Meditating as a Family

by Fr. Frans DeRidder CICM

Fr. Frans De Ridder CICM is a missionary of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. After 15 years in Taiwan he moved to Singapore in 1981,and has been involved with the Marriage Encounter, Engaged Encounter and Choice programmes every since. He also works in the parish ministy and finds this service very meaningful. Fr. Frans also gives retreats and participates in inter-religious dialog. He travel to China regularly to conduct retreats for priests, religious sisters and lay people.

"All priests are convinced that prayer is important, and that prayer as a family can be a matter of life  and death. I think that many honest families have a longing for family prayer. Many however do not  know how to go about it. There are many reasons:

Family rosary is no longer so attractive. It is monotonous and repetitive. Bible reading and sharing thereafter is a lofty idea, yet not so simple for most of our Catholics. Spontaneous prayers could easily become a routine. Not all of our Catholics have the gift to  formulate a spontaneous prayer and be creative with a variety of bible texts and or songs.  There is also the danger of being manipulative with spontaneous prayers. Our society (and our Church) has become very wordy! I am convinced that “silence” is the  only common language all human beings have and understand.

Learning to meditate in silence as a family could become a powerful alternative.  It can sound  impossible and difficult. In fact nothing is more simple and accessible to all. It is also non- threatening, as nobody has to “say” anything. There is no danger of competition and rivalry. There is  only one dynamic: focus on the presence of God!

It calls for basically three things:

1. Silence

2. Discipline

3. Presence of God

SILENCE

As a family (or as a couple) people agree to set aside some time. This is an important decision, to  make time, to get started! The ideal is between twenty and thirty minutes. This can be too long for  beginners, especially when children are participating. One can start with five or ten minutes and  gradually building up to the ideal of twenty to thirty minutes. One could start off doing it once a  week…and gradually build up. If we can spend (or waste) so much time watching TV or playing with  computer (and web side) why not spending time together “dwelling in love”? To create the atmosphere one can start with some gentle soothing religious music, yet then "Be still and know that I am God!"

During the silence, one does not “do” anything. One focuses on the presence of God. Jn. 15: 9  Dwell in my love.  Jesus does not say: “analyze my love, understand my love or explain my love!” He just says: “dwell in  my love!” He could have said: “soak yourselves in my love, immerse yourself in my love, come to rest  in my love…”

Acts 17:28  In God we live and move and have our whole being… Our so-called modern times are characterized by a culture of noise. Noise pollution is one of the  great threats to civilization. Because of noise there is no more space for God. Pope Benedict XVI, in a  speech before his election, at the end of 2004, has said: “A society in which God is completely  absent self destructs.”

The problem is not the ‘existence of God’ (Even the demons believe that God exists…Js. 2;19) The  problem today is the presence of God. The problem is not some knowledge of God, the real problem is the experience of God’s presence.

We need to recapture the taste for silence. This will reconnect us with the presence of God. In our church liturgies too we have to be watchful. Some liturgies are too wordy and too noisy. Saying that our young people like this is a sort of abdication. Young people have to be educated. Not all what they like is automatically good, not everything that the consumer society displays and advertises can be accepted. We need an education in silence…a culture of silence. God can only speak when we give God a chance and a space to reveal Himself. In liturgies too, after listening to the Word of God, people need time and silence to digest, to appropriate the Word of God in their hearts. The Word has to become flesh and blood in us as it became flesh and blood in Jesus. “and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us…and we saw his glory.” Jn.1:14

This is true (and at times urgent) for our celebrations of the Eucharist. This is equally urgent and important for family devotion. The family is the little Church. I am convinced that in most families it becomes increasingly difficult to experience God’s presence. TV and computer and the net, are invading our families to such a degree that there is almost no more space for God. Values are not taught, they are caught! If God is experienced as present only in the church buildings, then the Church failed her Mission! Then God is only experienced as really present for one hour a week in that building. We give God his due, and the rest of the week we keep God out of our lives: our families, our neighborhoods, our offices, our social life.  The family is a sanctuary where God’s love can be experienced in a most intimate way. And this experience of God in the family can be made possible through prayer together.

A simple way, an absolute simple way is the prayer in silence. Then God can speak to the heart. Creating this holy space is only possible in silence. In this silence, all the members focus on God’s presence! No need to ask, no need to praise!There is only one need: to be in God’s presence. Dwell in my love! As a family or group people can immerse themselves in this presence, “soak” themselves in this presence, allow God to love them, to fill them with the glow of His presence.

Church depends on the experience its members have of the redemptive love of Jesus within them. We are all summoned to this experience here and now and it is our pre-eminent task to dispose ourselves for it. In our own way, it meansransferring our conscious hopes for a renewal of the Church relevance and ffectiveness in the world from politics to prayer, from mind to heart, from ommittees to communities and from preaching to silence. Word into Silence, John Main page 36.

DISCIPLINE

There is one great need: to make time! This calls for discipline. It goes back to the ancient commandment. Love God above everything. Make God your top priority. People have to create space for God, make new priorities also in time management. Nobody can serve two masters. In universities we find scholarly studies of the desert fathers of Eckhart and Rhineland mystics or the Cloud of Unknowing, of he Carmelite studies, studies that are pursued avidly by students looking not just for theoretical knowledge but for religious experience.

Religious thinkers such as Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Bede Griffiths speak of an evolution in human consciousness. The claim that humankind is transcending the rational consciousness of reasoning and dualistic thinking to enter into a mystical consciousness wherein one sees the unity of all things. Karl Rahner, in a much quoted sentence, said that the Christian of the future will be a mystic or nothing. (William Johnston sj in Tablet of 1 June 2002)

PRESENCE

In John’s Gospel we find some astonishing declarations by Jesus in chapter 14:7-11

       "To have seen me is to have seen the Father.

       I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

       It is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work.

       You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me…

I believe that these words, more than anything else, give us the clue to Jesus spirituality, and lifestyle. His consciousness, his awareness become ours. And this is not archeology, something that happened to Jesus long time ago, something that fills us with nostalgia and powerlessness. Jesus’s experience is our reality. We dwell in God. God is more present to us than we are to our most intimate selves. St. Augustin’s word Intimior intimo meo. Spirituality is living in that reality…is acting responding to situations from within God. Our whole being, in a certain way is pregnant with God. We have to awake to our own truth, to our reality. We have been transformed. We have been divinized.  We start living our human life in a divine way, in God’s way! From information we are brought to transformation. We learn to look at life no longer with our senses, but with the inner eye, which is the total reality rather than the superficial one limited by the senses. Reality becomes transparent. The tragedy of our modern times is that people are convinced that only what the senses can register is real. The truth is that reality is much richer and not limited to the results of a laboratory.

DWELLING IN GOD

It is absolutely simple! That may be the reason why many people are reluctant to start the journey. It calls for time, not just a fleeting prayer. It calls for time to immerse, to soak ourselves in His presence, to absorb, to suck into the depth of our being the very presence of God. It is focusing, not just intellectually, on that presence: “…so that God may be all in all” (1Cor. 15: 28) The presence of God will permeate all the layers of our existence will seep through all our interpersonal relationships and transform them. It is surrendering to God. In Christological terms we could speak of Col.3:11: “There is only Christ, he is everything and he is in everything.” And Eph. 3:19…will put it as follows: “until we are filled with the utter fullness of God”.

Practical points

As priests and religious we can start practicing the method as advocated by John Main and Laurence Freeman, twice a day, morning and evening meditate in silence, using a mantra (They suggest MA RA NA THA) Nobody can give what he does not have. As priests too we can learn to dwell together in God’s love! We can share our experiences with people and encourage them to do the same, personally on a daily basis and as a couple (with children) on a regular basis: weekly…or more. 

We could do our home visitations in a different way. Rather than just spending much time talking, arguing, story telling, we could propose to spend time together in silence. Meditating together, together dwelling in God’s love has brought many families and small communities closer together. For then it is no longer I/we who live, but Christ lives in us.” (Ga. 2:22) I am convinced that this practice will and can affect people’s lifestyle, time management and the atmosphere at home. I believe that this is ultimately the meaning of conversion, a change of mentality, making God number one in our lives. The family is called: the little Church. I do not know of any better way to bring this about than the time spent together in silence. 

Children have a natural inborn hunger and taste for silence. They will soon take after their  parents. With the psalmist we can echo: Taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy the one who takes refuge in Him. (Ps. 34:8)This way of prayer is absolutely simple, within the reach of all: learned or illiterate. One need not look for a church building or adoration room. One can (and hopefully will) do it at home. 

Then our houses become truly homes: places where people dwell together in God’s love.To create an atmosphere of silence and recollectedness is also important. Dimmed light or a candle lit by one of he members of the family can do ‘miracles’. The gift is given. The Spirit is in the heart. All prayer is the pure gift of God given to us with infinite generosity. Meditating is a small token of our reciprocal generosity in our openness to his gift. This time is God’s time, not our own. Repeating our word, our mantra will teach us many things: humility, poverty, fidelity, hope! (John Main)

How and what of meditation, personally and/or in groups, has been well described by John Main.

Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert.  Silently, interiorly, begin the say a single word. We recommend the prayer phrase MA RA NA THA. Recite it as four syllables of equal length. Listen to it as you say it, gently but continuously. Do not think or imagine anything—spiritual or otherwise. If thoughts or images come, these are distractions at the time of meditation, so keep returning to simply saying the word. Meditate each morning and evening for between twenty to thirty minutes.