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6Don't worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. 7Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel.
Philippians 4.6-7, CEV
St. Julian of Norwich (14th Century), English mystic and anchorite, teaches not to take our sufferings too seriously. She, indeed, advises us, "... as soon as we may, we are to pass lightly over it, and count it as nothing."
Julian gives a spiritual logic for this disattention to our pains and distresses. "Because God wills that we should understand that if we know him and love him and reverently fear him, we shall have rest and be at peace. And we shall rejoice in all that He does."
I, after over twenty years since, recall the dread of visiting a lady in a congregation I served as pastor. I faithfully visited her and patiently listened to the most constant gush of complaint I can recall enduring as a pastor. The visits were all about the miseries of her life: even though she was doing much better than many persons.
Certainly, self-immersion in the mire of self-pity leaves one repulsive to persons of love, joy, and peace. And, more, such complaining is a manipulate dispersal of self-chosen misery, as though, since we lack grace and spiritual bliss, we must smear the foulness of gripe on others and contaminate the environment with attention getting mushiness. How foul is this odor, when compared to the affective graces, given in Scripture, of love, joy, and peace! How foul this odor, when compared to the trinity of virtues--given in Scripture: faith, hope, and love! How selfish such grumpiness, when others suffer much more than us and, yet, graciously and still sharing love, joy, and peace!
Therefore, we must turn our gaze. We become like that we gaze upon: and our thoughts and words are testimonies to where our gaze rests. If we gaze upon God, we become godlike. If we gaze upon ourselves, we become selfish. Says Julian: I understand truly that our souls never find rest in things below, but when it looks through all created things to find its [True] Self, it must never remain gazing on its self, but feast on the sight of God its maker who lives within and enfolds all.
Contemplative prayer is the ultimate act--in this life--of feasting on the celestial Light, the Inner Christ, and this entails gazing away from the self to God-beyond-god: the Mystery of the Ineffable Godhead.
Meditative prayer addresses the veil of self, self revolving around itself, leading to the perpetuation of selfish attachment to self-generated and self-perceived miseries and the spreading of that selfish self-gaze among others. Meditative Prayer, wherein we are given a clear vision into the cunning selfishness of the self, exposes the selfishness of the self that hides behind what the self calls religion and spirituality, and hides behind forms of worded prayer to manipulate God through the self--rather than the self dying to the self, that the self might be taken up into loving Surrender to the Christ, who gives rest from our self, through our gazing upon the Sun of Grace, even Christ.
We can experience peace beyond understanding. We do this by turning our gaze, daily and nightly, upon the Beloved and Love of peace, the Fount of unspeakable and eternal joy. We enjoy the warmth of the Sun by turning our face to its Light cascading down upon all creation, offering Itself without reserve or prejudice, and unlimited by the frailties of human nature. The Light already shines, and looking toward and, then,into the Light, our hearts are warmed and our faces glow with a newness untouched by this world.
The sweetness of the drink and the joy-bringing beam that comes from the sun will drive away every sorrow from his soul, and will make that man to "rejoice always," (Phil. 4:4).
Saint Symeon the New Theologian (b. 942)
*Material on Saint Julian of Norwich, from Revelations of Divine Love, in B. J. Groeschel, K. Perrotta, The Journey toward God; quote of Saint Symeon, from Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses, Trans. C. J. DeCantanzaro, "The Classics of Western Spirituality."
OneLife writings are offered by Brian K. Wilcox, a United Methodist pastor serving in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. He writes in the spirit of John Wesley's focus on the priority of inner experience of the Triune God; scriptural holiness; ongoing sanctification; the goal of Christian perfection (or, wholeness). Brian seeks to integrate the best of the contemplative teachings of Christianity East and West, from the patristic Church to the present. Brian lives a vowed contemplative life with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, in North Florida. OneLife writings are for anyone seeking to live and share love, joy, and peace in the world and in devotion to God as she or he best understands God.
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