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Scripture: Hebrew 10.19-20 (NLT)
And so, dear brothers and sisters,we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place.
A Christocentric Basis of Contemplation
The following is from St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan who lived 1217-1274 and known as one of the most eminent teachers of the contemplative Christian life, The Soul's Journey into God.
Whoever turns his face fully to the Mercy Seat
and with faith, hope, and love,
devotion, admiration, exultation,
appreciation, praise and joy
beholds him hanging upon the cross,
such a one makes the Pasch, that is, the passover, with Christ.
By the staff of the cross
he passes over the Red Sea,
going from Egypt into the desert,
where he will taste the hidden manna;
and with Christ
he rests in the tomb,
as if dead to the outer world,
but experiencing,
as far as is possible in this wayfarer's state,
what was said on the cross
to the thief who adhered to Christ;
Today you shall be with me in paradise.
*From Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, Trans. Ewert Cousins, "The Classics of Western Spirituality."
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Progression into the Holy of Holies
The Prayer of the Heart refers to forms of meditative prayer using a word or phrase in repetition to usher us into full enjoyment of the Wonderful Presence. In our Center, which is God, the Holy Spirit and the Christian are one in Love, not as a state but as an Acting-Within-Each-Other.
Christian contemplatives historically have taught that mind and heart are to be united in prayer and life. These organs of spiritual discernment and action are already in harmony in the Word, but divided in time, for the Word is the Father's Eternal Generation and in Whom all contraries find Unification.
What is the heart in Christian spirituality? The heart is the physical organ. The heart is the seat of emotions and feelings and where human consciousness enters to mingle with Spirit: Spirit-with-spirit. The heart is also the seat of the will. The heart can refer to the Center where contemplative union with the Triune God occurs, but only as far as possible in this life. Here, I prefer to use Heart.
Through prayer and holy living, our will is transformed to enter Union with the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is what the Hebrew Scripture calls Ruach and the New Testament calls Pneuma: words for wind, breath, spirit. This is a Relational Numinosity beyond words and feelings and will.
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