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    In my forty years as a priest one of the pastoral and missionary involvements I have always deeply
    enjoyed is preparing young couples for their wedding. I consider this also a “missionary activity” as
    more often than not either partner is a member of another Church or belongs to one of the world’s
    great religions…or is simply a “free thinker” as most of them call themselves to be if they are not
    affiliated to any religion. Ruth and David (not their real names) were such an unforgettable couple.
    David was Catholic and Ruth a born-again Christian. That particular session we had shared about the
    meaning of love. We had used some texts by Saint John: Dwell in my Love…Jn.15:9 and the other gem
    of 1John 4: 16: God is love…Anyone who lives in love, lives in God and God in him/her.

    We got carried away by the sheer fascination of those texts…”We live in God and God lives in us.”
    Trying to ‘get’ an image around this, we came up with the “sponge”. A sponge is in the water and the
    water is in the sponge. In that way we can be immersed totally in the ocean of God’s love…and God’s
    love can seep through every fiber of our whole being. Towards the end of our session, I invited either of
    them to lead us in a simple prayer. Ruth enthusiastically volunteered:” I will do that…!” She invited us to
    enter into silence. After a few moments she said: ”Let our first step be: Immersing ourselves in the
    ocean of God’s love. Let us be like three sponges being soaked…allowing ourselves to absorb the
    loving presence of God into the depth of our beings…and in our relationship…” We spent maybe three-
    four minutes in absolute silence. It was sublime, sacred and unforgettable. It was an experience of
    divine life…dwelling in a holy glow, just paying loving attention to a holy presence wherein we live and
    move and have our whole being. (Acts 17:28) After this Ruth led us in prayer…trying to articulate what
    or Whom we had experienced…yet her words, though filled with wonder and mystery, could not
    ‘match’ the experience it self. One senses the depth of the mystery and the poverty of human words.

    These moments keep lingering in my heart, as it was a real enlightenment to me.  It opened a whole
    new possibility of prayer…of dwelling in God’s love.

    Isn’t this the reality? Are we not called to live in love? Is this not the very foundation of a Christian
    Community a Christian family and maybe more explicitly so of a religious community? We were called
    together to live in a community of love. Through our vows we said yes to this fascinating dream. Our
    Constitutions uphold it… All of us know that community is not easy. One of the main reasons can be
    the ambiguity and poverty of words. Our words so seldom, if ever, translate our deepest awareness.
    The vibrations between people do not always allow us to really say what we mean. Words…so easily
    start living lives of their own. We want to prove ourselves…or to hide ourselves.

    A learned word could be enlightening, but on the other hand, creative of strong prejudices
    depending how and with what intention it is pronounced. The word, I dare say, had created
    more darkness than enlightenment in the world. The situation is no better today, though there
    are exceptions.
    (Asghar Ali Engineer in Preface to: I do not Adore what you Adore…)

    Words when they become discussions and arguments tend to divide people. When they become
    sharings of one’s deepest experiences they can unite people and build up communities.

    At different theological schools in the United States I have witnessed a tragic loss of faith.
    Those who came with a desire to serve soon found themselves entangled in such a complex
    network of theological and sociological issues that an intimate uniting communion with God
    seemed increasingly impossible to find. A desire to pray turned into an endless battle for the
    right words, a desire to know God turned into desperate feeling that there were no longer safe
    names with which to address God. (Words) can give birth to something new and life giving only
    when they remain anchored in the personal bond that we as people of faith have with each
    other. (Henri Nouwen,  in: The Road to Peace page 168)

    I am convinced that many in… the Church of the XXI century can recognize themselves in these
    statements. As a result we may no longer “trust” each other. Question may  be…what do we still have
    in common? We rather withdraw into our shell…or do not pray together anymore or –in the best case—
    we have recourse to our favorite writers and spiritual guides and use their texts. It is safer!

    In is book on Celibacy, Michael Crosby makes some pertinent observations. He summarized some of
    Erikson’s insights. (o.c.212)

    If we experience critical problems related to the basic issue of trust and distrust, this may
    indicate that, at its organizational level, religious life has reverted to the survival stage, the
    most primitive stage of life for an organism. As a result, scant hope remains for us at the level
    of our organizations. Without this hope our present and institutional forms of religious life will
    move ever more rapidly into diminishment, dysfunctionality and dissolution. This brings us to
    the conclusion: death cannot be far beyond…  

    Until we do make at least a modicum of sacrifices  of our self- interest for a vision bigger than
    ourselves—that is some cause that invites self-donation—we will continue in our present form
    of corporate self-destruction. (o.c. 217)

    In the past I have been writing about Meditation, the way Dom John Main, OSB has re-launched this
    ancient tradition. Be with your mantra-- he proposes MA RA NA THA—twice a day half an hour. Be in
    total poverty and simplicity. Learn to be in the presence of God without words, symbols or thoughts.
    Just grow anew and ever deeper aware of the simple words: I AM. I am convinced that we can in this
    way immerse ourselves as a community into that holy presence. In God…we can find and rebuild our
    unity, surrendering ourselves to a mystery greater than ourselves and at the same time more intimate
    to ourselves that we are to our most intimate selves (Saint Augustine). We reach out to God…beyond
    words.

    “Why should we meditate together? The negative answer is clear enough whenever one meets
    with a religious community in the Church that has stopped praying together. As a spiritual
    community it has fallen apart, and the isolated lonely lives of its individual members hold
    together with one another merely through social or professional bonds. Many orders and
    congregations that once received a hundred of novices a year are now contemplating their
    extinction. It becomes clearer every day: the depth of our community is directly proportionate
    to the depth of our prayer. A common but deceptive feeling is that we can pray together only
    after we have come together on the other human levels of relationship. A simpler and the more
    truthful view is that a community of living and mature people is created out of the prayer it
    enters together. The challenge of this in regard to meditation is evident. It asks us to be silent
    together, in faith, in the presence of the Spirit who is our unity. Until we can learn to be silently
    together in communion with each other, we will have little to communicate. Where one tries to
    preach from a place where the members have failed to lead each other into a personal depth of
    experiencing the gospel, then its proclamation will fall flat. Lacking true authenticity it will
    degenerate merely into exhortation or condemnation, defensive or aggressive
    authoritarianism."
    Laurence Freeman in:  The Inner Path of Meditation, page 8-9

    The advantage of praying together in silence is evident. Each and every one of the members commits
    him/her self to the discipline of silence, external and internal silence. There is no need and no space
    for words and/or arguments. Each and everyone focuses on the presence of God, pays loving attention
    to this presence. I know of groups of laypeople who practice this once a week. Some groups are even
    composed of people belonging to different denominations and religions or even free thinkers. It occurs
    to me that silence may be the only language we human beings—all human beings—have in common.
    Experience has taught us that nothing can heal relationship better and more profoundly than
    “dwelling” together in silence, focusing on God. Here the mantra is very important and helpful: the
    watchdog against all distractions.

    I know also of families where husband and wife with their children regularly spend time together in this
    way. And this discovery revives (rekindles) an old dream in me: family spirituality! In the past many
    families prayed the rosary together. This remains valuable yet it seems to disappear from the scene in
    modern society. Bible sharing is not as simple. It is also not without danger. Not all couples are equally
    versed in the Bible…Sometimes the wife or the husband is more knowledgeable making the spouse
    uncomfortable. Spontaneous prayers are not always easy to formulate and one can get in to a
    stereotype routine.  Yet in silence…we are all equal. We are all equally poor and simple before God or
    maybe all are being drawn into the intimacy of this holy presence. There is nothing to prove, nothing to
    defend. It is allowing the Spirit to pray in us. Rom.8: 26-27. It is an experience where one can sense the
    truth of Saint Paul’s words in Ephesians 2: 14 Christ is the peace between us…(10-15 minutes may do
    as a starter.)
    And what about Gal. 3: 26

    All baptized in Christ, you have all clothed yourselves in Christ, and there are no more
    distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in
    Christ…

    We cannot be Christians alone. We are over saturated with documents and guidelines, we are flooded
    with information so much so that we can no longer tell the trees from the forest. We get bored and
    frustrated with meetings…and more often than not our so called prayer meetings become debates and
    talk shops. Our homilies are lectures on social problems and politics…

    The fully realized individual participates in the life of the whole. The communal authority of the
    Church is derived from this truth, that is, from the depth to which her members have become
    persons, have actually experienced their own salvation in terms of the depth of the redemptive
    love of Jesus within them. We are all summoned to this experience here and now and it is our
    preeminent duty to dispose ourselves for it. In our day this means transferring our conscious
    hopes for a renewal of the Church’s relevance and effectiveness in the world from politics to
    prayer, from mind to heart, from committees to communities, from preaching to silence.
    (John Main, Word into Silence page 36)

    Earlier I ever shared about commitment to personal meditation, twice a day half an hour!
    It calls for a great discipline a really new lifestyle. It is possible. I met people—lay people busy as they
    are-- who can live up to it. Their lives are being transformed. I call that a silent revolution. It fills me with
    so much hope.

    …Start with 10-15 minutes the first times. I repeat, silence is a language all people understand. It is
    absolutely simple and that is why it must be true! In the silence together we will experience God’s
    presence. Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10) See also Mt.18:20: Where two or three gather
    in my name I shall be therewith them. Believe it, practice it and experience it. God is faithful!

    The prophetic words of Karl Rahner should jolt us out of our complacency: “The Christian of the 21st
    century will be a mystic or nothing!” Either we go for common experience of God’s presence in our
    midst or we will continue in our present form of collective self-destruction.

    Father Frans De Ridder, cicm
    Singapore
    10th of December 2004
SINGAPORE