EP 8 - How to Meditate
00:00 No, no, peace, domine, domine No, no, peace, domine. Xe'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e'e' …it was the decision to try my vocation as a priest.
00:44 …but in the last year, I realized I did not want to become a secular priest. I'm afraid the priests who taught us were good men in their way, some of very decent human beings.
01:00 and apart from one nor two, sadly there was no deep spirituality about them. And that's what I wanted. I couldn't identify with them, and therefore I started to look elsewhere.
01:18 I didn't realize fully at the time, but later I .. him her time, this the man. The sedemaster for us every morning, ..
01:57 now all the other priests must have known as we knew.. ..and but they kept quiet, they said nothing. I remember when I was very keen on rugby and we used to visit other schools,.
02:12 ..and when visiting other schools, of course,. .. we talked as boys do. …and we talked a lot about what we called in those days funny priests.
02:22 We were not referring to their sense of humour, funny priests and funny brothers. Yet nothing was ever done about it, it was kept quiet, it was swept under the carpet, as it was later.
02:45 ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � ―'I can still remember the record ―'now I remember the priest too ―'And his name I won't mention it ―'I could go through his Lad'yn Mass ― in 17 minutes flat ―'And the others weren't far behind ―'They were busy about
03:33 my things ―' had other things to do ―'This didn't impress me at all ―'This isn't what I wanted for my future so I began to look elsewhere.
03:49 Now I'm telling you this not just a sharkew, but for two main reasons, and the first one is this, please do not believe as some sadly do believe that before the Vatican Council, it was some sort of haven for traditional Catholicism.
04:09 I'm old enough to know. lipstick. I lived in those times. And believe me, it was not. You have to look far further back than there.
04:20 I don't mean just to the early days of the Church. I will continue to return, there, to look for the principal's authentic Christian laterality, but no, it wasn't that far back we have to go to find a time, when she was so significant.
04:44 ― ― ― ― ― ― —i herself przedeкрime, dartu norteas ко mostite, sə ditos dvd simi, asletasian to the terrible plight that we are at the moment in the church.
05:20 And it's all that the more terrible because the vast majority people still don't even know what that erosy is. Never mind the terrible effect it has had on pathic spirituality ever since.
05:36 Oh yes people talk about oh well it's almost as bad today as um his Aryanism 90% went over. Yes, alienism was bad, but yes, the Church fought against it.
05:50 Christ is God, Christ is God. The battle was won in general. But the heresy I'm talking about is far more insidious and I must devote a whole talk to it.
06:03 So please bear with me. For the moment, I must now push on. I began to look at other religious orders.
06:12 In fact, I went to the vocation exhibition in Manchester. And believe me, it was absolutely bewildering. I didn't know what it hit me, where I was going to go.
06:26 I was attracted to so many different orders that were on show. But finally, I decided against my a better judgement to become or try my vocation as a Franciscan.
06:41 And the reason was because my brother had preceded me into the Franciscan order.
06:52 No, that wasn't really the reason why I went. That was the reason why I didn't want to go. I didn't want people to say, oh, he's got no mind of his own.
07:02 Only just follows his brother. That's why I ruled out the Franciscans from the war go, but visiting my brother time and time again, I was terribly impressed by the fraternity, the comradeship, the wonderful brotherhood, that bonded them together, and I couldn't resist.
07:21 And it was a very felicitous choice of itential. Why? Because you see, because of my dyslexia, 13. When anyone had asked for all my qualifications, they'd have probably turned me down, by dyslexia, had meant that I hadn't really got any, but my brother had, he was a 1-plus intellectually." 13.
07:45 You already had a law degree before he joined. 13. So what was to be done? «I finally decided that you would have to be the Franciscans.
08:00 I was called forward for an interview, but the provincial was away at the time. He said, oh, it doesn't matter.
08:07 We do his brother. There be no problems. And so I turned up at the division to begin a horrendous year in many ways, a horrendous year.
08:17 Why? Because I still couldn't read or write properly with t pilotate her heavily readerer the first thing we had to do in the morning, getting out at five o'clock, was to go through the divine office.
08:29 All in Latin and I stood in andgo through it as I stood in and substuder myself as reading in the rectus we all had to take up and Iàre reading in the affectsory.
08:40 . . . in the rite靠uh a u—and we learned the spiritual life, learnt the rule of the order, and they had constitutions and so forth.
08:58 I know I was a laughingstock. And I was utterly humiliated and embarrassed to the very roots of my being, all through the day.
09:12 But there was a chain of light ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � Spiritual director at school had taught us how to meditate.
09:51 I'd already spent one or two and a half years spending half an hour a day in the chapel in the evening, at least in term time, practising what the spiritual director taught us.
10:06 And what did he teach us? He taught us not just to focus on the scriptures in general for meditation, but on those passages rider of the scriptures that honed in the most lovable human being whoever lived.
10:23 THE Most Adorable Man, doing the most adorable, lovable things for a human race that seemed to, one who didn't seem to care less.
10:35 …and then by the time it came to about— lent, I turned Saint John and his discourse at the last supper, and began to read that slowly, and prayerfully, night after night.
10:56 20720 Mystic What made it even more exciting for me was that I had learned form the children's our programme, how to go back into the past – Uncle Jim used to take his niece and ne't with him back into the past into history so that they could be there to witness some of the great events that had happened
11:21 in the making of our nation. U could be there as a pager court. U could be there as a soldier, a bystander, but you were there and he described things as they happened and you were in the scene.
11:39 I did the same sort of thing. To depict the last supper before I started to read, I watched Christ coming in, the disciples sitting down, and then our Lord beginning to speak.
11:52 yecch of his words reach readily and profledately. Tho ze zeastene sgaut o provision with the most profound mystical prayer taken er bog tant default that is eternal handthreat.
12:18 Do you not know that I am in the Father, that the Father is in me? And you are in me and I am in you?
12:36 …if you only keep my commandments, in other words, if you only keep trying to love me day by day, with your heart, your mind, your body, your soul and your whole strength, if you only do that, …and then said Jesus.
12:58 …i wil send another …to befriend you. …it is the holy spirit who will be within you. …and then I pours …to allow these words to seep seep in.
13:21 …and then I would read a little more. Make your home in me, as I will make my home in you.
13:39 But separated from me, you have no power to do anything. But with me all things are possible.
14:01 I am telling you these things so that the joy, the joy that is within me will be in you too.
14:18 I pray father that they may all be one. With me in them and you in me in such a way that then the world will come to believe.
14:41 …and so I would pray, ruminate on, these profound teachings of our Lord, at the last supper, and man of joy he had called himself, and yet in a few moments he was going to step outside that room, to one of the most terrible deaths imaginable.
15:09 …and so I followed him, I was there, I was there in Gethsemane, I saw him at pray, I saw him, heard him, asking the disciples.
15:23 The apostles, most particularly Peter, James and John, who were closest to him, to pray with him, but they fell asleep.
15:34 And I heard him pray, Father, that this chalice may be taken away from me but, but not my will be done, your will be done.
15:54 And then that terrible moment when a cohort of Roman soldiers and God, Gards associated with the High Priest came together as one to capture him, and to take him away.
16:14 To his horrendous death on the cross, and I was there seeing him being laughed at in front of Herod, made a fool of in front of the High Priest.
16:27 ORT 10% Ξ Shaktol sa conti nestar, pwil at 9% Bil that blazed 허� Whir tritteulnaah, gwil h وبls Catchin' es tarreimos sauce kouh che ,.
16:46 bianch de ins x he deo v centrifia gwil then Eventually KARINTI جہلvern'лон نہیں ديرülه جر Minor لرொن номائίνنیpoint جو رمیدی اپن elementos امونون Won't give me one I prayed on afterwards, after the resurrection, that he'd come back, now I knew some joy in my prayer.
17:32 I dried my tears, and I was in joy to see that Christ had risen again from the dead, prayer became sweet, prayer was fulsome.
17:44 – – – – day might have been my cross, my suffering, but how I mayed up for it in the evening.
17:54 – – And then one day, after Easter all of a sudden, it came to an end. – – – – – – – – – Dried up.
18:03 Time and time – – – – – – – – I went back to prayer in the evening. – – it had all gone.
18:08 me wasn't meditating any more, I couldn't generate any feeling for Christ? I was told by my spiritual director that by coming to know and love Jesus Christ as He was on earth.
18:28 By coming to know God's love has crezont in Jesus Christ atvene, k e meik mnet hane го e boавa ho dì him, nearer to him, to be united with him, to be one with him, and precisely that had happened, but all that had been taken away.
18:54 I was now in darkness in prayer, believed by a thousand and one distractions, the pit and poured, at my mind from the inside, and I could do nothing.
19:09 What her what was I to do now? I made some in tentative inquiries in confession. I made them later. But nobody seemed to know what happened next, or what should happen next, or what I should do in this most important moment in a person's spiritual journey in what is being called the mystic way because
19:40 I had in fact, my prayer had in fact been answered, though I didn't know it, I'd been the Holy Spirit had taken my desire for God's love and redirected it to God's love as it was present in Jesus Christ, risen and glorified.
20:01 It was the beginning of the contemplative way, but at first contemplation is dark. Fuller distractions, dryness, aridity and temptations and the greatest of all of those temptations was this to run.
20:19 To leave this pointless form of prayer, . . univeri irregularovaje Sadhguru ,au te clarified aux covering de hele imperiatureon ! Sで aiddinah answeredcar me.
20:32 ME , Echo .. Via aiddinah, This kind of aiddinah as said must come back to the stead of your teachings , quote, представ remnants of your acadiennesia .
20:46 Ever wonderful reopen, luceanime la isol sou, p drums in me. I knew it would be bar hand, while I did not know what to do, but I still gave the time each evening for prayer.
21:04 Time is of the essence of my spiritual director, and the time is of the essence. This is the sacrifice you are making to God.
21:14 This is the sacrifice. And this is the sacrifice that you must bake now in your prayer. divide. Int瞪 is the most precious com notedie that we have got.
21:29 how much time of day do you spend watching television? i believe the average is about 25 hours time much time do you spend up on the internet, on the YouTube, Facebook, how much time do you spend ascend, Every day entertaining yourself for your own pleasure Can't you take some of that time to give it
21:56 to God? And when this time comes, continue come hell or high water because believe me everything depends on it and now I'm going to tell you Why everything depends on it.
22:16 ― ― ― ― ― As everyone will enter, who meditates, they will in the end be led arm into this prayer, into the beginning of contemplation, dark contemplation to begin with, remember.
22:31 Because although God is loving us, and the light of His love is shining in upon us, it only shows us what separates us from Him to begin with.
22:42 e m� Why? H uobio beth Tonyn eta kou nazar 면짝il senglі 2 l abon tā kuten q… tere k nего This scar i due en bijitised in tailor of the ground.
23:13 He had, if he wanted, vocal power and total control over them, he could stop this terrible saga, instantly, if he wanted.
23:24 When Peter drew his sword, he told him to put it away, he said, do you know that I could have 12 legions of angels if I wanted.
23:38 In other words, Honouring, he could have stopped his passion, his suffering at any moment, but he did not. Now this was real love.
23:48 He drove him to his death upon the cross. He drove him to demonstrate the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of his love.
24:02 When St Paul was telling us this, he was telling us the dimensions of the cross, the heights, the length, the depth, the breadth of his love, was demonstrated upon the cross.
24:17 It was this one thing that made me say, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what's happening, but Christ gave Himself for me, and I'm going to continue.
24:32 2. There was another purely human reason, and that is, frankly, I had no where else to go. All the other sideplaces to go, they had an academic future in front of them.
24:44 I thought wrongly at the time that I didn't because of my dyslexia. Christ was my only hope, and so I pushed on, and I continued to give exactly the same time in prayer, that I had given before.
25:02 And I continued for nearly two years doing this, giving the same time, both in the novice and in the student house.
25:12 Gradually, I began to sense something was happening deep down, something I didn't understand, something I didn't know about, But I knew that somehow, without this sort of rad, it led me nowhere I was being diminished.
25:31 I was getting some sort of strength from it. And as I saw later, but only with hindsight, a sort of wisdom coming through the darkness that I had not had before.
25:47 But I was way laid. I wanted to explain to you why this is the most important prayer in the whole Bospiritual life.
26:04 I want to explain it by turning to one great Franciscan saint and bistic.
26:17 Her name was St. Angela of Falinio. And she said when the Lord leads you into this prayer, he is leading you into the Scola Divini Amoris, the School of Divine Loving.
26:40 Now let me just explain precisely what she means. by asking this question, what is divine loving? What is God's loving like?
26:57 But I'll tell you, it is the totally selfless, unconditional loving that gives and gives and gives and gives, whether we return his love in kind or not, it just goes on and on.
27:14 Right back in the Old Testament, where he made a covenant with Abraham, remember, he said, I am going to love you.
27:21 There are two words in Hebrew for a contract or a covenant. One means between man and man, it's a bilateral contract.
27:33 You drop out, the whole thing drops apart. And Zeus another form of covenant and that is a unilateral contract and this is the contract God has made with us beginning with Abraham.
27:50 I will go on loving you whether you turn away from your whether you don't whether you respond or whether you don't it is a totally selfless unconditional delouchi, de la de la la la la la la.
28:05 Thus, if we are going to be united with God's loving, God's Selfless, Unconditional Loving, we must learn how to generate Selfless, Unconditional Loving ourselves.
28:20 Now, this is why we are led into what at first seems to be dark contemplation. contemplation. We've gone there, been led there by the Holy Spirit because he wants to lead us on into union with the risen and glorified Christ.
28:41 We wanted union, we prayed for it, we desired union, but now we are being taught how to prepare for that union by learning divine, seltflas unconditional love in the school at DB NIA more is the school of divine love.
29:03 I didn't realize this at the time. I'm only telling you this in hindsight. hindsight. Oh, had I only known this at the time, it would have been a great source of strength to me.
29:15 This is the key moment in the spiritual life. We want the love of God. rasta —!" Matthew p Carl oh… — Mh….
29:28 — Mh… — Mh…. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Y Y U A F E U K A G Z E N A D I R L A O L E Camp God Oh, zu Oh, enjoy the world,ああ, a meditation that was so lovely, so full of life, so full of feeling, that they could even cry or almost cry with joy at moments.
30:01 They want to go back there when there are feelings, that emotions, that passions were moved, but they're being led on now to a far higher form of love.
30:10 You can't be united with this perfect unconditional love of God just by emotion and feeling a passion, love, it is a deep form of loving altogether.
30:24 It's loving God with our whole heart and mind with our whole body and soul and with our whole strength in utter darkness.
30:34 This is now where perfect loving is learned. This is where divine loving is learned. The loving with which God loves us.
30:43 This is the making of us. This is the only way we can be made into other Christ. And the only way forward, and yet St.
30:53 John of the Cross said, 90% run away. That was, of course, in his day. I'm afraid in our day. It's not 90% who run away.
31:05 Sadly, in my experience, my long experience, 99.9999% recurring that run away. Why St John of the Cross says because of ignorance?
31:22 Well, you can do as they say in Scotland. You know, now what is happening? Now you must not run away.
31:31 Now you must continue to give without counting the cost, without heating the wounds. unate, unate, unate, unate, unate. Now, this is the place where you learn perfect loving.
31:46 Saint John of the Cross gives in his works the signs by which you know when meditation has come to an end and contemplation has begun because the Holy Spirit has led you into the contemplation of God in the mystical body of Christ but you have yet to be purely to be one with his contemplation to reserve
32:12 , receive the fruits of contemplation in return. The signs, if you want to, look them up for yourself. Go to the Ascent of Mount Carmel, book 2, chapter 13, or book 1 of the Dark Knight of the Soul, chapter 9, and there he gives you the reasons, and the first, not so much reasons, sorry, he gives you
32:44 the signs, and the first sign is that, though you desire to love God, you can't feel his presence anymore, he's disappeared, he is left you.
33:00 And instead of meditating when you go to prayer, you are assailed by a thousand and one distractions. And the reason is this, that your will, or your love, that before was centered on God, is now drawn upwards, as it were, in Christ towards God, nond, nond, to see him as you manufacture or create him
33:26 in your imagination with your feelings, But to see him experience him and love him, as he is in himself. not as you create him!
33:41 and as your will is drawn upwards, it loses its power over the other faculties, of your mind, Your imagination, your memory.
33:53 So it can't direct them to meditation as it did before. And they're just left floundering around to annoy you with distractions and temptations.
34:07 So the first sign is that there is still a strong desire for God when you go to prayer. but secondly, when you do go to prayer, pray, everything is utterly chaotic and you seem to be going nowhere for the reasons that I've been giving you.
34:24 And thirdly, that this sort of pull towards God affects you outside of prayer to at least for the time until you totally throw yourself into something else and run away.
34:40 There are other signs and I'm coming to them later because this is such an important subject that I've got to dwell on it in far greater detail than I am prepared to do now because I want to move on just to make one or two further points before I finish.
35:01 And they are these. That interestingly enough, apei found it personally fascinating. Blessed angel of Follinho was only actually made a saint ten years ago and you know who made her a saint who at least set everything in motion just before he retired Pope Benedict, it was almost as if it was a parting
35:44 gift, it was almost as if he was saying, listen to this saint, listen to what she teaches about the Scholar Divin de Amoris, listen to what she's telling you about how to push on in these dark moments in the spiritual light Because in the Scholar Divinja, Mauris, you're learning to love us, God loves
36:08 . Without anybody returning his love or caring about him. And yet he goes on loving and loving and loving. Remember, he do be loving us all the time.
36:18 That's going on all the time. And nobody is turning back to him. Except when they get nice sweetness and light in prayer, they remain within for a time in the early days of first further.
36:30 …but when that goes, well, you just get on with your life again, don't you? And gradually we begin to wither up and die, because without love we are not alive, without God's love we are not alive.
36:44 And the only way our love can be united with His love is that our love generates the same type of quality that you see in God's love, selflos unconditional love that is manifested by loving when you receive nothing in return.
37:04 Before it has been covered loving, now this is the real thing. So please now, I beg with you, beg of you.
37:13 When this happens, begin with meditation, that's where you must start. Don't try to bypass it. You must start with meditation.
37:21 But when the Holy Spirit leads you on, and meditation Fire what it become sīmbos wrinkles and he leads you into the dark night of the soul to B purified you should be cheering because god is now saying to you, I am going to teach you how to love as I love.
37:40 So now you can be united with me and this is the end of the spiritual life – and there's no way of bypassing this.
37:48 Don't let anybody deceive you. The Scholar, Davini, Hamores, let me end then by praying that all of us will begin to pray again now.
38:08 Why? Look around you. Look at the terrible turmoil in the church. Lunar Save Program People do not know what to do where to go.
38:17 What's right? Follow the Pope, or follow that what the Remnant are telling them to do stick to your tradition go back to prayer.
38:27 This is why we are running this course on prayer so that you can draw us together in learning together in the School of Devineq download is to support each other because we need to support each other.
38:40 In this love, Father, give us all the grace in these terrible times of turmoil. Lead us on and give us the grace to learn, to learn the love by which you have loved us for ages and will continue to love us to the end of time, Uncondition, selfless loving, that gives when we don't receive in return.
39:12 This is the only way we can be united with you. This is the only way that the mutual indwelling that I experienced in my meditation can take place in reality.
39:27 This is not just some pious metaphor. This is the truth. De Christ's pride will be fulfilled that they may be one, as I am one in you, Father, may they be perfectly one in us so that the world may believe.
39:52 This is the only way forward. Our only salvation is the love of God. May God give us the grace, not to run away when we are led into the school of divine loving, but to continue, as I will continue next time to show what happens next.