Jesus continues in his teaching on prayer to tell us that in our spiritual life we should be mindful, not distracted, not scattered. We should live with a sense of the presence at all times. This is implicit when he says, “Set your mind upon God’s Kingdom before everything else, and everything else will come to you as well”. What does this mean? Surely it means to be, to be present, to live attentively in the present moment, and then you will be mindful of the Kingdom of God, which means the presence of God within you and between us at all times. It’s very close to what the Buddhists call mindfulness. It’s what the Christian tradition calls “praying at all times”.
2 One of the great benefits of meditation in daily life, if you meditate regularly every day, morning and evening, is that you’ll find that more and more deeply you become aware of this continuous life of the Spirit going on in your depths, in the depth of your own being. It’s going on at all times, not just when you are praying but whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whoever you are with, at any time of the day or night and even whatever you are feeling. This is the deepest ground of being, the ground level of existence on which we are standing. This is the present moment, that present moment that contains past and future. We are always in the present moment, even if we are thinking about the past or thinking about the future, we are in the present moment aren’t we? That is what we mean by praying at all times.
3 To live in a contemplative way doesn’t mean we have to live in a monastery or living a very quiet form of life. It means that whatever we are doing, fulfilling our duties or our vocation, we are present to what we are doing and to the presence of God in that action. To pray at all times means that actually we are opening a deeper level of our consciousness to the prayer of Christ in us. St Paul helps us to understand this when he says, “We do not know how to pray, but the Spirit prays within us, deeper than words.” The symptoms of this are joy and peace. You can experience joy even when things go wrong, and you can experience peace even in times of stress or anxiety, because of this joy and peace that Jesus promised us and communicated to us – his own peace, his own joy. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I give you my own peace, my parting gift to you and I give you my joy so that your joy may be complete.” It is in this joy and peace that we find the real experience of God. They are not dependent on external circumstances. They are there in good weather and bad weather, when things go well, when things don’t go well, when you are happy, when you are unhappy. It’s always there. The contemplative life is to be rooted in that ground of being, to have your feet standing on that solid ground, to be rooted in that ground of love.
4 That’s the meaning of the daily meditation discipline. That’s why we do it. You don’t always feel like meditating, do you? Sometimes you are not in the mood for it. Sometimes you feel you are not doing it very well, you are not making much progress. But it’s our commitment to that regular daily practice that we discover the fruit in this experience of continuous prayer in daily living. We find that even without trying to do it, our mind is set on God’s Kingdom above everything else.
Living Fully in the Present Moment
5 At the conclusion of this section of St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Don’t worry about tomorrow; every day has enough problems of its own.” He’s talking about living fully and faithfully in the present moment. Be present. Be real.
6 Actually as you understand and discover what the present moment means, what it’s like living in the present moment, and you will discover that in your own experience as you meditate day by day, you discover that you don’t forget the past. You don’t become irresponsible about the future. The past and future are now related to the central primary experience of the present moment. There may be some aspects of the past you have still to deal with, some leftover business that you haven’t finished yet, some emotional or moral responsibilities that you have yet to attend to arising from your past behaviour, some things you don’t understand about the past that you’ve got to learn to understand before you can move on. It doesn’t mean either that you ignore the future and just pretend that there isn’t going to be any future – you still pay your insurance policies or your car tax or make your bookings for the plane long enough in advance to get a cheap rate. The past and the future have a certain reality which we have to respect. But you will find that as you learn to live in the present moment, you will become less anxious about the future and less controlled by the past. You won’t be living so much out of the fears for the future or the memories of the past. You won’t be living behind yourself or ahead of yourself. And you won’t be so trapped in the past especially those aspects of the past that cause anger, guilt, or sadness. You know, you’ve had fights, or family feuds, or people have betrayed us, or our employer made us redundant or we had a fight with a friend. Those experiences of the past are very powerful. They can linger – we may struggle with forgiveness for many years. But what you will find is that, as you discover what the present moment means, you will be able to deal with those memories and experiences of the past much more freely, much more peacefully.
7 Contemplation sets us free. When Jesus said that he came to show us and to bring us the fullness of life, so that we could live life to the full and maximise our full human potential, he said it is the truth that will set you free. This is what we discover through meditation: the truth.
Prayer of the Heart
8 So those are the essential elements of Jesus’ teaching on prayer that we find in The Sermon on the Mount: being free from external obsessiveness, practising interiority, silence, trust, calmness of mind, mindfulness and being present.
9 If you were to say, “How can I put those good teachings into practice” what you are asking is, “how can I pray”. That question, “how can I truly pray; how can I deepen my prayer, how can I pray better” is the question which when sincerely asked, takes us to a deeper level of our spiritual journey. It leads us, in God’s own time, in God’s own kindness, eventually to the practice of meditation, to the prayer of the heart.
Laurence Freeman OSB
Excerpt of tape “Meditation: An Introduction for Friends”
December 1997
Pecos, New Mexico, USA
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