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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Forty-nine

Giving Birth to Christ

Fruit of Our Labor
Thursday, December 10, 2020

When we are engaged in some form of contemplative practice, we are more able to bring Christ into the world. By emptying ourselves, we are more able to embody God’s presence for others. Professor and Episcopal priest Vincent Pizzuto writes about how contemplation enables this to happen:

The contemplative disciple is one who is clothed with love. . . . One meditates, then, not in order to produce a successful meditation but in order to be transformed into an ever more compassionate person. We pray not that we might become mystics but that we might become ever more authentic Christians who embody the love of Christ in the world.

John of the Cross [1542–1591] takes up the analogy of a smudgy window to make the connection between deification [becoming more like God] and contemplative discipleship. A smudgy window, he says, is less able to transmit the sunlight shining through it. The more cleaned and polished the window, the more identical it appears with the rays of sunshine. While the nature of the window is distinct from the sun’s ray, a clean window better participates in the ray of sunlight that passes through it. As one progresses in the spiritual life it is as if the window all but disappears, allowing the Christ light to shine through it without hindrance. [1] . . .

It is not mystical experience we are after but radical interior transformation, so that others may experience Christ more fully in us. [2]

The contemplative mystic John of the Cross frequently wrote about the via negativa, or the path of darkness as a way to greater union with God. Spiritual teacher Beverly Lanzetta explores the darkness as a pregnant place from which one “gives birth” to the Divine in the world. She calls it “a theology of gestation.” She writes:

From darkness and uncertainty, it waits for the Divine to be born in its own time. The process doesn’t try to contain new revelation in the dry, crusty soil of old forms, but germinates each seed in the moist openness of heart, fertile and hollow like the womb, receptive and waiting. It is the qualities of Wisdom, the Mother of all—merciful, gentle, humble, nondual, holistic, benevolent—that we tenderly bear. Verdant, womb-like theology welcomes new seeds to take root. Round and hollow in imitation of divine fecundity, gestation cannot be forced; new life cannot be prescribed. We cannot change the color of the eyes, or the shape of the nose. Similarly, we cannot fashion divine self-disclosure to our own liking. Impregnated with its seed, we simply support it and watch it grow. [3]

Richard again: Regardless of our gender, the fruit of our labor is a gift from God for the world. What else could we want this time of year?

Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?

Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.

Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer.

Story from Our Community:
I am a United Methodist pastor and . . . when the pandemic started . . . I started sharing the [Daily Meditations] online in our private Facebook group Monday - Friday. I could not have imagined how life-giving sharing these meditations would be. In a year of so much loss, these daily readings have helped us find comfort, given us strength to make hard decisions, and bound us together in a web of love. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and love with so many. It has made this year bearable. Thank you. —Jen S.

Share your own story with us.

[1] St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, 5.6. See The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, ed. and trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, 3rd ed. (ICS Publications: 1991), 164–165.

[2] Vincent Pizzuto, Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life (Liturgical Press: 2018), 152–153.

[3] Beverly Lanzetta, The Monk Within: Embracing a Sacred Way of Life (Blue Sapphire Books: 2018), 96.

Image credit: Abiding Love (detail of triptych), Janet McKenzie, copyright © 2019. https://www.janetmckenzie.com/

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Action & Contemplation

2020 Daily Meditations Theme

What does God ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. —Micah 6:8

Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. If we pray but don’t act justly, our faith won’t bear fruit. And without contemplation, activists burn out and even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good. In today’s religious, environmental, and political climate our compassionate engagement is urgent and vital.

In this year’s Daily Meditations, Father Richard helps us learn the dance of action and contemplation. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find reflections you may have missed.

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Inspiration for this week's banner image: Mary could trustingly carry Jesus, because she knew how to receive spiritual gifts, in fact the spiritual gift. She offers a profound image of how generativity and fruitfulness break into this world. We have much to learn from her. —Richard Rohr