INTRODUCING CENTERING PRAYER IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC

INTRODUCING CENTERING PRAYER IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC

I.          What is Prayer?

A.  Prayer is relationship with God. The moment we say “Let us pray,” we open ourselves to a deeper relationship with God and with one another. In this relationship, God is "Abba, Father" and we are all children and so brothers and sisters one with another.

B.  Traditional Prayer is summarized as ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication) and oftentimes we associate these as verbal. We talk to God, we try to listen to God, we want to feel the presence of God. And so we adore him with verbal adoration, prayer and praise, psalms and spiritual songs. I spoke about this last week in our 7:14 Prayer Room 2020.

C.  But there is another type of prayer that goes beyond verbal. It is called contemplative prayer or centering prayer. And this is what I am going to introduce tonight. What is centering prayer? What are the scriptures that support this kind of praying? What is the purpose for this kind of prayer? And finally, what are the guidelines to Centering Prayer.

II.       CENTERING PRAYER AS A GIFT FROM GOD

St. Francis of Assisi said something about proclaiming the gospel and I quote, “preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.” So I think Francis of Assisi was a believer that silence has much to do with proclamation just as much as words. He, like Jesus, was a contemplative as well as an evangelist.

So centering prayer uses silence and it is only when necessary that we use words, verbal words. In Aramaic language which Jesus used, the word prayer simply means “to open yourself to the divine presence.” The Lord’s Prayer was taught by Jesus to the apostles in Aramaic and much of the words are contemplative before they become action words. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done” before it goes to “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

So centering prayer or contemplative prayer is simply opening our hearts and our minds to the will of God that is beyond words, beyond thoughts and beyond emotions. It is not to replace the ACTS prayer of words; it is not to replace prayer in tongues. It is simply resting in the presence of God, accepting the initiative of God, allowing “thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” trusting that God’s will is always for our good.

III.    SCRIPTURES AND WRITINGS THAT SUPPORT CENTERING PRAYER

First scriptural support is the wisdom of Jesus who said in the sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 6:6, Jesus said: “When you pray, go into your room and close it and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” 

The context of this verse was Jesus’ critique of the scribes and the Pharisees whom he called hypocrites. They wanted to give alms but first would first announce their generosity with trumpets and self-congratulations. They also love to pray standing in the synagogues in order to be seen by others. For that reason, their prayers are not really addressed to God but to the human hearers whom they supposed would be impressed by their holier-than-thou attitudes. We remember the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14). The prayer of the Pharisee was loud and pompous filled with self-congratulation and narcissistic obsession. The prayer of the tax collector was a sinner's prayer--remorseful, quiet, humble and contrite. Jesus said it was the humble and quiet prayers of the tax collector that the God favored over the self-righteous  prayer of the Pharisee.

The second bible verse that support Centering Prayer is Psalm 46 particularly 46:10 which says, “Be still and know that I am God.” To be still is to stop striving, to stop fighting, to stop resisting but instead to totally surrender to God’s will. The other word for stillness is simply to relax. I remember the stillness of the Galilean Sea when we were there last November 2019. 

Now being quiet is not easy. Most of us can not be silenced by silence. Remember the song, Sound of Silence? It says in part "Hello darkness my old friend, I'd come to talk with you again” and then the song continued: “And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people maybe more, people talking with out speaking, people hearing without listening?”  

In this song by Simon and Garfunkel, "even in our dreams, we are restless." So centering prayer is learning about silence. Centering prayer is simply accepting, receiving (neither fighting nor resisting) God’s will in silence. “Be still and know that I am God.”

There are of course many other scriptures but I will say the experience of Elijah in a cave when he was waiting for God’s intervention after he escaped from the wrath of Jezebel who was wanting to avenge the death of her false prophets. The context in 1st Book of Kings, chapter 19 was the contest between the lone Elijah the prophet of Israel versus the 450 false prophets of the Baal and Asherah, the fertility god and goddess of the Canaanites. Well, Elijah won the contest. He successfully appealed to God to deliver the rain after the drought while the false prophets shouted and cried to their gods to no avail. 

It would have been the end of the story but Elijah became overzealous and made an extra move. When the false prophets lost, Elijah commanded the people of Israel to slaughter them and to spared no one, that the Kishon river flowed with their blood. 

Elijah thought that God would congratulate him for that so as he was hiding in the cave he thought God would speak first through the storm but God was not in the storm; then through the earthquake but God was not in the earthquake; then through the fire but God was not in the fire. Where was God? The bible says in God was in "the still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12).

IV.     NOW WE GO TO THE PURPOSE OR PURPOSES OF CENTERING PRAYER

A.  Centering prayer increases our awareness of God’s presence. The whole purpose of our lives is union with God in Christ. But there is thing that separate us from God; it is sin in all its protean forms. 

    In our relationship with God, there are three levels of knowing, as Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher had taught. 

    First is the aesthetic level, this is the most basic level. We know God by our senses and we know Jesus as the icon of God, a representation, a visible model of the invisible God. 

    Second level is ethical in which we know God by our conscience. Jesus is not only the model but also the reality of God. We know right and wrong due to the conscience that operate in our being. 

   But the highest form of knowing is the spiritual level, that of knowing Jesus is not only as the model, not only as the reality but also the experience of God. This is how deeply the contemplatives, the mystics have arrived, a mystical, religious experience. It is union with God. The Buddha calls it the enlightenment. 

    One of my favorite mystics is St. Teresa de Avila of Spain. She wrote “we are not physical beings with spirits; we are spiritual beings with bodies.” It is not simply that the Holy Spirit shall communion with our spirits. The Holy Spirit will commune with us, our whole being which is spiritual. Our bodies are simply shells of our being, the spiritual being.

B.  The second purpose of Centering Prayer is the growth of our relationship with God and with our neighbor. With that awareness, we progress into four levels of our relationship: from acquaintance (informational) to friendship 1 (conversational) to friendship 2 (friendly bond), to friendship 3 (intimacy). Centering prayer leads you to intimacy with God. This intimacy is done by the Holy Spirit who is already with us and in us. Jesus said in John 14:20 “On that day, you will realize that I am in the Father and I am in you.” If we have a deep relationship with God, it will also reverberate in our relationship with our brothers and sisters, our sibling in Christ, fellow children of God.

C.  The third purpose of Centering Prayer is deepening of our faith. Jesus said to the apostles, “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain move and it will move” (Matthew 17:20). We probably do not have such faith but if we can have even a tiny fraction of that seed faith, we can at least have a glimpse of God’s will.

IV.     GUIDELINES FOR CENTERING PRAYER
First thing to remember is to sit or stand or whatever posture but STOP from your busyness so that you may listen to God. The more silent you are, the more you can hear the still small voice. Most of us, especially New Yorkers, are uncomfortable with silence. But let me emphasize that the more silence you have within and without, the more you can listen to God, and the more you listen to God, the clearer God’s will becomes.

Now, you know I live in Queens, one of the busiest boroughs of New York City. It's hard to find a quiet place. Whenever I need one, the only place I can experience quiet is at the cemetery, which is around 30 minutes jogging from our home in Woodside. Now, I would sit and sometimes walk around the cemetery, exactly an hour of silence. Yes, it is quiet a quiet neighborhood, everybody is dead.

Second, what would you do now that you have taken the position of relax, non-anxious, listening presence?  You go into meditation: choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s own presence. Consent is the heart and soul of centering prayer. God’s presence is the divine life within us, through the Holy Spirit, and God’s action in your prayer life is the grace of the transformation process.

So let me now enumerate at least three steps once you’re quiet with God and have chosen a sacred word. Sacred words like “love, “ “peace,” “divine healing”, "Jesus," etc.

1 Sit comfortably with eyes closed, settle silently and introduce the sacred word in your thought as symbol of your consent for God to come and be present and act into your soul. (back straight as a symbol of letting go, gently say your sacred word, “peace”, the gentler you are, the bigger the effect.

2.  Whenever your thoughts wander, return again so gently to that sacred word that you chose earlier.  Now wandering thoughts can be introduced by our body sensations caused by the weather, by our feelings, images, memories, plans, reflections, the news we heard earlier, even by the sounds and noise you hear from the outside. In the world, there are many voices and the moment you kept silence, there are voices that will occupy your empty space. So without fighting them, slowly let them go, surrender once again to the heart of prayer. 

   Richard Keating, one of the experts in Centering Prayer said: "Remember the 4 R’s: Resist no thought; Retain no thought; React emotionally to no thought; and Return ever so gently to the sacred word." Do not rush, but move back gently and as lightly as a feather.

3.  At the end of the Centering Prayer period, which is at least 20 minutes minimum or one hour, remain in silence for a couple of minutes before you rise up. I would suggest you do this 20 minutes Centering Prayer for at least two times a day and the third time you can do the ACTS (verbal prayer). I likened it to say that God has given us one mouth and two ears so that we can listen twice and speak only once. Soon you will master the art of contemplation or quiet time.

CONCLUSION

Finally, how would you apply Centering Prayer to our current situation of staying home due to COVID19 epidemic? 

Again, I would say as I have said in the past few weeks here in 7:14 Corona Prayer Room, that Corona Virus is not from God---but God maybe allowing this pandemic to encourage us to be silent, so we may listen more deeply and learn clearly how to discern God's will. 

The imposed isolation that we now have will be an occasion for us to be silent and hear the still small voice of God. It will be an occasion for us to devote ourselves to prayer and "self-discipline" which Queen Elizabeth has advised the Britons. It will be an occasion for us to give thanks to the doctors and nurses who are at the front lines of battle. For us, who have to endure social distancing, we can use this opportunity to be quiet before God, to let go and let God, and pray with peace and quietness “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.

The Rev. Canon Dr. Fred Vergara is Asiamerica Missioner of the Episcopal Church and priest at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, 130 Jerusalem Avenue, Hicksville, NY 11801. This article is the written text of his lecture on Centering Prayer last April 7, 2020 at the 7:14 Corona Prayer Room 2020. He can be reached by email at: wvergara@episcopalchurch.org or by text at (646) 510-6918.