When Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, was a parish priest in Huddersfield, a friend of his, who was involved in Adult Education, told him that a course on Zen Buddhist meditation could have been filled three times over and asked why the church was not running a course on Christian meditation.
Archbishop Stephen later moved to a role at the Cathedral in Peterborough and when he told this story there, the Head of Adult Education asked him to run a course on Christian meditation as part of the Adult Education programme. He did, and the course filled up with a mix of those who were already Christians and those who would describe themselves are ‘searchers’.
This experience confirmed his belief that, with the right kind of introduction, many people are open to the riches of Christian spirituality. What better time than Lent for exploring some of that tradition? Lent is a time for going deeper with God; for going deeper into our faith and the riches of its tradition, particularly in terms of prayer.
This Lent we are essentially going to run a course on Christian meditation through our Lent Course ‘Ways to Pray’. Our five-week course explores some different ways of praying: Being Still with God, Prayer Through the Day, Using the Imagination, Multi-sensory prayer, Using Art and Images. The course gives some ideas on aspects of the Church’s tradition and practice that we could explore this Lent, as part of going deeper into God through prayer. Our Quiet Day, here at St Mary’s, on 4 March will also do more of the same. Here are some others ideas and resources too …
The Desert Fathers and Mothers were hermits, monks and nuns who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. These informal gatherings of hermit monks and nuns became the model for Christian monasticism. Many of the wise words and teachings of these early desert monks and nuns were collected and are still in print as the ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers.’
One such saying has a significant overlap with today’s Gospel reading: ‘Stay in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything.’ The idea being that being in conversation with God through prayer will teach us everything we need to know. For this reason, when he was once interviewed by Radio 4 and was asked which wilderness would he go to for Lent if he could be taken anywhere in world, Archbishop Stephen replied that he would stay in his own living room. The location for our prayer is not the main point (although quiet and privacy can help); instead, the point is the quality and depth of our prayer.
Having said that, the Celtic Church has given us a model for the precise opposite; integrating prayer into our daily lives. Celtic Christians had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, which can blessed if we see God in our tasks and undertake our tasks as an act of worship to God.
This tradition was particularly strong in Gaelic countries and in the late 19th century Alexander Carmichael collected a number of the prayers and poems together in a book called the ‘Carmina Gadelica’ which ‘abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.’ In more recent years, equivalent contemporary prayers have been written covering every aspect of daily life from turning on a computer to attending meetings, driving a car, stopping for a lunchbreak, and so on.
Some of the most visionary and passionate prayer in the history of the Church derived from the renewal of the Carmelite Order undertaken by St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. Through quiet prayer, resting in contemplation of God which involved forgetting all earthly things, these attained occasionally prayers of union in which their whole being was absorbed in God.
They frequently described these experiences in terms of the union of lovers in marriage. St John, in particular, described in great poetry the experience of feeling abandoned by God which he described as the dark night of the soul. Their writings can help us understand those times when we feel God is very distant from us as well as those times when we feel an intimate closeness.
St Ignatius of Loyola devised a series of prayer exercises which many have found particularly helpful in the development of their prayer life. The Examen is a daily process for reflecting on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and discern his direction for us. The Examen begins with prayer for light then continues through thanksgiving, reviewing our feelings and focus before concluding with future appointments and the Lord’s Prayer.
Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises are a compilation of meditations, prayers and contemplative practices developed to help people deepen their relationship with God. These are divided into four weeks; not seven-day weeks but stages on our spiritual journey. Week 1 involves reflection on our lives in light of God’s boundless love for us. Week 2 involves imagining ourselves as Christ’s disciples as we reflect on the Gospel stories. Week 3 is meditation on the Last Supper, Christ’s passion and death, while Week 4 is meditation on the resurrection.
These are just some of the resources for prayer which can be found in the Christian tradition (some of which we explore in our Lent Course) and which are available to all of us as we seek to go deeper into God this Lent. These resources can be found in books, through retreats, and by using online meditations. It is possible to travel to centres of prayer or to the world’s deserts and wildernesses in order to learn to pray in some of these ways. But we don’t have to! Like Archbishop Stephen, we could take to heart the teachings of the Desert Fathers to stay in our cell and our cell will teach us everything. Our cell can be our own front room. If we use it for committed, regular prayer this Lent then like the saints, monks and mystics about whom we have thought, we can go deeper into God.
Jesus said: ‘… go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.’
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