Silence & Contemplation (PM) | Merton in His Own Words (2013)

[Music] you [Music] [Music] basically I suppose prayer should be as simple as breathing as simple as living as simple as just anything but when we make a great issue out of prayer list so that's one reason why I don't like to talk about prayer much as as soon as you make an issue out of it it tends to become confusing it tends to get distorted it becomes a cause the great cause of Prayer and then it becomes opposed to something else which is not prayer and then you get into this break prayer is something sacred and then you have other things which are secular and you have to keep them apart and that's a confusion because breathing is neither sacred in our secular you just breathe so prayer too should be neither sacred nor secular I don't regard prayer as a specifically sacred activity it's life it is our life comes from the very ground of our life I think it becomes a sacred activity when it gets to be quite public and formal and so forth but well anyway we should not divide prayer against the rest of our life and we should not make prayer a cause for which we're willing to fight and have Crusades so to speak you know TS Eliot in murder in the cathedral the temptation of thomas a becket was to fear that his cause of serving the church became a temptation and the vocation to martyrdom could include in it a temptation for he said those who serve the greater causes can make the cause serve them so the danger is that our religious life our prayer our apostolate things like that become causes which we make to serve ourselves there are great causes and then we use them on perhaps out of a spirit of self glorification anyway let's start with the basic proposition that we belong to God and we want to belong to God and we want to affirm our belonging to God we want to live in a consciousness that we belong to him and that is the great thing in our life is this awareness of our identity as children of God that he is our Father and we live in this constant relationship with him with him from whom we come to whom we return to whom we belong and we belong to him most completely in prayer and prayer should be the activity therefore in which we are most ourselves now right away we see that when prayer is not what it should be it becomes the activity where most not ourselves and we released ourselves whenever if we're not praying as we should we are most artificial in prayer and we feel that when we are praying you're phony in a circumstance for pretending and of course this this is something we should at times feel because as soon as prayer becomes too much of a project we do tend to pretend we pretend that we're praying rather than praying we discover some kind of a rule that some part to play we find out some particular kind of prayer that we think that we ought to furnish to God and we put ourselves in that role and try to act the part of somebody praying in that particular way well then it's right away artificial and that is well the great curses healthy life of prayer is that when it becomes a rule one learns how to play the part of a nun pray I am sister so-and-so and I am praying an or worse still the role of having a certain degree of Prayer which is all nonsense so I put myself in that role and I play that gets to be very artificial well this brings up the question of the understanding of ourselves which is a big question today and people are rightly or wrongly whether you like it or not we tend to be constantly questioning our understanding of ourselves and who we are our vocation and whether we should stay or leave or whether we should consider ourselves this way or that way whether we should look at ourselves from this or that point of view we have a great variety of choices of identity offered to us today and we tend to waver around which one are we going to be am I going to be that bright broad-minded sister who is so wide open to everything or am I going to be that right shiny bushy-tailed being that is rushing around wildly saving everybody or am I going to be that sharp charming and very much alive and alert young wife and all these things well we got all these roles and we don't know which one we're supposed to be in you see well if you don't know what role you're supposed to be in you're having a hard time it's it isn't a question of a role it's a question of a vocation a vocation is not a role it's not a part we play as a response to a personal call God speaks and we answer and he doesn't give us a role the function of being a child of God is not a part that we play it's not a role when a baby is brought he doesn't start playing the role of baby he doesn't know he's got a role to play hasn't so there's but that is a big problem you see we are obsessed with this idea of understanding of ourselves it's unavoidably that we are so but then we get that mixed up with prayer we start trying to understand our in prayer hera becomes a time devoted to self understanding the evaluation of ourself how are we doing that's what it should not be in unavoidably it gets to be that to some extent but we have to try to avoid that because it's wasteful frustrating and it's not what we want to do is not what prayers for on the contrary prayer should help us to abandon ourselves to be not occupied with ourselves and to attain to a kind of wholeness a kind of all-around acceptance which I would say is a very important fruit of prayer and all-round acceptance acceptance of ourselves acceptance of the world as it is acceptance of our religious life as it is not as it may someday be or hope it will be something but we still have to accept it as it is if we're going to make it what it is going to be and we really have to accept other people and prayer is the great way of getting ourselves opened up to this attitude of acceptance and availability and not lamenting our lot so much just being in it being with it being all there and being ourselves but at the same time we do have to recognize the fallenness and ambiguity of our state the fallenness and ambiguity of our love the natural material of our prayer is our love our capacity to love our human heart and it's most important that our human heart as a whole should function in prayer therefore in some of the ancient monastic traditions the first thing about prayer is the ability to find one's heart to seek and find one's own heart one's true voice to speak to God with and to listen to God with a true Center and not to be ambiguous about this the fallen state that we are in as we are ambiguous about our own hard to be in a fallen state miss to be in a state where one's heart is double self-contradictory and even though we're baptized and even though we are nourished with the bread of life we maintain this state of ambiguity in spite of ourselves of East psychologically we can't get out of it all together we have to be Saints before we are through with that and even the Saints aren't through with it so we have to also accept this fullness and ambiguity of our love and of our heart we come to prayer with ambiguous hearts and we have in ourselves the same doubts as other people to some extent you right away you make a resolution to study the commentaries and the sounds after ten minutes you know that it's baloney see yet it's good you have to study the commentaries on the sound and so forth and so forth but see the wrong way of doing this you get a grace that says love the Psalms and you're all steamed up so you get down over the commentaries and spread them all out and saying I'm really gonna go star one verse one see and when you begin to see how much has been written about the Psalms and how much these different commentaries can say without saying anything and now you know and how involved it can get it's extremely discouraging but sooner or later if you persevere with the thing and asked the rest for the right kind of directions of whether you will realize that there's a certain activity called Sawadee which I'm not preferring to the kind inquire but just your own recitation of the Psalms see there is such a thing as loving to recite the sobs quietly by yourself not great numbers of them but you you delight in the Psalms see and sing and over by yourself quietly small bits at a time and so wasn't meditating on them and that sort of thing they begin to apply deeply to you see okay this is just an example see our God gives us love for these things for these ordinary things in the monastic life if that grace comes along follow it through because it's going to lead somewhere and in the love for this it is is grounded in something deeper which is love for God himself and as you go on loving this sort of simple thing deep down your love for God is growing and you are actually being becoming more United to him and without realizing it you are beginning to know him see in other words put it very simply you do the ordinary simple things that are around to be done and as you do them with love your knowledge of God increases without your realizing it see and you get closer to God and you Andy's but then what happens with this is that you're not thinking about knowledge and you're not thinking about yourself see both those things are important you're just simply doing something with love and the left takes care of everything so that's very important are these Sufis come along with a great deal of this in Sufism very much this kind of thing then Sufi for example says this reason of mine which for long I made my guide I have consumed in the effort to know God my whole life has been spent and with this weak reason I have read this much alone that I still know him not of course now this is sort of standard you get this and all this kind of literature see you going on with your reason and intelligence and you push it as far as you can go and you realize that you don't know God see having accepted the fact that you don't know God you just go along love him anyway and as you go along doing things with love you realize that you're coming close to him and you suddenly find that you do know it but as soon as you pay attention to the fact you don't see so that as soon we learn by experience that when we are loving God somehow or other he's close to us and somehow or other there is a knowledge of God built into that some way see that you can't explain and so wasn't so will put us there and therefore well but you do get some kind of an object in view some kind of an aim in what you do same thing that you are studying something that you are cultivating and in the language of Sufism and in the language of hesychasm and in the language of some of these other things it all comes to about the same thing what is it would you say one of the hesychast try to do one of the what is your objective you don't work any more on just knowing God but what do you do you work on loving God okay well can anybody think of any specific yeah what's that continuous prayer and with Hezekiah was that involved yes and it ended but especially what yeah your heart see it is a it is a question of you stop trying to reach God by educating your intellect that you do will try to awaken your heart so therefore the great study of the log is to have an awakened heart and of course you have to see you have to sort of know what that means but I think we all do see it's by little that we know God and as we say it's curly rat or speaking what is with our heart that we love and so this question of having an awakened heart means to cultivate a vigilant love to cultivate the awareness of love in the simplest words that I know that's it see this it this is what you do when you want to know God you don't we're looking for an object called God you cultivate the awareness of love in a awake heart so you keep your heart awake to respond to God by love now that means in a certain sense a kind of a continuous quiet patient humble sort of desire for to come closer to him and so forth and this a person can cultivate see it is varied when you say continuous prayer it's true that I mean I just I had some correspondence on this with the prior survey there's an experimental Carmelite current foundation for Carmelite nuns which is now cooking up in New Hampshire and we've had some correspondence back and forth about things in the spiritual life and they sent down sort of a program that they've got out for what they're gonna do and what they're gonna do is cultivate continuous prayer and something that I've said in a tape was well don't try to cultivate continuous prayer because you will get in trouble so they write and asked what do you mean don't try to cultivate that's what we're here for us continuous prayer so we sort of kick this back and forth for a couple of letters and of course we ended up by fully agreeing but the practical way to cultivate continuous prayer is not to cultivate a continuous conscious concept of God but to consolidate this awareness of love C which which is very easy a continuous concentration on a concept of God is not only rather hard to do but in the long run it's bad for you because it does involve strain and it is artificial see if I insist for example no matter which one which kind of thing you take I mean just that you if I insist on constantly thinking about our land on the cross for example it's hard it's and it doesn't really work as it should see it's a you thing you have to concentrate on this image and you have to keep returning to it and so forth it's alright certain people can do it but not everybody can do it and not everybody should try to do it whereas if without concentrating on an idea or an image I just simply cultivate this sort of openness to God as a in a general way see a completely general non-specialized not come not not fixed on an image they and of course the way to do it the simpler way to do this you've got to do a little something to keep the thing going what is the simplest way to do this what is the real you know they're the most basic way of maintaining a sort of quiet awareness of love for God it's okay yes but I mean what's the simpler sort of a simple way of doing this yeah that's right see that the simple way that the the classic way of maintaining a simple awareness is it Jack natori prayer very simple and of course that has a caste thing is the prayer of Jesus Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me a sinner see well just simply just say the holy name of jesus once in a while see or just some simple thing this is this is you know this is the plain classic basic sort of thing but the objective of this sea is to keep one's heart awake and this is the basic thing and this is what these Sufis do - of course they they they get a little energetic on this and sometimes they if they really want to get turned on then they dance they played drums and dance and so forth and so forth that's another story we talked about that before but the basic thing is this awakening of the heart and one of them says he comes unheralded but he comes to none but an awakened heart see therefore you can't make God come to you but he will come if your heart is awakened you now what does the solitary life means the same as all monastic life there is one basic essential thing in the monastic life and in the Christian life which is the thing that we all seek in one way or another and it is are some assurance that it's possible in this kind of life to put away all care to live without care to not have to care see now what do you mean not have to care not the rhythm to say well I don't care I don't care what they do with the note I don't care if they say it in Chinese they won't praise me that sort of thing yes that's not it but the idea the life of the world in this wrong sense of the word as we were saying the last time is a life of care and it's a life of useless care and it's a life of self-defeating care because basically what the life of the world is the world in this particular sense is what it is a life which is which cannot confront the inevitable fact of death see it is a life which is full of death it's got death built into it and it cannot get away from that fact it circles around and around the fact and it cannot escape the fact that death is the end of it and then death comes and death is the end period see a life that has nothing but a straight line towards the grave and a lot of little circular lines to forget the grave as you travel towards the grave see distractions and run and so forth and is a life of care and it's a life of ever-increasing care and it's a life of frustration and it's a life of futility see and this is what is meant by the world in the bad sense of the word now ideally speaking the Hermit life is supposed to be the life in which all care is completely put aside first of all because it is a death see it accepts completely death as a completely built in fact in life it is a death to society it's a death of certain consolations of society and so forth it's a death to certain kinds of support and it is a renunciation of even care of a person don't go into solitude simply to practice a lot of virtues see if that's what suppose to be happening I'm probably not gonna be able to make it great but you go into solitude in order to cast your care upon the Lord which is what I was saying last time let me reduce this sentence a couple of sentences from Co Saud which give the whole essence of it and these this is absolutely applicable to the cinematic life as well as a solitary life as both are were are operating on the same principle first of all self abandonment which is this is what we're here for see this business of surrendering totally to God self abandonment is that continual forgetfulness of self which leaves the soul free to eternally love God untroubled by those fears reflections regrets and anxieties which the care of one's own perfection and salvation gives now what he's saying there of course that I should read that through the five or six times with each word is important but we haven't got time now what he's saying there he is accusing monks actually of what we do we come from the world and we leave behind worldly cares and we come into a little world on the monastery which is full of its little cares of its own see the the trouble with our life whether solitary I mean a solitary life can be the same thing you can just be devoured by care there too the trouble with the monastic life is that it's supposed to be a life without care and we have filled it with care we fill it completely with care we are devoured by care see care about our job care about our life of prayer care about how we're getting on care about what other people are doing care about this care about that we're devoured with these and then the kind of thoughts that are fears reflections regrets anxieties see fears reflections this cost of business do you deny that our life is life of care well done do you deny that we're constantly constantly going over reflecting reflecting he said this and he made this side and I made this side and next time I'm gonna make this sign and they have dropped dead because it's gonna be a real fine it's gonna get and this is care see there are things we're caring about where we're caring about this we're caring if they're gonna get that red cheese instead of that other cheese if it's that red cheese for supper I'm gonna throw up right in the middle well this is care thing and what we are here for is to get rid of that and of course you get rid of it by going through it now here is this beautiful passage which says I I think it is my opinion at least what I think that I'm supposed to do living up on top of that Hill is purely and simply this and this is what I'm what I'm asking you to pray for that I may do it because I think also it's what you're supposed to do down here and what we're all supposed to do one way or another since God offers to take upon himself the care of our affairs let us once for all abandon them to his infinite wisdom that we may never more be occupied with aught but him and his interest period see since God offers to take upon himself the care of our affairs that is the monastic life and that is above all the solitary life that is what the solitary life means see it is a life in which you no longer care about anything because God is taking care of everything see he takes care in a sense I mean this is why you don't have a great deal of context with that with the world you're not terribly occupied with a lot of people you're not terribly occupied with a lot of works and projects and so forth you are simply letting God take care of all those things see all that needs to be taken care of he will take care of with the help of the interior seller a once in a while but I read at that intermarrying and so forth they will run up with the band-aid if necessary but but you cast your care upon the Lord now this is what love is see let's face the fact us that our hair down which it would which is non-existent but let us let us let us face the fact for once what we're here for is love see and what is love when you love another person you simply forget yourself often think about the other person you are not concerned with yourself and you and if you love this other person and you know that it's mutual you know that the other person is thinking about you see so that what happens is in love is that each one forgets himself in order to live in and for the other and he doesn't have to think about himself because the other will think of him now this is what God asks of us he asks us to live in such a way that he will do the thinking about us that we don't have to think about ourselves he will think about us and what I think that we should learn to do I think as we get along on a spiritual life is we have to learn to do this even in matters of virtue see casados doctrine we're following here at the moment even says that actually you should reach the point where you don't think about virtue at all you don't think about whether you're doing good at all you just do what you do see well this presupposes that you have been practicing some virtue and a presupposes you're leading a fairly halfway decent life and you're not in jail all the time and you're not don't have the cops on your tail all day long and that sort of thing you'reyou're you're more or less in the clear sea and you because anything you do God will take care of you do things the the obvious things that call that are called for by your situation and then God puts virtue into this sea so you are no longer worrying about whether you're virtuous or not you just live you live without care and without concern for anything of yourself see now of course this is not exactly easy in the solitary life because one of the things that you're liable to get into and solitary life is precisely care about yourself let's see you're liable to worry about a lot of things and this is one of the things about a solitary vocation is a person who can't be in the solitary life without caring about himself all day long hasn't got a vocation see you have if you're going to be in a solitary life you have to be able to simply to forget yourself and enjoy it so that is the thing see to have God as the whole content of one's own life see to forget oneself not to care for oneself and have God as the total content of one's life well what this does and I know so far from what experience I have of it it does it means that in fact it is sometimes possible to see that actually things become transparent see so that they are no longer opaque and they no longer hide God and this is true the thing that we have to face is that life is this simple we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time and this is not just a fable or a nice story it is true see and this is something we're not able to see but if we abandon ourselves to him and forget ourselves we see it sometimes when we see it maybe frequently see that God manifests himself everywhere in everything in people when in things and in nature and an event and so forth so that it becomes very obvious that he is everywhere and he's in everything and we can't be without him you cannot be without God it's impossible it's just simply impossible the only thing is that we don't see it see now this is again what we're here for and what is it that makes the world opaque and makes it not transparent anymore it is care see because everything becomes opaque in proportion as we regard it as an individual object and we become concerned with it there's this individual thing there's this day that I have to live through it's a particular day not here and so it's opaque see it comes to me it's it's it comes to me in a big opaque package and I spend my time opening it up and then when I've taken all the package apart then it's the evening it's the examination of conscience and I examine myself I took off all the paper off the package and I wasn't anything in it and then so then the next day comes along and that's what we do and then our big event comes see I don't know I get the job of teaching something to the rabbits and then this becomes a great thing and I take the paper off of this piece by piece by piece sort of and then there's nothing in it either well you have to leave the rabbits what they are rabbits I think if they if you just see that they're rabbits you suddenly see that they're transparent and that the rabbit nosov God is shining through in all these darn rabbits see and that the people that the people are transparent or that the humanity of God is transparent in people say and that you don't have to take each person as an opaque package see who is the mystery of this crazy person here that I have to analyze this person see and I have to look across the card what makes that guy tick well you don't have to know what makes the man tick all you got to see is that he is a manifestation of the humanity of God there is humane humane assume a a humanist man Ness in God which is manifested by every human being not only by the fact that he's a creature of God with by the fact that he's redeemed in Christ see so now this again is our life and this is what it's for now this doesn't become apparent as long as we try to love the world for its own sake you our encounter with God is at the same time the discovery of our own deepest freedom if we never encounter him our freedom never fully develops it is in the existential encounter between the Christian and God in the Word of God or between man and God because not only Christians encounter God every man at some point in his life encounters God and many who are not Christians have responded to God better than Christians but our encounter with him with his word our response to his word is the drawing forth and calling out of our deepest freedom our true freedom our true identity to properly understand prayer we have to understand that it emerges from this encounter of our freedom emerging from the depths of nothingness and undeveloped Mansouri at the call of God prayer is the flowering of our inmost freedom in response to the Word of God prayer is not only dialogue with God it is the communion of our freedom with the ultimate freedom of his infinite spirit it is the elevation of our limited freedom into the infinite freedom of the Divine Spirit and of the divine love and divine charity the all-embracing charity which knows no limits and knows no obstacles prayer is the emergence into this area of infinite freedom prayer then is not an abject procedure although sometimes it does spring from our objection we have to face the existential reality of our wretchedness nothing to send objection because it is there that our prayer in our own nothingness it is out of this nothingness that we are called into freedom it is a out of this darkness that we are called into light therefore we need to recognize this as our starting point otherwise our prayer is not authentic but we are called out of this nothingness darkness and alienation and frustration into communion and intimacy with God in his freedom that is the meaning of prayer prayer therefore is not just simply a matter of thrusting ourselves down into a position of abjection and abject ly in servile submission asking God for things which are already our own which is the picture that Marxist marks in his idea of alienation gives us religious alienation prayer is not something that is meant to keep us to maintain us in civility and helplessness it is meant to simply to enable us to take stock of our own wretchedness at the beginning in order to rise beyond it and above it into infinite freedom and infinite creative love in God and prayer infallibly does this if we believe it and if we understand its true dimensions but the great problem of prayer arises from the fact that precisely if we take this any innate view we remain fixed in our own ego and we no longer are able to go out from ourselves into this freedom and if you remain in our ego cleansed upon ourselves trying to draw down to ourselves gifts which we then incorporate in our own little limited selfish life but then prayer does remain serve I'll the escape from civility in prayer means the escape from a self from a servile self from itself which seeks to serve itself only servility has its root in self serving and trying to make God and possibly serve our own needs we have to try to say to modern man something about the fact that prayer enables us to emerge from our servility into freedom in God which rack the heart man I'm trying to explain them away or to make them even intangible because they're wanting to tell her that they're behind the intelligible cases of the idea of prayer I must give the human spirit support in this problem it was sustaining the human spirit in a story that is sometimes in terrible and this does not mean trying to say that the struggle is really horrible on the contrary it is a theology of the cross the cross was intolerable how does it feel on your territory this kind of problem not very easily but massively and my insight and by a verse a poetic insight which leads directly to the death of the heart in which these things are experienced and in which these conflicts are exact in experience and one has to get into a theology of prayer is the capacity to experience the contradictions of struggles and some of life and as a sharing in the cross not just to say that it's a sharing cross but to experience it in the deepest possible religious and existential matter as a sharing in the cross as a has placed suffering in us this is not done without passion of the only affair is going to have to be somewhere or other a passionate theology of the article is intolerable how do you approach this kind of problem not very easily but as silly and my insight and by our say for any insight which leads directly to the death of the heart in which these things are experienced and in which these conflicts are resolved in experience and one has to get into the theology of prayer is the capacity to experience the contradictions of struggles and some of life and as a sharing in the cross not just to say that it's a sharing cross but to experience it in the deepest possible religious and existential manner as a sharing in the cross as a has placed suffering in us this is not done without passion of the only affair is going to have to be somewhere or other a passionate theology of the ology about the events a prayer as far as to an immediate relationship with God a face-to-face unmediated vision of God or relationship with God and I would say analysis color problems because everything has to be mediated through Christ so what do you mean an unmediated approach to God here we get into the whole theology not on prayer but the whole deal go into that but this idea of a mediator and the prayer certainly when we do one things through the mediator ship of Christ and when we do but there is a kind of internalization that has to take place in prayer in English there is no longer a mediator here and God beyond mediator but in which event a scope and which the mediator becomes so interiorized in me but he and I are one and my prayer is therefore his prayer progress in prayers therefore is arrived at by this theological telescoping in which the mediator and I become well and he is still obviously mediate he is still Savior and Christ but my prayer is that is we have to dare to make this kind of response we have to come close in this way and we have to beware therefore but constantly keeps everything at arm's length you see the kids are away from this when you've tendinopathy oasis in prayer that keep man - God instead of bringing themselves so there is another path that has to be considered their gardens journals of this relationship and we tend to make you see general of the distance it is true he is transcendent certainly he is about and everything but coming close to him he wants I scared together he wants us even at the cluster you see he has the cylinder to him even in his sinister process that's what this is the meaning of Joe music Jacob is a person who is in trouble himself and who dares to come close to God and chant around the issue or something rather the new that we all do see as soon as we got in trouble in this opera going this is the original the sign of original sickness of what Alan did as soon as he got done troubling he didn't pray yeah so there is this that has to be taken into account enough theology apparently instinct of man to hide from God so there is passion in the absolute seriousness of God's that for us that passion unified in mechanical of catalyst for example twenty pilot in a statement and then aware of Christ to one of the mystics and locally no I was not fashionable start out with the daresay this is the West you don't quote statistics in the West anymore I did not let you fulfill as a journal I was not kidding when I loved you and this is the very power of God statements in valuation as a way of self god say is that truly what I liked you I was not kidding when I was nailed to the cross I was not just putting on that I was not putting on a show this was real because this I would just take the final chapter of st. Luke as an illustration of the New Testament now their prayer in practice this is the way how many other himself teaches us prayer in the context of new tests within which the law has been nailed to the cross along with a man been defeated along with the enemies of Christ that very day [Music] himself through narrow Memphis that but their eyes will and he said what is this conversation which you are and they stood still looking sad are the things that happened there these days and you know that goes this is jump in a brain on top they're complaining our savior has been hour long has been crucified don't you know this don't you know that everything we hoped for has collapsed don't you understand you don't don't you to see that everything is all wrong can't you see that everything's going on and then he says foolish men and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory this is the only explanation and beginning of Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself the holy theology is in that line so then they knew near to the village to which they were going he appeared to be going further but they constrained him saying stay with us for this toward evening and the day is now far spent so we went in to stay with them when he was a table with them he took the bread and blessed and gave it to them and their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he vanished out of their sight they said to each other did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road to us the scriptures and they wrote that same hour and returned to Jerusalem and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them said the born is risen indeed and has appeared to Simon then they told what had happened on the road and how he was known to them all in the brief read there was theology of Prayer according to the New Testament this starts with a test a job in a low-key suffering bastard frustrated people bully and grips with the problem of the supposed by the fact that the problem has dropped out of their life the father was dropped out of everything they've done at this point a stranger appears and they don't understand that he fails to see their difficult they don't know who he is we are the theology of Prayer begins when we understand that we're in trouble and they we have a city girl with us when we do not recognize gradually the meaning of the gospel begins to be clear to us and then our hearts burning within it you might say this is a degree of Prayer this is the point where prayer becomes real but it becomes a realisation of the seriousness and the absolute reality of the promises of Christ and our hearts burned in as a witness to that reality a st. Paul says the spirit in our heart cries out to the finder about Todd this is the burning which is the reality of Trek the response the recognition that God has accepted us as such as adopted SS times we are truly the sons of God this is the heart of prayer is the spirit of sonship consciously responding to God in an awareness of that pressure analysis awareness of love and then of course our mark goes further on manifest himself completely to them and then vanishes which is also a part of track the theology of Prayer must take account of the point at which our Lord in his has a sort of a separate object vanishes but this has nothing to do with the old controversy about whether or not you should try to imagine the presence of the Lord so well because he is present in the in the disciples in the group and as witness to his resurrection and from then on that presence cannot be taken away so you have the common dimension prayer the unity of prayer has to take into account all these things it has taken into account the resentment of Joe and the anger of Joe the frustration inside of the disciples the constant present of Christ with those who suffer his the burning of the heart that begins to recognize the spirit of sonship that we are truly sons of God the disappearance of the visible presence within solvent present subscribe and finally the awareness that he is always with his church one way to be with her with us as he is here now as well and will never leave us now this problem is without effect on this isolate as we said tried to build a theology of the prayer [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you you [Music]

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Keywords: thomas merton, merton, merton center, bellarmine university, Merton Legacy Trust, Gethsemani, merton in his own voice, merton voice, thomas merton's voice, history, ted talk, tedtalk, talk, panel, documentary, audio tapes, archives, festival of faiths, faith, catholicism, interfaith

Id: Zr3V-BnENmA

Length: 59min 8sec (3548 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020