading. which goes far beyond
· · the , . »'Xlernunderstanding of ..spiritual reading", took the place
in the life of the monks of those days which is now occupied .
by ..meditation" in more recent .spirituality. It is indeed
necessary for us to assimilate the Word of God by means of
the intellect-that Word which comes to us through Revelation
or is mediated to ·us through ,thevisible world or the teaching
.of sages, or that which is beard in the silence .of our heart.
Only so will we able to integrate that'Word into our lives. and
so to place our whole being :at lhe cljsposalof the SpiriL The
essential purpose of lectio divinais to feed the ·mind "in spirit
and in truth". Long periods were set apart for it every day in
the monasteries and .in the hermit's cells. To understand its
importance,• we need only refer to the Rule of· St Benedict,
 86 Prayer'
which was not at all written for the sake of intellectuals, but
even so appointed long hours to be spent reading the holy
Scriptures, the works of the Church Fathers and monastic
authors. It was by devoting themselves to such devout reading
and to the singing of the liturgy that the monks fed their souls
with holy thoughts and devout ~irations. Then in times of
silence they spontaneously poured out their hearts in prayer
and adoration. The most favoured moments for this more inward
prayer -were usually those which followed the celebration of
the Divine Office. 1
* * * of those who read or hear them. This is all the more true in
Such devout reading is not, properly speaking, the same as
study, though it ought to be done with the same serious attention
as is normally applied to study. But it does not aim, at least not
directly, at acquiring new knowledge. No spiritual person indeed
seeks knowledge merely to add to his store of informatiop or
to develop his mind for his own satisfaction. As the old sayipg
puts it, there is no knowledge whi~h should not pass into love.
There is no knowledge which should not go beyond the merely
rational level and reach the very source of the intellect, namely
the "heart" (as it was understood by Pascal, and even more in
, India)-that centre of our being which is the place of meeting
with God. In devout reading we should seek above all to be
tuned in to the Spirit, so as to be enlightened and inspired by
him.
1. The Divine Office consists of the prayers (Psalms, Scripture readings,
hymns) which clerics have to recite, either in common or privately, at
,specifiedhours in the day.
The Word of God 87
· We are taught by Revelation that the Scriptures have been
directly inspired by God: The writings of the saints naturally
cannot claim the same degree of inspiration, but they normally
issue from their personal experience of the love of God. and
from a profound sense.of his Presence; and.their purpose is to
transmit to us that same experience by means of their words.
Words are always signs, even from a purely psychological
point of view. Beyond their immediate meaning they carry
with them that whole halo of experience which accompanied
them in the minds of those who thought or uttered them. It is
that halo which they aim similarly to reproduce in the' minds
cases where the words refer to the kind of spiritual experience
which is beyond the reach of all precise thought-
whence words recoil, together with the mind,
unable to reach it... (Taittiriya Up., 2.4)
It is that experience of God in the hearts of sages and saints,
lying behind the words which th~y speak to us, which we seek
to make our own. Words which signify the things of God
certainly have to be understood first of all in their most precise
.meaning at the rational level, but their ultimate object must be
to awaken our whole being and make it "vibrate" for God. So
long as they have not caused this awakening at the heart level,
they have not yet rightly fulfilled their function of being signs,
"transmitters". When we hear or re~d the Scriptures, or indeed
any spiritual text, what essentially counts is not the verbal
symbols of which the message consists, or even the thoughts
which they transmit; it is the wealth of inner experience from
Which the words and thoughts have sprung, and which they are
intended to reproduce in us. They are only signs, and as such

88 Prayer
they point beyond· themselves. Their work is only truly
accomplishedwhen they have, as it were, disappearedin that.
which they signify.
When a true message is transmittedfrom the master to the
di~ciple, the words which are used, or rather their content,
passes directly from the heart and the .experienceof the one
who speaksinto the,heart and experienceof the one who hears.
At the same time,.beyond and within what is uttered by the
lips and heard,by the ears, it seems that. something passes
directlyfrom the centre of one being to the centre of the other;
or rather, we might say, that somethinghappensin that unique .
centre in whichall meet and share.We shouldnot be swpris¢
at this; for God himself is the innermostcentre of all spiritual ·
beings, and the Spirit is a truer and more effective "means of
communication"than any such means in the natural world. In
the_last resort it is that which gives to the.Gospel narratives
their quite special flavour. Irideedwe may ask ourselves how
much greater would be the power and effectivenessof the
Gospelmessage,if the preachingby which it is presentedwas
always derived from that centreof the heart from which it
came to light in Jesus, and at which its first hearers received
iti . .
In the same way, in the course or devoutreading, the Spirit
establishesa contact between the heart of the reader and the
heart of the author. The Spirit transcendstime and space and
every physicalcircumstance;and one who is born of the Spirit
· shares his mystery (John 3:8). When any9ne is whollyin tune
with the·Spirit,then in truth his spiritualreading~andlikewise
. his thoughts andmeditations-become pray~r.
* *
The Wqrd of God . 89
, There is also a place in the spiritual life of:a Christian for i
I
the same kind of contemplativereading to be undertakenas a
corporate activity. As we have often been reminded in these·
pages, particularcallingsmust al~ays be respected,and iri the
first place, the call to solitude,providedit is genuineand does .
not conceal a desire to escape from or reject human.society. ·
However, it is obviousthat human life is normally lived in a
world of communionand exchange.It is thereforenatural that
at least occasionally, the faithfui should meet to read and
n:ieditatetogetherupon the Scripturesor other texts which can 1
help to a better understandingof God's mystery.
When we speak of "corporatereading",we arenot thinking
of the boring practice according to which-the leader of the
group takes a book, reads it.aloud·and then commentson it
while the rest of the group remain completelypassive. In an;
case, the younger generation which so rightly insists on
"participation"will no long~rput up with it. Corporatereading
shouldbe somethingin which all take an active part, an ai;;tof
real koinonia, in which everyone shares with .each other in
love and_humility, all togetherattunedto the Spiritand awaiting
his inspiration. . · .
For such corporatereading the first choice is naturally the
Bible, the ever-livingWord of God; but any spiritualbook of
proved value can supplythe text. For those whom Providence
- has put in touch with the spiritualtreasures of other religious
traditions, it is worth mentioning that such texts, whether
Scripturalor not, will only yield up their secrets and be frilly
understoodthroughthis kind of contemplative.reading,first in
private, and then as far as possiblein partnershipwith othe~sl-
2. CompareHindu-ChristianMeetingPojnt, chapters3 and 5.
 90 Prayer
One method of corporate reading which ha_s,proved very
fruitful is the following. To begin with, someone reads the
text, if possible using two different translations in cases where
the original is riot understood. Then the leader of the ·group
offers a brief introduction to the passage, after which all keep
silence. This time of silence should last at least five or ten
minutes; each one employs the time to empty his mind of all
irrelevant or egocentric thoughts and desires, and to make
11
himself completely open to the Spirit. After this it is time for·
i "sharing", when all can ask questions, each is listening for the
II , Spirit to speak through the others and each can also simply
',1
and frankly express his r~ctions to the text that is being studied.
Only practice can prove the effectiveness of this method as a
means of entering ,into the true and existential meaning of a
text, of feeding the spirit. in depth, and of strengtheping the
experience of fraterqal communion-always provided that none
of those present retires into selfish isolation or, worse,, yields
to the temptation to show off his own learning and sets
himse,If up as an instructor of the others.
' .
* '* * of contemplative ptjtyer; otherwise ,it is hard to see how it will
Christians do not come together only for meditation in
common on the Word of,God: much more often they meetto
hear that Word publicly proclaimed during divine worship in
church. , : . Traditional liJUrgical prayer was derived directly from the
There is no question· that common prayer and worship is a
fundamental Christian duty, and that the times de.voted to it
are among the highest moments in life. Of course, aH Christian
prayer is ''common prayer", even when it is offered in the
solitude ofa monastic cell or in the privacy of the home (Matt.
The Word of God 91
\', . ' .. '
6:6), for we can only pray in communion with Jesus Christ,
and so with all our fellow ·Christians. In what appears_to be
solitary prayer the whole Church is present, indeed, the whole
f~ily of mankind. We cannot beChristian without being with
Jesus, the "man~for-others", the "man-with-others". But when
the faithful m~e their pray.er together, there is an added truth
and depth in th6ir fellowship, both churchly and human. This
is what Jesus ,neant, when he promised his apostles that he
would always be present "where two or three are gathered in
.,,_my name" (Matt. 18:20). Liturgical prayer is unquestionably·
the most meaningful sign of this "communion of saints". But
when in addition'it is offered, in a spirit which matches the
' prayer, it is a particularly effective means of introducing the
. soul to the mystery within. .
The contemporary. renewal of the Church has given special
importance to liturgical worship. All kinds of experiments are
' being made in different places, new texts are published, and
new forms are tried out. fa this crucial time when the new
•,directions are beginning to take shape, it is very necessary for
,the liturgical movement to be supported by·a deep experience
: escape the dangers, which lie in wait for it on every side.
: ;lpdeed current liturgical experiments often show only too
,few signs of beingiprayer that is genuinely "in spirit and in
ttuth".
,I,
I .
:prayer and con~mplation of the medieval mo~. Admittedly
·,wemay ~gret itsstress on certain themes which are no longer
., hionable-for' instance~ man's weakness and sin; its outlook
.
,. so was toQ,pften restricted to "Christendom", and its forms
'ailedto express the fullness of human, or even of Christian,
92 Prayer :,
community-this is true at least of the develd})mentof liturgy.
in re.centcenturies. It is therefore only to be expected that the
new liturgical forms and prayers should give a place to the . '
values which aremore important to present-day people, such
as the dignity of the human person, the goodness of creation,
Christian concernfor the world and for social justice. Yet all
this has·first to be iritegrated into our interior ~r,er, so that
its liturgical expression may not simply be the repetition of
popular slogans, but the vehicle of .trueprayet, which springs
freshly from the contemplation of those same values within
the mystery of God himself. The more spontaneous liturgical
prayer becomes, the ·more it needs to be rooted. in a deep
experience. Now that formulas ·and structures are being
increasingly challenged, the Christiarawill only find a firm
foothold and a sense of his true identity in the fundamental
experience of God's presence within him and all arorind him,
within everything and also beyon~ everything.
A renewed liturgy ought above all to expressthis experience.
Spontaneity will only escapeshallowness and verbosity, if it is
the ex~on of a truly contemplative spirit New fonns of
prayer should stress the inner mystery andthe wonder of the
Presence (of which there was so little in the older fonns), and
should help Christiansto acquire a taste,and desire for it, so
that in their prayers they may ask for an interior knowledge of
these realities ~ for an inner awakening, rather than for
deliverance from those vaguely ~efined dangers to body and
soul which weresocommon in the old forms.Meditativechants
which enable the worshipper to sa-,our the mystery should be
drawn not only from biblical sowces. but al$Ofrom texts in
other traditions,in which the sense of this Presenceis expressed
in te~ such as may arouse a like hunger in the hearers.
The Word of God 93
Periods of silence-which at last have been recognized as
deserving a place in common worship-should be still further
extended, above all in contemplativegroups and communities
which are specially open to the call of sil~nce. When people
go on their way after such \\'.Orship,they should have a sense
of being deeply recollected within themselves. Oniy then will
the liturgy have recovered its full meaning in Christian life,
and the opposition which used to be alleged between rilugll
worship mid truly contemplative prayer will no longer· be
possible.
Liturgical prayer has a place in the Jife of the Church, and
thereforein the life of.every Christian,whose importancecannot
bequestioned.However, each individualhas his own particular
spiritual needs and his own call from God. Every Christian no
doubt has a duty to take part in the common worship of the
Church, and above all in the celebrationof the Eucharist,which
is its heart Even so, it is for each one to decide before God
and accordingto his conscience-bearing in mind the minimum
requirements of the Church-what part of His time of prayer
should be given to hearing the Word of God and worshipping
in company with others, and what part should be given to
silent prayer in the privacy of his own room-always provided
that his withdrawal from the outward fellowship is not a sign
of coldness or indifference towards his fellow Christians.
There are certain Religious Orders in the Church whose life
is devoted to the offering of praise to God in liturgicalworship,
for instance, the Canons Regular3or the Benedictines.Others,
3. Canons:bodies of ecclesiastics (founded in the Middle Ages), who are
speciallyresponsible for the celebration ofthe Liturgy,either in cathedrals
(secular Canons) or in monasteries (regular Canons).

94 Prayer
like the Carmelites, at least according to the original intention
of the Order, are consecrated to the prayer of silence, The
Church is iike a great tree, whose branches shelter bird~ of
every kind, and whose fruit provides food according to each
one's need. The mystery of God is infinite, and so also is the
mystery of the Church which is the fullness of Christ (Eph.
1:22-23). The Church, as the vanguard of the coming Kingdom,
manifests its mystery in many forms, which vary according to
time and place and the nature of different individuals. Some
kinds of prayer, especially corporate liturgical prayer, whness
powerfully to the fact'that human life i$ one of communion,
communion with God and with our brothers and. sisters in
God. On the other hand, there is the prayer of the hermit, alone
in the desert, witnessing to the absoluteness and the essential
solitude of God. Such prayer cannot possibly be expressed by
any sign,.any word, any thought; and yet, no less than corporate
prayer, it has an essential place in the Church, and is made in
the name of all Christians, indeed, of all humanity, the one
family of God.
,,
I
CHAPTER 9
THE PRAYER OF THE NAME
There certainly is no set method or technique, still le~s any
short cut, whereby we can be brought into the inner sanctuary,
to the summit of that."Horeb" which irresistibly draws anyone
who has heard the Spirit's call (cp. 1 K;ings 19:8). However,
. in addition to what has been suggested above, there is one
/ practice whose effectiveness has been recognized for centuries
in .the spiritual traditions alike of· India and of Eastern
Christianity.
In India this called namajapa,1 the prayer of the Name. It
consists of the continual repetition of the name of the Lord in
one or other of its traditional forms; either the name by itself,
for example, "Rama" or "Harl" or "Krishna"; or else an
invocation which contains the name, for example, "Om namah
Shivaya", "Glory to Shiva". Some people decide that they will
recite a given number of mantras,2 and keep count of them on
niima: name and japa: prayer (the verbal root jap means · "to murmur'').
mantra: a formula of prayer or invocation. The.verses of the Vedas are
called mantras. The sense of "mantra" as a magieal forinula or incantation
is secondary. However, the ritual use of a mantra, especially of Vedic
man~ras, as ~ey belong to the universal order, does au~omatieally, ac-
cording to Hindus, produce in it the results in view of which they are
recited.
 96 Prayer

a kind of rosarycontainingone hundredand eightbeads.Others ThePrayer of the Name 97

prefer to set apart a fixed time every day when they will repeat
expressing a deeply personal·experienceof the love of God
the mantra without stopping.Yet others, especiallythose who
and the realizationthat in forgivingus he reveals most fully
have practisednii.majapaover a long period, do not care either
his love and almightypower.4 In the last analysis,to pray for
to keep count or to limit the ti.me;they simply go about with
forgiveness unites us with the deepest level of the divine
the sacred name continually on their lips and in their heart,
mystery.
and sometimes continue to whisper it even during a
Hindu prayer is different. Sometim~s.no doubt, the Hindu
conversation, interrupting·it only when obliged to give an
also prays for forgiveness and for divine help: "pahi mam,
answer. As far as possible, the Name is given..by a guru.
· rakshamam, tva.meva sharanam,""Have mercy,save me, you
Sometimes there is one particular name to which the guru
I alone are my refuge."But most frequentlyhe is contentsimply
·1
initiates any worthy disciple who applies to him-as in the
to praise and adore: "Om namah Shiviiya" (Glory to Shiva),
I
I well known case of Swami Ramdas. Sometimes the guru
"Om nam(lhNariiyanaya"(Glory to ~e "Son of Man"). Here
himself chooses .a particular mantra for the disciple, in
too it wouldbe improperto find in this almost exclusivestress
accordance,at leasl theoretically,with the aptitude and needs
on adoration the attitude of a proud Pharisee.who feels no .
of the one whom he is initiating into the prayer.
need to beg for divineforgiveness. At least in those who are .
Among Christians the nearest equivalent of the Hindu
truly spiritual, it is rather the sign of total self-forgetfulness
nii.majapais what is called in the Oriental Christian tradition
and of lack of concern for all that affects them personally-in
"the Jesus Prayer". Here too the practice is either a simple
Christianterms, the completetrust of a child who knows that
repetition of the name of Jesus, or else the use of a longer
his fatheris caring for his needs and whoseonly personalwish
invocationcontainingthe sacredName. In these day:sthe most
is to continuegazingat him. Indeed,onceGod has beenknown·
widely used invocation.is: "Lord Jesus, Son of the living God,
in truth, how could anyone in.the Presenceof Most High give
have mercy on me, a sinner.''3 . ··
any thought to himself or his own affairs?
In this Christian prayer of the Name we are immediately
The Christianprayer of the Name comesfrom a very ancient
struck by the stress on our sinful condition and our need for
tradition.Its origin can be traced back to the Egyptianmonks;
forgiveness. This constant prayer for forgiveness, which is
St John Climacus also speaks of it in his Ladder of
equallycharacteristicof the whole liturgy of the Church, does
Perfection.5 Later on, the monks of Mount Athos practised it
not howeverin any way indicatea morbid concernwith one's
spiritual state,:as is sometimesheld. Rather is it one way of
4. Expressed most beautifully in the Roman collect for·the tenth Sunday ~r
Pentecost (old missal); cp. Book of Common Prayer, the eleventh Sun-
3. The best introduction to this form of prayer is The Way of a Pilgrim day after Trinity: "O God, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly
(translated from the Russian by R.M. French). See also note 7 below. in showing mercy and pity." ;, · ·
5. "Let the remembrance of Jesus.be present in every. breath you draw, and
11 you will discover the value of the solitary life.' 1
'
I ,
I I

98 Prayer
diligently. It was the soul of the Hesychast movement; 6 among
its best known champions we need only mention Simeon the
New Theologian and Gregory Palamas. In recent centuries its
influence has spread very widely among Orthodox Christia~s,
especially in Russia. 7 ·
The form of the prayer has varied widely at different periods,
although in our day the invocation most commonly takes the
form quoted above. But id what ever form it appears, it is
I undoubtedly the finest fruit of the ancient practice of brief
'I
ejaculatory prayer which was strongly advocated by the Desert
I Fathers. Some of them spent their time crying out to God the
Miserere("Have mercy·on me, 0 Lord!" Ps. 51:1). Others had
a special devotion to the first verse of Psalm 70; which later
· took its place at the opening of.the Divine Office: "];le pleased,
0 God, to deliver me; make hast~,.O Lord to help me!" In the
case of others the constant prayer was the 'Trisagionin either
of its forms: the "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!" of Isaiah's
vision (6:3), or the "Holy is God! Holy and Almighty! Holy
and Immortal!" of the Oriental liturgies. All these prayers have
'this in common~ach is a very brief act of prayer or praise
to God, continually repeated and always the same, aimed at
fixing the mind on the Lord, and making an. uninterrupted
offering of love and adoration. / without stopping. This does not mean that one should be
* reflecting or meditating on the meBI,!jngof the Name. The
* *
There are differen. stages in the practice of the prayer of the
Name. Those which are usually noted, at least in Russia and
6. On Hesychasin,see Chapter 5, note 9.
7. See Writingsfrom ihe Philocaliaon the Prayer of theHeart, translatedby
Kadloubovskyand Pahner, Faber 1951; The Art of Prayer: an Orthodox
Anthology, compiled by Igumen Chariton, Faber, 1966.
The Prayer of the Name 99 'I
the Eastern Mediterranean, are linked with the "place" at which
the prayer is uttered: namely by the lips, in the mincl, or finally,
·in the heart. No one of these places, of. course, excludes the
others; however the "place" at which anyone normally utters
the prayer can· be taken a sure sign of the ·depth at which he .
is aware of the divine Presence.
In the first stage, the beginner will set the·divine Name on
his lips and his tongue, somewhat as the Lord's Body is received
in Holy Communion. He will repeat the Name aloud, or will
at least·murmur it audibly, without flagging. At this point the
mind may be completely distracted and have wandered off on
its own .. The heart also may be filled with desires which are
quite inconsistent with the prayer uttered by the lips. But this
does not matter so greatly. The repetition of the holy Name
will of itself bear fruit when the time comes. For the moment
the essential thing is to be pronouncing the Name with respect
a
and real longing for the grace of God.
In the next stage the lips remain closed. It is in the mind, or
"in the head", as it were, that the prayer is made; there is a
barely perceptible movement of the vocal chords and other
muscles associated with speech, a whisper of the imagination
that can just be discerned within. The prayer has now become
the mind's unbroken attention to tlte Name which it repeats
movements of the mind should be increasingly stilled in the
same way as· those of the. throat-muscles; becoming like the
gentle undulations on the surface of a quiet pool when caressed
by a geritle breeze. The mind is concentrated, but without
becoming taut, stilled, but without strain. As a help, especially
at the beginning, the novice (in the Indian context) is encouraged
 100 Prayer
to fix his imagination on the letters of the mantra, or else on
same symbolic· form, or even on a single point
The highest stage is reached when the prayer, or rather the
Name, is set in the heart There is now no longer ·any movement
of the lips or of the vocal chords, or even in _the end, any
moveinent of thought. The prayer is now firmly fixed at the
very centre of our being~ and from there its light and glory
radiate everywhere. This is truly· tlle "experience of the Holy
Spirit" of which the Russian saints,.often spoke. This'glory, the
I. very light of the Transfiguration, is sometimes manifested even
in the physical body, as in the famous vision of St Seraphim
I of Sarov.
The Name has now come to its true place; the sign has
returned to the Reality from which it proceeded.Now not only
has the mind come to perfect peace and recovered jts true
silence, but even the desires of the heart have.,beenlfclllsformed.
In being fulfilled they have been brought to unity. In no part
of the soul is there now any other desire except for the Lord
himself, the desire to contemplate his glory and share his joy.
As an aid to placing the 'Name· in the heart, the saints who
have practised this prayer recommend that it be uttered
(inaudibly, of course) in time with the process of breathing or
the beating of the heart. In this way the whole being is taken
up and borne along in this prayer-soul and body, mind and
senses, and indeed, by means of the body, the entire universe,
with which each of us in. his body is physically one.
Only by using picture Janguage can one attempt to convey
something of the depth and power of this prayer., Abstract
concepts give little help in explaining it The essential point on
which it is all based is clearly that we cannot be content wjth
living at the surface of our being, simply at the level of sense
The Prayer of the Name 101 ·
and mind, still less with praying at that superficial level in the
hope of finding God there. The only possible place where we
can truly encounter God is at the very centre of our being, the
source from which we have come, the point at which we
proceed from God in the eternal birth of the divine Word. This
is physically symbolized by the heart, the centre· of the body
and the organ from which the blood is pumped out to give life
to the whole body. Even when we direct our attention to the
physical heart, -it amounts symbolically to directing all our
activities towards· the centre of our being. this centre is a
point which is quite impossible to localize or to picture in any
way. But it is the very place at which th~ spirit issues, so to
s~, 'from the hands of God and awakes to itself, to God and
to the world.
India also, ever since the first beginnings of thought on
spiritual matters, has given much attention to the mystery of
the heart, the "cave" within, the guha as it is called in the
Upanishads.8 This gµha is essentially a hidden, secret place,
8. Cp. Chapter 7, note 2.
The hard-to-perceive and wrapped in mystery,
Set in the cave and hidden in the depth, primordial ...
smaller than the ~mall, greater than the great,
hidden in the heart of the creature; here,
is the self... .
the inner Self of all things, the One Controller ...
(Katha-Up., 2.12,20; 5.12)
The Purusha is all that-
work, ascetic fervour, brahman, immortality;
he who knows That, hidden in the secret cave,
has cut the knot of ignorance... .
Vast, heavenly, of unthinkable form,
and more minute than the minute, It shines forth,
It is further than the far, yet here quite close,
set in the secret place (of the heart) ... (Mundaka Up., 2.UO; 3.1.7)

102 Prayer
beyond the reach of sense or thought. It is the "abode of
Brahma.n",9 the very place of the atman,our deepest and truest
. self. From it comes the primordial impulse which is the source
of everything, both in the macrocosm ·of the universe and in
the microcosm of the human person. In it is the Life, from
which have come all the particular manifestations of life in
mankind and in the universe. In it is the Fire, the Agni which
is contemplated in the Vedas, whose warmth is everywhere
spread abroad and kindles everything. In it shines the essential
Light, whose. brightness illuminates all that is seen. 10
Indian tradition gives even more precise information about
the "places" where mantras can or should be recited. There is
the whole Tantric theory about the chakra,or nervous centres, ·
of which we have already spoken, and through which shakti,
or cosmic power, is supposed to rise up and so take possession
in tum of the different physical and psychical zones. The heart-
chakra is the fourth, following those connected with the lower
organs. The sixth chakra, ~n which people are most often
advised to concentrate during meditation or the recitation of
mantras, is situated between the eyes,. at the ro.ot of the nose.·
There too is located the "third eye" of Shiva, his spiritual eye
which loqks within and sees everything with perfect truth in
the light which alone. shines inwardly-the light of the guha
which we have just mentioned. There is also a final chakra, in
one sense the seventh, although it cannot rightly be counted
along with the others, just like the gift of wisdom in relation
9. Brahman: the Absolute, the Supreme Being.
10. Neither sun nor moon nor stars shines there,
neither lightning nor fire finds there a place.
With the radiance of that Light alone all tirings shine.
That radiance illuminates all this world. (Mundaka Up., 2.2.10)
The Prayer of the Name 103
to the other gifts of the Spirit. It is .the thousand-petalled lotus, .
situated at the very top of the cranium, in exactly the same
place as the fontanelle, the opening through which t~e purusha
•'enters the body and, makes it a person. 11 Accordmg to the
Tantras, it is the place of the ultimate meeting of the Shakti
with Shiva, the place of final unification, or rather, the place
where the original non-duality is recovered. 12 Here we have a
~ymbolism which.is parallel to that of the guha, but which lays
greater emphasis on the progressive character of the work of
grace and on the initial. distance between the Lover and the
Beloved-imagery which is as common in the Indian tradition
as it is in that of the Bible and Christian literature. Only the
guru's teaching and one's own practical experience can m~e
clear the wealth of spiritual truth that is hidden behind all this
imagery. However, it was fitting at least to have mentioned it
here.
* * *
The fruits of the prayer of the Name, even tnough mutually
related differ according to the stages of this prayer and the
"place~" at which it is made. But at every stage their value is
immense. From the very start this prayer powerfµlly assists the
' beginner to overcome his instability an~ to fix his wandering
attention. Later on, at least when practised faithfully and
11. See Aitareya Up., 3.12.
12. Compare this Tamil verse:
In the temple courts of Chidambaram
Shiva dances with joy for his Beloved,
who gazes at him;
but at the hill of Arunachala
he stands motionless, firmly set in the Self,
while his Beloved is lost in the Self.
 104 Prayer
perseveringly, it leads those who continue to go forward as far
as the prayer of pure contemplation. · . -
When practised with faith and sincerity, the repetition of
God's name is a wonderful help in concentrating the attention
and deepening the. mind. Our mirids are flighty and inconstant;
they are continually drawn. in a thousand different directions,
wherever they are summoned ~y our outward senses or by the
imagination, which is more treacherous still. No one can lead
a contemplative life without first making serious efforts to
master this weakness and tendency to distraction; this js the
~tn of all ascetic practice. One way of carrying on this struggle
1sto set thoughts against thoughts, ''spiritual" images against
"worldly" images--:-as was discussed above in connection with
meditation. But when we do that, we inevitably remain at the
~evel of mind, we restrict ourselves to a field where our enemy
ts stronger than we are, where it is only too easy for him to
turn back against his opponent the arrows that were intended
for himself. We run the risk of marking time indefinitely, and
of never managing to free ourselves for the "take off'.
The prayer of 'the Name in fact provides the mind with just
that minimµmof activity which it must have in orde,r to escape
the_danger of a violent reaction; it keeps it sufficiently occupied
at its own level, so. that it may not seek distraction in other
directions; at the same time it does not keep it so busy-as
happens in meditation-that the "inward quest" is hindered.
By continually repeating the Name, the mind accustoms itself
to being fixed in a single direction. Distractions automatically
bec~me f~wer, and soon they disappear almost completely.
Vanous images may make their way across the mental
firmament. But they will be like those light cl~uds which cross
the sky almost unnoticed by one who is watching the sun-
1'he Prayer of the Name
insubstantial dreams which make no impression on the
underlying awareness.
.·Once the mind is thus stilled and stabilized, then 9f itself
~d without any·sp~ial effort it is bound to move towards its
<>W~ centr~. The wording of the mantra will probably convey
to the mind less and less of its literal meaning. This does not
matter in the least: Leaving pehind the verbal sense, the spirit
is in process of learning the deep an~ essential meaning of the
mantra; it is moving on from the always limited aspect of the
divine mystery which any particular name of God {even the
.word "God" itself) seeks to express, and is finding the infinite
, reality of the mystery itself, beyond all forms and names. In
/the end the mind is brought by the Spirit of God into a kind
of waking sleep, 'witliin which all memory and all particular
thoughts disappear. Then at last prayer is made in spirit and
. truth-the prayer of which the holy monk Antony the Great
used to say: "The only true prayer is the one in which we are
no longer aware that we are praying.1'13
The prayer of the Name is therefore undoubtedly one of the
best ways in which we may be helped to start praying and to
spend fruitfully the hours devoted to mental prayer. Above all
·· it is the surest means of keeping oneself constantly. in the
pr~sence\of God, and so of pi;~ying without ceasing. It is indeed
a simple matter to pray uninterruptedly in this fashion. It should
13. Compare these aphorisms of Evagrius of Pont11S:
"It is not because thou hast reached indifference that thou shalt pray
in truth, for one can remain among thoughts, however simple, yet be busy
with them, and hence be far from God." (55) ·
"Do ilot picture God within thee. in thy prayer, nor let thy intellect be
impressed with any forin; but formless go to him who has no form." (66)
"When thou shalt have passed ~ thy prayer beyond all bliss, in truth
shalt thou have foun4 prayer." (153)

106 Prayer
• else. It is somewhat like the rocky bed of a river, over which
become as it were second nature to keep such a prayer always
on our lips, in our mind and in out heart, at least when we are
engaged on work which does not call for concentrated attention
on our part. There are many times in the day when it is quite
immaterial whether we are thinking about one thing or another;
times when we are walking or travelling, times before we fall
asleep or after we wake up, when we are· taking a bath, or
during manual occupations like sewing, cooking or gardening,
etc. We could yery easily turn into conscious prayer all those
times in our life when our minds have nothing special to attend
to. This would also protect us. from those distracting thoughts
which are constantly waiting to sneak into our minds and get
a foothold there, to our great distress when we try to pray. In
this way we should stifle many useless or dangerous desires as
soon as they appear in the mind. Hardly would they have
made their presence known, when they would be confronted
with· the recollection of the sacred Name, and would
immediately be dashed against the Rock, which is Christ, as St
Benedict explains in his reference to Psalm 137 (Rule, ch. 7).
Of course the constant practice of the prayer of the Name
must never distract our minds from giving due attention to our
various duties and responsibilities. The repetition of God's
name clearly cannot continue at these times-at least, not at
the level of the lips or the mind. But it is precisely here that
prayer at the leveL of the heart reveali., its most "ltlarvellous
secrets. At the level of the heart it can continue indefinitely.
Even when the mi~d is occupied, and even when it is in deep
slumber-"! slept, but my heart was awake ... ", as the Bride
says in the Song of Solomon (5:2). Even when the mind is
paying no. attention, the prayer of the l).eart is capable of
remaining as a kind of substratum or background to everything
.The Prayer of the Name 107
the water ceaselessly flows, while jtself it never. changes. Fer
some people the continuous Jlow of the mantra is so powerful
that they actually "hear" it behind all their mental activities.
* * *
from the point of view of psychology the value and
·effectiveness of me prayer of the Name is unquestionable. But ·
we would fail to appreciate its true worth, if we valued it ·
chiefly for its practical utility. If there was no more to it than
that, it would be difficult to understand the praises accorded to
it by the saints, or even its fruits which have just been described.
The Name is an icon. Icons are signs, and like all signs, share
to some extent in the reality which they signify. Naturally any
icon and any sign may become an idol, if we stop .short at it.
Nevertheless they are a most valuable aid given to us by God
to remedy our weakness and the natural fickleness of our minds.
The Name of God is the greatest of all mental icons. That
is specially true.when the Naine has been directly revealed by
God, as was that of Yahweh in the Old Testament and that of
Jesus in the New. Yet it would be difficult to maintain that
those who honour the one eternal God under other names ~ave
been completely abandoned by their Father in heaven. If that
were so, how c~uld one account for the outstanding spiritual
favours bestowed by God. on Indian sages, for example,
pre.cisely.through th.ejrnllmajapa,the prayer of the Name? The
divine names which have been recognized in Indian tradition
were certainly not mere human inventions. They emerged first
of all in the hearts of sages and seers, springing out of their
personal experience of the Spirit. When they used these names,
108 Prayer The Prayer of the Name 109

they were trying to communicate something of their inner we may say that the power of the Name is truly the energy of
vision. They called God "Shiva", the Benevolent One, "Rama", the Holy Spirit working in us. It i!! only in the Spirit that we
the lovely One, ."Murugan" (Tamil), the Beautiful God. They are able to utter the name of Jesus.
charged these syllables ·with all the spiritual power of their
love and worship. After them others repeated these same names,
each in tum enriching them with his faith and inner experien.ce.
Gurus imparted them to their disciples in the sacrameqt of
initiation, dikshii. Successive generations drew upon their
spiritual potency and in return made them ever more expressive
signs of the divine mystery.
For a believer the uttering of the Name contains the fullness
of the. divine mystery in a concentrated form, somewhat in the
same way that a pearl or a diamond, though they are
insignificant in weight and size, nevertheless are equal in value
to a large amount of gold or other precious material. For one
who ·has inwardly tasted the prayer of the holy Name, the
simple repetition of this Name tells him more about God than
all that the theoJogians struggle to express rationally in their
heavy volumes. Yet what the Name conveys is not presented
in a diluted or derivative form. It quenches our thirst for God
with water from the very fountain-head.
That is the reason why ·the practice of niimajapa is ·so
effective. Of all mantras and prayers, the invocation of God's
holy Name is the highest and most powerful. At the
psychological level it concentrates and deepens the mind. At •
the truly spiritual" level, in virtue of the divine power with
which it is ·filled, it leads the soul to the very centre of itself
and of all things, to the Source, to the Father. 14 Iil biblical terms
Ramana Maharshi: "To disappear in the Source, that is truly (the•aim,
essence of) action and devotion (karma lll!d bhakt1),of union and wis-
14. The Greek Fathers often coote~plated the Father as the Source,' "Source
dom (yoga andjnana)" (Upadesa Saram, ~O).
of the Godhead", "Source of all that is". Compare the saying of 'iri
;

.\
L;r ·'t:rrtr:rtrHftnttb
1
 Om! Abba! 111

which OM finally disappears. The OM, which human lips utter

and human ears can hear, comes from the OM which cannot
be perceived or uttered, and is drawn back to it by a natural
momentum.
All the Vedas announce this Word,
all the austerities proclaim it... .
CHAPTER 10
that Word in short I shall tell you: it is OM!
i I
OM! ABBA! It is the imperishable Brahman;
it is the Beyond, imperishaQle indeed_!...
(Katha Up., 2.15-16)
THEsupreme mantra in Hindu tradition is OM, the pranava. It
is not intended to express any particular name of God; rather The bow is OM, the arrow the self;
i it stands for the ineffable and unsearchable nature of the abyss Brahman the target.
I I
of the divine Being. It has no special meaning like that of the By a mind undistracted i_thas to be pierced,
i.
one becoming "That"! (Mundaka Up., 2.2.4)
names Rama and Shiva which were mentioned above. It does
I
not refer to any event, whether historical or mythical. It is a Fixed in OM, the wise man attains That,
kind of barely articulated exclamation, which is uttered when tranquil, unaging, deathless, supreme! (Prasna Up., 5.7)
I anyone finds himself personally confronted with the infinite OM is the brahman which is uttered;
I ;,
I, mystery of God. "OM" is, so to speak, the simplest sound that ascending by it, one attains to that which is not
can issue from human lips: beginning with "A", the primordial uttered ...
sound in all languages, deepening into "O", and extending into As a spider climbs by his thread to free space,
a nasal resonance, represented by "M". so through the. OM the wise man reaches freedom ...
The most frequently quoted explanation of the pranava is that He crosses over with OM as his raft
it is formed of three elements: A and U, united in the .diphthong to the other shore of the space of the heart,
0, and then M, three letters with a single sound. This in the inner space ...
symbolizes, as they say, all the existing or imaginable triads in into the hall of Brahman. (Maitri Up., 6.22,28)
the universe, for example: past, present and future-and then OM is the primordial word uttered by God in creating. OM
also (according to the Mandukya Upanishad) all that is beyond is Vag, the eternal Word. OM is the beginning of God's self-
the three times, since God fills all things, and y~t is always manifestation. OM is at the origin of the universe. OM is also
I, I
beyond all. It is also sometimes said that OM is not composed at that centre of the soul from which arises the awareness of
I:
of only three parts, but of four, the fourth being the silence in being oneself. All the possible sounds that our lips could utter,
II

i . '' -.-.' '

hrtrrttrOtttrttrt
112 · Prayer
all the words which will ever be derived from them in the
languages of mankind, are already contained in this primordial
OM, the shabda-br,ahman,brahman in form of sound, as it is
also called. From it indeed words receive the power to convey
meaning. OM is the first sound that is heard by anyone, when
God emerges from his eternal silence and begins ·to address
him. OM is also the last sound which anyone is able to utter
when, in response to the call of the Spirit, he allows himself
to be brought into the silence of God. The Bible teaches us
that all things come from God's Word-that Word without
which "was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3).
"He commanded and they (the heavens) were created" (Ps.
148:5). God said: Let there be Light! and there was Light
(Gen. 1:3).
The Rig (veda) is Speech,
the -Sama(veda) is Breath ...
This is a pair,
namely, Speech ahd Breath ...
they become one in OM. (Chandogya Up., 1.1.5,6)
Even Christians also, in the course of discovering the treasu-
res of India's spiritual heritage, have em barked on speculations
about the OM. In the symbol of its three elements merging in
a single sound, some have seen a kind of foreshadowing of the
mystery of the -Trinity. 1 With equal justification we could
1., "The Christian monk is invited by a divine call to concentrate his mind
and heart; .. on the very mystery of God himself, the Holy Trinity. And
even for the sannyiisi who has received 'enlightenment' the ultimate and
indivisible simplicity of the Absolute can be named by a kind of repeti-
tion: sat ~ing), cit (thought), iinanda (Bliss). He knows that the Deity
does not have, but is Existence, Intelligence and Bliss.
Om! Abba! 113
recognize in the OM that Word which eternally proceeds from
the silence of the Father-to use the striking phrase of St
Ignatius of Antioch (Letter to the Magnesians, 8). It is in that
same Word, made human flesh, mind and word in Jesus Christ,
that all our prayer and worship ascends to the Almighty. But
even in a Christian interpretation of OM, it is always in the
first place the symbol of God's ineffability, the very last step
in our ascent towards him that is capable of outward expression.
It is the last support, it is the highest support;
he who knows it attains to brahman. (Katha Up., 2.17)
OM stands for God unmanifested, for that in God which is
utterly beyond manifestation, beyond every sign and everything
that could be expressed, even by the tongues of angels, as we
might say; and yet it is that very .goal towards which our
spirits are irresistibly drawn, when once at the deepest centre
of our being we have sensed its mystery.
When he repeats that sacred formula, Saccidiinanda, the Christian
gives it a new and mysterious meaning, unknown to all other men, because
such knowledge is beyond the reach of any created intelligence and has
only been communicated to him in novissimo tempore (in these last days)
by the Revelation of the Word and the Spirit. Even more fervently and
with greater truth than his fellow. sannyasi, the Ch_ris~anmonk c~n ~tte;.:
SAT, when he contemplates the Father, "the begtnnmgless Begmrung ,
the very source and end of the ".ell:tension"and the "gathering up" oft.he
divine life; CIT, when meditating on the eternal Son, the Logos, the m-
tellectuai.hnage, of one substance with the One who is; ANANDA,when
contempia~g the. Paraclete, who unites the Father and his Word' in the
joy of Absolut.e Love. .
Because AUM is a single sound (OM), composed of three elements
(A,U ,M), it is a fitting expression, as an audible symbol, of the mystery
of the one Essence which is identical in three 'Hypostases'; it resounds
like music at the heart of the silent but creative Deity." ~J.Monchanin,
Ermites du Saccidananda, 176).

114 · Prayer
The mantra OM has come down to us from the earliest
Vedic times. It accompanied-and strictly should always ac-
company-the recitation and chanting of the sacred texts. When
uttered by the presiding priest, it ensured the efficacy of the
sacrifice; it even rectified the mistakes which the other priests
might make in the performance of the ritual or the chanting of
i the mantras. It is still the most cherished mantra among spiritual
I
people in India. In the first place, it is very of~n part of their
niimajapa: "Hari OM", "Om namah Shiviiya". Then, when the
call to a higher life i~ heard in the depth of their heart, they
will abandon all prayers, all rites, all devotional practices, and
sometimes even meditation on the Scriptures; but they will
continue indefinitely repeating the s~cred OM, whether they
are walking or sitting still, contemplating the natural world or
concentrating their minds within, attending to their bodily needs
or answering the greetings of passers-by. And when the time
comes for them to depart from this world, it is still the OM
which is uttered, by their dying_lips before they pass into the'
silence of God's eternal Now.
OM, however, is not a mantra like the.other mantras, which
a devotee may decide to repeat a given number of times,
counting them, for example, on the beads of a rosary-for OM
is unique. Or ·else, if we treat OM as. multiple, it is only so in
the same way that Being itself at the level of m:anifestation is
multiple. With the deepening of our .experience, OM appears
as reflecting the epiphany, manifestation, of being in the world
of becoming, as eci10ing the heart-beats of the universe which
are measured by time. OM is the awakening of the individual
to the mystery ·of h~s own heart, to that mystery which is
hidden in each movement of the natural ·world, revealing at
every minute point of space and .time its di~ine origin and end.
tr
Om! Abba! 115
OM is the word which, being at the very horizon of meaning,
gives its full truth to everything. OM, for anyone who is awake
in God, expresses the fullness of his communion with the
universe, and also the communion of each person with every
other person who thinks, desires and loves. Blending with the
rhythm of the human body and soul, with the beating of the
heart,with breathing and thought, and likewisewith the rhythm
of the cosmos, with the most minute vibrations of atoms as of
living cells, and equally with that of the orbiting stars, OM
calls each being to attain its fullness, and indeed to discover
it in the simplest act and the most fleeting moment. In Christian
terms we could say that OM is the appeal of humanity, and
through humanity of all things, for that final Kingdom which
Jesus proclaimed, the gathering and summing up of all things
in Christ, the supreme Person who transcends space and time,
and in whom the sign is ide~tical with the reality; and then at
last the return in Christ of all things to the Father, the infinite
Abyss from whom all things proceed, the Source and Fulfilment
of Being.
The OM which our rishis heard resounding in their
souls,
when they descended to the very depths of their 'being,
deeper than their thought, deeper than all their desires,
in the ultimate solitude of Being itself;
the OM which is heard in the sound of leaves shaken
by the wind,
the OM which howls in the storm and sighs in the
. gentle breeze,
the OM which roars in the rushing torrent
and is softly murmured by the river on its peaceful
I
L.,.~
way to the sea;.
 Prayer Om!'Abba! 117
116

the OM of the heavenly spheres in their journey
through space, · .
and the OM which throbs at the core of the atom,
the OM which is heard in the song of birds
and in the call of the beasts in the forest;
the· OM of our human laughter, and also of our sobs,
the OM which' vibrates in our thoughts and all oui
desires,
the OM in our words. of war, of love, and even of
'business,
the OM in the passing of time and of history;~
this OM all of a sudden rang out
in a comer of space and at a point of time
in i~ undivided fullness,
when from\iMary's worrib the Son. of Man was bom,
· Jesus the Word, the only Son of God. . on the next'stage of its spiritual ascent.
. ' · (L' autre rive, IV)
However, the use of OM, the pranava, should not be
recommended indiscriminately to all Christians, or indeed to
people of any other tradition. This man~a is ~ rich and too
deep for anyone to ,have the right_to use 1t u~bl ?e has at least
begun to enter into the inner expenence to which 1t c~rresponds.
Otherwise it will remain a meaningless sound, wh1c~ ~~not
profit the one who utters it. But if a ~hri~tian has been m1bated
into the Indian tradition, and above all 1f he has accept~ the
Gospel message in its fullness and has allowed the Spmt to
lead him into' the interior of his own heart, then he h~ as
much right as his Hindu brother to murmur the OM, the ulttma~
symbol of the abysmal depth of_G~ and the ~elf. ~o doubt 1:°
•·times of reflectioµ and med_1tation he will give to this
mantra a fuller meaning, one at least that is enriched by all
that Revelation has: taught .him concerning God;. and yet,.
once he. bas_uttered -the_OM at his heart's centre, it will
· surely be for him, as for his Hindu brother, a mystery of pure
silence.
* *
Of the:tradilipnalChristianmantrasit is perhapsmoredifficult
to decidewhich is the highest, and SQ mostto be recom~umded.
Here,agam·.individual callings have to be respected, and also
the,needsof the soul which consiantly change as it becomes
more,accustomed to the light of God. The 'best mantra will
alwaysbe thatwhich accoros with the soul's spiritualinclination .
at that·moment, or better perhaps, with what a wise guide
discernsas neededby it in order to prepare itself for entering -
. ~Y. however will mainiain that the holy name of Jesus is
thefmost'sacred man~ and so the highest that human lips can
utlOl'il•Itdsprecisely on the basis of that conviction that the
proctic:e of·the·"Jesus Prayer" has developed. And yet, as,we.
kndw/lesus presented himself as the Way which leads fQ the
Fadlet. lftle1wbole purpose of his earthly ministry was to lead
mankind to the Father. For Jesus himself as for all mankind,
thotovertidirig ·and all important goal was the "'return to· the
PatWWo·,',· .
'' '
1
/fYSifitoved me, you would have rejoiced
1
, ,,,,. , I go to the Father; . . ·· -
' ·' tFather is greater than L' (John 14:28)
'moueof Jesus, o( CO.~. reveals the Father:Jo,ut
;thatis, "Yahweh saves~'.
·c
The name of JOHUI
.
_ · ·jl
118 Prayer
perfectly sums up all that God has revealed to mankind about
himself, most of all, his ..mercy arid truth", his salvation, the
theme foretold by the prophets and proclaimed in the' Gospel.
Yet, as the Spirit ceaselessly and by every means recalls to
those who are inwardly awakened, however worthy of adoration
the mystery of God in his manifestation may be, God in himself
is always beyond, infinitely beyond... The very revelation of
his saving work enables us to glimpse in his Beipg abysses of
love which far exceed even :what is manifested in our salvation.
On two occasions in his letters to the churches, the Apostle
Paul recalls that the Spirit constantly murmurs in the heart of
the Christian the sacred invocation ..Abba! Father!" (Rom. 8:15;
Gal. 4:5). "Abba"-'-that is, "Father" in Jesus' mother tongue-
was without question the ceaseless prayer of Jesus himself.
Otherwise, why should the Spirit of Jesus murmur it in us? We
only need to glance through the Gospels to be convinced that
the remembrance of the Father was constantly in the heart and
mind of Jesus.just as his name was always on his lips; Whether
he was praying alone in the solitude of the night, or was doing
his mighty works in the midst of a crowd, Jesus .was always
calling on the name of God his Father. "Abba" was his last
prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, his last cry on the Cross
(Mark 14:36; Luke 23:46).
All this constitutes an invitation to Christians to make this
invocation, "Abba, Father" the very centre of their life of prayer,
and to make it their inostcherished mantra.keeping it constantly
on their lips, in their minds, and above.all, in their hearts. By
so doing, they will not only follow the example ofJesus in his
life and outward behaviour, but will share in what is deepest
in him and central to his life in relation to the Father and w
all mankind.
' Om! Abba! 119
By' repeating Abba, Father, with him and after him, they
will enter into the deepest mysteries of his "interior life"-
above ·a11~ into the mystery of his experience of b~i~g "one
with 'the· Father" and, at the same time, as his Beloved Son, of
being,eternally "face to face with the Father". Little by little
theirhearts will be transformed into the heart of Jesus. With
Jesus and in Jesus they will offer to the Father the tribute of
tl}ekprayer and adoration. More than any other prayer, Abba,
Father! will enable them to share in the interior life of the
Father and the Son, in their endless mutual. Gaze in the unity
of the Spirit Abba, Father! will be their ceaseless response to
"Thou art my beloved child!" which the Father addresses to
them in the only Son for all eternity. It will equally be their
truest response to the call w~.ich springs up in their own hearts,
made by God and/or God, which can never know peace until
,ney have finally passed into the glory ,~fGod. It will also be
their response to the appeal which. reaches them ·from the
whole creation, coming to them through every being, through
everyevent in history, and through every meeting with their
followmen-because in and through everything it is always
Ood,the almighty Father, who comes to them and seeks their
love.
Abba, Father! is the sacred word which opens the gates of
eternity, the door of the innermost· sanctuary, the secret cave
of the heart, and leads the child of God as far as the ultimate
mystery of God; hidden in the depths of his own self~that
110erciwhich was hidden from all human generations, until at
lllll the Son of God himself came to our earth and was
manifested as the Son of Man.
* * *
 120

· We mightweUsayth~tQM. in,tro4us:es us.~ the_mystery9f

the'Spirit;
···':,;\
!the F'ei'S911'
.,, ,,,.;·n,"''
in UM
: ,'>:··,,,.
\\!ho
1,i,·'··,,ii'·
neitlier
iS' utllired iiorbbgoiien,
t1~•v•~ ,.,,i· r~. ,·,,.,
"i''l_"l':. '· . . "!
yet the •Orie~ho 'iiloriete:veal~tbe 'mystery, of theSon, the ,
Only~begcitten' :the 'Wbflr"bfGod' and'the'Oii~ Who ilitirrii~
the.'sinduruj'bf
id'. 'the'h® Pthe'iibba bfdi\iirt~ ~nshi~'. 'Ai}ft{
;.istheh 'tliel~st}articulat~ ,wiht'id'.be Utteredby'. theitre.itiir~fi&'
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