Good and Beautiful and KindSample

Contemplative Prayer as a Way of Loving Others

It was soon after my conversion to Christ that I was introduced to the Desert Fathers and the practice of contemplative prayer. The Desert tradition, arising from a countercultural community in the deserts of Egypt, began to surge two centuries after the resurrection of Jesus. These men and women wanted to live in God for the sake of healing the world. They fled to the silence of the desert not because they preferred to be alone but because they knew something powerful was only available in the contemplation that comes as a result of spiritual solitude, silence, and stillness.

The same is true today. Our world is desperately searching for people who live from a life saturated with God’s love, who know deep in their soul what it is like to “be still” and know that God is God (Psalm 46:10).

Contemplative prayer is not for the spiritually elite, but for anyone hungry for God. We open ourselves to God in contemplative prayer primarily through silence, Scripture, and self-examination. As we gaze into the mystery of God’s love in silence, unhurriedly listen to God’s Word through Scripture, and attend to our own interior world, we position ourselves to be changed—changed in a way that our interior fractures are slowly made whole, preparing us to go into a fractured world with God’s words of love, healing, and hope.

One of the chief benefits of contemplative prayer is the lowering of anxiety. I wonder if this is why we never see Jesus exhibiting anxious reactivity. Jesus spent much time in solitude and silence, never succumbing to the unrelenting pressures around him. In contemplation, our brains are rewired, giving our bodies the capacity to be present with ourselves and others. Contemplative prayer forms us to love well.

This path is the way out of incurvatus in se (curved in on itself). It’s resistance to sin and the powers of the world. It’s the place God forms us to live beyond our wounds.

Contemplative prayer is embracing a new way of seeing. It’s in the true praying moment that God heightens our awareness: we are already enveloped in His loving union, which enables us to externalize that love to others.

God, what new spiritual practices might You be calling me to? May I be still, and know that You are God. Amen.