Curious Christian

Earlier today I was asked a question about Christian meditation which reminded me that I had planned to make a few comments on the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of Christian Meditation” some time ago.

I am not sure how many of you have heard of this open letter, but coming from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Jospeh Ratzinger, who is now Pope, it is about as official a statement as you are likely to get from the Catholic Church on meditation. The document outlines what the critical issues are for Christians, at least from a Catholic perspective, and provides some guidelines for experimenting with new forms of meditation for the prayerful Christian.

Here are some excerpts I found particularly pertinent:

“Christian prayer is at the same time always authentically personal and communitarian. It flees from impersonal techniques or from concentrating on oneself, which can create a kind of rut, imprisoning the person praying in a spiritual privatism which is incapable of a free openness to the transcendental God. Within the Church, in the legitimate search for new methods of meditation it must always be borne in mind that the essential element of authentic Christian prayer is the meeting of two freedoms, the infinite freedom of God with the finite freedom of man.”

“Without doubt, a Christian needs certain periods of retreat into solitude to be recollected and, in God’s presence, rediscover his path. Nevertheless, given his character as a creature, and as a creature who knows that only in grace is he secure, his method of getting closer to God is not based on any “technique” in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. Genuine Christian mysticism has nothing to do with technique: it is always a gift of God, and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy.”

“Some physical exercises automatically produce a feeling of quiet and relaxation, pleasing sensations, perhaps even phenomena of light and of warmth, which resemble spiritual well-being. To take such feelings for the authentic consolations of the Holy Spirit would be a totally erroneous way of conceiving the spiritual life. Giving them a symbolic significance typical of the mystical experience, when the moral condition of the person concerned does not correspond to such an experience, would represent a kind of mental schizophrenia which could also lead to psychic disturbance and, at times, to moral deviations.”

“The love of God, the sole object of Christian contemplation, is a reality which cannot be “mastered” by any method or technique. On the contrary, we must always have our sights fixed on Jesus Christ, in whom God’s love went to the cross for us and there assumed even the condition of estrangement from the Father (cf. Mk 13:34). We therefore should allow God to decide the way he wishes to have us participate in his love. But we can never, in any way, seek to place ourselves on the same level as the object of our contemplation. the free love of God; not even when, through the mercy of God the Father and the Holy Spirit sent into our hearts, we receive in Christ the gracious gift of a sensible reflection of that divine love and we feel drawn by the truth and beauty and goodness of the Lord.”

Now, I would invite you to read the full article. I don’t agree with the tone, I think it is a bit too boundary maintenance focussed, but, insofar as Christians should exercise discernment in this I think the document does make some important points, and more, that Protestant and Orthodox mystics should engage with it. The points which I have highlighted above are ones which I have already made elsewhere on this blog, as a Protestant, and it is these commonalities I want to draw attention too.