“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became man and lived among us. John 1: 1-14

In the Johanine community out of which this gospel emerges, there evidently were very advanced contemplatives who were experiencing the glorified Christ in their midst. 

Contemporary science throws light on what this text means. You have heard of the Big Bang, of course. Most scientists seem to accept that event as proven beyond reasonable doubt. The Big Bang is described as a super explosion with temperatures and density of matter that are inconceivable to us. This initial thrust of creation was so condensed that it included the energy of all the black holes in the universe, which irresistibly draw into themselves everything within range, including light.

Scientists affirm that there must have been an even greater force present to reduce that density to a point where matter could move out in all directions resulting in the universe that we dimly see around us. What could that force have been, a force greater than the immeasurable density of the matter that existed in that first trillionth of a second of creation? 

This is the all-powerful vibration of the Eternal Word of God calling forth out of nothing all of creation: a power strong enough to blast apart the gravitational pull of the Big Bang.

Now that creation has evolved and life itself has occurred, it seems that this initial vibration of the Word is still going on at the deepest level of everything that exists. This is the Word  with whom every human being from the beginning of time has been in contact. This is the Word whose body, so to speak, is the universe, and in a more particular way, the human family.

When Jesus presents us with a formula for contacting this immense energy, he invites us to do three things. In Matthew 6:6 he says: “If you want to pray,” that is, if you want to enter into a relationship with the infinite Source of all that is, “enter your inner room”-the spiritual level of your being--“close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.”

“Close the door” is a metaphor according to the early desert fathers, of silencing the interior dialogue that accompanies most of us day and night. Both the external world and the noise of the interior dialogue prevent us from hearing the subtle movements of eternal light, life, and love that are always available to us at the deepest level of our being. 

The third step that Jesus recommends is to pray to your Father, the loving Creator, in secret. Centering Prayer is a contemporary form of detailing this invitation in a way that is accessible to ordinary people. The eternal creative Word penetrates all creation as a kind of primordial “hum”. (You can almost hear it if you are quiet enough.) The ultimate secrecy that Jesus invites us to in praying is nothing less than the secrecy or hiddenness of the Father: “Pray to your Father in secret and your Father who is in secret will reward you.” What is the reward? The awareness of That which is. 

Thus, in Centering Prayer we leave behind our external environment, our own interior dialogue and concerns, and finally ourselves; that is, our over-identification with the false self and who we think we are. This process might be called the Divine Therapy. It invites us to cooperate with the divine action that takes place in the inner room: the healing of the illusion of our idealized self-image. The latter is upheld in daily life by the working out of our emotional programs for happiness based on the instinctual needs for security, affection and esteem, and control.

The sacred word is not a substitute for thoughts. The key attitude for fully accessing the Centering Prayer practice is to listen to the Silence beyond thoughts; that is, to listen to the Word of God before it is articulated into any thought or translated into any perception. Listening at this depth frees us from the domination and confusion of diversity. There is nothing, of course, wrong with diversity; it is our over-identification with it that hinders us from hearing the Word always present and manifesting the goodness and tenderness of the Father in everyday life. Perhaps this is what St. Paul is trying to say when he writes of being “in Christ Jesus.” “Christ” refers to the Eternal Word; “Jesus” refers to the humanity of the human person we know as Jesus who, at the same time, is united in the fullest possible way with the Eternal Word of God, the expression within the Trinity of all that the Father is.

To be in Christ Jesus is another way of proclaiming the Divine Indwelling. The Eternal Word of God together with the Father and the Holy Spirit created all things and is present within us. The experience of this Word is beyond any particular kind of expression. Accessing the Eternal Word by faith also establishes us in relationship with everything that exists.

Thus, as we emerge from Centering Prayer, saturated by the values of the inner room and by the liberating action of the Holy Spirit, we perceive this Word vibrating in everything and everyone that we meet. The Word is present in everything while at the same time beyond everything. We gradually become aware of this Divine Presence that is in and beyond the immediate contents of the present moment. 

The primary focus of Centering Prayer is on the created Word that I have just been describing: in particular, on Christ’s passion, death, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension that we call the Paschal Mystery. The Paschal Mystery is the place where God is most profoundly revealed. 

The regular practice of Centering Prayer in daily life can accelerate our accessing this dimension of life. The Paschal Mystery reveals the heart of God in the most profound way available to us. We will not find it by thinking about it, although this is a way to engage our faculties in the project, so that at least they can recognize their limitations and accept the need to be still in the presence of the divine reality.

In Christ’s descent into hell, he has taken our personal melodrama, the whole of our personal history, all the trauma, guilt, failure, disappointment--and all damaging or disastrous events--into himself. What causes God pain is not so much our sins, but the suffering we feel as a consequence of them. This, I suggest, is the point where God unites himself to us. Divine Union is not achieved through personal accomplishments of any kind. Rather, Divine Union takes place when we accept ourselves and our whole personal history just as we are, in total honesty, without anxiety or self-recrimination. At the moment of utter powerlessness and, to us, the failure of everything the false self wanted to achieve, God joins us in our suffering and transforms it into our redemption for ourselves and for others.

We come from one and the same Source and through contemplative prayer become aware of our basic interconnectedness and interdependence. What we do, in a sense, everybody is doing, and what we don’t, everybody is not doing. The virtues of others belong to us as much as to them, and vice versa. Everyone is together in the mystery of unfolding love in which the primary purpose is to reveal God’s infinite mercy. Such is God’s choice: to manifest God through mercy rather than in any other way.

As thoughts, feelings, and perceptions arise in prayer, they need not have any control over us. Identifying with them is the mistake that causes most of the problems we have in prayer. Similarly, in daily life, it is not the existence of diversity itself that is the problem because God is present in everything. It is rather our possessive attitude to things that binds us. The capacity to perceive the basic unity in diversity--the presence of the eternal Word in everything that happens--frees us to live in God and God in us. As Paul wrote, “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Living in Christ means that daily life and its events are not just our experiences, but the manifestation of God’s love and of his intent to transform the whole human family into His glorified body.

Centering Prayer leads to bonding with others and with the whole universe, and brings with it the call to participate in the redemptive adventure that God has initiated.

To sum up, the first step of the spiritual journey is to become fully aware that there is an Other; that is to say, there is a God who is calling us into relationship and who has made us part of a race that is accountable to each other for everything that happens. We can’t escape from the consequences of being a member of the human race. Rather, it is in submitting fully to them, including death, that we fully become who we are. To accept death is to accept God. And to accept the little deaths of everyday life is to accept God in everyday life.

The second step of the spiritual journey is to become the Other. This practice is enshrined in the Christian tradition as the imitation of Christ. This leads not only to union with Christ, but to a place beyond union to which Jesus calls us in his concluding prayer at the Last Supper, “That they may be one, Father, as we are one” (John 17:11). Unity in the Trinity is absolute and infinite. The creative Word is the basis of the unity of the human family. All the diversity in creation can never change it. In embracing the divine presence in diversity we are freed from our possessive attitudes including that toward our personal identity.

Jesus, on the cross and in his descent into hell, seems to have lost his identity as the Son of God, a surrender that is almost inconceivable since he was God in his inmost being. According to Paul, “he was made sin” (II Cor. 5:21) and hence became, in a sense, the opposite of God. Here is the ultimate double bind, the ultimate polarization of opposites that plunges us into a mystery that is beyond our comprehension, but to which spiritual suffering introduces us in a way that nothing else can. Jesus’ loss of identity invites us to let go of ours, to let go, that is, not only of our false selves but of our ego identity itself.

When we sit down in Centering Prayer, we are sitting on the cross with Christ. This means that the inner resurrection of our true self is assured.

The experience of the Eternal Word as the ultimate Source of the universe, as that which is deepest in everything, or at least beyond the senses or anything we can imagine or conceptualize, is the realization that there is no Other. Paul affirms this amazing truth when he writes, “God is all in all” (II Cor. 15:28), and again, “Christ is everything in everyone” (Col. 3:11). If we maintain awareness of the Divine Presence in everything that happens, Christ lives in us and experiences our human uniqueness in a way that no one else can ever give him.

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