Mary Magdalene

Come and See
Friday,  July 24, 2020

At our Universal Christ conference in 2019, artist Janet McKenzie shared her paintings, including her work “Jesus of the People.” In her presentation, she shared how rewarding and difficult it can be to disrupt people’s preconceived notions of who someone is and how they should behave. Our expectations are often bound by class, race, culture, gender, and in this case, religious tradition. Any resistance we might feel to changing our perspective of the role Mary Magdalene played in Jesus’ life or the early church probably stems from that same discomfort of having our preconceived notions challenged. With that in mind, I want to share what Janet McKenzie has to say about her painting, “Mary Magdalene with Jesus, the Christ”—our banner for this week’s meditations.

I painted Mary Magdalene and Christ seated side by side as visionaries and spiritual teachers with their hands open in the universal gesture of prayer—gifts offered and received—as icons of the sacred. Jesus, the Christ, sent to live among us as the Word Made Flesh, and Mary Magdalene, the first one sent to proclaim the resurrection, are models for the community of disciple-companions sent “to the ends of the earth” [Acts 1:8] to tell and become the Good News for all. [1]

Susan Calef, a professor of theology at Creighton University, wrote this commentary about McKenzie’s painting.

The One Sent: Mary Magdalene with Jesus, the Christ. The very words recall the climactic scene of the Gospel of John, that of Mary Magdalene’s dawn encounter with the Secret Gardener. “Mary! . . . Go, tell my brothers and sisters . . .” (John 20:16‒17). For centuries artists have rendered the scene familiar: The Risen Christ stands above and Mary kneels below, her outstretched hand reaching for him as he rebuffs her. “Do not cling to me,” the image speaks.

In striking contrast, The One Sent images not a Gospel scene but a vision, a vision of the Wisdom-Word that dwells in the deep of John’s Gospel. From the opening words “In the beginning” to its climactic return to a garden, the fourth Gospel evokes a new creation, worked and signed upon the world by the Word-Made-Flesh. For those eyed to see by John’s Gospel telling, the image set before us speaks, not “Do not cling to me,” but “Come and see.” [2]

Spend a few moments simply gazing at this painting. Is it possible that “Do not cling to me” may not have been a rebuke but an invitation for Mary Magdalene to see her beloved rabbi and friend from a new perspective? Could it be that the same invitation applies to us as well?

Great Love
Thursday,  July 23, 2020

One of the lessons we might learn from the Gospel stories of Mary Magdalene is that, in the great economy of grace, all is used and transformed. Nothing is wasted. God uses our egoic desires and identities and leads us beyond them. Jesus’ clear message to his beloved Mary Magdalene in their first post-resurrection encounter is not that she squelch, deny, or destroy her human love for him. He is much more subtle than that. He just says to her “Do not cling to me” (John 20:17). He is saying “Don’t hold on to the past, what you think you need or deserve. We are all heading for something much bigger and much better, Mary.” This is the spiritual art of detachment, which is not taught much in the capitalistic worldview where clinging and possessing are not just the norm but even the goal. In her desire to cling to Jesus and his refusal to allow it, we see ourselves reflected as in a mirror. We are shown that eventually even the greatest things in our lives—even our loves—must be released and allowed to become something new. Otherwise we are trapped. Love has not yet made us free.

Great love is both very attached (“passionate”) and yet very detached at the same time. It is love but not addiction. The soul, the True Self or Whole Self, has everything, and so it does not require any particular thing or person. When we have all things in Christ, we do not have to protect any one thing. The True Self can love and let go. The separate, small self cannot do this. I am told the “do not cling to me” encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the most painted Easter scene. The artistic imagination knows that a seeming contradiction was playing out here: intense love and yet appropriate distance. The soul and the spirit tend to love and revel in paradoxes; they operate by resonance and reflection. Our smaller egoic selves want to resolve all paradoxes in a most glib way. We only have to look around at all the struggling relationships in our own lives to see that it’s true. When we love exclusively from our small selves, we operate in a way that is mechanical and instrumental, which we now sometimes call codependent. We return again and again to the patterns of interaction we know. This is not always bad, but it is surely limited. Great love—loving from our Whole Selves connected to the Source of all love—offers us so much more.

The ego would like Mary Magdalene and Jesus to be caught up in a passionate love affair. Of course they are, in the deepest sense of the term, but only the True Self knows how to enjoy and picture a love of already satisfied desire. The True Self and separate self see differently; both are necessary, but one is better, bigger, and even eternal.

Story from Our Community:
During this global pause, I am navigating a life-threatening illness which brings daily suffering. As I consider the gentle, calm, lifegiving words from James Finley in [a recent] meditation, I am reminded of the power of the breath and each moment even while managing and moving through pain. Inhaling God’s Love in each breath, exhaling love. The atmosphere changes. I am changed. —Michele R.

Faithful to the End
Wednesday,  July 22, 2020
Feast Day of Mary Magdalene

Diarmuid Ó Murchú is an Irish poet, author, friend, and member of the Sacred Heart Community. This poem highlights the presence of Mary Magdalene and the women at Jesus’ death and resurrection and invites us to question why we have not honored their role more fully. Poetry is so much better heard than simply read, so for full effect, read these words aloud, perhaps several times.

What happened [to] the women on the first Easter Day
Breaks open a daring horizon,
Inviting all hearts to discern.
Mid the grieving and trauma of loss,
The horror to stand at the foot of a Cross.
A body we think was buried in haste,
And a tomb that was empty but restless in taste.
Empowering a strange group of women. [stanza 2]

What happened to those on the first Day of Easter,
The faithful disciples by Magdalene led?
A subverted truth the patriarchs dread.
Beyond all the theories that time has construed,
Beyond the oppression we have too long endured.
The first ones commissioned for Easter proclaim
A woman-led mission we’ve brutally maimed.
But we can’t keep subverting empowerment. [stanza 5]

Resurrection still flourishes and always it will,
Imbued with a truth that time will fulfil.
What women empowered at the dawning breakthrough
will bear fruit in season
despite all the treason.
’Cos justice will render what deserves to endure. [1]

Ó Murchú reflects:

Of all the Gospel material related to women, none is more enigmatic and empowering than the role of the women in post-Resurrection space . . . I [wrote of] the women on Calvary remaining faithful to the end. For those women, it was anything but an end. Even when the male disciples fled in fear, they remained to await a new frightening dawn that would propel them into a mission transcending all other missionary endeavors recorded in Gospel lore. The early church seemed unprepared for the archetypal breakthrough and proceeded to consign the women to historical invisibility.

Richard again: I think this is a perfect example of how we cannot see what we aren’t told to look for. For most of history, Christians glossed over the presence of the women at Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. We weren’t wrong; we were simply paying attention to what we were told to look at—the men—by other men (priests, theologians, and even the Gospel writers themselves). We skipped over the faithfulness of the women and focused instead on the faithlessness (and the Easter morning foot race) of the men. Mary Magdalene and the other women were the first witnesses to the resurrection because they remained present for the entire process, from death unto new life, exactly what is necessary to witness resurrections in our own lives as well.

Tuesday,  July 21, 2020

She Does Not Run
Tuesday,  July 21, 2020

One of my favorite things about Cynthia Bourgeault is the way she poses questions that get right to the heart of the matter. Her brilliant scholarship comes from the fullness of her being—body, heart, and mind. Her study of Mary Magdalene is no exception, as evidenced by the questions she asks at the end of this passage. Bourgeault writes: 

[After seeing the risen Christ,] Mary went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord, and this is what he said to me” (John 20:14–18).

It is on the basis of this announcement that Mary earned the traditional title of “Apostle to the Apostles.” The first to witness to the resurrection, she is also the one who “commissions” the others to go and announce the good news of the resurrection. . . .

All four gospels witness to Mary Magdalene as the premiere witness to the resurrection—alone or in a group, but in all cases named by name. Given the shifting sands of oral history, the unanimity of this testimony is astounding. It suggests that among the earliest Christians the stature of Mary Magdalene is of the highest order of magnitude—more so than even the Virgin Mother (mentioned as present at the crucifixion in only one gospel and in none at the resurrection). Mary Magdalene’s place of honor is so strong that even the heavy hand of a later, male-dominated ecclesiology cannot entirely dislodge it.

All four gospels insist that when all the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. She does not run; she does not betray or lie about her commitment; she witnesses. Hers is clearly a demonstration of either the deepest human love or the highest spiritual understanding of what Jesus was teaching, perhaps both. But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed?

How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if even that one sentence that I finally heard at Vézelay was routinely included in the Good Friday and Palm Sunday Passion narratives? What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone and rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave?—for surely this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?

And above all, why is the apostle to the apostles not herself an apostle? [1]

Richard again: Let’s hold Cynthia’s questions in our minds and hearts that they might stir us to “epiphanies” of our own on the nature of steadfast love. Mary Magdalene’s love for Jesus shows what it means to have one person hold fast to us in our hour of need, despite the apparent hopelessness of it all.

Go Back to the Gospels
Monday,  July 20, 2020

Today, Cynthia Bourgeault, a member of the CAC’s teaching faculty, shares an epiphany she had about the significance of Mary Magdalene’s presence at the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

I was spending Holy Week 2005 on a “working retreat” with the Fraternités monastiques de Jérusalem, the innovative young monastic order in residence at the basilica in Vézelay [France]. This mixed community of men and women monks is well known for the imagination and beauty of its liturgy, and toward the end of the Good Friday liturgy I witnessed an unusual ceremony that changed forever how I understood my Christianity.

The liturgy was long and intricate, performed with meticulous reverence by the brothers and sisters. . . . As sunset fell, one of the monks began to read in French the burial narrative from the Gospel of Matthew. . . . I allowed the sonorous French to float by my ears while I drifted in and out, catching what I could. . . . Out of the haze of words came “et Mary Magdalene et l’autre Marie restaient debout en face du tombeau . . .”

That’s when I did my double take. Mary Magdalene was there? That was in the scripture? Why hadn’t I ever noticed it before?

Thinking that maybe my French had failed me, I went back to my room that evening, took out my Bible, and looked it up. But yes, right there in Matthew 27:61 it read: “And Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained standing there in front of the tomb.”

Suddenly the whole picture changed for me. I’d thought I knew the tradition well. As an Episcopal priest I’d presided over many Good Friday liturgies, and as a choral musician, I’d sung my share of Bach Passions. I’d thought I knew the plot backward and forward. How could this key point have escaped my attention? No wonder Mary Magdalene came so unerringly to the tomb on Easter morning; she’d stood by in silent, unflinching vigil the whole time Jesus was being laid to rest there. Maybe she never left . . . Since that moment I have literally not heard the Passion story in the same way. It inspired me to go back to the gospels and actually read the story in a new way. . . .

Like myself, a great many Christians have absorbed most of what they know about Mary Magdalene through the dual filters of tradition and the liturgy, which inevitably direct our attention toward certain aspects of the story at the expense of others.

Mary Magdalene

Love and Knowing Become One
Sunday,  July 19, 2020

This week I’m excited to share another wonderful model of action and contemplation, Mary Magdalene. One of Jesus’ closest disciples, the Catholic Church celebrates her feast day on July 22.  My friend Cynthia Bourgeault tells a story about the moment when she told an older priest friend that she was writing a book about Mary Magdalene. She recounts, “He looked at me long and hard, as only an old friend can, and then said, ‘Go gently. Try not to leave me behind.’” [1] I, too, will try to “go gently” in these meditations on Mary Magdalene, yet at the same time, I want to challenge our preconditioned and possibly mistaken ideas about who this woman was.

For over a millennium, Mary of Magdala was misidentified as the woman with the alabaster jar who was called a “sinner” and who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair (Luke 7:36–50). While we may never know for certain if those two women were the same or separate individuals, the conflation has confused Christianity’s view of them. Either way, Jesus shows both Gospel women nothing but respect, forgiveness, and love.

What we do know about Mary Magdalene is that she was the woman who was closest to Jesus. She was “possessed by seven demons” and Jesus healed her (Luke 8:2). She is mentioned in the Resurrection accounts by name in all four Gospels, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of other women. [2] She was the first to meet the risen Christ. The fact that she immediately went to embrace him is a testament to the closeness of their relationship, the mutual regard and affection they must have shared. When Jesus said to her “Don’t cling to me” (John 20:17), he was indicating that the time for physical closeness was in the past. Mary’s love had to release the finite in order to reach a more expansive, spiritual dimension.

Mary Magdalene is the person in the Gospel who most needs love to be stronger than death and so she is the first to know it—and perhaps at the deepest level. She is the first one who symbolically comes to “consciousness,” as it were, of Jesus as the risen Christ and thus is the clear “witness to the witnesses.” She is the real knower; in fact, love and knowing have become one in her. Mary is the archetypal name for all those who have been led by love into awareness of their True Selves and know its Source.

Mary Magdalene is the icon and archetype of love itself—needed, given, received, and passed on. She is a stand-in for all of us who seek an intimate and loving relationship with the divine. Jesus’ appearance to her first and alone is the clear affirmation of the wonderful and astounding message that we do not need to be perfect to be the beloved of Jesus and God.

Two Revelations of Faith
Friday,  July 17, 2020

Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. —Charles Péguy

It seems to me that a regular practice of contemplation makes it almost inevitable that our politics are going to change. The way we spend our time is going to be called into question. Our snug socioeconomic perspective will slowly be taken away from us. When we practice prayer consistently, the things that we think of as our necessary ego boundaries fall away, little by little, as unnecessary and even unhelpful.

Whatever our calling on behalf of the world, it must proceed from a foundational “yes” to God, to life, to Reality. Our necessary “no” to injustice and all forms of un-love will actually become even clearer and more urgent in the silence. Now our work has a chance of being God’s pure healing instead of our impure anger and agenda. We can feel the difference in people on both sides of any issue.

Because contemplation feels like dying and is, in fact, the experience of the death of our small self, we can only do this if Someone Else is holding us in in the process, taking away our fear. If we trust that Someone Else to do the knowing for us, we can go back to our lives of action with new vitality, but it will now be much smoother. It will be “no longer we” who act or contemplate, but the Life of the One who lives in us (Galatians 2:20), now acting for and with and as us!

Henceforth it does not even matter whether we act or contemplate, contemplate or act, because both articulations of our faith will be inside the One Flow, which is still and forever loving and healing the world. Christians would call it the very flow of life that is the Trinity. “We live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) inside of this one eternal life and love that never stops giving and receiving. This is how we “die by brightness and the Holy Spirit,” according to Thomas Merton. [1]

Contemplation is no fantasy, make-believe, or daydream, but the flowering of patience and steady perseverance. When we look at the world today, we may well ask whether it can be transformed on the global level; but I believe that there is a deep relationship between the inner revolution of prayer and the transformation of social structures and social consciousness. We need only look at the lives of the contemplatives in action that we read about this week to know that it’s true. Our hope is that contemplation really can change us, and guide our actions for compassion and justice in the world.

Thursday,  July 16, 2020

Dorothee Soelle (1929-2003) is an example of a contemplative who finds she must take action. I met her once in Germany at the Kirchentag (an assembly sponsored by the German Evangelical Church) and was deeply impressed. She was a first-rate scholar and noted theological author. I’ve been especially influenced by her book The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. For today’s meditation, Kerry Walters and Robin Jarrell describe this contemplative activist.

Society’s conventional image of a mystic is that of a person who withdraws from the world in order to journey inward. . . . The mystic is stereotyped as a guru sitting in splendid isolation on a mountaintop, utterly unconcerned with the world’s affairs.

But theologian Dorothee Soelle [Sölle], herself something of a mystic, argued that there’s actually little accuracy in this portrayal. Far from being withdrawn from the world or indifferent to the suffering that goes on in it, the mystic is uniquely motivated and qualified to respond to social and economic injustices. Genuine mystics, like Buddhist bodhisattvas, don’t renounce the world for the sake of a private spiritual illumination. Rather, they use the enlightenment they’ve achieved to do something about the world’s ills.

The reason for this, says Soelle, is that mystics have been liberated from the three powers that typically hold humans in bondage: ego, possession, and violence. They recognize that the standardly accepted division between I and not-I is an artificial one born from overvaluing oneself and competing with others for possessions . . . [which] in turn sets the stage for the “onset of violence.” But the genuine mystic understands that his or her connection with the divine is likewise a connection to all other humans and, indeed, to all of creation—a relationship, as Soelle said, that “borrows the eyes of God.” [1] Patterns of opposition and resistance bred by the division of I and not-I collapse to be replaced by ones of mutuality and community. Violence becomes obsolete, because the conditions necessary for its eruption disappear.

Soelle became interested in questions of religion and politics at an early age. She grew up under the Nazi regime and, like many Germans of her generation, never got over the shame of belonging to a nation that willingly collaborated with mass murderers. She was especially worried by the acquiescence of so many people who claimed to be Christian, and eventually concluded that part of the explanation was that they had compartmentalized their faith, transforming it into a private and “otherworldly” thing. Convinced that such privatization is a perversion of faith, Soelle worked as a theologian to demonstrate the social responsibility of religion and as an activist to put her theology into practice. She became one of the Cold War’s leading anti-nuclear voices, a dedicated opponent of both [U.S.] involvement in [the] Vietnam War and Soviet-style communism, and a proponent of liberation theology. The spiritual fuel of these activities was her conviction that the mystical worldview is revolutionary enough to resist “powerful but petrified institutions” that trade in oppression and violence. Consequently, her “most important concern” was to “democratize mysticism” so that society might be truly democratized as well.

Defender of Liberation Theology
Wednesday,  July 15, 2020

Jesuit priest Pedro Arrupe (1907–1991) was a deeply spiritual man who was entirely committed to serving others, particularly the poor in whom he saw Christ. Authors Kerry Walters and Robin Jarrell describe some of the pivotal events of his life:

He was three years into medical school in Madrid when a miraculous healing he witnessed at Lourdes sparked Pedro Arrupe’s call to the Society of Jesus. He entered the order at the age of nineteen and was ordained seventeen years later after studying in Holland and Belgium.

Following doctoral studies in the United States, Arrupe was sent as a missionary to Japan. He was serving in a Hiroshima suburb on the day the atomic bomb fell and later described the horror as “a permanent experience outside of history, engraved on my memory.” Calling on the skills he had acquired years earlier as a medical student, he quickly converted a damaged chapel into a makeshift hospital for the bomb blast’s victims. Arrupe remained in Japan after the war years and was named Jesuit provincial there in 1958. Seven years later, fellow Jesuits elected him Father General of the entire order.

During his leadership of the Jesuits, Arrupe was particularly supportive of his brethren who worked with the poor in Central and South America. These Jesuits combined spiritual ministry with social activism, convinced as they were that the poor were oppressed by wealthy landowners who acted with the tacit approval of the Church. The Roman hierarchy condemned this political involvement as well as the liberation theology, or gospel-based privileging of the poor, that justified it. . . . Arrupe disagreed, and he vigorously defended his priests, even after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith officially condemned liberation theology. He also refused to withdraw Jesuits serving in El Salvador, despite persistent death threats against them, insisting that the people of that war-torn and oppressed nation needed them. Six Jesuits who remained, including noted theologian Ignacio Ellacuría, were murdered [along with their housekeeper and her daughter] in 1989.

Described by one of his friends as “a second Ignatius” who “refounded” the Jesuit Order “in the light of Vatican II,” Arrupe focused the Jesuits during his term as Father General on both renewed spirituality—as a result of his years in Japan, Arrupe himself practiced Zen meditation daily—and social justice advocacy. Along with other proponents of liberation theology, he identified the suffering endured by the victims of war and poverty with Christ’s Passion and taught that alleviating the one through justice was honoring the other in faith.

Arrupe’s leadership of the Jesuits and his quiet but persistent defense of their involvement in liberation theology came to an end in 1981 when a massive stroke left him paralyzed and mute. In resigning as Father General, he offered this prayer: “More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound experience to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.”

Civil Rights Contemplative
Tuesday,  July 14, 2020

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) is remembered for her strength and courage in the face of an oppressive system. During the Civil Rights Movement, she inspired others to reclaim their God-given dignity and demand full citizenship in the United States. CAC faculty member Barbara Holmes writes:

[Fannie Lou Hamer is] a contemplative exemplar because of her spiritual focus and resolve. Her practices spoke to the depth of her contemplative spirit. In the face of catastrophic suffering, Hamer worked, loved, sang, and resisted the powers that be. She was jailed, beaten, and hunted by the enforcers of the social order after registering to vote. The treatment was so brutal that [civil rights leader] Andrew Young was sent to get her out of jail. Yet, she was kind to jailers who had been beating her for a week. . . .

Hamer was centered; she drew power from the example of her parents in their struggle to transcend the impossible situation of their lives. She faced daunting odds, as she was not dealing with an abusive individual but instead the power of federal, state, and local governments and cultural traditions that deemed her to be a nonperson. This designation of non-personhood did not deter her, for her contemplative entry into a deeper “knowing” came through her commitment to nonviolence. Adherence to the spiritual disciplines of civil rights activism required that she love the crucifier, bless the torturer, embrace the jailer, and pray for his or her salvation. . . .

According to her friend Virginia Gray Adams, “her back hurt and her spirit waged war without proper food or medicine. So when the movement came, there was rest”—not the rest that pervades the lives of most contemplatives [or what many imagine of monks and mystics], but rest nonetheless. Rest as you tell Congress to let your people go. Rest as you testify and lead a delegation off the floor of the Democratic Convention. Rest comes as rest comes—sometimes in the great feather beds of the wealthy and sometimes just a step away from hard labor. When it comes, it is balm to the spirit and solace to the soul. This is a rest that wafts from a wellspring of intentional justice-seeking as spiritual practice. These practices allow one to live in and out of the body and to inhabit hope as an ethereal but more permanent enfleshment. Fannie Lou Hamer was cloistered in an activist movement, finding her focus, restoration, and life in God in the midst of the beloved community already here and yet coming. . . .

Once upon a time there was a contemplative mother, a brave and wise woman of few words who entered the Civil Rights Movement as a [novice] enters a convent—not for retreat but for the restorative love of the community and the space to fight for justice.

Peace and Advocacy for the Poor
Monday,  July 13, 2020

Dorothy Day (1897-1980) gives us a clear example of a contemplative activist. In her case, she began with activism, converted to Catholicism around age 30, and eventually lived out her two callings in a powerful and effective way. My friend John Dear, himself a contemplative activist, writes this about Dorothy Day:

An activist and journalist living in New York City’s Greenwich Village, [Dorothy Day] fought for labor rights, women’s rights, and an end to World War I. In 1927, after her daughter Tamar was born, she was filled with gratitude and received the gift of faith. She decided that the two of them should be baptized in the [Catholic] Church. In response, her partner promptly left her.

It was 1932, and Dorothy didn’t know what to do or how to be a radical Catholic Christian. While attending a march against hunger in Washington, D.C., she prayed that God would open up a way for her to practice her radical politics as a devout Catholic. Her prayer was answered in the person of Peter Maurin, a French peasant intellectual who was waiting for her back in New York. Within a few months, they founded the Catholic Worker Movement [on May 1, 1933]. [1]

The Catholic Worker Movement is alive and well today, with over 200 active communities. Catholic Workers commit to voluntary poverty, prayer, nonviolence, and hospitality to those in need. They also protest and take action against systems of injustice, war, racism, and all forms of violence. [2] Robert Ellsberg, who worked with Dorothy Day in New York, continues:

[Dorothy Day’s] spirituality and her social witness were equally rooted in the radical implications of the Incarnation. In Christ God assumed our humanity. And we could not worship God without honoring God’s image in our fellow human beings. We should feed them when they were hungry; shelter them when they were homeless. We should not torture them; we should not kill them.

In the 1950s Day and the Catholic Worker took on a more activist profile. She was repeatedly jailed for refusing to take shelter during compulsory civil defense drills in New York City. In the 1960s her activities reflected the turbulence of the times—protesting the Vietnam War, fasting in Rome during the Second Vatican Council to advance the cause of peace. She was last arrested while picketing with the United Farm Workers in 1973 at the age of seventy-five. By this time she was widely honored as the radical conscience of the American Catholic church. But her life was not primarily occupied by activism or protest. She was a woman of prayer, beginning each day with meditation on scripture, attending daily Mass, and reciting the breviary [daily psalms, scripture readings, and prayers]. By and large, her life was spent in very ordinary ways, her sanctity expressed not just in heroic deeds but in the mundane duties of everyday life. Her “spirituality” was rooted in a constant effort to be more charitable toward those closest at hand

Who am I when there is no more rushing around? Troubling emotions arise to the surface even in my dreams. In contemplation I find a spacious place where I can bring the messiness of my inner world to a peaceful center. From there flows service to those in my immediate circles, particularly my elderly parents. In little things I take delight: conversations over coffee with my wife, a morning jog, the sighting of a goldfinch. —Tom A.

Contemplation: A Life’s Journey
Sunday,  July 12, 2020

I believe that the combination of human action from a contemplative center is the greatest art form, one that takes our whole lives to master. When action and contemplation are united, we have beauty, symmetry, and transformation—lives and actions that heal the world by their very presence. Jesus is the perfect example of this, but we can also point to the lives of many saints, mystics, teachers, and even people we know who share this gift.

For most people, the process begins on the side of action. We learn, we experiment, we do, we stumble, we fall, we break, and we find. Gradually, our thoughts and actions become more mature, but it is only when we begin to question our own viewing “platform” that we begin to move into the realm of contemplation. The contemplative side of the soul will reveal itself when we begin to ask, “How can I listen for God and learn God’s voice? How can I use my words and actions to expand and not to contract? How can I keep my heart, mind, and soul open, even ‘in hell’?”

Contemplation is a way to bring heaven to earth, but it begins with a series of losses, largely of our illusions. If we do not enter the learning process deeply, with curiosity and openness, we will use our words and actions to defend ourselves. We will seek to protect ourselves from our shadow, and build a leaden cover over our soul and our unconscious. We will settle for being right instead of being whole and holy, for saying prayers instead of being prayer.

True contemplation is really quite down to earth and practical. It does not require life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to move the world, we need some “social distancing” and detachment from the diversions and delusions of mass culture and our false self. Contemplation builds on the hard bottom of reality—as it is—without ideology, denial, the contemporary mood, or fantasy.

The reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most of us are experts in dualistic thinking. And then we try to use this limited thinking tool for prayer, problems, and relationships. It cannot get us very far. We cannot grow in the great art form of action and contemplation without a strong tolerance for ambiguity, an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a willingness to not know—and not even need to know. This is how we allow and encounter Mystery.

This week the Daily Meditations feature contemplative activists who encountered Mystery and felt called to live out Jesus’s prayer that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Their lives embody the beautiful struggle that is revealed when we seek to hold heaven and earth together through our love and faithfulness to God, humanity, and creation.

What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?

Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.

Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer.

Story from Our Community:
Who am I when there is no more rushing around? Troubling emotions arise to the surface even in my dreams. In contemplation I find a spacious place where I can bring the messiness of my inner world to a peaceful center. From there flows service to those in my immediate circles, particularly my elderly parents. In little things I take delight: conversations over coffee with my wife, a morning jog, the sighting of a goldfinch. —Tom A.