French translation
I have been leading a group in the practice of Christian meditation for years. Like its sister practice of centering prayer, Christian meditation asks us to let go of images and thoughts about God and instead to give God our full attention in silence. People ask sometimes how one can justify this use or non-use of one’s time. With so many needs in the world, ought we not to be busy trying to meet them? A bumper sticker version of the question says humorously “Christ is coming again. Look busy!”
Our faith tradition proposes something quite different. The purpose of activity is rest. It’s hard to think of anything more counter-cultural, even in the Church, than this. Activity in any form that is not harmful is seen as self-justifying and true. Has there been any time when there was so much sheer activity as there is today, yet with so little real co-ordination and unity of purpose?
Mere activity – activity for the sake of activity – is simply diabolical – noise for the sake of noise, bustle for the sake of bustle. The Vulgate translation of Psalm 91:6 describes the devil as negotium perambulans in tenebris, “the business that prowls around in the shadows,” sheer mischief looking for a loophole by which it can make an entry. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that “damnation is without direction or purpose. Why not? It has nothing to do, and all eternity to do it in.” George Macdonald, by contrast, described heaven as “the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.”
It’s a sad feature of our culture that so many of us have little opportunity for genuine interior repose and quiet, and we are reluctant to use it when it comes our way. Perhaps there is a fear that if we are deprived of the distractions, the noise, both literal and metaphorical, which is the condition of regular life, we might have to start paying attention to the disquieting suspicion that the very activity that so dominates life is largely pointless and self-frustrating. Noise can, in fact, make itself louder and louder in order to disguise its own futility.
The book of Genesis provides the pattern of rest. We are told that God blessed and hallowed the seventh day, because God rested from all the work of creation. There is a real sense, of course, in which God’s activity never ceases at all, since God’s creative act perpetually upholds and energizes the universe. Neither is the inner being of God dead or static. It is that unfathomable energy of life and love which is the Holy Trinity. But all this involves no change in God, no alteration or vacillation of actions. God is the unchanging ground of the changing universe. In God, rest and activity are reconciled.
Nevertheless, the truth that the anthropomorphic language of Genesis expresses is that God does not, so to speak, turn away in relief from the created world. God contemplates it and rejoices in it. God is not like the wage-slave who tries to forget work during the weekend break. God is more like the hobbyist who makes things and then takes pleasure in using them, or like the painter who can enjoy looking at a picture she has made.
In the Genesis story, the story of the first creation, it was on the sixth day of the week that God made man in the divine image and gave him dominion over the lower creatures. In the Gospel story, the story of the new creation, humankind was remade by God on the sixth day of the week, the first Good Friday, when Christ, the perfect man, died on the cross. And Christ rested in the tomb on Holy Saturday – the Great Sabbath – in the enjoyment of the work of the new creation. He saw what he had made and behold, it was very good. The consummation of the new creation comes when Christ lies at rest in the tomb, happy in the fulfilment of his work and awaiting his resurrection.
In Christ we have entered into the rest of God (see Hebrews 4:1-11), a rest that is not stagnation, inertia, or boredom, but perfect and unruffled life. Our full possession of this rest awaits us after death, but its foretaste is given to us here. We have already been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).
So, what about meditation and other contemplative practices? In contemplative prayer, we are not strictly speaking passive but receptive. We are receptive of God’s own self-contemplation, caught up into God’s own life and energized by God. Thus, contemplation is the source and foundation of all truly Christian activity. Many great contemplative saints, outside their times of prayer, have been veritable volcanoes of activity. But that activity has been unified, coherent, vital, and totally concentrated on one object, the fulfilment of God’s will.
Contemplation is, therefore, the source and the end of Christian action. It is the end because our final destiny is to contemplate God in heaven. It is the source, because Christian action is simply the overflow of contemplation.
In Christ we have entered into the rest of God (see Hebrews 4:1-11), a rest that is not stagnation, inertia, or boredom, but perfect and unruffled life. Our full possession of this rest awaits us after death, but its foretaste is given to us here. We have already been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).
On activity and rest
French translation
I have been leading a group in the practice of Christian meditation for years. Like its sister practice of centering prayer, Christian meditation asks us to let go of images and thoughts about God and instead to give God our full attention in silence. People ask sometimes how one can justify this use or non-use of one’s time. With so many needs in the world, ought we not to be busy trying to meet them? A bumper sticker version of the question says humorously “Christ is coming again. Look busy!”
Our faith tradition proposes something quite different. The purpose of activity is rest. It’s hard to think of anything more counter-cultural, even in the Church, than this. Activity in any form that is not harmful is seen as self-justifying and true. Has there been any time when there was so much sheer activity as there is today, yet with so little real co-ordination and unity of purpose?
Mere activity – activity for the sake of activity – is simply diabolical – noise for the sake of noise, bustle for the sake of bustle. The Vulgate translation of Psalm 91:6 describes the devil as negotium perambulans in tenebris, “the business that prowls around in the shadows,” sheer mischief looking for a loophole by which it can make an entry. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that “damnation is without direction or purpose. Why not? It has nothing to do, and all eternity to do it in.” George Macdonald, by contrast, described heaven as “the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.”
It’s a sad feature of our culture that so many of us have little opportunity for genuine interior repose and quiet, and we are reluctant to use it when it comes our way. Perhaps there is a fear that if we are deprived of the distractions, the noise, both literal and metaphorical, which is the condition of regular life, we might have to start paying attention to the disquieting suspicion that the very activity that so dominates life is largely pointless and self-frustrating. Noise can, in fact, make itself louder and louder in order to disguise its own futility.
The book of Genesis provides the pattern of rest. We are told that God blessed and hallowed the seventh day, because God rested from all the work of creation. There is a real sense, of course, in which God’s activity never ceases at all, since God’s creative act perpetually upholds and energizes the universe. Neither is the inner being of God dead or static. It is that unfathomable energy of life and love which is the Holy Trinity. But all this involves no change in God, no alteration or vacillation of actions. God is the unchanging ground of the changing universe. In God, rest and activity are reconciled.
Nevertheless, the truth that the anthropomorphic language of Genesis expresses is that God does not, so to speak, turn away in relief from the created world. God contemplates it and rejoices in it. God is not like the wage-slave who tries to forget work during the weekend break. God is more like the hobbyist who makes things and then takes pleasure in using them, or like the painter who can enjoy looking at a picture she has made.
In the Genesis story, the story of the first creation, it was on the sixth day of the week that God made man in the divine image and gave him dominion over the lower creatures. In the Gospel story, the story of the new creation, humankind was remade by God on the sixth day of the week, the first Good Friday, when Christ, the perfect man, died on the cross. And Christ rested in the tomb on Holy Saturday – the Great Sabbath – in the enjoyment of the work of the new creation. He saw what he had made and behold, it was very good. The consummation of the new creation comes when Christ lies at rest in the tomb, happy in the fulfilment of his work and awaiting his resurrection.
In Christ we have entered into the rest of God (see Hebrews 4:1-11), a rest that is not stagnation, inertia, or boredom, but perfect and unruffled life. Our full possession of this rest awaits us after death, but its foretaste is given to us here. We have already been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).
So, what about meditation and other contemplative practices? In contemplative prayer, we are not strictly speaking passive but receptive. We are receptive of God’s own self-contemplation, caught up into God’s own life and energized by God. Thus, contemplation is the source and foundation of all truly Christian activity. Many great contemplative saints, outside their times of prayer, have been veritable volcanoes of activity. But that activity has been unified, coherent, vital, and totally concentrated on one object, the fulfilment of God’s will.
Contemplation is, therefore, the source and the end of Christian action. It is the end because our final destiny is to contemplate God in heaven. It is the source, because Christian action is simply the overflow of contemplation.
In Christ we have entered into the rest of God (see Hebrews 4:1-11), a rest that is not stagnation, inertia, or boredom, but perfect and unruffled life. Our full possession of this rest awaits us after death, but its foretaste is given to us here. We have already been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).
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