“Centered on God”?

    It is difficult to know where to begin in responding to an article on centering prayer featured in a Catholic diocesan newspaper. Perhaps one should start with the facts, a number of which the article writer got quite wrong and proceed from there to analyze this popular form of “prayer.”
    Contemplative prayer, we are informed in the article, “was commonly practiced” in the early days of the Church. This is a strange assertion to make in the light of the fact that genuine contemplative prayer is uncommon, the rather rare gift and grace of God, the Saints tell us, normally reserved for those who have gone a long way in obedience to God’s commandments, the life of virtue and the discipline of prayer. I am not sure one can know how commonly such contemplative prayer was or is granted. In any case, such prayer “was virtually abandoned… following the Protestant Reformation,” the writer claims. Then she offers us the following information: “Centering prayer is drawn from ancient prayer practices of the Christian contemplative heritage, notably those of St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and others.”
    Now, it would not take too much research to discover that the two Saints mentioned here both are of the time of and after the Reformation and that their instruction concerning prayer far extended beyond their own time. The question, then, is this: if contemplative prayer all but died out following the Protestant Reformation, then how is it that we have two popular and early modern Saints – again, who lived during and after the Reformation – who are mentioned as the sources of authority on these “ancient prayer practices”? Strange too that it was in the time of the Protestant Reformation that Ignatius of Loyola lived and bequeathed to his religious order and the whole Church his famous means of disposing oneself in prayer for contemplation, that is, his Spiritual Exercises, which have been used widely since his time all the way up until the present. St. Francis de Sales too, who taught the Church so much about prayer, died in 1622, more than a century after the beginning of the Reformation. Also, as further examples, there were St. John of God, St. Philip Neri, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and St. John Eudes, all who lived, more or less in early modern times and taught the people of God much about prayer from “the Christian contemplative heritage.” St. Therese of Lisieux wrote at length about contemplative prayer in her ever-popular Story of a Soul, published after her death in the late 19th century. Lectio divina, a truly ancient form of prayer toward contemplation, was widely practiced all through the history of the Church and is often mentioned in association with St. Thomas More and Erasmus, the former having been martyred by the Reformation in England; lectio divina has been taught at monastic retreats ever since then. Finally, there was, is and will be the rosary itself, popularized in the Middle Ages as an aid to contemplative prayer and was the staple of nearly every devout Catholic household until the mid 20th century.
    The writer makes the additional error of equating centering and contemplative prayer, a claim that even the proponents of centering prayer – Fathers Keating, Meninger and Pennington – do not make. Rather, they claim that centering prayer is a means to achieving the “gift” of contemplative prayer. But, breaking with the ancient tradition, they have, nevertheless, reformulated the classic and general description of all Christian prayer – “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God” – into the “opening of the mind and heart – our whole being – to God.” The former points the one praying out of himself toward the transcendent God; the latter directs the one praying inward. Though undoubtedly this “opening” is necessary, it is not primary, neither in sequence nor importance, and if posited as the foundation of prayer, could easily leave someone with himself, his own feelings and experiences of prayer, rather than lead him to an actual encounter with God.
    Again, it cannot be stressed too much, the Church has always taught that contemplative prayer is that level of prayer that is pure gift and grace. It is the crowning of all prayer, which God bestows when He sees fit. It cannot be achieved by technique, especially by the technique of a kind of “prayer” that is as empty of content as is centering prayer.
    And here, with centering prayer, is where we see the most striking, and distressing, break with the “Christian contemplative heritage.” A “sacred word” is chosen, which is a “symbol” of the intention of the one praying, a word, whatever its meaning, that is simply used as a technique. All other forms of Christian prayer – oriented, yes, toward contemplation – are not at all without content: the Spiritual Exercises are grounded in the definite, particular, historical reality of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels; the rosary is based in the great Christian mysteries of our Faith; lectio divina, by prayerful, reflective reading, immerses one in the Holy Scriptures; traditionally, all forms of mental prayer call for a meditation on doctrinal or scriptural realities; and so forth. Yes, it is true that authentic contemplative prayer is often described as “empty” of conceptual content; but, to repeat, the methods of prayer that Christians traditionally use to dispose themselves toward the gift of contemplation were most certainly not content-less.
    It has been noted by numerous critics of centering prayer that it has a disturbing resemblance to Transcendental Meditation, so popularly spread about since the 1960s in circles not even remotely Christian. And TM has a recognized connection to Eastern religions and philosophies, whose basic tenet of the Impersonal One (a non-personal “God”) perhaps explains why centering prayer can so easily divest itself of content in favor of a technique that is closer to yoga than to what the Church has recommended for us. Be that as it may, the propagators of centering prayer emphasize that it is geared toward true Christian contemplation, and that’s commendable. I am not, however, at all hopeful that this august and mysterious reality can be attained by “four simple steps,” sitting comfortably with eyes closed, returning gently to a “sacred word” and taking breathing lessons, etc.
    If we would read about the Saints, we would discover that prayer in their lives was seldom so simple or, for that matter, so technical (as our Lord’s prayer of agony in the Garden of Gethsemane was not). Though that’s why, I suspect, centering prayer as technique has become so popular in a culture of the adoration of technology. I get the impression that this form of prayer is appealing because it fits so well with our pop-a-pill and stop-at-the-drive-through approach to life. With centering prayer, we are not “encumbered” with the stark and sharp-edged reality, outside of ourselves, presented to us in the stories of Scripture, the demanding pattern of liturgy, and the standards of doctrine. Too easily, then, in centering prayer the one praying becomes the manager, if not manipulator, of prayer, and the whole project slides into an exercise of self-will. A realistic knowledge of the selfish tendencies of the human heart should disillusion us from approaching prayer without all the helps the Church has traditionally insisted upon. With centering prayer, the one praying is too much in danger of simply being left to himself, and that’s not prayer.