The Centering Prayer or a Contemplative Meditation
A Pentecostal pastor was on retreat at a Catholic monastery in, Colorado. Seventeen years a pastor, a genuinely holy man, and he was having problems and didn’t know what to do. What he said to the Priest was, “I was telling my wife that I couldn’t talk to God anymore. I’ve been talking to God for 17 years and leading other people.”
The Priest immediately recognized what was happening. “The man had walked through the door and he was into the silence of contemplation. He did not understand it. There was nothing in his tradition that could explain it to him. His church, it’s all praying in tongues, dancing—all of that is good. But they forbid you to go beyond it. The Holy Spirit doesn’t pay a lot of attention to that prohibition and took this man through the door”.
The door you want to go through
Sit down comfortably, be quiet and begin to focus on your breath. Then lift up your heart to the Lord with a gentle stirring of Love (The German mystic Sister and Saint Hildegard of Bingen called it Violent Rapture), desiring Him for His own sake and not for his gifts. Begin to use a simple word such either “God” or “Love” and let be the expression of your Love for God in this contemplative prayer. Do it for 20 min.)