YOU CAN

MAKE GOD BLUSH

Integrating PRAYER into your BUSY LIFE

YOU CAN

MAKE GOD BLUSH

Integrating PRAYER into your BUSY LIFE

by Stephen I. Nellas

You can MAKE GOD BLUSH

Integrating PRAYER into your BUSY LIFE

Stephen I. Nellas

Copyright © 2012 by Stephen I. Nellas

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or copied, except for brief quotations, without the express permission of the author.

Cover design     by Florencio L. Regado, Jr.

Book layout       by Stephen I. Nellas

Proof-read        by Mabeth Laure

To the Holy Trinity

Thank you for your unconditional love for me

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction                                                             1          Does God Blush?                                                          3

God’s Paradise: The Dignity of a Soul                                    5

MERCY IN CREATION

Chapter 1       The Smallest Particles                           13

Chapter 2       The Myths of Contemplation               17

Chapter 3       My Conviction                                    29

STARTING PRAYER

Chapter 4       Charity Begins at Home                                   35

Chapter 5       The Prayer Life                                    47

PRAYER OF THE PRESENT MOMENT

Chapter 6       God of the Present                              57

PRAYER OF THE POTS AND PANS

Chapter 7     Prayer in Action                                    65

Chapter 8     In His Image and Likeness                    75

Chapter 9     Prayer of the Laity                                79

Chapter 10   Prayer and Sin                                      81

CONTEMPLATION

Chapter 11   What is Contemplation for me               93

Chapter 12   Make God Blush!                                  97

TRANSFORMING UNION

Chapter 13   The Fire of Love                                   105

Chapter 14   God’s Merciful Love                             115

The Start of a Great Adventure                                               119

Introduction

Friend,

If there is any motivation in me as to why I am writing this down, it is only because I want to sing of the Mercies of God to all people of all the ages.  Whoever you may be, if you are reading this, then I am happy to sing this to you.  But the thing is, this has been a very long song.  I can say that if you’re reading this right now, I maybe too old to go up on stage and jump up and down so that I can show you how much God has blessed my life.  I mean, I may and I think I can, with the strength of the Lord of course.  Or maybe I will still be young.

And although, I would have preferred to speak personally to you and to tell you lots of stories about the goodness of this Lord of mine, I wouldn’t be able to finish it.  I would have to spend eternity singing this song, but having things as they are now, I want to start singing it while here on earth.

I have no structure to what I am about to tell you so forgive me if there are any digressions in my stories or there are some thoughts that are left hanging without any ending to it.

I submit myself to my Mother, the Holy Roman Catholic Church who has nourished me and has cared for me as any good mother would.  Everything that makes sense to her, I dedicate to her. But anything that contradicts to her teachings, I dismiss as coming from me only—who is full of mistakes and wounds.  So please, bear with me.

Let God,

Stephen I. Nellas

DOES GOD BLUSH?

If anything, this long story that I am about to tell you is all about seeing contemplation in the eyes of a lay person.  For many, prayer is simply a series of formula prayers said without too much attention to the meaning of the words.  I am not saying that everyone is not attentive to what they are saying, but I am saying that more often than not, most of us if not all, fall into the trap of hastening our prayers and not truly mean what we say.

Prayer (and this will be repeated all throughout the book) is nothing more than a conversation between the soul and God.  This conversation presupposes a relationship—no matter the degree of depth of this relationship is.  I have found that prayer and contemplation are not so widely discussed in our time now.  And I am not even saying that only the lay miss out on a lot about prayer and contemplation.  Even the religious and priests do not really talk about this wonderful truth of our Christian faith.  I have been doing some research on the subject and I can say from my study and from experience that the talk on contemplation is really scarce and people—religious and lay alike—naturally shy away from it.

Be ready because a portion of this may be somewhat obscure and can represent a very long time in my life.  This is a journey, and because of that, I am going to attack this undertaking with patience and with love.

Does God really blush?

And if He does blush, how can you make Him blush?  Can I make Him blush?  These are the exact questions you may have in mind right now and I am very excited to answer them.  My answers are not theological in nature, nor will I ever try to answer in such a way because I am no theologian.  But as you read along I hope that I could really present to you the God that I know and love.  And I know this is the God that we all love.  We hear about Him, we read about Him, we sing about His mighty works, but do we really know Him?  Or at least, do we really try to know Him?  I hope that this book will help you not just come to terms with a blushing God, but I hope that you grow in your relationship with God in prayer.  I hope that at the end of the day, not only will God blush, but you will blush as well.

How good it is to see two lovers blush in their love for each other!

But first, I would have to lay down some principles or evidences, about God and his work in our lives in general, then gradually build on these evidences leading to prayer and contemplation to answer the question: How can I make God blush?

Let’s start, shall we?

GOD’S PARADISE:

The Dignity of a Soul

I consider every person a paradise of God.

Yes, even you.

You are a paradise of God, and so am I!  But we don’t really realize this immediately.  I thank God for showing me that each person is one special soul in His eyes.  So be ready to read about this paradise that I am about to show you in a few more lines and after a few more pages.  I know that you also have a story to tell and you also have a song to sing.  Whatever that maybe, I pray for you and your song.  May you have the strength to live your life and sing your song.

So just imagine this great God—this Being who has no beginning and no end.  He lives in inaccessible light, His thoughts cannot be fathomed, and He is almighty and omniscient.  Imagine this God, this great God come inside our soul which is a paradise for Him so that He can take a walk inside it, and enjoy being inside it, and bless it, and complete it with His very presence.

He is infinite and could not be contained by the whole of the universe, but our souls can afford to welcome this good Lord inside and let Him stay there as long as He wants.  Just consider the capacity of our finite souls!  How is it that we can afford to let this God of ours enter our very souls?

Oh the power and the graciousness of the Lord to allow this impossible thing to happen to us.  This just blows my mind away, and the more I think about it, the more I don’t understand it.  The more I realize that this is possible for this God, the more I feel myself so small and so unworthy to accommodate Him.  The more I think about Him coming down right into my soul and that He is willing to do that, the more I ask myself, why am I not allowing Him to do so right now?

Let me go back to the reason why I am doing this sharing to you.  I am going to sing about the Mercy of God, but always within the contexts of prayer.

Why prayer?  Because prayer is nothing but the meeting of two people.  This meeting is not as simple as one may think.  This meeting is between the soul and God.  One can make God truly blush only in the context of a great and vibrant prayer-life.  This kind of life is not heard of in the world now.  Things about prayer are not being discussed in conversations.  For many of us, prayer is some kind of ritual or some kind of special activity reserved only for a single few, or elite.

Since it has been laid down that one can meet a blushing God in the context of prayer, this whole book will be about prayer and contemplation.

As I said earlier in my Introduction, I speak as a lay person, and as such I speak these things because I can hear the groaning of many of my brothers and sisters around the world who yearn for a deeper experience of God.  Many of us do love and want to get to know Him more, but we are at a loss because prayer and contemplation are not being talked about or discussed as much as the other things that pertain to God.

God is said to be personal, gracious, sensitive, loving, and real—and many of us do believe this, but only a few of us do reach this level of experience of God.  Some of us who are still in exile in this world even reach the loftiest levels of prayer that they are given the transforming union which many saints are talking about.

But what about us?

How about the busy father, the mother who has to buy groceries, the accountant who needs to finish his job, the celebrity who is bombarded by temptations, the student who is busy studying for his exams, the government official who is facing the dilemma of corruption, the sinner who alienated himself from God but genuinely feels that He is being called back?  Where and how do they fit in this whole issue on prayer and contemplation?

These questions are real and they need to be dealt with squarely.  These are the questions of the lay who feel deep inside them the need to connect and be filled by God.

Soon enough you will understand how prayer and contemplation are connected to the question of making God blush—even if you are a member of the laity.

There are things that you can relate to, but there will also be things that you think are so absurd that you will think I am out of my wits.  And I will not blame you.  The prayer life of one person is very different to that of another person.  Many people experience other things, while other people experience God in other ways as well.  Every soul is as different and as unique as the fingerprints of every person, or the DNA of each individual.

Prayer is the very door of that paradise which I am talking about.  But the only thing essential about it is that, when prayer starts, it is not only God who acts, but the soul responds to him. God is essentially inside all of us because without him, we will be nothing. This is true.

But prayer is not just an act of God.

It is essentially a meeting, an exchange, a conversation mutually entered into by two parties—in this case, of God and our very soul.  There is much mystery and beauty contained in this conversation—in this talk between the soul and God—and these are things that I cannot and will not describe as they are, for human language and understanding can never attain to God unless helped by the divine operations of the Holy Spirit.

God continues his work of creation every single moment because he sustains us.  He is living silently deep inside us.  As I said, without Him, we will be as nothing.

Literally.

He is there to continue to make every atom, every cell, every molecule in our bodies move and work so that we can continue to live.  Without this essential presence of God, we will not be.  We will cease to exist. No body, no soul.

Nothing.

Mercy

in

Creation

Chapter 1

The Smallest Particle

I do not wish to tackle this in a scientific way because I am not a scientist; neither do I want to be so detailed in my considerations of these things because I am not trying to make a textbook out of this. I am simply considering how the whole universe works as we know it.

Even traveling by plane can let us see how extremely insignificant we all are.

I travel by plane most of the time when going to other parts of the country and when I peer over the small figures from the window of the airplane, I am always amazed at the fact that people can be very tiny just from a few thousand feet above the ground.

And that just takes my breath away! If I were God, looking down a few million miles above the earth from my throne in heaven, I would see these tiny creatures going about their business every single day:  some of them looking up straight back at me, while others just couldn’t care less.

Thank heavens I am not God!  My tiny mind cannot even begin to imagine how that would feel.  It even feels exhilarating when I look down from the plane—how much more God who can see every nitty-gritty of every single thing on earth.

They say that the universe is still expanding.  There are billions of galaxies out there and in every galaxy there are billions of stars and planets.  Every star is made out of hot gases and planets are made of up solids, liquids, and gases, or a combination of the three.  I have always been amazed by how small and insignificant I am in terms of my relationship with other things in the universe.

In relation to the whole earth, I am but a very small speck of dust.  In relation to our own medium-sized star, the Sun, the earth is just a small pebble in the middle of a vast ocean.  Our sun is just a medium-sized star and we already see it as very big.

Our sun and even our solar system could not be located when you view it from outside our Milky Way galaxy.  And there are a lot of galaxies in the whole universe!  How small we are and yet God, in His love, chose to love US.

Not the dogs.

Not the planets.

Not the other forms of flora and fauna around us.

He didn’t come to die for these.

He became human and died for us.

The Essential or Substantial Presence

Every single person and thing in the universe, whether living or non-living, enjoys this essential presence of God.  This is the first verse of my song about God’s mercy.  Without this merciful love to the created world, we wouldn’t exist.

Even if we are in the state of mortal sin or in the happy state of grace, this essential or substantial presence of God holds everything sway.  This essential presence of God in a soul does not discriminate for mercy demands that everything in existence be engulfed in it for Mercy to be satiated.

He gives life to everything.  Not only does He give life to the living things, but also to everything else—even non-living things.  Every single thing in the world is made up of molecules and atoms and electrons and what have you.

These particles should have something in them that makes them stay as they are; these tiny things are made up of more tiny things that humans have yet to discover.  Take for example solid things. I am sure that the molecules that comprise a solid matter are there because they are being held up together by a bond or something.

I’m imagining looking at a solid thing and then I start to peer closer on its surface until I am able to see the bonds of molecules that hold everything together.

But then as I move in even closer, I notice that there are smaller things that actually make up the molecules.  And the more I move closer and examine things deeper I can see that there are smaller stuff that make up the small things that make up the molecules which make up that one solid matter.

And as I push the envelope even more, I noticed that as I went pass the atoms which are considered the tiniest things that make up every single matter, there are even smaller stuff that make up atoms and the electrons, protons, and neutrons that are contained inside it.  How else could atoms exist?

They simply couldn’t exist without something firing them up.  There should be a source of everything, and I believe that that source is no one else but God.  Everything in this life whether living or non-living, gets its being from God.

Everything in the universe has its existence grounded and found only in God.

Chapter 2

The Myths of Contemplation

As I said earlier, this is going to be a book that seeks to answer the question if you—we, unworthy and lowly creatures that we are—can make this Being so Mighty and Strong, Clement, Merciful blush.  Even as I write this now, I am at awe with what I am going to present here in this book. I have long asked the help of God the moment I started this undertaking.  I never really knew how or why I got interested on the issue of prayer and contemplation.  And although I am quite dumbfounded as to the circumstances that led to my fair discovery, I am forever grateful to God for leading me to this road.

When I found myself walking down this road, I saw great lamp posts, if you may.  These lamp posts are those great brothers and sisters of ours who have gone before us and have finished the journey down this road.  These brilliant lamp posts helped me see that indeed, there is an end to the journey.  And what a great end this is!  For not only do we arrive at God Who is the End, but we shall have Him.

Another thing that I noticed when I walked down this path is that there are only a few who are walking with me.  And this really disturbed me and confused me because the road on which I tread is so wide.  It is not meant only for a few, but it is meant for all, for I cannot see the edge of the sides of the roads.

Another reason why I want to share to you what contemplation is as taught by the Church and what it is to me in my personal life is that I believe that there are a lot of misconceptions or myths that surround this beautiful thing.

I believe that it is one of the things that we’ll be doing in heaven—if not the only thing.  For in heaven we shall have God and in having Him there is no other way but to contemplate Him.  In heaven we shall all be filled with joy of beholding this Lord of ours who has been obscure for all our lives.

For me, contemplation is the ultimate relationship that we could have with God here on earth and in heaven.  For many years I have been praying to God as I was taught in school and at home.

I had learned many things about meditation and recollecting.  I kind of created my own personal way of relating to God.  My experiences are unique to me and so this is really just a personal sharing of what I have experienced so far and how this relates to my belief that the call to contemplation was made to all—and I mean every one.  Yours is different from mine.

Your own experiences are unique to you as well.  There is no one rule to contemplation precisely because the object of contemplation is God himself who is not bound by methods, procedures, or concepts.

But there are ways to dispose ourselves to contemplate.  There are some initial steps that we need to do to journey towards contemplation.  But once you journey deeper inward, you will have to abandon these methods which are earthly and futile in reaching the object thereof.

All the ascetism that we can do are just that, ascetisms.

They are just things that we do to help us get in-tuned with God through prayer.  They are our acts.  But contemplation is beyond that, and we shall prove this after we have taken into consideration many things that affect it.

The reason why I would like to discuss the myths is because I myself believed in the myths.  I was so taken by my discovery of the amazing reality of prayer and of the interior life that I wanted to discover my own interior life.

But then because of my lack and the myths that I am going to discuss below, I began to abandon the thought altogether.  But after a few years (specifically when I was in college), I rediscovered this amazing treasure with the help of a wonderful saint whose identity I will divulge a little bit later in the book.

That saint is one of the most amazing contemplatives that I know and the saint’s experience in contemplation was so profound—but so simple at the same time—that contemplation, when seen through her experience, seems so easy to reach.

If it really is easy or not, we shall soon find out but as for now, let us tackle the myths of contemplation one by one.

Myth No. 1: Only For a Chosen Few

I congratulate you and anyone who reads this book and has reached this part so far.  You see, not all really understand what contemplation is.  Many hear about it and they may even have somebody describe it to them, but only few people have tried to grasp the reality and true meaning of contemplation.

Why did I say this?

Because I guess that all of us can easily get a dictionary or a catechism of the Church and read all about contemplation.  Yes, you may have knowledge about it, but since it is something to be experienced, you can never know its essence until you get a first-hand experience.

That contemplation is reserved to only a few “special” people, is a myth that’s not entirely a new thing.  Contemplation has always been believed to be something mystical—no, even magical—by many people who have no idea what it really is.

And I cannot blame them.

I cannot blame you if you also think this way because I thought like this before.  But praise be to God He led me to learn more about contemplation and prayer in a very amazing way.  He gave me light as to how I can live a life of contemplation in my very own state of life.  These lights came through books and holy people that I’ve been blessed to know.

Without the guidance of these books and mentors, I would not be able to grow in this area in my life.

To go back to what I was trying to say, when people talk about contemplation, they usually picture a person whose eyes are closed, arms outstretched, and floating inches above the ground.

The heavens are opened and rays of godly light emanate from a very bright source as angels descend with harps to play music on this wonderful event called contemplation.

I have seen that people naturally shy away from this idea of contemplation and they have a difficulty of applying this to themselves. And because of this, they shun the idea that contemplation can also be given to them.  They regard it as foolish and absurd the idea that they can be able to contemplate.

Aside from this fear of being labeled as weird and foolish or crazy (because people do go to use such adjectives when describing people who have genuinely gone through the rigors of prayer and have reached the heights), history will tell us that there were only a few folks who have reached the far-reaching heights of contemplation.  And when they examine the lives of these persons, they discover that their own character and virtues could not quite reach parity with those of the so called contemplatives.

And because of these factors, people naturally think that contemplation is reserved for only a few “special” people who are “destined” to become contemplatives.

It is for them.

But not for me.

That’s the first myth about contemplation that the public has. And as I write this now, I am really saddened by this myth; but I’ll soon prove to you that this is wrong.

Myth No. 2: The Laity Needs to be Lucky

The next myth that I am going to share with you is that because of the predispositions of the religious (those who are priests, nuns, and brothers of religious orders) are so conducive to prayer and contemplation, contemplation is an undertaking reserved for the religious only and the laity will have to prove themselves lucky to reach even a slightly deeper prayer life.

A dear friend of mine was ushered into prayer early on in his life.  The first memory he had about prayer was when he was a very small boy of 4 years.  His mother was lulling him to sleep and as she did that, she was teaching him how to pray the Our Father.

And for many years, he’s grown to love prayer that at a tender age of seven he would always go back home from school wondering why he was the only one who prayed in the Blessed Sacrament in the Cathedral near their school.  It didn’t bother him that he was doing a different thing, and not playing like my classmates would.  But it did bother him that they were not accompanying him to the Blessed Sacrament chapel.

Of course, it wasn’t like he was analyzing things as he does now.  He just wondered why, but didn’t bother to ask.   A few years after that, he wanted to become a priest or a religious brother. He had his selfish and immature reasons for wanting this vocation for his life, but he guessed the one reason that really prompted him to have an inclination to the priesthood was because he felt the most happy when he was praying to God.

He felt the happiest when he was in the Blessed Sacrament or when he was simply thinking of Him.  And he didn’t want that happiness to be taken away from him.

He saw that the active life of a family-man will not be able to let him reach contemplation.  He saw that it wasn’t for him.  He needed to work and do other things to keep everything in stride.

Prayer was a meeting between two persons, and if you can’t go to that meeting or if you can’t concentrate while in that meeting, then what’s the point? That was his thinking at the time.

Of course, he knew he was wrong. He didn’t continue to become a priest, and he went on to live a very active life, both in his career and in his ministry in the church.  He has given me some insights on how his thinking changed the moment he himself busted the very myth that this chapter talks about.

To put it bluntly, the religious are really predisposed to do the so called “things of God” like prayer and the apostolate because that is why they entered these religious institutions in the first place.  The religious becomes a worker of the works of God. He thinks about God and about everything related to Him.

But is it really an exclusive deal for them?  Can we not also do God’s works outside of religious life?

When he was in the Carmelite monastery, he was able to spend a lot of time praying and thinking about God.  The whole structure of the life of the monastery is centered upon disposing one’s self for the action of the Holy Spirit.  When they woke up, they knew that they did it for God.  When they took a bath, they were deliberately doing it for God.  When they ate or played or worked in the monastery, they knew that these things are done because God willed that they do it at the specific time and in that specific place.

The religious life can literally make you saints fast—or at least that’s what most of us think.

In contrast, the life of a lay person is riddled with many things that not only tend to but really do distract the person from centering his life on God and on finding Him.  This can still be qualified because there are people, as I shall try to show later on, who do know and find him in spite of it all.

The lay person thinks that because he has a lot of things to attend to, he has no or little time to allot for prayer and in contemplation.  For him, prayer is a waste of time.  For the lay person, prayer is a very precious commodity because he needs to invest time and effort to do it.  But he also has to do things that one needs to do to fulfill the demands of his state in life.

In other words, one can claim that he has absolutely no time to pray and to contemplate.

What  a sad reality this is! But don’t get discouraged right away.  Later on we will discuss how this is a myth that’s long been busted by many.

Myth No. 3: Mary or Martha?

If there is any myth about contemplation that’s so staggering, it may be this one:  that a contemplative is someone who locks himself inside his room, doesn’t go out for many days or weeks, and when he does come out, you will see his face radiant with light only to find out that he is going to lock himself inside his room to pray and contemplate once again.

People believe that when we contemplate the face of God, we must go inside our room and think about him.  Most of us believe that in order for us to really reach contemplation we have to abandon our work and just sit there and pray.

Now don’t get me wrong.  In praying to God we must give Him the highest form of reverence which should include the posture of our bodies.  We show adoration by kneeling down or bowing our heads.  We close our eyes or gaze upon the crucifix and pray. Or when we are inside the Blessed Sacrament, we prostrate before the monstrance as a sign of reverence and worship.

And these things should be done rightfully so.

But let me tell you that when you have reached a deeper friendship with God, you will find that these are not the only ways of showing God that you respect and adore him.  In fact, because God is simple and all his works are simple, you become simpler as you go along the path of contemplation.

When He starts to act in your soul, you will begin to see that although those postures and methods in prayer are good and important, they are not the only ways of going to God.  You will even find that there is really no method that can be used to attain to God—but every method available can be used to dispose yourselves for the action of God.

If this is so, then commuting to the office can also be used to connect to God.  Doing the laundry can also be used to pray to God. Cooking a meal for your family is also a way of communicating with God.  Selling products at work is your prayer to God.  Lulling your baby to sleep is connecting with God.

So it is not a question of becoming Mary or Martha, but a question of finding the one thing that Jesus talked about when he visited the house of Lazarus, Mary and Martha.  We also have to choose the better part which will not be taken away from us.

What is this one thing?  What is this better part?

I believe that this one thing, which is also the better part, is God himself.  Like I said, it is not a question of whether to lock ourselves in our room or just go about our business for the day.  These things are both good in themselves.

It is then a question of whether you have found God or not.  It’s a question of whether you’re just doing the methods or whether these methods have reached the end to which they were used.

It’s not a battle between Mary and Martha.

Instead, let Mary and Martha hold hands and both go straight to God, neither should be left alone.

Myth No. 4: Levitations and the like

This may be the shortest portion in this book.

People are sometimes engrossed about mystical experiences that are linked with contemplation and prayer. They see these things as amazing phenomena that always happen to people who journey towards contemplation.  They view ecstasies, levitations, locutions, visions, and apparitions of the saints or the Lord as the end of the journey.  They say that when these things do not happen, then your prayer or contemplation may well be futile.

Although the ones I have mentioned should be esteemed properly by the one who receives them for these things do happen to some or a few, they should not be taken as the end of contemplation.  I am not here to discuss these things.  The discussion of these things will only hinder us from continuing our journey to God.  There are other authors who have tackled the question of mystical experiences in prayer.  Numerous books have been written about them and I even profited from these books myself.

Suffice it to say that when these mystical experiences do happen, let the one who receives it receive it with thanks and gratitude, tell his spiritual director about it and leave it at that.  I would not even suggest that you examine whether the experience was from God or not.  That would only take time and delay you from reaching contemplation.  If they happen, thank God.  But if they don’t, thank God.

Chapter 3

My Conviction

I have a simple conviction, but this simple conviction is based on an equally simple fact of our spiritual life as Christians.

We are all called to be contemplatives.

The call to contemplation is a universal call.  It is not reserved only for a few souls.  If contemplation were reserved only for a chosen few, then you could just imagine how boring heaven will be.  We are all called to contemplate the face of God starting now here on earth. Many saints from the patristic era to contemporary saints have talked much about contemplation and how everyone of us is called to a communion with God at the summits of contemplation.

Heaven will only be a wonderful continuation of that loving act here on earth.

It is a welling belief of mine that’s ready to gush forth: you who are reading this are invited to go through the path of contemplation!  You have been made by God to go straight back to Him and to do that starting now.  You are invited to gaze back into those loving eyes.

God is excited to know your thoughts about Him.  He wants to listen to what you have to say to Him.  He needs to converse with you and share to you His plans for your future.  He wants to communicate with you in your heart and usher you into His most loving presence wherever you are and whatever it is you’re doing.

I believe that contemplation is not reserved for only a few, but it is the destiny of every soul.  We were made to contemplate Him.  We were made to share in His unfathomable life and to start sharing in this life right here on earth.

The religious are not the only ones who can become contemplatives.  We all have the God-given capacity to go to Him.  Yes, we do need to do our part and dispose ourselves by doing all these methods and procedures in prayer, but once we have become disposed, we need to let the Holy Spirit of God act on our souls.  We should let Him have his way with us.  We should abandon everything that we previously did because God cannot be contained by methods and procedures.  He has no way, but He uses every kind of way possible.

The mystical experiences that I mentioned in the previous chapter clearly show that contemplation is a supernatural thing because it involves the action of God in our souls.  These phenomena are simply the result of our physical bodies and our created souls meeting with the One who made us all.  The Creator meets the lowly creatures.

Because of this amazing presence and action of God, these mystical things occur.  God acts on us in every part of our being that not only the soul is acted upon but the body shares in these actions of God.  The soul and the body react accordingly to God’s action.

But once the body is attuned to receiving God and His graces, then these experiences cease, or at least cease to become frequent.

The one who desires to truly contemplate should not have any inclination nor desire to experience these things. Why?  Because the devil meddles in this area of the prayer life.

He seeks to confound people so that they will swerve from the path to God.  He will dazzle men and women with these amazing things so that they will not continue.  He is a master counterfeiter who will stop at nothing from copying the true manifestations of God.  He is there ready to hinder us from attaining to God.

He will be content to even copy the things of God and disguise himself as an angel of light—as long as he can detain you there, unable to really attain to God.

Starting Prayer

Chapter 4

Charity begins at Home

The sense of the title goes for prayer as well.  Prayer can start at any part of a man’s life, but most of the time, it starts at home.

Children begin to learn about values and about God when they are still very young and they learn these from very reputable and trustworthy people namely, their parents.

My mother was the one who taught me about the Our Father when I was 4 years old.  I can still remember that I was lying in bed and she was beside me.  She told me that we should start with the Sign of the Cross and so I did it like any child would—erroneously.  She was so patient to correct me and she started to pray the Our Father.

I tried to follow her—or to put it more clearly, I tried to mimic her.  I mimicked the sounds that she made and I could remember that all I said were muffled words or more like mumbles.  That was enough for my mother and then I slept soundly after that.

Fast forward to now and looking back at those times, I can see that those moments with my mom and my family really made the difference for me.  I could not even begin to imagine what would have happen if she had not guided me and taught me the simple formula prayers that I now say like a pro.

The seeds of contemplation are generally sown at home.

Parents have a big responsibility of honing the God-given capacity of a child to become a contemplative when he grows up.  Parents should and must strive to produce godly children.  They should start to instill in every child the virtues that they need in order for them to go straight to God.  The Holy Family should be the model of every household.

The father should emulate St. Joseph who became the provider of Jesus and Mary.  He became their Guardian and Protector.  He became the spiritual head of the household and he guided Jesus to grow wise and with the fear of the Lord.  Joseph himself was a contemplative because every single day he would look at Jesus and see in Him two realities:  the reality of Man and the reality of God.

He could not understand how this is possible of course, but he always looked or gazed at Jesus with the eyes of faith.  And primarily, contemplatives gaze with faith, they use contemplative faith.  Joseph loved Jesus with this faith and he worked in the carpentry shop with this faith in his heart.

He worked hard, but the one thing that moves him to work was the fact that after he worked, he would go home and gaze upon his Son once more.

And while he worked, he was confident that his Son was still gazing at him, learning from him, observing him, growing in wisdom and in strength.

Mary was a contemplative because she held all of these things in her heart.  And what a heart she has! I believe that her heart is a deep container of virtues and graces.

I believe that as a Jewish girl, Mary may have been taught about the coming of the Messiah.  She may not have been given the proper education as the males at the time, but I believe she did learn about the scriptures because of her parents.  Her parents taught her about the Jewish religion and about God and about the coming of the Messiah.

Because of this, I believe that she became pregnant with Jesus in her heart first.  She loved God with all her heart and she anticipated the birth of the Messiah whom she knew was to be born of a virgin.  She longed for Him to come and deliver His people from bondage.  Jesus already lived in her heart even before the annunciation.

I don’t believe that Mary’s fiat was just a spur of the moment.  I don’t believe that the choice of God came just out of nowhere.

Here’s what I believe:  I believe that because Mary was taught about God at home and because she came to love Him with all her heart, she was chosen by God to be the spotless vessel.  Yes, God may have saved her from original and actual sin in her life, but even if she was spared any contact with sin, she still had to learn who God is and how to love Him.

I believe that she could not have said Yes had she not first loved God above all things.  I believe that God would not have chosen her if her heart was not prepared for his coming down.

God can of course make everything happen and just make things out of nothing, but He is not like that when it comes to dealing with human beings.  He will never take away our free will.

Where did Mary get the strength to say Yes?  From her knowledge that God was a loving God, that He will save His people from the tyranny of sin and oppression. She was taught all about the Messiah and that made her already know Him in her heart.

She had to learn ideas about God, she had to experience his love in her daily life.  She had to be taught about Him.  And because of her faith, her experiences of God and of her knowledge of Him passed on from one generation to another, she said YES with love.

Her YES was a consent.  It was not forced.

It was an informed decision.  She said YES with all her being, with complete volition.

Jesus, although He was truly God, learned to contemplate the Father because his parents taught him.  He had to learn these things as any man would.  He had to spend 30 years in the obscure town of Nazareth so that he can allot it to practicing prayer and contemplation.  That’s what I believe.

And the reason that I believe that is because all throughout the public of ministry of Jesus, he would show us glimpses of his prayer life.  The holy bible would tell us that at many points of his ministry, especially when he was about to make a very big move, he would always go out alone and spend his whole night in prayer.

Now that would sound nothing to a regular man, but if you will just take every word in, you would see that these instances reveal the very heart of Jesus.

His heart was a heart of a contemplative.  It seeks the Father and enjoys Him and wants to be with Him.  Contemplation led Him to the source of His strength, the source of His wisdom—His Father Who loves Him and begets Him; Who offers Him for humanity’s redemption.

As we saw in the very life of the Holy Family, contemplation starts at home and it is nourished and strengthened there.  Without this “getting used to” of prayer, a person would not have the inclination to even want it for and in his life.

Of course, there are exceptions to this because God can actually act whenever and however He will and He can take a man who has never known Him and immediately usher Him into the highest parts of contemplation, but that is only on very rare occasions.

God usually acts in a very simple manner.

He chooses to act in the usual and the “normal” way because He wants us to understand that we need to work for something very special.  He wants us to do our part.

I am motivated to write about this because I know that we are dealing here with God.  And as I have set the premise in place, that contemplation is a universal call from God Himself, then I can say that He will not fail to give Himself once we have acted thus accordingly.  He will never let His loved one go away long without Him.

When I myself pray and do every effort to contemplate Him, I can only abandon myself in whatever will happen in my prayer because I believe that if I would only be true to myself and genuinely want Him, He would see that and give Himself to me in the wonderful embrace of Love.

Whether that is sooner or later, it doesn’t matter as long as I know that He will.

So normally, it starts at home.

Try to remember when you were young.  Did your parents teach you prayer?  Have you any memory of praying to God or even thinking about him when you were really young?  Did you have questions about him?

Try and remember.

You may have started prayer earlier than you think.

The call is sounded early on

When I entitled this portion, I wasn’t thinking about early in terms of a person’s development from childbirth to adulthood. You may have noticed the clear grammatical error of the present tense “is” and the past tense implications of the words “early on”.  Moreover that should have been “earlier on” and not just “early on”.

But here’s the thing: the word early means something much deeper than it sounds.  Early here means so much more than just a word to describe a measurement of time.  In this sense, early is not just time.  It is more than that.  To me, early is a person.  Early has a being.

Early means eternity.

Early means before time.

Early for me in this chapter, is God.

Only God is truly early, and yet He is even before early.  He is earlier than early.

So if we look back at the title, then it means that the call to contemplation was done by God even before the creation of the universe.

God spoke only one word, Who is His Son, Jesus.  He never spoke another word.

But when he spoke His only Word, the fullness of life came with it and of course, contemplation as well.

I don’t know if I am wrong or not, but since God made us in his own image and likeness, it will be right to say that not only do we have the physical and spiritual attributes of God, but that we also do things like Him.  And if we are to contemplate Him in Heaven—which is our main work—then I believe that He is also contemplating His very person.

I may be wrong about this, but I can’t take away this thought in my mind and it is best that I share it with you since this book is really a compilation of my contemplations on God.  The Father contemplates His Son and the Son contemplates His Father.  The Father loves this Son and the Son loves His Father with His capacity as God, and this Love forms a bond that only God can create.  And this Love is a person, the third person of this contemplative being.  That third person is the Holy Spirit.

So therefore, if God calls us to contemplation, then we ought to do this office as soon as possible.

Start now, if you haven’t started the journey of prayer and contemplation as a child.  You may be deep in sin and your life may be a mess.  Things in your life may not be going as planned and you may not see yourself as a contemplative now, but God does not judge you.

He chooses not to see your sins and your past.  When He looks at you, He only sees your potential, your greatness, your amazing life.  He sees only the things that He has endowed you with when He thought about you before the creation of the world.

You can always start where you are.

***

I have a friend who was being led by God into the very depths of prayer.  I could tell that this is so because of the way she described to me her feelings and the situations that happen to her when she prays or relates to God.

She related to me one story that happened when she went to one of her many sessions or meetings with her Spiritual Director.  She went to him as usual and so their meeting started.

But then, as she was relating to him everything that happened so far since their last meeting, she was surprised to see that her Spiritual Director was sitting there, fast asleep—or so it seemed.  She really can’t tell if her spiritual director was sleeping, but it looked like it.

She said that she was relating to him all the things that happened –even the bad things she’s done, but all he did was sleep there.  I was amused at what she related to me.

She thought that her spiritual director would be surprised or shocked at what she has said to him, but he just slept there—as relaxed as he can be. I can’t say if the spiritual director was really asleep or not, or whether he was doing it on purpose or not.

That’s not important, but I would like to point out the attitude of the priest who was “sleeping” in spite of the things that my friend was relating to him.

I guess that’s how God relates with us.  He is so at ease with us and with what we have to say to Him that he can afford to sleep even if we speak with Him about matters that are so bad in our standards.

Nothing surprises Him.

Nothing shocks him.

He will accept you, whoever you are or whatever you may have done.  He chose to do so. He chooses to do so, and will continue until eternity.

God can accept whoever you are and whatever you may be going through right now.

He accepts YOU.  As is.  Where is.

Meditation

After the initial stages of prayer which includes all the prayers that your parents and your school has taught you, you can then move on to a different kind of method of disposing yourselves to the action of God.

Contemplation generally also implies that at the initial stages, you have to try to practice the silent and interior forms of prayers.  There is nothing wrong about vocal prayers, and like I said, they are really needed to form our habits of prayers, but they should also be balanced with interior prayer.

As you master the art of praying all the formula prayers, if you are to move on deeper into the interior life, you need to start meditation.  Meditation is a method that’s used by many masters in the spiritual life when they started in their journey.

This method involves the use of the mind and we make considerations about the things of God.  We think about the mysteries of our faith and then try to silently ponder on them or lovingly think about them.

What I usually do is I start with a scripture passage and then I think about the scene silently and try to imagine that I was in the scene and Jesus, Mary or the Apostles were there talking directly to me and explaining to me what the scene was all about.

I try to let my mind let go of any kind of distraction and so I usually do this in the Blessed Sacrament or somewhere silent enough to help me meditate.

Others use a word or a few phrases to help them center on God, and they keep on repeating these words—or more like chanting them silently.  This is called centering prayer. Others use the Rosary to usher them into meditation.  The mysteries of the Rosary are a great way of focusing on God and eventually meditate more on things that pertain to Him.

Like I said, there are many ways to start prayer, but the most important thing is that you started prayer.  Don’t be too distracted by methods because as St. Teresa of Avila said of prayer:  “The key is not to think much, but to love much.”

So unless your prayer is a loving prayer, then your efforts have become mediocre.  Take note, I did not say your efforts were futile, but I only said mediocre.  The excellent kind of prayer is always the prayer of love.

Let your prayer always be done in Love.

Let the motivation be love and let the end be love.

Chapter 5

The Prayer Life

If prayer or contemplation is something that we will be doing for eternity in Heaven, and if it is something that we need to start doing now while here on earth, then the invitation now is to make prayer and contemplation a part of your life.

Prayer is and should be a lifestyle.

It is not something that you just discovered and then insert in your hectic schedule.  It should become part of your day and of your whole life.  You should ask God the grace to give you the gift to do things in such a manner that you can afford to rearrange your whole life to make room for prayer.

This is very important because people who desire to become pray-ers (as what Fr. Tom Green, SJ fondly calls persons who live a life of prayer) usually just go with what they already have and then just insert the activity of prayer in some part of their day.  There is nothing wrong with this, but if you are to get the most out of prayer, you have to make sure that you also give it due importance.

You will not just insert a date or dinner with a loved one in your schedule, right?  You will check your schedule and then change it if it will not coincide with the schedule of the dinner with your loved one.  You will change everything for your loved one because that person is extremely important to you.

Prayer should have that level of importance because it is actually your date with God.  The object of prayer or contemplation is God Himself.  So we should give due credence to prayer.

Not just an activity

It is important to take note then that prayer is not all activity.  Yes, it does involve some kind of activity on our part but our prayer should, by God’s grace, be an activity of love.  By activity I mean everything that you do with your mind or your body.  Thinking is done during the first stages of prayer.  The posture and gestures done in prayer are very important to keep us focused on our objective in prayer.

If there is anything that we should and must do in prayer—if there is one activity that we should do in prayer—that should be the activity of love.

People tend to focus more on the activities done in the early stages of prayer.  You should do them, yes, but when the time comes that there will be no need for them, then you should just abandon them with love and focus on loving God.

Unless you have love in your heart, then nothing will matter. The things that you do will only be pure activity.

Holiness and Prayer

Prayer (especially those that are in the lofty levels) and holiness come hand in hand.

When people hear the word “holy” they always cringe and dismiss it as an obscure idea:  something that is good for day-dreaming.  Some people use the words “holy” and “holiness” as conversation pieces only.  And they are being very good when they do that.

There are other people who don’t think like that.  There are some who go to the point of dismissing holiness of life as something superficial.  They think that holiness connotes religious piety and outward display of religiosity.

They picture older women with veils and rosaries in their hands.  They see people who always bow down when they meet people in the streets. They think of people who never smile and who always close their eyes because they are always “ in prayer” and always “connected with God”.

I can’t blame this stereotype because that’s what society tells us.  Experience and history will tell us that holiness is something weird and only a few “saints” can be holy.

The world tells us that holiness is something that’s not available for the laity.  It is a state reserved for people who “have done the works”.  Holiness is viewed as some reward for doing something. It is viewed as payment for doing things that God “requires” for us to do.

What holiness is

Holiness is simply the action of God in a willing soul.

It is something that we can never attain only by our own selves.  It is something that only God can give to us.  Like I said in the previous chapters, we can do something on our own in order for us to dispose ourselves for the action of God in our souls or in our lives, but this disposition is not the end of contemplation, and this is not holiness.

Yes, the inspiration to dispose ourselves for the action of God does come from God and He is the One who strengthens and sustains us to keep on moving forward towards Him, but this is not strictly the action of God in the context of contemplation.  This is the same when we discussed about the substantial presence of God in souls—without which, we will be nothing.

In the same way, without the constant action of God in souls, we will never have any good things to do or think about.

Contemplation is more than that.  It is deeper and it can only be explained by those who have experienced it or are already in the summits of the prayer life.

Prayer or contemplation and holiness go together.

Prayer prepares the pray-er for that specific action of God that truly transforms the soul and the whole person into someone who is truly holy.

Holiness then, like prayer or contemplation, cannot be described only by the acts of the person.  It involves the spirit and soul and so is very tricky when judged by human standards.  Only God knows the heart of a person and it is only He who knows the disposition of a certain soul.  But this doesn’t stop us from discerning or getting a glimpse of that heart and that soul.

How?

By the fruits.

The action of God in a soul always comes with fruits that tell us whether they are indeed from God or not.

I am not saying that you measure people with the use of these fruits, but I am saying that you can “tell” if a person is truly holy when he is bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I know that as you go through the journey of contemplation and prayer, you will be able to notice people who are also making the same journey.

I can’t really explain this, but you just begin to notice people who are doing the same thing.  Maybe it’s because the more you think about God, the more aware you will be of the things that pertain to him—even the people that are close to him.

I liken this to a woman who has become pregnant.  When she becomes pregnant, she will tell her husband, “Wow, I can see that there are a lot of women in this mall who are also pregnant!”  The husband just nods, but thinks silently that they have been in that mall many times.  She has not noticed any pregnant women before, but now that she is pregnant, she suddenly notices every pregnant woman in the big mall.

Then the husband just smiles.

The pregnant woman has noticed other pregnant women because she is undergoing the same thing.  She can relate and her circumstance leads her to think about things that pertain to pregnancy.

The same goes true to people who are journeying to God in prayer.  They will notice a certain stance, a certain way of speaking, a certain topic that will tell them that the person is also trying his best to contemplate God.  And the easiest way of telling is by looking at the fruits of the Holy Spirit:

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)

When these fruits are evident and present in the works and life of a certain pray-er then the Holy Spirit of God is at work in him—and that renders him genuinely holy.

We can be truly HOLY

So we should not recoil at the idea of being “truly” holy because it is even something that every person should desire.  There is no other way to heaven but by being truly holy.  And when you have allowed God to act thus on your soul, there is no other way but to be rendered holy.  His very acts will make you holy.

We cannot attain holiness, although we can prepare for it.  It is only when God specifically acts on our soul that he makes us holy.

Holiness is not only our act. It is a collaboration between us and God, a partnership.  We can only dispose ourselves until God calls us to move higher and deeper into His very mystery.

I am tempted to say, “We can only dispose ourselves for God’s actions, but if He doesn’t act on our souls, we will never be holy.”  This is true, but remember that we are talking about God.

God desires that we become holy.  He will never not want us to become holy.  He is holy and He wants us to be like Him. He wants us to be holy and spotless in Jesus.

God acts on us, and that makes us holy.

So don’t be afraid to strive for true holiness.  It is real and it should be desired by all.

Prayer

of the

Present Moment

Chapter 6

God of the Present

Like a tree, prayer grows and moves from one stage to the next.

We have seen that prayer usually starts with our human acts: we pray vocally, we learn the catechism, we learn about the saints, we learn the formula prayers and then we move on to the next stage from there.  We soon see that as we learn more about God with our conscious mind, we see that the knowledge that we have of Him only makes us love Him more and then we see that He is indeed real—concretely acting in our lives.

He is present, although unseen, and He is Someone Whom we can talk to and relate with.  We can speak with Him, and hear Him respond to us in many ways.

We suddenly realize that God is as real as we are real.

And so, if He is real and if this God is a very great good that we have gotten to know in a very deep way through prayer, why do we only converse with Him or go to Him only in some parts of the day?  Why only spend 5 minutes with this amazing person?  If this person is our greatest good, why would we want to be separated from Him?  Why do we need to “insert” the time of being with Him in our tight schedule?

If we love Him, why do we choose to leave Him alone?

I believe that God desires to be with us every step of the way.  He desires to speak with us and be with us, His beloved creatures. He loves to spend more time with us. He wants to be part of our very existence.  He desires to be present in our very lives that every fiber of our being might be inundated by His very life! He is the God of the past and the future, but He is also the God of the present.  And I believe that as God, He wants us to focus more on the present than on the past or on the future.

We are but human beings and once an act has been done, once the time has passed, once thoughts are thought, they become just part of our past.  This is where the problem lies.  As human beings, we can only think about the past, but we can never live in the past!

Time goes and we go with it.   Time keeps us ever in the present.  We can only think back about the past, but we can never go back to it. Neither can we be in our future.  We can only speculate what will happen, but still we are in the present moment.

No more imagining Him

A dear friend of mine shared to me what seems to be a very amazing proof or idea that God is indeed a God of the present.  He is truly here.

When my friend had an amazing stay in one of the monasteries of a famous religious order, he industriously gave himself up to prayer and meditation because that was the charism of the order.  He offered himself up to the order’s way of life and started the happy journey to prayer.

One day, after a few months of giving himself to the way of life of prayer and meditation, he was meditating alone in the chapel and he was really trying his best to think about Jesus.  He tried to imagine Him with him, present, sitting with him, conversing with and listening to his every word.  My friend tried to imagine Jesus gazing lovingly at him.  He tried his best to imagine and picture Jesus doing these things, in his mind.

But there was one problem at that very moment.  He couldn’t imagine these things.  He could not make his mind create the pictures that he wanted to.  No matter how hard he tried.  How can he pray?

He got distracted by this but still he persisted.  But the fact was that he became truly sad about this seeming lack of concentration.  He has been able to imagine Jesus during his many times in prayer before but he could not do it now.

Then something happened.

My friend told me that as he was sitting there just frustrated with himself, he clearly felt Jesus speak to him.  Jesus spoke to him from the tabernacle and what Jesus told him was so amazing that he told me that the grace he received that day stayed with him to this day.

Jesus appealed to him.

I would not want to quote him but I would only relate to you the gist of what Jesus told my friend.  Jesus appealed to him not to imagine Him.  How could you imagine somebody or a friend who is truly there?  Jesus told my friend in his heart that if he really believed that He was truly there with him, why would he even imagine Him?

I will provide an example:   Let’s say you have a friend who visited you one day.  You let him enter your house, let him sit on your favorite chair, sit with him there and then you do the unthinkable: you imagine that you were talking to him.  You imagine that he was really there.  You imagine his face, his smile, his posture, his clothes, the words that he says—everything—but the fact is, he is actually, truly, really there!

Imagine how you would feel.  How would you feel if your friend just imagined meeting you when in fact you were actually there! Why was there any need for imagination?

That’s how my friend felt Jesus was telling him.  He clearly felt the emotion of Jesus: it was of sadness and longing.  Jesus explained something to my friend:

“I am truly here present. I am here.  Your imagination may have served you and Me in the past while you were still growing in prayer, but this time I want you not to imagine me.  I am here! You don’t need to imagine me!  You may not feel me physically nor hear my voice nor see my face.  But the fact remains that I am here!

I want you to gaze at me with your single eye.  I want you present with me now. Not with your imagination, but with the eyes of your soul.  You know me in a deeper way now.  When you come to me in prayer, come to Me.  Don’t imagine it.  I am here.”

Jesus wants us to be present with Him more and more.

My friend told me that after that incident, he doesn’t go to Jesus with his imagination.  He goes to Jesus in faith.  He never really sees Jesus.  He doesn’t hear his voice with his bodily ears. He doesn’t feel Jesus sitting beside him when he prays.  But he believes it.  His faith tells him it is so.

So far he is not using his imagination when praying.  He has been praying thus for a few years now.  And my friend says Jesus taught him a new way to pray because that’s how Jesus wants to lead him.  But the fact remains that Jesus is not confined by methods or ways, but he does have all the means to lead everyone uniquely.

God may lead one with imagination, while others in another way.  But all of these ways are good and profitable.  God may soon lead you using another way as you progress, but the way by which he leads you and others—none of this is wrong.  It just shows us that God will change your prayer as you go deeper in to Him. It becomes simpler and simpler until it becomes simpler than simple.

As to how deep, no one can really know for sure.  But suffice it to say that God leads each one according to one’s readiness and capacity at a given time.

My only take on this is that God really is a person who is in the present moment.

Be present to Him, too.

Be fully present.

Prayer

of the

pots and pans

-St. Teresa of Jesus

Chapter 7

Prayer in Action

People have a romantic idea of prayer.  When they speak of prayer, they always picture out a person closing his eyes, kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament, tears rolling down his cheeks, and a sweet smile on his lips.

That is a very good picture of prayer and that scenario does happen a lot.  I am not saying that the romantic idea of prayer is bad or wrong.  No—on the contrary.  I even know very good friends of mine who experience that kind of event during prayer.  I even experience that myself.

But I would like to appeal to all of you that prayer should not be viewed as only that.

Prayer is more than that.  The feelings of piety, tears, deep sense of joy,  strong resolutions, the feelings of deep love for God, and others are part of what happens during prayer—but prayer is not limited to these things.

Prayer should be our whole life.  It should permeate every aspect of our lives.  Our bodies should act always in the context of prayer.  Our minds should always be in the state of prayer.  Our words should always be words of prayer.  The holy words of prayer should always be on the tip of our tongue.

When we open our mouth we should be saying words of prayer.  We should breathe prayer.  Prayer should not be part of our lives, instead it should become our life.

St. Therese of the Child Jesus was the most popular saint of modern times who exhibited this kind of practice.  Her life did not only include prayer, but it became her very prayer.  She did everything with love.  Even doing menial things was a way for her to connect with God.

I guess she was able to do this because she discovered something very important.  Something most of us are not so ready in accepting.  She has found something very valuable that it enabled her to become the saint that she is.

She found out one truth about God:  God is omnipresent.

And because this is so, He is present in anything.  Whether you eat or sleep or drink—He is there, as present as He can be.  His very being penetrates every fiber of every creature here in our known universe and Therese was able to realize this.

She knew that if she only tapped into that fire in her heart, she would be reminded of this truth.  Once she is reminded, then everything that she does will now be offered for the sole purpose of making God happy.  If He is there, why would you not want to make Him happy?

You are where God wants you to be.  So if you begin to remind yourself that God is present within and with you when you are cooking, for example, then you can simply offer your activity for the greater glory of God.

Because you are where God wants you to be, you should grab every present moment as a chance for you to be united to Him in your will.  If God wills you to do a certain thing at a given time, then you should unite yourself to His will by wanting whatever it is that He wills.

Do everything with love.  Do everything for God.  Do every little thing for His great pleasure.

God at the bus stop

God is truly the God at the bus stop as He is the God of heaven and earth.  He is there to accompany you to any event or mundane activity in your life.  God is a very passionate friend and lover—he wants to be part of our lives even to the minutest details.

I saw this truth myself when one day I was so engrossed to pray and be “alone with the Alone”.  But the thing is I needed to go to a very important meeting.  I was supposed to be the one who will preside the meeting, but I really wanted and felt the tug to pray.

Now, the only way that I knew was to be alone with God in my room or somewhere quiet so that I can pray.  I wanted to sit on my bed and close my eyes and enjoy the presence of God in my heart.  That was the only way that I knew that could really help me to connect with God.

So shall I go back inside and pray, or shall I go to the meeting and be a good leader?

I had to choose the latter and so I went out to wait for my ride at the bus stop.

I was still having the desire to really pray, but the fact that I was there waiting for the bus at the stop made me worry that I might not be able to pray well—that I would not be able to give God the due attention that one should give.

And so there I was, sulking in my misery.  Then something really amazing happened.  I suddenly felt deep in my gut a warm and fuzzy feeling that only one person can arouse in me.  It felt as if a warmth enveloped me and my ears became very attentive to this soft, still, but clear voice.

I felt the warm presence of God with me and within me.  I felt at peace and I was filled.

Suddenly there was no difference between my room and the bus stop.  Between my quiet time with God in the Blessed Sacrament and my busy day waiting for the bus.  The place wasn’t a struggle anymore.  I was praying while consciously waiting for the bus.

Suddenly, I realized that God is not someone who waits for you in some corner.  He is someone who actually goes with you wherever you may go!

And that’s where God is!  He is at the present moment—truly present and there for you—for all of us.  He is there when you’re worried, when you’re commuting, when you’re busy with paperwork in the office, when you’re chatting with your friends using instant messaging, when you’re having a mental breakdown, when your neighbor is busy slandering you, when you’re having a fight with your spouse.  He is there when you’re doing your laundry, when you’re taking care of the kids, when everything seems to be in chaos.  He is there when you’re thinking about doing something wrong, when you’re actually sinning, when you’re desperate to run away from Him out of shame, when you think you’re all alone and no one is watching you.

He is there.

Many people don’t realize that God is actually present in everything that we do.  He is patiently watching our every move and His blessings are being poured out to us, we just need to open ourselves up to these blessings.

God is the God of the bus stop, of the grocery, of the laundry.  He can be experienced anywhere as long as we are keenly attuned to Him.  Just like a radio is made to receive sound waves or radio signals so that you can hear the sound, so is our very soul.

Our souls are made to detect and capture the signals of God.  That is why for people who do not really know Jesus, they feel a void that nothing can fill.  Only God can truly fill this void, but since we do not really come to know him in a deep way, we try to fill this void with other things.  We try to make things God and put them into our lives.  We just don’t realize that the more we put things into our lives, the more this void becomes pronounced.  The very fact that you are looking for substitutes of God says that you do acknowledge that there is this void that nothing can fill except Someone.  But if you do continue to collect things just so you can fill this, your soul will be encumbered by these substitutes—and you will continue to feel the void.  Instead of remedying your void, you add other problems.

All you have to do is acknowledge Him.  You have to desire Him and want to be with Him.  Once you do this, I am pretty sure that God will come to you and help you.  He is this Being who is solicitous of you.  He wants to fill you with nothing short but Himself.  He is a God who is generous at the level of being God, and as such, the only thing that He can really give that is worthy of his being generous as God is the gift of Himself.

He gave Himself through His only-begotten Son, Jesus and so the rest is, as they say, history.

Prayer in the midst of Chaos

Prayer is an exchange between two persons.  It is a conversation between friends who really know each other.

Now you might say that you don’t really know God.  How can this relationship work if the other end of the communication does not know the other?  How can friendship be made if one of the two parties does not genuinely know the other?

Well, friendship does not work because the parties involve already know one another.  Friendship works because of one main ingredient: willingness.  What is friendship if the parties are not willing to invest in the relationship?  How can the bond be formed if there is no desire to form a bond in the first place.

Besides, knowledge alone does not constitute friendship.

I may know many things about a certain person—even his personal life, but that doesn’t mean that we are friends.  Or that exact same person may know lots of things about me as well, but we may not necessarily be friends.

Acquaintances, yes, but friends, it cannot be told.

Unless I desire to be friends with the person and unless he also desires this, there will be no friendship.

God is a being who already knows us from the inside out.  And not only does He know us, but He also desires to be friends with us—or He desires us to desire to be friends with Him.  Of course there is no question as to God’s desire to be friends with us.

All of Holy Scripture has shown us that He in fact desires this with His whole capacity as God.

We are the ones who are in question.

Do we really want to be friends with Him?  And if yes, do we really know Him?

***

There are many distractions to prayer and most of the times, we are the ones at fault.  As we start in our prayer-life journey, distractions will be numerous and it would be a great suffering for anyone who truly wants to focus on God to deal with these distractions and chaos.

How to deal with distractions

Many spiritual writers and saints have dealt on the subject of dealing with the many distractions in prayer, and you can easily look them up using many books.  But as for me, there is one thing that really worked well.

Distractions can be likened to children.  When a person has children in a house it is quite chaotic to say the least, and when a friend comes to visit to talk to you, the problem seems to escalate.  You can imagine that as you are focused on your friend because you also want to talk with him/her, the children begin approaching you.  They burden you and your friend with many a concern that are truly petty.  They even go to the extent of holding your hand or your face so that you will focus on them.  Some will even pull you or push you just so you will face them or listen to their whining.

But as good parents and those who also have this experience know well, there is one great and effective way of making these children go back to their playing: to lovingly and gently take care of their concerns.  This can be done by a gentle nod, a sweet smile, or even looking at the children with the same doting attention as any parent would give.

Once their concerns are acknowledged, these children will see that you are a force to be reckoned with.  They will see that you cannot be manipulated.  Soon enough they cease their whining and they move on to play in another part of the house.  You can then verily proceed with your conversation with your friend.

This is exactly how distractions are to be treated.  You need to simply deal with them lovingly and gently.  Your imagination may be agitated or your mind may seem so chaotic, but nevertheless, you need not pay attention to these distractions to the point of frustration.  Gently let them pass.  Once they do pass, go back to the conversation with your Friend, and I am sure He understands.

But you also need to take note that distractions are, as I said, mostly because of our own faults.  When you set a time for prayer, you need to make sure that you set the venue where there are few distractions.  Look for a place or niche in the church or in your house where it is quite silent and conducive for prayer. You also need to make sure that you have set your prayer at a time where you are most awake.  Drowsiness and being able to sleep during prayer can be remedied if you try to set the prayer at a time when you are not sleepy.

Just like any kind of meeting, you need to set the venue and the time appropriate for your meeting.  This way, distractions will be lessened.  As to the ones that do come which are beyond your control, it is best to ignore them.

Chapter 8

In His Image and Likeness

If you think that your capacity to be friends with God is largely crippled by your lack of knowledge of Him, let me just remind you that you were made in His own image and likeness.  We all are!

And because of this, I believe that somewhere, somehow, deep inside our souls or grafted into our very souls, knowledge of God is already present.  Somehow, we “know” Him.

Our souls’ very DNA was made in His image.  Surely something of Him is impressed thereon.

When you create something, a project or something that you built, don’t you feel that some part of yourself was engraved in that particular project?

When chefs make their dishes, they say that they “added their own flair” to the dish which made it “theirs”.  Singers who sing the songs of other artists tend to give the song “a little twist” and that’s how they get their “own version” of the song.

When painters finish a masterpiece, they sign it with their “own name” which gives the whole painting a unique “sense of being owned” that can only be made by that particular artist.

I believe that deep inside our very beings, we already have a certain “knowing”—something even deeper than our knowledge of him by studying about Him.  We truly know Him.  Should I say that as we go through our lives we have forgotten about this “knowing” of Him?  I honestly don’t know.

But whether or not this is so, let us try to get to know Him more.  Let us dig deep into our very souls and desire Him with all our hearts and with all our strength.

I believe this with all my heart.  I believe that deep down within my very soul, a certain “knowing” of this wonderful Being is engraved ready to be rediscovered by me.  This “knowing” and the knowledge that I will get as I “get to know Him” in my life’s journey will help me become friends with this God.

God is love and if there is anything that He will impart to our souls, it will be love.

Charity.

So don’t be afraid to get to know God.  Don’t be discouraged if you really don’t know Him yet.  Only desire Him, and the rest will follow.  Even if you feel like you don’t have any kind of knowledge about God, just desire Him.  Be willing to get to know Him more.

Want him.

Chapter 9

Prayer of the Laity

What then is the prayer of the Laity? How does the lay person pray to God?  How different is his prayer from the religious?

If you’re asking those same questions, then you’re asking the wrong questions.

We have established in the previous chapters that contemplation and prayer are things that are not reserved to a class or people or to a chosen few.  Everyone is invited to contemplate.

Everyone has the capacity to contemplate.  Whether you are a religious or a father of a small family, you can contemplate if you want to.  God will surely honor that desire of yours.  In fact, He wants you to contemplate Him while here on earth.

The laity and the religious do not have different prayers.  They have one and the same.  They may arrive at it in different ways, they may have different methods to dispose themselves to prayer—some are readily disposed while others are not; but still, prayer for them should be one and the same.  Why?

Because the prayer of the laity and the prayer of religious—the prayer of every person—has only one object.

God.

The very reason why I wrote this book was to show you that we, the laity, can contemplate God.  We have the capacity of praying and attaining to God.  The reason why I say this is because God eternally desires us to contemplate Him.  He desires this with all His desire as God.

This is something that we need to learn to accept and understand.  The busiest person in this world, if he only desires to know God through prayer, can contemplate Him and enjoy Him while here on earth.

Chapter 10

Prayer and Sin

I originally planned to dwell more on this section because the topic on sin is what most people see as the hindrance to prayer and contemplation.  The inconsistencies of the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s soul and the sins in that same soul confound even the wisest scholar.

I wanted to speak much about the relation of sin and the power of the Mercy of God in the soul.  I wanted to speak about how the dynamics of the Holy Spirit and the sinner create these two extremes.

I wanted to make this section the biggest part of the book because I know that everyone can relate to it.

Everybody sinned, sins, and will probably sin in the future.  I wanted this section to become the “human” part of the book.  I wanted this section to be the pivotal chapter which grounds everything about the laity and contemplation.

How full of pride I am!

I am at a loss for words as I write this because I feel the gentle tug of God in my heart.  His voice is clear and sweet, gentle and yet firm.

I felt in my heart these words: Why focus about sin?  Why do you intend to talk more about something that isn’t really what you were all made for?  Yes, it is good to discuss a bit about sin and contemplation, but why plan to dwell on it?  Is My Mercy not much more interesting for you?  Yes, acknowledge that you are all sinners and sin has to slowly go away as you progress towards Me—this with My Help—but declare more about My boundless mercy!  Declare to the world that the reason why everyone is capable of contemplation is because of My Mercy.  My Mercy affords you the power to come to Me.  My Mercy is attracted to the misery of sinners.  It does not discriminate.  My Mercy does not even dwell on your sinfulness, so why dwell on it?  Are you better than Me?  Sinners need to know that My Mercy seeks them!  I died specifically for them.  Today is Good Friday.  Remember what I did for you.  Even I don’t look at your sinfulness.  I know you have done me bad things, but I choose to look at your beauty.  I choose to look at your capacity to love Me.  I choose to look at your potential. I choose.  For once, stop looking at yourself, and look at Me.  Fix your eyes on Me.  When you come to prayer and desire to contemplate, contemplate Me.  Contemplate my Being. Contemplate my attributes.  Contemplate my Trinitarian Life.  Contemplate and speak to Me.  Don’t start calling Me to come to you only to leave me there in the corner because you begin to look at your own sinful self yet again.  Look at me and trust me.

That is my reflection about sin and contemplation.  Please approach God in prayer with trust and confidence.  Choose not to dwell on your sins.  He loves you more than you could ever love yourself.

To stop praying is stupid

I say that it is natural to want to abandon prayer because we have the tendency to look at ourselves and all that we see are our sins.

Continue to pray!  Especially when you realize this tendency.  More often than not, the enemy rides straight on the guilt that we feel.  Yes, it is good and fitting to feel remorse for our sins, but if this remorse hinders us to humbly go before God because we think that our sins are too great and beyond Mercy, then it is time to reconsider the nature of your remorse.

The Holy Spirit always sends the grace of remorse that truly heals.  The sinner becomes humble when he feels the remorse and there is renewed strength to overcome temptation.  There is peace, gentleness, joy, and love in this holy remorse.

The opposite comes from the enemy.  The remorse that is inspired by the devil creates unrest, loss of self-esteem, and the soul who feels the remorse becomes agitated.

The devil is the accuser.  He tempts us to sin and then if we do, he goes on to accuse us.

When this happens, never ever abandon prayer.  Continue to do it.  Continue to trust.  If you fall, stand back up and pray.  Start again.  Be stubborn about it.  Any inspiration that makes you abandon prayer is always from the devil.

So be stubborn in your continued walk through prayer.  You may look crazy, but you won’t look stupid.

To stop prayer because we are sinners is just stupid.  There is no other word more appropriate for it, I guess, so please forgive the term.

The more you sin, the more you should pray

We know what sin is and how it affects our relationship with God, so it is wise to run away from it—to fight every ounce of temptation so that you can rise and overcome all of them.

When you sin, you always feel guilty and worried about how God will take the sin that you have done.  In your own standards you require punishment.  You have done such a horrible thing in the sight of God and of men that you need to be given some form of penalty.

In your eyes you can’t see the reality of prayer and sin in your own life.  You see these two things as opposing forces that tire you.  You feel that you need to get away from prayer because you are a sinner.

What’s the point, right?  We should just stop praying because it’s so shameful to be a sinner who prays, right?

Wrong.

The point is that prayer keeps you close to God Who sees you in a very different light.  He sees you with His eyes as God, not with our own lowly vision as creatures.  He would not have died for us if He saw the whole of creation in our eyes.

God loves you so much that He delights when a sinner goes to Him in prayer.

Yes, He knows everything about the feelings that the sinner has: the shame, the guilt, the confusion, the desire not to face Him.  But all of these are eclipsed by the faith that the sinner who prays presents before God.

God delights in someone who prayed the prayer of the tax-collector who beat his chest in a corner and would not even look at heaven, but still prayed, “Have mercy upon me, Lord, a sinner.”  Jesus said in His own words through St. Faustina in her diary that the greater the sinner is, the greater is his right to God’s mercy.  The more you sin, the more you should come closer to God.

I had this dilemma a few years ago.  I had so many sins while I felt the Lord genuinely calling me to come to Him in a deeper way.  I wanted to go to Him, but the first thing that hindered me was the feeling that I was just kidding myself.  I figured that maybe I should just stop trying because I can see in my life that nothing was working.  I was still having many faults, I was still a sinner, I was not improving.

Self-knowledge

Now self-knowledge is a very important virtue in our journey towards God.  If there is anything that we need in all the stages of our journey towards God, it is self-knowledge.  We should try our best to get to know ourselves:  what makes us tick, what situations make us succumb easier to temptations, what happens to us when we pray, what values we want and live in life, what things make us happy, what stuff make us think about God more, and the like.

But there is a danger here because most of us will have self-knowledge based on our standards.

There is nothing wrong with that, but there is a better way of exercising the virtue of self-knowledge.

Instead of seeing yourself in your own eyes, look at yourself as God sees you.  Instead of knowing yourself by looking at your own self, look at God.  Gaze into Him and know Him.  When you do this, you will get to know your own self in His light.

You will realize that although you are not yet perfect as you should be, you have a great potential.  You were made for greatness!

When God thought of you even before the foundation of the world, He delighted on you and all of the three persons in the Holy Trinity reveled about you.  The Father was proud to see you in His mind; the Son definitely delighted upon seeing you, knowing that He would be saving you—you were well worth it!

And the Holy Spirit?  He was so happy that He couldn’t wait to come into your soul and live there silently, inspiring you and giving you power to become a child of God.

Self-knowledge makes you tread towards God in truth.  Always pray to God to give you this wonderful and singular grace.

Never stop praying! And the more you sin, the more you should pray and go to God—even if you don’t want or feel to do it.  Where can you go?  Where can you get better if not only in God’s embrace?

There is no other way, but the way of prayer!

There is no other available way to God, but through prayer.

St. Teresa of Avila said that “Prayer is the door, it is the entrance.”

If you are relentless in other things—be relentless in prayer!  Just keep at it.  Stick to prayer no matter what.  Stumble your way to holiness.  Crawl your way to God. Even if you’re crippled by sin, then by all means cripple your way to holiness!

Just go and move forward.  Don’t stop until God tells you to stop.  Who knows, the next step might be the one you and God have been waiting for.

Stumble your way to holiness!

Let’s set things straight

The thing is, God is infinitely pure and no amount of sin can ever be admitted in His presence.  Unless we are purified of the stains of sin, we can never be able to truly see God as He is.  This is what Jesus Himself meant when he said in one of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

But do not fret, if you are not yet pure as you and all of us ought to be.  God is faithful and He said that He will continue the work that He has started in our lives.  We should all be patient with God’s slow and sometimes unnoticed work of purification in our lives.

With patient endurance and determination in this road of prayer and contemplation, we shall soon see light at the end of the tunnel.  God will come decisively and He will act with such power that not even our sinful nature could ever hinder His operation on our souls.  It only takes our readiness for these operations.  Let us prepare ourselves then for God’s work in our lives.  Let us wait on Him and fix our gaze on Him alone.

Let us all be patient with ourselves.

God is.

Contemplation

Chapter 11

What is Contemplation for me

Simply put, contemplation for me is to be alone with the Alone.

It is a conversation between good friends who love each other.  They see each other and know each other.  Contemplation is that intercourse between God and the soul, that sweet embrace where both seem to become one and no one could ever sever them.

God is called “the Alone” because no one and nothing ever compares to Him.  He is not alone because He is lonely.  He is alone because I see Him as Someone who can never be replaced by any other human person.  No other person could ever touch what He has touched in me.

There are no words for He speaks in silence.  He has spoken only one Word and that Word is Jesus.  When I go to Him, I am truly myself!  I am fully alive.  I am at peace with myself when I feel His loving gaze on my soul.  Only under that fiery gaze am I truly my own self.  In that eye I am truly His.

Just one gaze from His eye and I am set afire.  I burn with love for Him and I feel this flame going up and leaping with love for Me.  This fire is truly alive in me, and this is also true to all the other men and women in this world.

In His gaze I know myself.  There is no other way of knowing myself but only through His gaze.  He gazes at my soul and then I am filled.  His gaze completes me, sustains me.

Contemplation is heaven for me because when I contemplate Him, I have Him.  I may not have the beatific vision yet, but I know that I have nothing to be envious about the saints in Heaven.  I have Him.

When I shall reach heaven one day, I will be one who sings without end!  I will sing to the stars and to galaxies and to all the angels and the other saints.  The whole of heaven shall hear my voice and they shall sing with me in one accord.  My song will be for eternity and so what better time for me to start and practice than here on earth?

The Single Eye

If there is one thing that describes God, I would say that He has only One Eye.

God looks at you not with one physical eye, but I mean that He looks at you alone.  He focuses on you every single time that He deserves our single eye as well.  We don’t need to take out one eye for us to have only one physical eye.

But what I mean is we need to learn how to gaze at Him with our ALL.

When we go to God in prayer, we need to take everything in our lives—the good and the bad—and then leave them at His feet for Him to take care.  With this, we can start gazing at Him with our single eye.

Jesus, when you look at me, you smile and are glad.  You sigh with relief at how I turned out to be.  You died for me and You did everything for me.  You gave me blessings beyond imagination.  You favored me and gave me this life.  You thought of me. When you look at me, you look straight into my soul and Your eye sets me aflame and consumes every part of me that is not giving You glory.  Your eye sees me and makes me brand new.  You see every part of my soul and know that there You are reflected.  When you see me with your single eye, you see a reflection of Yourself.  We are all seen by You.  You always see Yourself when You look at us.  You see our potential, our greatness.

***

Our Single eye

So it is right to look at Him with our single eye as well.  Let’s focus on God whenever we have the time.  Let’s not just ask God that we be given time, but let us make time.

Our time with God should not be dependent on circumstances.

We have long established that prayer and contemplation is not something that can be contained in a place or reached by a certain posture or gesture.

You can pray anywhere.  You can pray however you want.

But whatever or however you do it, always strive to look at this Gentle Lover who is madly, passionately, head-over-heels in love with you!  Look at Him with your single devotion, with your undivided attention, with your ALL.

Chapter 12

Make God Blush!

Consequently, contemplation is the time when you make God blush!

God is excited to hear your thoughts, to hear your words, to see you smile, to feel your embrace, to see you cry to Him, to feel every pain you’re feeling and to celebrate every joy that you may have.  Yes, He always sees you and knows your thoughts without even your saying them.  He already knows what you have to say to him.  He knows everything!

But just imagine the reaction and joy of this Holy Trinity when you yourselves respond to Him.  Yes, he knows your thoughts, but he prefers that you be the one to really tell Him about these thoughts.

He prefers that you communicate with Him.  He prefers that He not only embrace you, but that you embrace Him back.  He prefers that you also go to Him specifically for the purpose of meeting Him in prayer—to meet Him, to be with Him.  He prefers that it is not only Him gazing at you, but that you gaze back at Him with that general loving awareness.

Silent, piercing, loving gaze.

The Lord will blush!

That is the only time that God will blush, if you gaze straight in to His eyes.  God is a suitor who loves us so much with a love that only God can have.  He is relentless in his desire to have us for Himself alone and he keeps on gazing at us.

He does this so lovingly that as He gazes into our very souls, He bestows on us graces and innumerable blessings that only He can give.

You can just imagine how He would react if the one He is courting also responds to his gaze. His heart will quicken, His stomach will turn and He would let out a very wonderful shout of joy!

Finally, His beloved responded to Him with an amazing gaze of faith! Any lover would blush when he sees his beloved gaze at him and straight into his eyes.  He would feel the most amazing feelings that he could ever feel.  Anyone who is in love would be able to say that this is true.  Anyone who has been struck by the “love bug” would say that when their beloved reciprocated their love, they blushed and are suddenly bashful.  They could not believe that their beloved has finally responded to their love!

I could just imagine the love at first sight effect that the person feels when he finally realizes that God has been staring lovingly at him all his life—no—from the moment God thought of him in God’s mind.  God is the ultimate lover and because He loves every person so much He cannot help but blush.  But it is not only God who blushes.

Because the soul becomes aware of the love of God and sees that he is loved as such by this infinite being, the person—you—cannot help but blush as well!

Oh God! To finally realize the amazing fire with which we are being purified!  It is Your loving gaze that makes us who we are for in Your loving gaze, we are truly ourselves.  Oh my Jesus! How good it is to make You blush!  I will be bold to say that this is so.  I have been squandering Your graces and have been running away from You all these years.  And although You still hope for my return, and You still see my potential and constantly wait for my return, how happy You do feel when I finally come back into Your arms!  The heavens rejoice.  The angels and the saints rejoice over the return of even one lost sheep!  May we forever blush as we both gaze at each other!

The soul will burst out into praises and songs of worship as it blooms under the gaze of such an infinite being.  No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind can know, what God has in store for those who do love Him or even try to love Him.

He knows that we are human and that we need a little push, but He does see our goodwill.  He will not shun someone who comes back to His embrace.

Oh to make God blush!

Who are we to do that?  What are we?  Mere mortal who, in a way, makes this gentle Being so great and mighty come to us and becomes our captive!

Contemplation is that sweet and loving gaze of a soul at this God Whom we know loves us.  It is a conversation between Creator and creature, between the Lover and the beloved; it is a union of likeness.  Their loves are now alike.

This is the whole point of our book.  Contemplation is something that can and must be desired by all of the laity.  It is a work that we will have to do in heaven which we must start while here on earth.

I guess this is the best part of the book where I can explain to you why I chose the figure of the man doing the laundry as the cover of the book.  When I looked at this picture that my friend showed me, I just knew it would make it to my book because the expression on the man’s face really captures the essence of how contemplation can be integrated into the busy life of a lay person.  And the “man” doing the “laundry” is such a striking scene because this is out of the “norm” of our day.  Doing the laundry is supposed to be the work of women and men are supposed to do some other thing.  The book cover just goes beyond servile conformity to how society dictates our lives.

And that is what prayer is.  The world tells us that prayer is not for us.  It suggests that to be engaged in prayer is a waste of time.  The world is trying to choke us with many cares.  But if we only learn how to integrate prayer successfully into our lives—whether we eat or sleep or drink or do many things—we can truly pray and contemplate.  Prayer is more than just a simple activity.  It is not just a kind of work.  Prayer is sacred and it opens us up to the operations of God in our soul.  In prayer, we see ourselves as we truly are, eventually.  In prayer God slowly reveals Himself as the God of Scripture and the God of the present.  As we meet God in prayer, we know Him and He lets us know that He desires that we know Him.

I could just imagine the face of God as He gazes at this figure of a man or a woman going about his or her busy day, but deep inside the soul this man or this woman is connected deeply in God.  There’s no other way for God to react, but to blush.  And not only will God be the One Who will blush, but even the soul will blush when it realizes that God has blushed because of its humble desire to be one with Him.  God lets the soul know in a marvelous way that indeed He is blushing.

Just like any lover, God wants to “know” you—meaning, He wants you to show yourself to Him with your willingness and with love.  He wants to be with you.  He wants to be a part of your whole life.  He is passionately, truly, deeply, madly, head over heels in love with you!

All this within the context of a very tight and loving embrace!

Transforming Union

Chapter 13

The Fire of Love

God is fire.  He is the eternal fire that animates the whole of our existence.  We clearly see this when we read about the fire that Moses beheld when he was in the desert.  There Moses saw that the bush was not consumed by the fire and yet he knows that the fire could have been burning for a few minutes or hours or days.

Heavenly fire that burns and yet does not annihilate!

This fire is one that moves and leaps and rises up.  It is not stagnant but it wells up to consume the object of its desire.  This fire is intelligent.  It feels and it knows.  This fire takes its existence from the bosom of the Holy Trinity.

This fire is the Fire of love.

This is the fire Whom we encounter during contemplation.  When we go to Him, we cannot help but be like the burning bush.  We receive this Fire and our drab appearance become radiant with His light.  We receive his warmth and we are set ablaze by this amazing love that only He can give.

And yet, we are not consumed to be annihilated.  If anything is consumed, it is the impurity that we may have contracted due to our concupiscence.  And yet this blazing fire of Love, this God of ours does not force Himself to us.  He will set us ablaze with His love and because we are loved by Him, He will usher us into His life in a very gentle manner.

He is a fire Who is gentle, a blazing fire that does not annihilate.

When we come closer to this fire of Love, we cannot help but be transformed into Him.  We become as it were, participants in this work of Love because if we allow Him to truly touch us, we cannot help but be burnt by this loving fire.  We are all like wood that is placed in this raging fire.

The properties of wood become fire and then the wood truly becomes fire.  The wood is not the source of the fire, but the fire renders the wood a participant because of the effects of the fire’s action on the wood’s very essence.

Remember that it was because of the fire that acted upon the wood that the whole piece of wood was “set on fire” therefore giving off properties that resemble fire.  The wood becomes so red and hot that it starts to give off flames that leap off the wood.  But the fact remains that it was because the fire acted on the wood that the wood “became” a participant of the works of the fire.

When we begin to truly contemplate the essence of God, we cannot help but become participants of the actions of God.  Our actions become “divinized” because the source of these actions is Divine—is God.

It is a mystery that God wants this and delights in our participation.  He has no need of it for He can do things independent of us.  He loves even if we are not existent because God is Himself a community of Three Persons.

But taking things as they are, we accept this amazing result of contemplation.

We become fire in participation.

We can then truly love.

The Dried Leaf

For this fire to truly penetrate us, we need to be stripped of anything that opposes it.  Just like the wood, we have impurities and “moisture” that directly oppose the fire that desires to act on us.  But thankfully, with our permission, the fire is relentless and He has the ability to help us get rid of these impurities.

In order for us to be truly and immediately engulfed by this fire, we have to lose the moisture of our sins and the effects of concupiscence in our lives.  We have to do all that we can to strive to renew our lives and to detach from things that are opposed to the Fire of Love.

And yet, the only thing that can truly help us take out all these impurities is that very same Fire.

Let us take the example of a simple and brown dried leaf.

It is fragile and small and is easily drifted by the wind.  The dry leaf has been taken by the wind to a blazing bonfire nearby.  The gentle flames consume the dried leaf in a matter of seconds and then the dried leaf was no more.  But I think it has not become “no more”.

In fact, I believe that it has been transformed into one of the flames that engulfed it.

We have to become like the dried leaf.  We have to ask God that as we contemplate Him, we become dried out.  We can only be truly transformed when we become as dry and become as brown as the dried leaf.

Don’t Think much, but Love much

I would definitely need the help of my mentor St. Teresa of Avila for this portion of this book.

When we start the journey of contemplation, we always think about the do’s and don’ts that we become too engrossed about these things.  And like I said, there is nothing wrong about the methods and the processes that we have to go through in going to God through prayer, but there will always come a time when you will lose the savor of the use of your mind.

You cannot imagine anymore—no matter how much you may want to.  You may even lose the savor of looking at symbols of our faith.  This loss gives people who genuinely desire to follow God a severe pain in their soul.  Losing this savor is a death in itself.

People become accustomed to the methods and the considerations in their minds, to the feelings of happiness and joy when praying that when God starts to lead them to a different way, they will not be able to understand.

I have a very close friend who lost the savor of the Holy Mass.  Before this, he participated with all his soul’s powers when he goes to Mass.  He sings with all his heart even if he was not serving in the choir.  All the words in the Liturgy he strives to feel and understand and when the priest starts to say the words of consecration, he always manages to imagine himself right there in the presence of Jesus and the disciples.

He has enjoyed these amazing moments in the Mass for several years, but then one day, he just lost everything.

He was okay with his imagination going away.   He was okay with the feelings going away.  But he said that the most painful thing that he ever got from this experience was the apathy that he felt towards the whole Mass itself.  It’s as if he was a non-believer.  He loved the Lord with all his heart, but he suddenly lost the things that made him enjoy this love.

He became distressed and looked for help, but none seemed to understand him.  It was only in the books by St. John of the Cross that he found solace.  There he came to know a friend of yesteryears.  Even if the Spanish poet lived a long time ago, my friend felt as if the books that this saint wrote were intended for him.  He found in St. John of the Cross a kindred spirit.  He found a friend, a father, a guide.

My friend was still journeying in the initial path to prayer, but St. John of the Cross has already reached contemplation.  John of the Cross was a religious, and my friend was a lay person.  And yet, they both understood each other.

With St. John of the Cross’ help, my friend realized that although he lost those wonderful things and though he may lose more other things, he won’t lose something special.  This thing is what makes all of us human.

My friend will never lose his will.

He needed no other help than his will.  Even if he lost all feelings and savor, he can still will to love God.  He can still will to choose to love God.  Even if there are times that he is tempted to think that everything is just a lie, he still wills to believe.

Our will is closely connected to the virtue of charity.  And charity is love.

As St. Teresa of Avila said, the key to prayer is not to think much, but to love much.  When you approach God in prayer, you need only one thing and that is to love.   Even if you do not know how to truly love yet, just will it.  Choose it.  Choose to love even if it seems alien to you.  Be relentless.

Love makes the soul dilate

What’s really amazing about our souls is that although it is finite, it can have the only Infinite Being.  It can accommodate Him Who cannot be accommodated by the universe itself!  Of course, our souls are indeed finite and they are created by God, but the reason why our souls can afford to accommodate God is that Love designed it.

Love gives our souls the power to “capture” God.

And that is the nature of Love.  That is the mystery of God Who is Love.  No one could ever have Him as He is in His entirety as God, but Love wants to be “captured” by the object of His love.  He wants to be captivated by his loved one and so He renders Himself captive as it were.

Love transforms a soul, but as it transforms, it also enlarges its capacity.

I don’t know if I am talking gibberish here but that is my conviction.  I don’t believe that the soul will have no bounds so that it could contain the infinite, but I think that God will allow it without ever losing His essence as God and without letting the soul lose its essence as a finite being.

Is this really impossible for God to do?  I don’t think “impossible” is even in His vocabulary.

An enclosed garden

Something amazing happens during contemplation that I will not even try to disclose or even describe.

I am not saying that I know that amazing thing.  I don’t even know if something out of the ordinary has been said to me.  And this amazing thing is not some kind of secret knowledge that is open only for the chosen few.  What I mean by secret is that contemplation is really a private event.

Only God and the soul know what transpired in the conversation.  Now God may ask the soul to share the good news to others, but most of the times, the conversation could not be translated into human language.  It would be reckless to say in human terms what has been said between the soul and God.

The intercourse between God and the soul is such a sacred event that it would be an affront to even talk about it.  It is something that should not be tampered with.  Nobody should try to “know” about it.  It is an enclosed garden where only God and the soul may enter.

But if it’s a consolation, I am sure that whatever that sacred conversation is, it is NEVER something that has not already been told or shown by Jesus.  There is no other additional revelation because the fullness of revelation is Jesus.  He is more than enough.

He suffices.

The partnership

Let me just remind you that God needs a partner.  He will not impose on us something that we do not want to do.  Of course, we know that God is the greatest good that we could ever have.  Everything that comes from Him should be desired, and He knows this as well.  But He always respects our readiness and our capacity at a given time.

We are like children who progress and grow and eventually learn many things. And He is our Father Who knows us really well.

The only good thing about this whole setup is that God really is just waiting for you to finally respond to his prodding.

You are His partner.  You have to want this partnership because if not, nothing will happen.  Just say Yes, and figure things out after you’ve said Yes.  In the next pages I am going to give you steps on how to approach prayer that will allow you to open up to the love relationship that God is inviting you into.

Chapter 14

God’s Merciful Love

God is love.

I keep on repeating this because I just love writing and saying that.  It gives me such a rush when I say that God is love.  And if that is not enough for you, let me give you one adjective to describe that Love of God.

Mercy.

God is Merciful Love.

I believe that there is no other adjective or attribute that can fully grasp this love Who is God.  Powerful? Amazing? Strong? Eternal? Almighty? All of these and others can be used to describe Love, but I believe in my gut that there is no other adjective that could fully grasp what love really is as “merciful”.

I don’t even want to elaborate more on this because there is nothing more to say.  If you want to understand God as love, think of mercy.  And if you want to know what mercy really is, just think about God’s love.

It’s really not that difficult.

God is simple.

Transforming love

This merciful love transforms whatever it touches.  If there is anything that this merciful love ever does, that is transformation.  We were nothing, but because of mercy, we came to be.  Because of mercy, God thought about us.  Our parents sinned against God in that ancient garden, and we lost that original beauty that we had in the beginning.  Because of mercy, He brought that back because of His only Son.

We had original sin, but with mercy that has become restoration to original dignity.  We were only creatures—the highest of all creatures, but just the same: only creatures.  But because of mercy, we became His sons and daughters.

Merciful love has been transforming the face of humanity ever since we set foot in the mind of God.  This transformation continues to this very day and this very instant.  Lives continue because of mercy.  We still breathe now because of mercy.

We enjoy our freedom because of mercy.

In contemplation, we are transformed in love by love.  Our sinful nature is transformed in love here on earth so that the indwelling of the Holy Trinity in our souls can be wrought. This is what was meant by our analogy on the wood in the fire and the dried leaf.  The fire is actually the fire of Love.  The fire of Justice is given to those who are already in Purgatory.  Every penny should be paid off before a soul is released to enjoy the beatific vision.

Be transformed in love.

St. Therese of the Child Jesus said that the more one is weak and without virtues, the more one is disposed to receive the transforming love of God.

At the heights of prayer life, or as the spiritual masters call the heights of contemplation, there are many things that one can talk about and there are definitely more things involved in those stages.  But the most important thing to note is that the journey of contemplation is nothing but a journey of being transformed in God.

This transformation is the ultimate grace that we can ask for in our earthly exile.

And if this transformation is what we ought to ask from our Lord, then we should ask it from Him relentlessly.

As lay people, we have to have due diligence to learn more about this transformation so that we do not miss out on the benefits that this transformation gives.

But let’s not think about any other benefit.

Think about God.

He is the ultimate benefit we will have once we are truly transformed by, for and in Him.

The Start of a Great Adventure

You may have noticed that this is not a how-to book.  And you are right!

Although my intention is really to share to you that there is a way for us to contemplate God or to start praying or making God blush, I can really not begin to tell you how to do it.

Like I said, this is a matter between God and our souls.  It’s easy to point out the ascetisms that we can do, or the steps to dispose ourselves to God’s action.  But contemplation and prayer, in the strictest sense of each of these words, are so sacred that only the soul and God can really know for sure.

If there is one step that I should suggest, just let God.

Because even if you do all the things that you need to do on your end and yet not allow him to act on your soul, everything will be futile.

The things I’ve written in this book are mini-reflections on the matter at hand.  I just shared to you the fact that contemplation is an invitation by God given to every human person.

Pray to Him.

Converse with Him.

Be present to Him 100% percent.

You are called to gaze into His eyes and contemplate Him.

This is not the end, but the start of a great adventure between your soul and God.

Let God because you can make God blush!

Special thanks:

To Guadabel, you are my “Proverbs 31 Woman”.  Thank you for always being there for me, and thank you for your love.

To JayR Regado, thank you for your support and thank you for taking the time to take some photos of your dad because it really captured the essence of this book.

To Jhonsen Sales, you are my Barnabas, brother.  You were the one who inspired and encouraged me to start writing and publishing.  I can say that without you, I wouldn’t have bothered to follow my dream of becoming a best-selling author, in God’s time.

To my parents, siblings, relatives and friends, thank you for your full support.

To Tito Bo Sanchez (and the Light of Jesus Family), Ninong Buddy Tan, Hazel Atencio, Sis. Mabeth Laure, KZ Cortez, the Light of Jesus Family-Cebu, and to all the people who contributed in making this book a reality, tap yourselves on the back and be proud.  You have just made this dream of mine come true.

To my SPONSORS, Kay Gonzaga and Tito Bo Sanchez.  I may not be able to repay your kindness, but rest assured that God sees your generosity.  And I will pay it forward.

I thank you once again for taking this journey with me.  I hope you liked what you read and I hope that I helped you in one way or another.

I would encourage you to please share this to people you know who really desire to contemplate or pray to God in and despite of their busy lives.  Also, send me your comments and your review of this book so that others will get a heads up on what this book is all about.

You may send them or contact me directly in my e-mail at sindwriter@yahoo.com.ph and I would be more than happy to respond to you.

Watch out for my next book!  God bless.

Stephen I. Nellas

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

DOES GOD BLUSH?

GOD’S PARADISE:

Mercy in Creation

Chapter 1 The Smallest Particle

Chapter 2 The Myths of Contemplation

Chapter 3 My Conviction

Starting Prayer

Chapter 4 Charity begins at Home

Chapter 5 The Prayer Life

Prayer of the Present Moment

Chapter 6 God of the Present

Prayer of the pots and pans

Chapter 7 Prayer in Action

Chapter 8 In His Image and Likeness

Chapter 9 Prayer of the Laity

Chapter 10 Prayer and Sin

Contemplation

Chapter 11 What is Contemplation for me

Chapter 12 Make God Blush!

Transforming Union

Chapter 13 The Fire of Love

Chapter 14 God’s Merciful Love

The Start of a Great Adventure

Acknowledgements