Catholic Contemplative Affiliation

Contemplative Notes

Centering Prayer and Eucharistic Adoration: Is There a Conflict? Methods of Prayer There are several methods of prayer in the Catholic mystical tradition that prepare us for the gift of contemplative prayer. One is the prayer of simplicity, sometimes called the prayer of the heart. Recently, this type of prayer has been specifically promoted as centering prayer. In this method one prays with the simple intention of being open to the divine presence and open to the internal work of God by returning to a sacred word when one becomes aware of thoughts that are demanding attention. This word, sometimes called the love-word or the sacred word, echoes the simple intention of being there in the presence and accepting the divine work within. When one becomes aware of thoughts and images, the person in that prayer method simply and gently returns to the presence by repeating silently the word in the heart. In centering prayer, the eyes are kept closed and the body posture is comfortably attentive, usually sitting in a chair. Another method of prayer is to come into the presence of the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle or exposed in the monstrance. One remains before the Sacrament in an attitude of love, adoration and reparation, and sometimes with special intentions. Recently a retreat director spoke to me about an apparent conflict between these two methods of prayer. A Charles de Foucauld fraternity had begun to practice centering prayer after taking an introductory workshop. The de Foucauld fraternities practice adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The retreat director questioned me about this apparent conflict between the two practices because I teach an introductory class in centering prayer and I also practice centering prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. I stated that I experience no conflict between these two traditions of prayer. The question occasioned the following reflections. The Divine Presence What is quiet, interior and simple prayer of the heart but answering the call of God inviting us to enter into the divine presence by directing our mind and heart exclusively to God. The action of sanctifying grace opens us up into the divine presence. Invitation and grace signify gift. Prayer then becomes the concentrated moments dedicated to responding to the invitation and the gift. In prayer the Christian cooperates internally with the movement into God, by grace, sharing in the Trinitarian life of love. In prayer nothing else is intentionally held in consciousness. Memory, understanding and will are all directed into being in the divine presence, participating in the light and love of God. We pray only because God has called us; God has invited us to pray. The act of prayer is our response of love to Trinitarian intimacy: in the Holy Spirit with Jesus the Son into the Father. Deep interior prayer moves us into the perichoresis, the circuminsession that is the divine life of the Trinity. Prayer, in its deepest simplicity, is to be centered in the Divine Presence. We enter into the presence through our faculties of consciousness participating in the divine life through the infused virtues of faith, hope and love. Progress in this unitive state is our deepening perceived awareness of the increasing immediacy of the divine presence. In The Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism, Vol. I, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (Crossroad, New York, 1992), the author, Bernard McGinn, defines mysticism: “I have come to find the term “presence” a more central and useful category for grasping the unifying note in the varieties of Christian mysticism. Thus we can say that the mystical element in Christianity is that part of its belief and practices that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the reaction to what can be described as the immediate or direct presence of God” (p. xvii). Divine Presence in Revelation Let us look at the fundamental concept of divine Presence as outlined in Sacred Scripture. Revelation in Scripture and in the Living Tradition of the Church tells us what God is; that He is coming to us; and, how we come to Him. God is presence. God is the absolute and completely absorbing other, an Infinite “Thou” to a created “I.” (The English word “presence” comes from the Latin “praeesse” which in turn is composed of the two Latin words, “prae” which means before and “esse” which means to be. It situates the One before me; it also has a time significance: it is now; it is happening now!) God is present to creation; God dwells with Adam and Eve. God is present to the Israelites in their exodus, dwelling with them in a tent. God dwells in his glory in the Temple at Jerusalem. The psalms sing of the joy of dwelling in the house of the Lord; the psalms moan of being away from the presence and a desire to be in the house of God to have God’s face shine on his people. God and His people, face to face, in presence. Jesus is the Word who pitches his tent among us; the Word is made flesh so to be present to us. “What do you seek?” “Lord, where do you abide?” “Come and see” (John 1. 38-39). The Holy Spirit is the promise and guarantee that the Trinity abides with us and lives in us. “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive… you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you” (John 14. 16-17). The Eucharist is the sacrament of abiding presence, of the New Testament sacrifice and of nourishment. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6. 56). Our Christian Life Is Abiding in the Three-Fold Presence The mystery of the Church is the assembly of those whose faces are illumined with God’s glory reflected upon the face of Christ. Presence is face to face. All Christian service to others is the presence of Christ abiding with the human family, especially the little ones and those suffering and in want. Basically the journey of righteousness in Christ’s grace is to experience the immediacy of God’s presence in being made a new creature in the image and likeness of Christ. The great paradigm of Christian prayer and transformation is Isaiah 6 wherein the divine Presence invokes the thrice repeated refrain of Holy, Holy, Holy and the presence burns the servant into being the purified friend of God who dwells spiritually in the temple of presence. In summary, we can discern the divine presence in a three-fold manner: the divine presence in the soul, in the mystery of the Church, and in the bosom of the Father within the Trinity, Although we make this distinction among three ways of God’s abiding with us, yet the three merge, one into the other so that they are really and always the one divine presence. The Divine Presence in the Soul The baptized soul in grace knows the interior presence of the Holy Spirit. “Neither here nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father” (John 4. 21-24). “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…” (Romans 8. 15-16). Prayer begins and progresses radically and primarily in this interior immediacy. What is called centering prayer and all interior, simple prayer, is the surrender to the presence within. One centers into the Spirit who lives within. With the Spirit dwell the Father and the Son. Thus one says it is centering prayer because one intentionally dwells within the center of the soul, within the deepest levels of consciousness in grace. We say, “intentionally,” because the whole point of the prayer is the intention to be there in the already given presence and action of God in the Spirit. The Divine Presence within the Mystery of the Church Secondly, Christ dwells within the visible Church, his mystical body. Union with God in Christ is not a matter of my soul vis-à-vis God alone. We touch the presence only within the whole of the fullness of Christ made visible in Church, in sacrament and word, in teaching and ministerial order, all in the love poured out into the Church by the Spirit. The Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of this corporate union that is the Church. To participate in the Holy Eucharist by receiving Holy Communion brings us to the very apex of divine union. We have Christ really, entirely; and Christ is sacramentally active in sanctifying and nourishing us with the divine life. In adoration of the Eucharist we come back to the Eucharistic Presence that abides in the species of bread to contemplate again the real, true, substantial presence of the fullness of Christ. We come there because he said, “I AM the Bread of life.” A special presence emanates from the sacramental sign whose substance is the body, blood, divinity of whole glorified Christ. The Divine Presence in Heaven—In the Bosom of the Father The third mode of presence is that in which the Holy Trinity is present, each Person to the Other within the divine unity. This presence is the very holiness of God, the Eternal Mystery of Trinity and Unity. By grace now we dwell within that unity; it is more true to say that we are in God than God in us. This is the presence that is heaven. Christ Jesus as the Son of Man is now seated in the state of being in the glory of the Godhead. By grace we are seated within him. “God … made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved,) and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2. 4-6). To summarize then: The law of the Spirit of life within me makes me dwell within the fullness of Christ in the Sacramental Church, the mystical Body which seats me with Christ now in the glory of the Father with the Holy Spirit in the unity of the Church being drawn into glory that will be fully realized on the last day. Centering Prayer and Eucharistic Adoration Serve One Another Centering prayer emphasizes that starting point of interior union within the soul in grace. Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament witnesses the corporate mystery of our being in the fullness of Christ’s redemptive power. And more, the real, true, substantial presence of Christ in the Sacrament is present to the faithful person who is one in prayer and adoration with the whole Church. But ultimately, all become one in the eternal embrace of the Trinity, in bosom of the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit Centering prayer is fundamental because it is the simplification and purification of all my interior faculties in the action of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Eucharistic adoration is an enhancement of the faith, hope and love that center me in the redeeming Christ and the giver of the Holy Spirit. Access to Eucharistic adoration is not always possible. Centering prayer is always available if we can but just interiorly direct ourselves into the silence of the indwelling Holy Trinity. Silent prayer of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament carries with it an actualization of our being a member of the mystical body of the Church, of the fullness of the Church within the visible unity of the Catholic Church. Fundamentally, where the Eucharistic species are present, there is a mystical Presence of Christ that is unique to that place. Simply to be there demands adoration and love toward the One who is Son of the Father, truly present. It can be the pathway into the deeper Presence of God in Himself. Although not always articulated specifically and continually in prayer, adoration carries with it all the intentions of the Church for the spreading of the Gospel, for reparation and thanksgiving, of corporate witness to the Sacred Heart of the Savior always making intercession for us within the divine liturgy of that ultimate presence of heaven. In the practice of centering prayer, it is suggested that in place of the sacred word, one could use a glance that focuses us into God; a glance then toward the Sacred Host of the Eucharist is a renewal of the love intention to be within the Presence, face to face to God and God to us. Conclusion In the Holy Spirit by grace and the sacraments I am one with Jesus the Son of the Father in the bosom of the Father. This is presence that emanates from the Spirit’s presence within the depths of my soul and spirit. “If any one thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’” John 7.37-38. I am only in Christ fully when I am one with him in the visible Church, a member of his mystical body. The Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of this incorporation in Christ. The Sacrament of the altar is the continued Presence of Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity. To be consciously present to the Sacramental Presence is itself a prayer of divine union adoring the Sacrament that is the source of grace and the summit of union in love. Centering prayer and Eucharistic Adoration enfold in one another as the Spirit leads the believing soul into deeper union, purification and transformation. Yet all this leads to the final consummation: “The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.” (John 217.22-23). We are already in the Father’s house even as we journey to the Father’s house.
For questions, comments or other communication, please contact: William Fredrickson Fredrickson46@msn.com

Centering Prayer and Eucharistic Adoration:
Is There a Conflict?

Methods of Prayer

There are several methods of prayer in the Catholic mystical tradition that prepare us for the gift of contemplative prayer. One is the prayer of simplicity, sometimes called the prayer of the heart. Recently, this type of prayer has been specifically promoted as centering prayer. In this method one prays with the simple intention of being open to the divine presence and open to the internal work of God by returning to a sacred word when one becomes aware of thoughts that are demanding attention. This word, sometimes called the love-word or the sacred word, echoes the simple intention of being there in the presence and accepting the divine work within. When one becomes aware of thoughts and images, the person in that prayer method simply and gently returns to the presence by repeating silently the word in the heart. In centering prayer, the eyes are kept closed and the body posture is comfortably attentive, usually sitting in a chair.

Another method of prayer is to come into the presence of the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle or exposed in the monstrance. One remains before the Sacrament in an attitude of love, adoration and reparation, and sometimes with special intentions.

Recently a retreat director spoke to me about an apparent conflict between these two methods of prayer. A Charles de Foucauld fraternity had begun to practice centering prayer after taking an introductory workshop. The de Foucauld fraternities practice adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.   The retreat director questioned me about this apparent conflict between the two practices because I teach an introductory class in centering prayer and I also practice centering prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. I stated that I experience no conflict between these two traditions of prayer. The question occasioned the following reflections.

The Divine Presence
What is quiet, interior and simple prayer of the heart but answering the call of God inviting us to enter into the divine presence by directing our mind and heart exclusively to God. The action of sanctifying grace opens us up into the divine presence. Invitation and grace signify gift. Prayer then becomes the concentrated moments dedicated to responding to the invitation and the gift. In prayer the Christian cooperates internally with the movement into God, by grace, sharing in the Trinitarian life of love. In prayer nothing else is intentionally held in consciousness.   Memory, understanding and will are all directed into being in the divine presence, participating in the light and love of God. We pray only because God has called us; God has invited us to pray. The act of prayer is our response of love to Trinitarian intimacy: in the Holy Spirit with Jesus the Son into the Father. Deep interior prayer moves us into the perichoresis, the circuminsession that is the divine life of the Trinity.

Prayer, in its deepest simplicity, is to be centered in the Divine Presence. We enter into the presence through our faculties of consciousness participating in the divine life through the infused virtues of faith, hope and love. Progress in this unitive state is our deepening perceived awareness of the increasing immediacy of the divine presence.

In The Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism, Vol. I, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (Crossroad, New York, 1992), the author, Bernard McGinn, defines mysticism: “I have come to find the term “presence” a more central and useful category for grasping the unifying note in the varieties of Christian mysticism. Thus we can say that the mystical element in Christianity is that part of its belief and practices that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the reaction to what can be described as the immediate or direct presence of God” (p. xvii).

Divine Presence in Revelation
Let us look at the fundamental concept of divine Presence as outlined in Sacred Scripture. Revelation in Scripture and in the Living Tradition of the Church tells us what God is; that He is coming to us; and, how we come to Him. God is presence. God is the absolute and completely absorbing other, an Infinite “Thou” to a created “I.” (The English word “presence” comes from the Latin “praeesse” which in turn is composed of the two Latin words, “prae” which means before and “esse” which means to be. It situates the One before me; it also has a time significance: it is now; it is happening now!)
God is present to creation; God dwells with Adam and Eve. God is present to the Israelites in their exodus, dwelling with them in a tent. God dwells in his glory in the Temple at Jerusalem. The psalms sing of the joy of dwelling in the house of the Lord; the psalms moan of being away from the presence and a desire to be in the house of God to have God’s face shine on his people. God and His people, face to face, in presence.
Jesus is the Word who pitches his tent among us; the Word is made flesh so to be present to us. “What do you seek?” “Lord, where do you abide?” “Come and see” (John 1. 38-39). The Holy Spirit is the promise and guarantee that the Trinity abides with us and lives in us. “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive… you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you” (John 14. 16-17).
The Eucharist is the sacrament of abiding presence, of the New Testament sacrifice and of nourishment. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6. 56).
Our Christian Life Is Abiding in the Three-Fold Presence
The mystery of the Church is the assembly of those whose faces are illumined with God’s glory reflected upon the face of Christ. Presence is face to face. All Christian service to others is the presence of Christ abiding with the human family, especially the little ones and those suffering and in want.
Basically the journey of righteousness in Christ’s grace is to experience the immediacy of God’s presence in being made a new creature in the image and likeness of Christ. The great paradigm of Christian prayer and transformation is Isaiah 6 wherein the divine Presence invokes the thrice repeated refrain of Holy, Holy, Holy and the presence burns the servant into being the purified friend of God who dwells spiritually in the temple of presence.
In summary, we can discern the divine presence in a three-fold manner: the divine presence in the soul, in the mystery of the Church, and in the bosom of the Father within the Trinity,   Although we make this distinction among three ways of God’s abiding with us, yet the three merge, one into the other so that they are really and always the one divine presence.
The Divine Presence in the Soul
The baptized soul in grace knows the interior presence of the Holy Spirit. “Neither here nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father” (John 4. 21-24). “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…” (Romans 8. 15-16). Prayer begins and progresses radically and primarily in this interior immediacy.
          What is called centering prayer and all interior, simple prayer, is the surrender to the presence within. One centers into the Spirit who lives within. With the Spirit dwell the Father and the Son. Thus one says it is centering prayer because one intentionally dwells within the center of the soul, within the deepest levels of consciousness in grace. We say, “intentionally,” because the whole point of the prayer is the intention to be there in the already given presence and action of God in the Spirit.
The Divine Presence within the Mystery of the Church
Secondly, Christ dwells within the visible Church, his mystical body. Union with God in Christ is not a matter of my soul vis-à-vis God alone. We touch the presence only within the whole of the fullness of Christ made visible in Church, in sacrament and word, in teaching and ministerial order, all in the love poured out into the Church by the Spirit.
The Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of this corporate union that is the Church. To participate in the Holy Eucharist by receiving Holy Communion brings us to the very apex of divine union. We have Christ really, entirely; and Christ is sacramentally active in sanctifying and nourishing us with the divine life.
In adoration of the Eucharist we come back to the Eucharistic Presence that abides in the species of bread to contemplate again the real, true, substantial presence of the fullness of Christ. We come there because he said, “I AM the Bread of life.” A special presence emanates from the sacramental sign whose substance is the body, blood, divinity of whole glorified Christ.

The Divine Presence in Heaven—In the Bosom of the Father
          The third mode of presence is that in which the Holy Trinity is present, each Person to the Other within the divine unity. This presence is the very holiness of God, the Eternal Mystery of Trinity and Unity. By grace now we dwell within that unity; it is more true to say that we are in God than God in us. This is the presence that is heaven. Christ Jesus as the Son of Man is now seated in the state of being in the glory of the Godhead. By grace we are seated within him. “God … made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved,) and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2. 4-6).
To summarize then: The law of the Spirit of life within me makes me dwell within the fullness of Christ in the Sacramental Church, the mystical Body which seats me with Christ now in the glory of the Father with the Holy Spirit in the unity of the Church being drawn into glory that will be fully realized on the last day.

Centering Prayer and Eucharistic Adoration Serve One Another
Centering prayer emphasizes that starting point of interior union within the soul in grace. Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament witnesses the corporate mystery of our being in the fullness of Christ’s redemptive power. And more, the real, true, substantial presence of Christ in the Sacrament is present to the faithful person who is one in prayer and adoration with the whole Church. But ultimately, all become one in the eternal embrace of the Trinity, in bosom of the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit
Centering prayer is fundamental because it is the simplification and purification of all my interior faculties in the action of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Eucharistic adoration is an enhancement of the faith, hope and love that center me in the redeeming Christ and the giver of the Holy Spirit. Access to Eucharistic adoration is not always possible. Centering prayer is always available if we can but just interiorly direct ourselves into the silence of the indwelling Holy Trinity.
Silent prayer of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament carries with it an actualization of our being a member of the mystical body of the Church, of the fullness of the Church within the visible unity of the Catholic Church.
Fundamentally, where the Eucharistic species are present, there is a mystical Presence of Christ that is unique to that place. Simply to be there demands adoration and love toward the One who is Son of the Father, truly present. It can be the pathway into the deeper Presence of God in Himself.
Although not always articulated specifically and continually in prayer, adoration carries with it all the intentions of the Church for the spreading of the Gospel, for reparation and thanksgiving, of corporate witness to the Sacred Heart of the Savior always making intercession for us within the divine liturgy of that ultimate presence of heaven.
In the practice of centering prayer, it is suggested that in place of the sacred word, one could use a glance that focuses us into God; a glance then toward the Sacred Host of the Eucharist is a renewal of the love intention to be within the Presence, face to face to God and God to us.
Conclusion
In the Holy Spirit by grace and the sacraments I am one with Jesus the Son of the Father in the bosom of the Father. This is presence that emanates from the Spirit’s presence within the depths of my soul and spirit. “If any one thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’” John 7.37-38.
I am only in Christ fully when I am one with him in the visible Church, a member of his mystical body. The Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of this incorporation in Christ. The Sacrament of the altar is the continued Presence of Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity. To be consciously present to the Sacramental Presence is itself a prayer of divine union adoring the Sacrament that is the source of grace and the summit of union in love.
Centering prayer and Eucharistic Adoration enfold in one another as the Spirit leads the believing soul into deeper union, purification and transformation.
Yet all this leads to the final consummation: “The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.” (John 217.22-23). We are already in the Father’s house even as we journey to the Father’s house.