CONTEMPLATION IN THE STREETS

“Contemplation in the streets. This is tomorrow’s task not only for the brothers of Jesus, but for all the poor.” ~~~ Carlo Caretto

In the time of overwhelming speed and flood of information and sensation, people crave a spiritual path of silence and stillness, the prayer of quiet.

The most important need for our own time is to be contemplatives, and help others learn the way of contemplative prayer, especially to help the young people who are eagerly looking for mentors and guides.

It seems that the saints and theologians of our times have emphasized the importance of contemplation and personal experience in concrete circumstances of everyday life.

Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa, Charles de Foucald, Dorthy Day, Karl Rahner – these have all emphasized that contemplation is for everyone, and have modeled for us that the way of deepest contemplation is possible for everyone right in the  heart of the world today.

They teach us that we can change hell into heaven if we have enough heart; if we have enough love in our hearts. Peace is possible.

Jesus wants the “prayer of quiet” to be known in the world today, and therefore he himself puts us among the people in the streets, in marketplaces. Zen is breaking out everywhere.

Our task is to defend humanity. Keep human beings human in this most inhuman of times.

We live in scary times, with overwhelming violence, ignorance, and technological power. Pope John Paul II referred to our time as the “culture of death.”

But the saints and holy ones of the 20^th century, have insisted that we must not be afraid to engage the world. The very horror of the modern world is an invitation, an opportunity, for a decision for faith, a metonia, a change of mind – a decision for peace.

This means an openness to the possibility of God, of grace, and the possibility of opening our hearts to the infinite horizon of faith in love. And opening of our hearts to Jesus.

The young people of the world today are looking for an alternative future to the one offered to them by the emerging technological society. When I walked with the young people in the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, I heard them chanting the dreadful words: “If this is the future, then to hell with the future!”

But who can speak to them of an other, more human future, a future of hope and of faith; a future of a civilization of love?

Pope John XXIII said, “Today the church is confronted with the immense task of giving a human and Christian note to the modern civilization; a note that is almost asked for by that civilization itself for its further human development and even its continued existence.”

When Edith Stein was first interred in the Nazi concentration camp in Westerbork Holland, she found the little children running around unsupervised, dirty and neglected by their mothers, who had lost their minds in fear. Edith took it upon herself to feed and clean and comfort the children. A survivor who had witnessed Edith ‘s presence int eh camp at Westerbork later recalled that Stein had been a presence of peace and strength in their midst. Fully aware of the tragedy engulfing her and all the Jewish camp inmates, she sat as a serene presence amidst the children - “as a pieta without a Christ”, the witness remembered.

Edith Stein was modeling for us the way to be present in this modern world – contemplation in hell is possible.

Thomas Merton spent his entire life calling all people everywhere to deepen their interior spiritual lives, insisting that contemplative prayer was accessible to all, not only to cloistered contemplative monk specialists. Contemplative prayer is not a rare mystical experience restricted to Trappist monks behind cloister walls.

“The urgent need for courage to face the truth of untruth, the cataclysmic presence of an apocalyptic lie that is at work not only in this or that nation, but in all of us, everywhere,” Merton said.

Merton chopped wood and planted trees and sang psalms, showing us how to be human, and his crazy hermit life in a cinder-block shack in the woods as a silent witness has inspired countless millions to deepen their interior lives.

Dorthy Day made soup for the poor hungry people during the depression,. She prepared bunks for homeless people to rest.

Mother Teresa picked up the unwanted, uncared for and abandoned outcasts dying in the streets of India. But, she said, the suffering she saw in America was far greater – the suffering of being unwanted, lonely, abandoned to the cruel reality of heartless individualism. Her example of kindness and care were models for us to be “something beautiful for god.”

When Nazi police came to the Carmelite Monastery to take Edith Stein into custody, she consoled the other nuns: “Today is good to reflect on the fact that poverty also includes the readiness to leave our beloved monastery itself …. If we are faithful and are then drive out into the street, the Lord will send his angels to encamp themselves around us, and their invisible pinions will enclose our souls more securely than the highest and strongest walls.”

Catherine de Heuck Doherty told us how to actually do it:

“Solitude in the mids of the people is the Jesus Prayer, the prayer of the presence of God.

It is holding of God

in what may sometimes be a land of total despair

a real desert

like the desert waste around Mount Sinai…"

In former times, people thought it was a miracle to walk on the water. In our time, it is a miracle to walk on the earth. Our mission is to help people remain human in this most inhuman of times.

Jesus is present not only in church buildings, or in far away Jerusalem. Jesus is found where our feet walk down the street with love in our hearts.

Those who walk with us learn to walk with Jesus.

The pure of heart will see Jesus, right here in the streets where we walk.

“We should imitate as faithfully as possible the hidden life of Jesus of Nazareth,” Charles de Foucald said.

The spirituality of Nazareth is the simple and hidden life, that reveals God’s closeness, Jesus’ intimacy to us in our everyday lives, of silent and dedicated service.

Jesus is hidden, close, here in plain sight.

The Kingdom of God is not far from here.