"About This Life" (Acts 5:20) # 3
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
tells us that "prayer is the life of the new heart" (CCC # 2697). This new
heart which is the Heart of Jesus alive within me is born in contemplative
solitude with God. This is the new heart promised by God through the Prophet,
Ezekiel: "I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you"
(Ezekiel 36:26). God delights in bringing forth the "New" within us: "See, I am
doing something new!" (Is. 43:19). Each of us is called to " a profoundly
personal and intimate solitude, a standing alone in and with God" ( The
Hidden Self Grown Strong; Fr. George Aschenbrenner,
S.J., IPF Publications, p. 233). This regular and disciplined time spent alone
in the solitude of God's love is the most important means by which to
experience renewal and growth in the interior life.
By my baptism I am called interior
into this hidden place of the heart with the living God of love. This being
alone with and in God is where I breakthrough to a new level of experience and
relationship with Him. For, this solitude is the "place" of conversion. The
path of contemplative transformation travels by way of relational purification.
This is where my old self dies and the new self rises.
This resurrected self is more "He" than me.
Jesus is the Morning Star who rises in my heart (see 2 Pet. 1: 19).
"Even though the human heart by its nature contains an emptiness that invites
solitude" (Aschenbrenner, p. 235), our culture today
militates against the experience of aloneness. There is a fear of facing
oneself. Hence, many run away from aloneness:
"The drama of contemporary culture
is the lack of interiority, the absence of contemplation. Without
interiority culture has no context; it is like a body that has not yet found
its soul. What can humanity do without interiority? Unfortunately, we know the
answer very well. When the contemplative spirit is missing, life is not
protected and all that is human is denigrated. Without interiority, modern man
puts his own integrity at risk" (Pope John Paul II's Address to youth in
Madrid, May 8, 2003).
God is the One who initiates solitude
by drawing me to Himself, and hence into this necessary furnace of
transformation. I must be faithfully purified in the experience of being with
God alone. In the bible solitude is sometimes symbolized by the mountain top or
the desert: "So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak
to her heart" (Hos. 2:16). There, God speaks forth His word into my heart,
and "is not my word life fire, says the LORD ?" (Jr. 23:29). What 'fire'
touches it transforms! In Exodus 33:7 we read, " The tent, which was called the
meeting tent, Moses used to pitch at some distance away, outside the camp".
This place of encountering God was set up outside the noisiness, busyness and
distraction of the "camp" in a deserted place conducive to silence and intimate
engagement with God.
In the New Testament we see Jesus
in the "meeting tent" of his body; for, he is uniquely the locus of intimate
encounter with God...And Jesus placed a most paramount importance upon his
times of solitude with the Father. We are told in Mark 1:35, "Rising very early before dawn, [Jesus]
left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed." This essential
solitude with God is a discipline of the committed contemplative.
Scriptures: Songs 8: 5D; Luke 6:12
Questions: Do I seek solitude with God, or do
I find ways of 'running' from this embrace? What changes are taking place
within me through my times of solitude with God in prayer?
