IN HIS BOOKLET The Power of the Name, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware writes:
When you pray you yourself must be silent.… You must be silent; let the prayer speak. Silence is not merely negative-a pause between words-but highly positive; it is an attitude of attentive alertness, of vigilance, and above all of listening. The person who prays is the one who listens to the voice of prayer in his own heart, and he understands that this voice is not his own but that of Another speaking within him.4
So, what happens when we are still? We can begin to listen to the voice of God.
When we say the name Jesus, we are both speaking and listening. How do we listen as we speak? Therein lies the great mystery of divine communication. God speaks to us in His own intonation, His own coloration, His own harmonious sound.
What happens if we try to become more still and pray, even a little more? St. John Chrysostom said if we try to pray more, we “rouse the snake within us.”
Then how can we learn to stop talking and to start listening? Instead of simply speaking to God, how can we make our own the prayer in which God speaks to us? One way to embark on this journey inward is through the invocation of the Name.
We are interested in getting closer to God. But according to St. Isaac of Syria, it is impossible to draw near to God by any means other than increasing prayer.
Then we assess the size of the task of prayer. And we find that the task is beyond difficult. Abba Agathon said, “To pray is the hardest of all tasks.” If we do not find prayer difficult, perhaps it is because we have not really started to pray.
~Albert S. Rossi, Becoming a Healing Presence
4 Kallistos Ware, The Power of the Name (Fairacres, Oxford, UK: SLG Press, 1986).
Contemplation
Through a regular practice of contemplation we can awaken to the profound presence of the unitive Spirit, which then gives us the courage and capacity to face the paradox that everything is–ourselves included. Higher levels of consciousness always allow us to include and understand more and more, although much of it is unsayable. Deeper levels of divine union allow us to forgive and show compassion toward ever new people, even those we are not naturally attracted to, or even our enemies.
Mystics have plumbed the depths of both suffering and love and emerged with compassion for the whole suffering world and a learned capacity to recognize God within themselves, in others, and in all things. If we can read with an attitude of simple mindfulness, the insights the mystics share can equip us with a deep and embracing peace, even in the presence of the many kinds of limitation and suffering that life offers us. From such contact with the deep rivers of grace, we can live our lives from a place of non-judgment, forgiveness, love, and a quiet contentment with the ordinariness of our lives.
~Richard Rohr, What the Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self
