REDISCOVERING

THE
FELT PRESENCE OF GOD

Gospel: Luke 10:38-42

SAINT JOSEPH COLLEGE OF SINDANGAN

INCORPORATED EMPLOYEES’ AND STAFF
RECOLLECTION

March 26, 2024

Siari, Sindangan, ZN
 Jesus at the house of Martha and
Mary
Luke 10:38-42

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he entered a

village, and a woman called Martha welcomed him to her
house. She had a sister named Mary, who sat down at the
Lord’s feet to listen to his words. Martha, meanwhile, was
busy with all the serving, and finally she said, “Lord, don’t you
care that my sister has left me to do all the work? Tell her to
help me!” But the Lord answered, “Martha, Martha, you worry
and are troubled about many things, whereas only one thing is
needed. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken
away from her.”
 What is contemplation?

• Contemplative prayer is when we use our minds and hearts, and

sometimes our imaginative ability, to recognize God’s
presence and fix our gaze on Him.
• It seeks to achieve a union with God and is characterized by
quiet, stillness, and simply resting in God’s presence.
• It is less a way of “doing” and more a way of “being.”
 “God is dead” - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882

A madman lights a lantern and, in bright daylight, rushes into a crowded

marketplace shouting: “I seek God! I seek God! But the people in the
marketplace ridicule him. “Has he got lost?” asks one. “Did he lose his way
like a child?” asks another. “Is he hiding? Or is he afraid of us?” They yell and
laugh at him. Then the madman turns on them and shouts, “God is dead, I tell
you, we have killed him, you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did
we do this? How could we drink up the sea? What was the holiest and
mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our
knives.” Then he goes silent, smashes his lantern on the ground, and
announces: “I have come too early. This deed is still too distant for people to
see, and yet they have done this to themselves. They have killed God!”
 God is dead or we have killed him means…

God no longer mattered in everyday life

God is present to us, but we are NOT PRESENT to God.

We struggle to make God MORE REAL in ordinary life

The eclipse of God is a fault in contemplation.

 Factors Militating Against Contemplation

• Narcissism
• Pragmatism
• Unbridled Restlessness
• Non-contemplative
Personality
 Narcissism
• The propensity for individualism and self-
centeredness
• Incapacity to recognize the reality of others
• For the yuppie self-development is salvation
• It’s the “ME FIRST” agenda
Pragmatism
• Sense of worth comes from what we do rather than
from who we are
• Self-worth depends on achievement and accomplishment
• Achievement of professional goals takes precedence over
family life, personal virtue, and leisure
• EFFICIENCY is a spiritual disease (Thomas Merton)
Unbridled Restlessness
• Our bodies, minds, and hearts are greedy for
experience
• Life is tragic without tasting every pleasure and
fulfilling every potential inside us
• The loss of interiority – “I’m super busy”
Non-Contemplative Personality
• Reality is simply “there”
• There are no longer supernatural dimensions
to reality
• No reality beyond what is empirical
 Narcissism, pragmatism, and
excessive restlessness and non-
contemplative personality can
effectively block us from seeing
God in ordinary life.
 Recovering the Ancient Instinct for Astonishment
Three Contemplative Traditions within
Christian Thought
1. Purification of Awareness
2. Contemplation as Respecting the Holiness of
God
3. Recognizing and Appropriating the Experience
of Contingency
Purification of Awareness

• Pursuing purity of heart through

contemplation
• Purification of awareness is possible by going
through the DARK NIGHT of the soul (St.
John of the Cross)
Purification of Awareness
• Veil of the Senses
• We act based on the pleasure principle (Hedonism)
• The dark night of the senses strips this veil away
• It purifies us by severing the spontaneous connection between
pleasure and motivation through an immersion into the life of
Christ, and through the experience of barren.
• Perseverance in prayer, love, and service, despite feeling no
satisfaction in doing these.
• Once we think and feel more like Christ, we will also see
more like Christ.
Purification of Awareness
• Veil of the Spirit
• We use the will, intellect, and memory to relate to that
which is outside of ourselves.
• Intellect – forms concepts and images to understand and
relate to reality
• Will – tries to possess what it loves
• Memory – tries to control reality to guarantee its own safety
Purification of Awareness
• Veil of the Spirit
• But when we understand something only in so
far as we can grasp it intellectually, and only in
so far as we can possess it, and only in so far as
we can remain in control and secure in the face
of it, we relate only partially to that reality.
Purification • Veil of the
of Awareness Spirit
Purification • Veil of the
of Awareness Spirit

•The dark night of the spirit can

open our heads, hearts, and
personalities to a new way of
understanding, loving, and
relating.
Purification • Veil of the
of Awareness Spirit

Intellect – faith
Possession – love
Security - hope
Purification of Awareness
• Veil of Life
• Human nature simply limits us while we are in this
world.
• We can never move to the fullness of perception and love
• Death brings about the final purification
• Full communion with God happens after death
 Contemplation as Respecting the Holiness
of God

• Holiness means otherness,

incomprehensibility, and awesome
• Our response is holy fear
• Approach God through the categories of faith
rather than through the categories of human
understanding
 Contemplation as Respecting the Holiness
of God

•To let God be God means not only that we

do not set limits to the infinite, but also that
we allow God to give us meaning,
significance, uniqueness, and eternal life.
• Secular experience is seen as non-
contemplatively
• Secular mindset is:
• “IMMEDIATE is ALL that THERE IS”
• Existence begins and ends with the HERE and
NOW
• There is no God who caused everything to exist
• Characteristics: “thrownness”, relativity,
transience, and autonomy
 3. Recognizing and
Appropriating
the Experience of Contingency
• Appropriate your contingency!
• Be aware of what is a gift in your life.
• Find that you are not a self-sufficient being but that at each
second of your life, you are being CREATED,
SUSTAINED, CHALLENGED, and REDEEMED by
some ABSOLUTE beyond you.
When the sense of gift is lost, we concomitantly
experience the death of the giver.

WHEN WE SEE OUR LIVES

CORRECTLY, WE SEE THAT ALL IS
GIFT.