Step 4 in the Discipline of Prayer series. Not happy with tonight's, but then there's always next week. Its funny that I talk about retreats, because I am just back from the Diocesan Curates' Retreat and it felt more like just another duty expected of a low-life curate than a time of refreshement. But now that I look back, there were many moments of great inspiration, you know the way, when, in the cartoons, the light bulb goes 'bing!' Lough Derg, next, maybe...or Pluscarden Abbey...or, well, maybe the YF sponsored walk on Saturday will have to do for my pilgrimage. ;-)
‘Soul Food’
Now during those days, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God…They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
Luke 6: 12-19
This tableau of Jesus, who spends his entire night in prayer, rather than asleep, and who then is thrust into these awesome tasks of his ministry, is one of quite a stark contrast.
Jesus moves from the very solitary figure of one praying on a mountain and becomes a very public figure. He sets himself the task of choosing twelve apostles from his followers and then allows himself to be what many of us would run away from, a servant at peoples’ beck and call: They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
Is it any wonder that Jesus goes up a mountainside to pray: it is the only way he can ever be alone and to get space to breathe and to be spiritually recharged and to be in communion with God his Father, because he is so sought after as a spiritual leader and as a healing presence amongst the peoples of Judea and Jerusalem.
It is very easy to get so caught up in the affairs of the world, in our work and in our day to day lives, that we can often forget or let slip the need to feed our souls and to bathe ourselves in scripture and prayer and to allow ourselves to enter deeply into God’s presence. And even where that work is the work of God, whatever our vocation, whatever our task, we still can get thrown into a flurry of busy-ness and preoccupation to meet deadlines, to meet targets, that we become frazzled and tired. And if we are tired as people, then our relationship with God can often be drained and dry. We all need balance. If we engage in a fraught, busy or public life, then we need private rest and prayer and scriptural study. Last week, we looked briefly at the monastic discipline of praying several times a day, in order to connect and re-connect with God’s presence through the regularity and familiarity of the set forms of liturgy and how this discipline is necessary for us contemporary Christians to fashion our lives into the likeness of God.
Another, slightly more unusual way, in which the modern person can reconnect with God’s presence, involves the idea of making a retreat, or going on a pilgrimage of some sort. A retreat in the strict sense is what you make at intervals, of maybe 6 months or a year or maybe a little less, depending on your circumstances, to a place which is set aside for prayer, meditation and spiritual guidance, such as a monastery or retreat centre or house run for that purpose. You will often hear people talking of their ‘spiritual home’, where they will go occasionally to recharge the batteries.
A pilgrimage is something you might only make once or twice in your life, and it will often involve arduous physical exercise and sacrifice in order to encounter God at a deeper level. Pilgrimage will always involve outstandingly beautiful natural surroundings and often meeting people very different from oneself. Places of pilgrimage are often world-renowned, such as Taizé, Santiago de Compostella, Iona, the Holy Land, Walsingham and the like. And pilgrimage is not just confined to Christianity. Muslims are obliged to make a pilgrimage to Mecca for example at least once in their lives.
I remember when I was a divinity student at College in Dublin, seeing an advert on a bus. There was a very striking picture of the soul of a foot with clods of soil around it and behind it was very blue sky. The shot of the camera was from under the ground if you like and we were looking up as if the foot was about to step over us. The caption read very simply: Sole Food, with the obvious play on words. It was an advertisement for short 1 or 3 day retreats/pilgrimages to Lough Derg, and clearly aimed at the busy commuter on Dublin’s buses. It was a clever advert and one which seemed to bring into contemporary relevance, something which is certainly nothing trendy or new. We can see from our gospel passage this evening that the notion of withdrawal to pray and to contemplate and to meditate was central to the life and survival of our Lord. From this passage we can glean that Jesus even deprived himself of sleep in order to meditate upon God’s presence and goodness. We can assume that in his prayer, Jesus would have contemplated some of the Hebrew Scriptures in the hope of finding some resonance for his own situation.
The idea of sacred or meditative reading of the scriptures, known as Lectio Divina, is a very ancient monastic practice and discipline. In the early monasteries, only very few monks were able to read, and so lectio was the way in which the majority of them prayed. Nowadays, it is a discipline which is currently most commonly practised on pilgrimage or on retreat, but should not be limited to it. It can easily be attempted at home or somewhere were there is likelihood of some silence. It is a discipline which involves deeply concentrated mental prayer, that is to say, where we lift up our souls to God through the constant re-thinking and marinating of a short text of Holy Scripture in one’s mind. It is a discipline which needs to be learned, but the method is very simple: of reading, meditation and prayer. What we bring to lectio is our experience, ourselves, our souls and bodies as an offering to God. One of the great developers of the method of meditative reading was St Ignatius of Loyola and next week, we will examine in greater depth the process of such discipline.
But for this evening, let us return to that image of our Lord on a mountain praying all night, without sleep, before setting off to choose twelve apostles and to be thrown into the demanding work of healing, teaching and building up the Kingdom. With the daybreak, comes a sense of readiness, readiness to be in demand and to be pulled from all sorts of directions. Jesus knows the urgency of his vocation, but can only do it when he has gathered the strength. Where else do we see such a pattern? Tonight’s image from St Luke 6, prefigures the scene of prayer in Gethsemane, when our Lord spends time in gathering the courage, resolve and strength, to face the greatest task ahead.
If our Lord, needed to gather spiritual strength from making time to pray and no doubt allowing a degree of discipline to prevail, then how much more do we need to do the same and how much more of a charade does it make of our lives as His followers if we forget, omit or ignore the need to pray regularly to the One who himself intercedes to the Source of all life. Amen.
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