✝ Spiritual Guidance ✝
Personal | Marital
|
Contemplative Spiritual
|
Initial Personal Consultation Recommended
All sessions are confidential
All sessions are confidential
Regarding the initial appointment for spiritual guidance:
The initial consultation is very important in spiritual guidance to mutually share, listen and ask questions about one another's own unique personal faith/spiritual journey. The person seeking spiritual guidance must feel open, honest, mature and trust with the human spiritual guide they are choosing as a companion on their spiritual journey.
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“There must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person, created in God’s likeness — righteous, holy, and true. So put away all falsehood and let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, because we belong to each other.”
- Ephesians 4:23-25
”Lacking the experience of divine union, we feel alienated from ourselves, God, other people and the cosmos. Hence, we seek substitutes for the happiness for which we are predestined but which we do not know how to find.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The divine presence has always been with us, but we think it is absent. That thought is the monumental illusion of the human condition. The spiritual journey is designed to heal it.... We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Call forth our strength, O Beloved; stand by us as we break down the fears that bind us.
Because You dwell in our hearts, we are strong and live with courage.
Ascribe wisdom to the Indwelling Presence, who invites us to understanding, and calls us to live in peace.
Majestic is Love in our hearts, the Beloved, Heart of our heart, who gives strength and wisdom to the people.
Blessed be the Beloved!
- “Psalms for Praying” (Psalm 68)
The initial consultation is very important in spiritual guidance to mutually share, listen and ask questions about one another's own unique personal faith/spiritual journey. The person seeking spiritual guidance must feel open, honest, mature and trust with the human spiritual guide they are choosing as a companion on their spiritual journey.
——————————————————————————————————————————--
“There must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person, created in God’s likeness — righteous, holy, and true. So put away all falsehood and let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, because we belong to each other.”
- Ephesians 4:23-25
”Lacking the experience of divine union, we feel alienated from ourselves, God, other people and the cosmos. Hence, we seek substitutes for the happiness for which we are predestined but which we do not know how to find.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The divine presence has always been with us, but we think it is absent. That thought is the monumental illusion of the human condition. The spiritual journey is designed to heal it.... We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Call forth our strength, O Beloved; stand by us as we break down the fears that bind us.
Because You dwell in our hearts, we are strong and live with courage.
Ascribe wisdom to the Indwelling Presence, who invites us to understanding, and calls us to live in peace.
Majestic is Love in our hearts, the Beloved, Heart of our heart, who gives strength and wisdom to the people.
Blessed be the Beloved!
- “Psalms for Praying” (Psalm 68)
“Now the art of meditation (centering/contemplative prayer) is to teach you the discipline to continue, and to continue on a daily basis, as one who is committed to depth, to seriousness, to fullness of life. That is, to be one who rejects living at the surface as one’s normal and necessary state of being. Meditation will gradually increase your discipline and your commitment will grow proportionately if you stick to it as a daily practice. Meditation will also teach you to turn away from your self, to rise above your own thoughts, to be detached from your own self-consciousness, vanities, fears and desires. It will lead to turn naturally beyond that to something much greater than you can ever find in all the analysis or self-obsession our culture rates so highly. You have begun a journey through the undergrowth of the ego...”
- Fr. John Main
”The power of meditation is its simplicity and its practicality — that we take the practical steps to set out on the way leaving the books, the talks, the lectures, the ideas behind. We learn to attend in depth, to attend profoundly, learning ‘to be’ and learning ‘to be in the presence of God’, learning from our own experience. All that is necessary for us is to be as totally as we can be in God’s presence. What we have to learn from our meditation — and in every generation this must be re-learned — is to see this light and to see everything illuminated by this light and the light is the light of Christ and, as St. Paul tells us, this light shines in our hearts.
This is the purpose of our meditation, this is the work of our meditation: to learn to see with this visionary dimension; and our work in
this life is to prepare our hearts to expand in this Light, this Light which is Life, which is Love, which is God. What we have to learn — and this is the most astonishing thing of all, is our destiny in this life is to become this Light, to lose ourselves in God, to find ourselves
in God, to become one with Him/Her.”
- Fr. John Main
”The spiritual journey is dying to the old, false self in order to transformed into our true self, communion-in- God, with Faith in God’s Living/Loving Presence in Grace and Divine Spirit of Love/Light/Life...”
”What are you really doing when you sit down in Centering Prayer and open yourself to God’s presence and action within you? You are opening to God’s presence and consenting to God’s activity. God’s activity is the work of the Holy Spirit in your particular embodiment in this world....We are pleading for the supreme gift of the Spirit simply by consenting to God’s will and action.”
- Fr. Thomas Merton
”Thus, the Centering Prayer practice is a way of life, a commitment to a new life, to be a new creation, to become the true self which is God’s idea of who we are; to let God act and bring us little by little to the integration of all reality into our understanding of God; and to see all things in God and God in all things....”
-Fr. Thomas Keating
”The regular practice of contemplative prayer initiates a healing process that might be called the”divine therapy.” The level of deep rest accessed during the prayer periods loosens up the hardpan around the emotional weeds stored in the unconscious, of which the body seems to be the warehouse. The psyche begins to evacuate spontaneously the undigested material of a lifetime, opening up new space for self-knowledge, freedom of choice, and the discovery of the divine presence within. As a consequence, a growing trust in God, a bonding with the Divine Therapist, enables us to endure the process.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
"Focusing on 'sacred breathing' (contemplative prayer in silence) brings us into the present moment...We allow our breath to convey Divine Love to our heart. Love from the Oneness of which we are a part...We allow our breathing to convey to our heart that we are a beloved child of God who is forever connected to the source of Life and Love..."
- Julie Redstone
"Interior silence is one is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming, in fact, than the experience of God's presence. That revelation says as nothing else can, "You are a good person. I created you and I love you." Divine love brings us into being in the fullest sense of the word. It heals the negative feelings we have about ourselves...Personal sin is the refusal to respond to Christ's self-communication (grace). It is the deliberate neglect of our genuine needs and those of others."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Interior silence is the perfect seed bed for divine love to take root. In the Gospel the Lord speaks about a mustard seed as a symbol of divine love. It is the smallest of all seeds, but has an enormous capacity for growth. Divine love has the power to grow and transform us. The purpose of contemplative prayer is to facilitate the process of inner transformation... We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Most of us have a heavy burden of emotional junk accumulated from early childhood. The body serves as the storehouse for this undigested emotional material. The Spirit initiates the process of healing by evacuating the junk. This takes place as a result of the deep rest of mind and body in contemplative prayer.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
"...the spiritual journey is a gradual process of enlarging our emotional, mental, and physical relationship with the divine reality that is present in us but one not ordinarily accessible to our emotions or concepts. The spiritual journey teaches us: first to believe in the Divine Indwelling within us, fully present and energizing every level of our being; secondly, to recognize that this energy is benign, healing, and transforming; and thirdly, to enjoy its gradual unfolding step-by-step both in prayer and action."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
-" Divine Love is compassionate, tender, luminnous, totally self-giving, seeking no reward, unifying everything...The inward journey to our true Self is the way to Divine Love... The growing awareness of our true Self, along with the deep sense of spiritual peace and joy which flow from this experience, balances the psychic pain of the disintegrating power of the false self. As the motivating power of the false self diminishes, our true Self builds the new self with the motivating force of Divine Love."
-Fr. Thomas Keating
"St. Paul says, "If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creature" (2Cor. 5:17). As we dismantle the false-self system, the new self arises with the awakening of the true self. That is the new creation that Paul refers to. The old creation that is passing away is the world of the false self...The means that the Spirit uses to purify our conscious and unconscious lives are called the Seven Gifts of the Spirit. Isaiah 11:2 lists these gifts as Wisdom and Understanding, Counsel and Fortitude, Knowledge and Fear of the Lord; Piety...The Holy Spirit, through the Gifts, is especially our guide in the practice of Centering Prayer and in accompanying programs to bring its effects into daily life."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The desire to go to God, to open to His presence within us, does not come from our initiative. We do not have to go anywhere to find God because He is already drawing us in every conceivable way into union with Himself. It is rather a question of opening to an action that is already happening in us.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”It is not so much what we do but what we are that allows God to live in the world. When the presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, divine life is pouring into the world.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Happiness can be found only in the experience of union with God, the experience that also unites us to everyone else in the human family and to all reality.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The Divine Light of Faith is totally available in the degree that we consent and surrender ourselves to its presence and action within us. It heals the wounds of a lifetime and brings us to transforming union, empowering us to enter Christ’s redemptive program, first by the healing of our own deep wounds, and then by sharing in the healing of others.” -Fr. Thomas Keating
"God draws people to Divine life, taking the initiative in every stage of the journey. God's love precedes all human response; it is Love that calls, purifies illumines, supports in pain, shares, transforms, and unites."
- Leanord Doohan
Disciple: "What is the difference between knowledge and enlightenment?"
Master: "When you have knowledge you use a torch to show the way. When you are enlightened, you becme a torch."
- Anthony de Mello
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness self-control,...If we live in the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit.
- Gal 5: 22-23
”Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. If your sinful nature controls your mind, there is death. But if the Holy Spirit controls your mind, there is Life and Peace (Love and Freedom).
-Rom 8: 5-6
”Then, the Peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ...”
-Phi 4: 7
””The Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Freedom. So, with unveiled faces, we all reflect the glory of the Lord, while we are transformed into God’s likeness, and experience His/Her glory, more and more by the action of the Lord, who is Spirit.”
-2Cor 3: 17-18
”May He strengthen you in His glorious might with ample power to meet whatever comes with fortitude, patience and joy to give thanks to the Father who has made you fit to share the heritage of God’s people in the realm of light.”
-Col 1: 11-12
”Christian meditation is far more than thinking or feeling about God. It is being with Him, living not just in His presence but from the resources of His presence. We are able to live His power, while being united to His power and His power is the basic energy of all creation, the power of Love. That power is a mighty river flowing in and through our hearts and in meditating what we do is to open our hearts to the pure reality of that stream of Love. Where are we when we meditate? We are in God. Where is God? He is in us.
Quite simply, this is the great conviction of the early Church, of all Christ’s disciples. The presence in our heart of the living Christ, and the supreme task of every life that would be fully human is to be open to that presence.”
- Fr. John Main
”What we must understand is that every one of us not only has this call but has this capacity to transcend the limitations that we impose on ourselves by our own egoism, to transcend the limitations we impose we ourselves by illusion, by desire ( and by unconscious societal conditioning). To enter the eternal life by opening our human consciousness to the human/divine consciousness of Christ (with-in us) is to enter now, in this life, into unlimited life, unlimited peace, unlimited joy: a peace that is a way beyond all understanding.”
- Fr. John Main
"In meditation as Christians our hearts are directed towards God's Love. Each of us has to discover and then to remember, knowing with absolute clarity and certainty, that we are infinitely lovable and infinitely loved. We must know it, not just as intellectual proposition but with experiential knowledge, in our own hearts. It is the most important knowledge there is for any of us and that is why meditation (centering/contemplative prayer) is so important."
- Fr. John Main
”We learn a little each step we take, each time we meditate, every morning and evening. More deeply we discover that to ‘be’ is not to be isolated, but to be realized in ‘communion’. The Presence of Christ is eternally present to us and we grow in our capacity to be present to Him. In that realization of mutual presence, of communion, the divine transcendence occurs and we are swept away from the netherworld of self-centeredness into the infinite energy and complete fulfillment of the reality who is Love.”
- Fr. John Main
“II (all) are faithful to their own calling... and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible... And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”
-Fr. Thomas Merton
”The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, brother and sister, is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of languages and problems that today surround. God; but that, whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present to you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons. The contemplative has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate
your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart, and risk the sharing of that solitude withe the lonely other who who seeks God through you and with you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained: it is the intimate union in the depths of your own heart, of God’s spirit and your own secret inmost self, so that you and God are in all truth One Spirit. I love you in Christ.”
(“For Merton, God was the burning mystery of Reality. God was the Great Experience beyond all experiences.” — William H. Shannon)
- Fr. Thomas Merton
-“I think what each of us is invited to in our lives, as mature people, is to come into contact with, to discover, the mystery of God in our own hearts and the mystery of God is the mystery of the divine energy (Love/Light/Life). What each of us must learn from our own experience is that this divine energy that we can encounter within ourselves is limitless, infinite, self-communicating Love. What we must know is that God is the ground of our being. What we must know is that God is the ground of all being and once we begin to make contact with this reality, with this truth in the depths of our own heart, we led into the understanding of the most profound and yet most simple truth: we are all one in God....God is All in All....”
- Fr. John Main
”The more I become identified with God (at my center), the more will I be identified with others who are identified with Him. His Spirit will live in all of us. We shall love one another and God with the same love with which He loves us and Himself...
When we achieve our true identity and become what God really intends us to be, we will discover that we love one another perfectly and that we all form the One Mystical Person that is Christ living in us. “
- Fr. Thomas Merton
When each day is sacred
when each hour is sacred
when each instant is sacred
earth and you
space and you
bearing the sacred
through time
you'll reach
the fields of light.
- Eugene Guillevic
”Because you cleave to Me in love, I will protect you.
All through the years, I will dwell in your heart,
as Loving Companion Presence, forever,”
- “Psalms for Praying” (Psalm 91)
- Fr. John Main
”The power of meditation is its simplicity and its practicality — that we take the practical steps to set out on the way leaving the books, the talks, the lectures, the ideas behind. We learn to attend in depth, to attend profoundly, learning ‘to be’ and learning ‘to be in the presence of God’, learning from our own experience. All that is necessary for us is to be as totally as we can be in God’s presence. What we have to learn from our meditation — and in every generation this must be re-learned — is to see this light and to see everything illuminated by this light and the light is the light of Christ and, as St. Paul tells us, this light shines in our hearts.
This is the purpose of our meditation, this is the work of our meditation: to learn to see with this visionary dimension; and our work in
this life is to prepare our hearts to expand in this Light, this Light which is Life, which is Love, which is God. What we have to learn — and this is the most astonishing thing of all, is our destiny in this life is to become this Light, to lose ourselves in God, to find ourselves
in God, to become one with Him/Her.”
- Fr. John Main
”The spiritual journey is dying to the old, false self in order to transformed into our true self, communion-in- God, with Faith in God’s Living/Loving Presence in Grace and Divine Spirit of Love/Light/Life...”
”What are you really doing when you sit down in Centering Prayer and open yourself to God’s presence and action within you? You are opening to God’s presence and consenting to God’s activity. God’s activity is the work of the Holy Spirit in your particular embodiment in this world....We are pleading for the supreme gift of the Spirit simply by consenting to God’s will and action.”
- Fr. Thomas Merton
”Thus, the Centering Prayer practice is a way of life, a commitment to a new life, to be a new creation, to become the true self which is God’s idea of who we are; to let God act and bring us little by little to the integration of all reality into our understanding of God; and to see all things in God and God in all things....”
-Fr. Thomas Keating
”The regular practice of contemplative prayer initiates a healing process that might be called the”divine therapy.” The level of deep rest accessed during the prayer periods loosens up the hardpan around the emotional weeds stored in the unconscious, of which the body seems to be the warehouse. The psyche begins to evacuate spontaneously the undigested material of a lifetime, opening up new space for self-knowledge, freedom of choice, and the discovery of the divine presence within. As a consequence, a growing trust in God, a bonding with the Divine Therapist, enables us to endure the process.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
"Focusing on 'sacred breathing' (contemplative prayer in silence) brings us into the present moment...We allow our breath to convey Divine Love to our heart. Love from the Oneness of which we are a part...We allow our breathing to convey to our heart that we are a beloved child of God who is forever connected to the source of Life and Love..."
- Julie Redstone
"Interior silence is one is one of the most strengthening and affirming of human experiences. There is nothing more affirming, in fact, than the experience of God's presence. That revelation says as nothing else can, "You are a good person. I created you and I love you." Divine love brings us into being in the fullest sense of the word. It heals the negative feelings we have about ourselves...Personal sin is the refusal to respond to Christ's self-communication (grace). It is the deliberate neglect of our genuine needs and those of others."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Interior silence is the perfect seed bed for divine love to take root. In the Gospel the Lord speaks about a mustard seed as a symbol of divine love. It is the smallest of all seeds, but has an enormous capacity for growth. Divine love has the power to grow and transform us. The purpose of contemplative prayer is to facilitate the process of inner transformation... We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet expectancy; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Most of us have a heavy burden of emotional junk accumulated from early childhood. The body serves as the storehouse for this undigested emotional material. The Spirit initiates the process of healing by evacuating the junk. This takes place as a result of the deep rest of mind and body in contemplative prayer.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
"...the spiritual journey is a gradual process of enlarging our emotional, mental, and physical relationship with the divine reality that is present in us but one not ordinarily accessible to our emotions or concepts. The spiritual journey teaches us: first to believe in the Divine Indwelling within us, fully present and energizing every level of our being; secondly, to recognize that this energy is benign, healing, and transforming; and thirdly, to enjoy its gradual unfolding step-by-step both in prayer and action."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
-" Divine Love is compassionate, tender, luminnous, totally self-giving, seeking no reward, unifying everything...The inward journey to our true Self is the way to Divine Love... The growing awareness of our true Self, along with the deep sense of spiritual peace and joy which flow from this experience, balances the psychic pain of the disintegrating power of the false self. As the motivating power of the false self diminishes, our true Self builds the new self with the motivating force of Divine Love."
-Fr. Thomas Keating
"St. Paul says, "If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creature" (2Cor. 5:17). As we dismantle the false-self system, the new self arises with the awakening of the true self. That is the new creation that Paul refers to. The old creation that is passing away is the world of the false self...The means that the Spirit uses to purify our conscious and unconscious lives are called the Seven Gifts of the Spirit. Isaiah 11:2 lists these gifts as Wisdom and Understanding, Counsel and Fortitude, Knowledge and Fear of the Lord; Piety...The Holy Spirit, through the Gifts, is especially our guide in the practice of Centering Prayer and in accompanying programs to bring its effects into daily life."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The desire to go to God, to open to His presence within us, does not come from our initiative. We do not have to go anywhere to find God because He is already drawing us in every conceivable way into union with Himself. It is rather a question of opening to an action that is already happening in us.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”It is not so much what we do but what we are that allows God to live in the world. When the presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, divine life is pouring into the world.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”Happiness can be found only in the experience of union with God, the experience that also unites us to everyone else in the human family and to all reality.”
- Fr. Thomas Keating
”The Divine Light of Faith is totally available in the degree that we consent and surrender ourselves to its presence and action within us. It heals the wounds of a lifetime and brings us to transforming union, empowering us to enter Christ’s redemptive program, first by the healing of our own deep wounds, and then by sharing in the healing of others.” -Fr. Thomas Keating
"God draws people to Divine life, taking the initiative in every stage of the journey. God's love precedes all human response; it is Love that calls, purifies illumines, supports in pain, shares, transforms, and unites."
- Leanord Doohan
Disciple: "What is the difference between knowledge and enlightenment?"
Master: "When you have knowledge you use a torch to show the way. When you are enlightened, you becme a torch."
- Anthony de Mello
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness self-control,...If we live in the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit.
- Gal 5: 22-23
”Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. If your sinful nature controls your mind, there is death. But if the Holy Spirit controls your mind, there is Life and Peace (Love and Freedom).
-Rom 8: 5-6
”Then, the Peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ...”
-Phi 4: 7
””The Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Freedom. So, with unveiled faces, we all reflect the glory of the Lord, while we are transformed into God’s likeness, and experience His/Her glory, more and more by the action of the Lord, who is Spirit.”
-2Cor 3: 17-18
”May He strengthen you in His glorious might with ample power to meet whatever comes with fortitude, patience and joy to give thanks to the Father who has made you fit to share the heritage of God’s people in the realm of light.”
-Col 1: 11-12
”Christian meditation is far more than thinking or feeling about God. It is being with Him, living not just in His presence but from the resources of His presence. We are able to live His power, while being united to His power and His power is the basic energy of all creation, the power of Love. That power is a mighty river flowing in and through our hearts and in meditating what we do is to open our hearts to the pure reality of that stream of Love. Where are we when we meditate? We are in God. Where is God? He is in us.
Quite simply, this is the great conviction of the early Church, of all Christ’s disciples. The presence in our heart of the living Christ, and the supreme task of every life that would be fully human is to be open to that presence.”
- Fr. John Main
”What we must understand is that every one of us not only has this call but has this capacity to transcend the limitations that we impose on ourselves by our own egoism, to transcend the limitations we impose we ourselves by illusion, by desire ( and by unconscious societal conditioning). To enter the eternal life by opening our human consciousness to the human/divine consciousness of Christ (with-in us) is to enter now, in this life, into unlimited life, unlimited peace, unlimited joy: a peace that is a way beyond all understanding.”
- Fr. John Main
"In meditation as Christians our hearts are directed towards God's Love. Each of us has to discover and then to remember, knowing with absolute clarity and certainty, that we are infinitely lovable and infinitely loved. We must know it, not just as intellectual proposition but with experiential knowledge, in our own hearts. It is the most important knowledge there is for any of us and that is why meditation (centering/contemplative prayer) is so important."
- Fr. John Main
”We learn a little each step we take, each time we meditate, every morning and evening. More deeply we discover that to ‘be’ is not to be isolated, but to be realized in ‘communion’. The Presence of Christ is eternally present to us and we grow in our capacity to be present to Him. In that realization of mutual presence, of communion, the divine transcendence occurs and we are swept away from the netherworld of self-centeredness into the infinite energy and complete fulfillment of the reality who is Love.”
- Fr. John Main
“II (all) are faithful to their own calling... and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible... And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”
-Fr. Thomas Merton
”The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, brother and sister, is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of languages and problems that today surround. God; but that, whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present to you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons. The contemplative has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate
your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart, and risk the sharing of that solitude withe the lonely other who who seeks God through you and with you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained: it is the intimate union in the depths of your own heart, of God’s spirit and your own secret inmost self, so that you and God are in all truth One Spirit. I love you in Christ.”
(“For Merton, God was the burning mystery of Reality. God was the Great Experience beyond all experiences.” — William H. Shannon)
- Fr. Thomas Merton
-“I think what each of us is invited to in our lives, as mature people, is to come into contact with, to discover, the mystery of God in our own hearts and the mystery of God is the mystery of the divine energy (Love/Light/Life). What each of us must learn from our own experience is that this divine energy that we can encounter within ourselves is limitless, infinite, self-communicating Love. What we must know is that God is the ground of our being. What we must know is that God is the ground of all being and once we begin to make contact with this reality, with this truth in the depths of our own heart, we led into the understanding of the most profound and yet most simple truth: we are all one in God....God is All in All....”
- Fr. John Main
”The more I become identified with God (at my center), the more will I be identified with others who are identified with Him. His Spirit will live in all of us. We shall love one another and God with the same love with which He loves us and Himself...
When we achieve our true identity and become what God really intends us to be, we will discover that we love one another perfectly and that we all form the One Mystical Person that is Christ living in us. “
- Fr. Thomas Merton
When each day is sacred
when each hour is sacred
when each instant is sacred
earth and you
space and you
bearing the sacred
through time
you'll reach
the fields of light.
- Eugene Guillevic
”Because you cleave to Me in love, I will protect you.
All through the years, I will dwell in your heart,
as Loving Companion Presence, forever,”
- “Psalms for Praying” (Psalm 91)