Dear Friends,

In the hope of continuing with the theme of the necessity of corelating our prayer life to the whole of our lives and prioritizing them appropriately, allow me to share the sage advice of the former head of the Anglican Church. Fourteen years ago, Dr. Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England (Anglican), was invited by Pope Benedict XVI to address the 2012 Synod of Bishops in Rome on evangelization. Williams, an accomplished theologian and man of prayer, focused his address on moving beyond “programs” that distract our attention and endlessly drain our resources toward the necessity and importance of beginning, sustaining, and directing all “works” of evangelization with contemplative prayer.

To be fully human is to be recreated in the image of Christ’s humanity; and that humanity is the perfect human “translation” of the relationship of the eternal Son to the eternal Father, a relationship of loving and adoring self-giving, a pouring out of life towards the Other. Thus, the humanity we are growing into in the Spirit, the humanity that we seek to share with the world as the fruit of Christ’s redeeming work, is a contemplative humanity. … We could say that we begin to understand contemplation when we see God as the first contemplative, the eternal paradigm of that selfless attention to the Other, that brings not death but life to the self. All contemplating of God presupposes God’s own absorbed and joyful knowing of … and gazing upon God’s Self in the Trinitarian life.

To be contemplative as Christ is contemplative is to be open to all the fullness that the Father wishes to pour into our hearts. With our minds made still and ready to receive, we are at last at the point where we may begin to grow. And the face we need to show to our world is the face of a humanity in endless growth towards love, a humanity so delighted and engaged by the glory of what we look towards that we are prepared to embark on a journey without end to find our way more deeply into it, into the heart of the Trinitarian life. St. Paul speaks of how “with our unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18), we are transfigured with a greater and greater radiance. That is the face we seek to show to our fellow human beings.

And we seek this not because we are in search of some private “religious experience” that will make us feel secure or holy. We seek it because in this self-forgetting gazing towards the light of God in Christ we learn how to look at one another and at the whole of God’s creation. In the early Church, there was a clear understanding that we needed to advance from the selfunderstanding or self-contemplation that taught us to discipline our greedy instincts and cravings to the “natural contemplation” that perceived and venerated the wisdom of God in the order of the world and allowed us to see created reality for what it truly was in the sight of God—rather than what it was in terms of how we might use it or dominate it. And from there, grace would lead us forward into true “theology,” the silent gazing upon God that is the goal of all our discipleship.

His words remind us that if we are to be effective Christians in this noisy and busy world, we need to pause in silence occasionally to re-boot and re-focus on what really matters. We need to delve into the depths of who “I” truly am … not “what” I do … “what” I say … “how” I am perceived … but “who” I am and ultimately, “Whose” I am. St. Francis of Assisi once said: “Keep a clear eye towards life’s end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God’s creatures. WHAT YOU ARE IN HIS SIGHT IS WHAT YOU ARE—AND NOTHING MORE. Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received … but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.” The Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel is not discouraged nor dissuaded by Jesus’ challenging, if not offensive, words. She knows to Whom she is speaking; she knows who she is; she knows the social context in which she exists; however, she will not accept the limitations that others, society, or even her own doubt and sinfulness have imposed on her to stop her from approaching Jesus in faith and asking of Him what she believes He can already do. Let us pray for such wholehearted faith.

Be of good cheer and have a safe and restful week!

Msgr. Grous