Being Heart-to-Heart with God
In II Corinthians 3:18, Paul talks about how we can behold the glory of the Lord and be changed into his likeness. (The word translated “behold” in that verse can also be translated “contemplate,” by the way.) Of course, this is a normal part of the Christian life, yet one that many of us rarely experience in regular prayer with words.
As a regular part of my Communion/Eucharist experience for many years now, as I take the wine (or juice) I gaze into the cup. Praying and focusing on Christ and his broken body and shed blood—broken by my sin, shed for my sin—as I continue to gaze into the cup, I imagine that I am seeing in the wine, not my own reflection, but the face of Jesus reflected back at me. (I suspect many believers have experienced this.) The point I’m making is this: in the depths of contemplative prayer, when thoughts have stopped and you know you’re in the presence of God, it can be sort of like expecting to see your reflection and seeing Jesus instead of yourself, as you reflect the Lord’s glory more and more.
I’m fascinated by Mother Teresa’s response to a couple of questions posed by well-known CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather when he interviewed her back in the 80’s. “What do you say to God when you pray?” Rather asked. Her simple answer was, “I don’t say anything; I just listen.” Rather, rather nonplussed, then asked her, “Well, what does Jesus say to you?” And Mother Theresa answered, “Oh, He doesn’t say anything, either. He just listens.”
A rather disjointed conversation (pun intended). And the type of prayer Mother Teresa described sounds, on the surface, like the most disjointed relationship imaginable. Two beings listening to each other not talk. Two listeners listening to each other say nothing. A Zen Buddhist conundrum, like the sound of one hand clapping. I’d love to have seen the look on Dan Rather’s face after that exchange! On reflection, though, what Mother Teresa was talking about sounds to me like contemplative prayer. In fact, that’s exactly what it is. The love of God expressed to humans, who express it back to God. Love expressed in a way that is beyond words, beyond description, beyond rational comprehension, yet meaningful beyond imagination.
We speak of relationship with God; for Christians in America in the twenty-first century, that’s what life is supposed to be all about. Well, Mother Teresa’s kind of prayer is true relationship with God. The kind of relationship where you don’t have to say anything, you just look in each other’s eyes or listen to each other breathe. The kind where there’s really nothing to say, nothing that needs to be said, nothing that can be said; the love is there, so unfathomably deep you couldn’t begin to put it in words. It’s prayer beyond the point of feeling like you have to say something to fill in the silence. It’s the look, followed by the embrace, that breaks down the walls of nervousness, that melts the anxiety and fear and loneliness, until all is dissolved in love and everything else is forgotten. That’s really what contemplative prayer is. It’s being heart-to-heart with God.
Book excerpt from Contemplation: Only the Crucified are Truly Alive
Gary Michael Hassig
From Chapter One: Beyond Worship, pp. 13-14
