Three Dimensional Spirituality
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B
For my PhD work, I carried out an experiment among young adults in Nairobi, Kenya. The 25 participants in the experiment were recruited because they scored high on either alcohol misuse or sex addition. During a weekend retreat, they were trained in the practice of “Jesus Prayer”, and they were asked to continue to practice it for ten weeks. During this period they came together also every Saturday to practice meditation as a group. They were expected to practice the meditation individually for 20 minutes a day, and jot down experiences in their journal.
The participants had no clue on what the researcher was looking for. At the end of the ten weeks, they were some amazing results. Besides some psychological tests that participants were taken through, I conducted in-depth interviews with ten of the participants. The conversations were really enlightening, and I came up with a conviction that deep contemplative prayer facilitates a three-dimensional spirituality (3D spirituality). I realised that at the core of Christianity is a way of life that integrates a wholesome relationship with the self, the other, and God. This is the secret not only to recovery from addiction, but to wellbeing itself. And true prayer facilitates this holistic wellbeing – the three dimensional spirituality. More recently, I added a fourth dimension: an inward journey towards the self; an upward journey towards God, and an outward journey towards others and the rest of creation.
This, I think, is also the central theme of the gospel text of today. Which is the first of the commandments? There are two firsts, and the second is tied up with two dimensions: “You must love the Lord your God… You must love your neighbour… as yourself.”
Which is the first of the commandments?
It is said that at the time of Jesus the rabbis could count up to 613 commandments contained in the Law: 365 were prohibitive or proscriptive (don’t do this!) and 248 were prescriptive (do this!). Some of the rabbis considered all these commandments to be equally important, while others continued to debate in order to identify the most important commandment. That is why, the scribe in the gospel story of today had reasons to ask Jesus, “Which is the greatest commandment of the Law?” Apparently Jesus gives an answer here that is similar to those given by other rabbis (but compare this also with Jn 13:34). For instance, there is a story about one Rabbi Hillel, who lived a few years before Jesus. A ‘pagan’ went to Rabbi Hillel and challenged him, “I will believe in the value of Torah, if you can teach me the whole law while I stand on one foot.” Hillel replied, “Don’t do to your neighbour what you would not want done to yourself! This is the whole law, and all the rest is only a commentary.” This is a negative rendering: don’t do… However, Jesus picks up two sentences and summarises the Torah in positive terms:
- “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (from Deutronomy 6:5), and
- “You must love your neighbour as yourself” (from Leviticus 19:18).
In the gospel of Matthew Jesus would add a linking sentence: “the second resembles the first” (Mt 22:34a), and in the Gospel of Luke (10:27) Jesus would combine the two in one breath! However, in all the synoptic gospels this summary has three dimensions that are put together as the first commandment: love yourself, love your neighbour, and love the Lord your God. I would like to briefly summarise what emerged in my research among young adults in Nairobi as the three dimensional spirituality in the practice of contemplative prayer, and how this is linked to the three dimensions of the “first commandment”.
Love the Lord your God
Jesus repeats the words of the Scriptures, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This sentence seemed very abstract to me until I came to practice contemplative prayer. I suppose the love of God is tangible when we are praying and acting being aware of his presence. But a prayer, in which I am just asking God for his favour does not contemplate the love of God. However, a type of prayer in which I am just available to God, opening up my heart to him, just listening to him becomes an expression of the love of God. And when this attitude becomes a habit in my daily life, and not necessarily tied to specific moments of prayer, then I begin to “love the Lord with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind and with all my strength.”
Listening to those young adults who participated in my experiment, I heard most of them say that initially they didn’t know why they were praying: just repeating the name of Jesus. This was very challenging since they were used to praying just to get some favours out of God. But in the form of prayer that we can call meditation or contemplation, they prayed focusing on Jesus as an end in Himself. God become real to them. One young lady put it rather plainly in the interview, “Yeah, I learnt through silence, God can speak to you… because if you focus on God, you can feel God’s presence.”
As you love yourself…
Contemplative prayer facilitates the journey into the depths of oneself. This journey helps me get in touch with my inner desires, and this prepares me to be empathetic towards others’ desires. And because I am created in the image of God (Gen 1:27; CCC #27, 355, 1705) by getting in touch with the inner self, I get in touch with God. One participant in my research says, “Before I came into meditation, I used to be rather careless about my life and my self… but now days I always wake up and be concerned and I think a lot about me, my life, where I am going and where I am coming from.”
The self-awareness that emerges out of true prayer is also accompanied by humility and self-control. Another participant said in the interview: “When I start meditating, I feel like being in the presence of God, so that I can… I can… ok I am humbled. I feel like I am, I am not myself, I just feel humbled. You see I don’t know how I can put it.”
Love your neighbour
This process of focused-movement towards God and getting in touch with oneself is also accompanied by a genuine sense of compassion towards others. And forgiveness becomes easier. One female participant in my study spoke about not keeping grudges, “not keeping grudges, ok. One day I was meditating, I started thinking of my sister-in-law who I hated so much and what she did to me that was making me hate her. As I was continuing with the ‘Jesus Prayer’ I said: ‘Jesus, son of the living God, have mercy on her’. After continuing to pray I felt like I could talk to her again after a very long time and I chose to forgive her”.
Yet at another level, one other participant said, “Meditation has helped me not to ignore people. If you are talking, even if you are telling me something that I don’t like I try to concentrate first and listen and understand what you are saying…”
I am sorry if this reflection was like an academic presentation, but these are real stories of young people who had gone through an experience in contemplative prayer. For them, Christian calling became more real: to love God and others in getting by also touch with themselves. Though not easy to be consistent with this, I suppose, in our own life journey, this is what we are called to.
For other reflections related to this theme, click:
From religious traditions to religious spirituality (Mk 7:21)
Love one another as I have loved you (Jn 15:12)