This all transpired as I read (and am still reading) John Main, OSB’s, Moment of Christ: The Path of Meditation. I have read a few books on meditation, especially during my novitiate, but this was the first one that really made me desire to put the practice into practice. Lent coming right around the corner probably helped, too. The purpose of meditation being simplification and presence, this all seemed a fitting choice during the liturgical season where we find grace to meet Jesus again in a new, deeper way.
So, I try to enter into the meditation experience while thoughts of the unchangable past and uncontrollable future work their way in and out of my consciousness for at least 14.8 of the 15 minutes. It gives me a better appreciation for the truth that we must we live our lives in the present. There’s nowhere else to be. Last year, during Holy Week, a sister reminded me, “This is your only Holy Week as a novice...savor it.” A call to be present if I’ve ever heard one. The present moment, this Lenten season, takes me back to Joan Chittister’s book, The Liturgical Year: the spiraling adventure of the spiritual life, which I read for a novitiate class on the topic. Joan writes:
It is this difference between Easter and Passover, this crossover point between one spiritual worldview and another, for which Lent is designed to prepare us. For the Jew, Passover is a sign of salvation, of “God with us” at a particular historical moment in the past. For the Christian, Easter is a sign of “God with us” in the past, but with us now also and at a time to come, as well. This single conscious concept is the life-breath of the faith, of life in Christ, of the Christian witness now and forever. Each succeeding year, Lent calls each of us to renew our ongoing commitment to the implications of the Resurrection in our own lives, here and now. But that demands both the healing of the soul and the honing of the soul, both penance and faith, both a purging of what is superfluous in our lives and the heightening, the intensifying, of what is meaningful.
Lent gives us an opportunity to practice the timelessness of God and of Love in our lives by giving up a bit of ourselves. Taking us out of the past and future to root us here and now, meditation seems to fit right in as a way to embrace that opportunity. From John Main:
Meditation is the way to illumination, to light and to life. Christ’s message is one of vitalization and illumination, complete enlightenment. The way to this is the way of single-mindedness, not being distracted by things that are passing away but ever more deeply committed to what is enduring, to what is eternal.
No wonder Benedict says, “The life of a monastic ought to be a continuous Lent.”
Let us walk in the holy presence.
