Audio only:
Meditation, mindfulness, centering — it’s all the rage. But what are the implications of these things for the Christian person? Father Hugh Barbour breaks down what meditation is and why the Church, actually, has a great deal to teach the world about how to get it right.
Meditation, it’s all the rage- we ask Fr. Hugh about it, next.
Cy Kellett:
Everybody’s talking about meditation and mindfulness and awareness and all of this. Well, it turns out that Christians have been thinking about these things for a long time, and there is an important contribution from Christian tradition, Christian history, Christian practice that can be made to our understanding of meditation. Is mindfulness evil? Is it wrong to be engaging in meditation or breathing exercises or yoga and all that? Well, another question might be, is there a better way whether or not it’s wrong? Is there a better way? So we asked that question of Fr. Hugh Barbour. Let’s get right into that.
Father as the world slips. It feels like a slip away from Christianity, just slip, slip, slip away from Christianity. It seems to me that it tries to replace some of the goods of Christianity with goods that are not quite as good. And among them is the modern idea of meditation. Does that all seem fair to you? What I’ve just said.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It can be fair. Yeah. It can be fair in some cases. Yep.
Cy Kellett:
But people are fascinated by meditation. You can talk to people about meditation, they have an interest in it. You could talk about it to people, or you could talk with people about it who might otherwise be resistant to any talk of anything religious or spiritual or anything like that. So we want to ask you this time about basically the Christian understanding of meditation and why, I don’t know the contemporary person who might otherwise not be really interested in religion might want to listen to a little bit about what the church has to say about meditation. Fair Enough?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Absolutely. Fair enough.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So let’s just start with the general, I think that the interest in meditation is primarily in what are usually called, I guess, Eastern forms of meditation, things that come from Buddhism or Hinduism and were brought here by Harvard professors and the like in the 60s. What distinguishes this understanding of meditation, which seems to be primarily an emptying of the cell from the Christian understanding of meditation?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, of course, generalizations and comparisons consent has to be odious.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So we want to be very careful in our description of what’s going on here, but basically it has to do with the personnel, with the dramatis personae, the characters involved.
Cy Kellett:
Interesting. Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
All right. Because it’s a question we all have, we have in common with Hindus and Buddhists and with Jews and Muslims and all of the religions and lack of the same, we have the same human nature with its faculties. We all have an intellect which can rest in the possession of a truth, or which can reason towards the truth by spiritual movement of rational inquiry. We have that part of our personality, and then we have also a will, which can rest in the good and enjoy it, or it can seek it out among various goods proposed, and by its freedom choose one rather than another.
So we have those two in might say, fields of activity. And then we have the whole universe, literally a universe, a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm of imagination memory, which includes also our use of words, all sorts of things. And so all of that is they’re bound up in our human soul, our intellect with its restful and its moving capacities, the will also with its restful and its moving powers. And then also the raw material might say what we’ve gained from the world by way of our sense experience and is possessed in imagination and memory, and therefore also an emotions and affections. So that’s true of absolutely everybody, whether he’s a Marxist.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I should say she’s a Marxist, nowadays I don’t want to offend anybody. Or they… Excuse me. They are Marxist referring to one person. They are Marxist. A cause is a Marxist, they have all kinds of funny pronouns and makeup. Anyway, or a cloistered Carmelite nun, all right. We all have the same human nature with the same basic raw materials to work with. The powers and the ways of entering into a relationship with the world that God made outside of us, and our retention of our experience in that world and interiorly, but still related to our senses. So imagination, memory, and then of course, feelings. Aristotle taught and St. Thomas points this out very strongly, every form begets an inclination. So by form, we mean anything that comes into us from outside. Color, sight, sound, taste, touch, these things are forms, accidental forms of things.
And we always have on the level of our human nature, some reaction to those things, either of attraction or aversion, we either move towards them or away from them. Sometimes our response is so negligible that it looks like we’re neutral, but we’re actually not. The fact is if we don’t find something repulsively, we automatically find it in some sense, attractive. We flee from the things we really see that seem to be harmful or unpleasant or whatever.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But we accept the present solver. We even move towards those things, which we perceive as being okay with us or even delightful. So that movement dictates you might say our additional inclinations and from all of that flows the way we direct our attention and the objects on which we might set our choice. And so meditation means precisely on the simple human level I’m using the rationalistic level that you would use for any of these religions, including our own of trying to collate, bring down to the concrete, sit with the experience we’ve had and bring it into order with what we believe and know to be true.
And so we come to a meditation full of our thoughts, tons of thoughts, constant thoughts, running, running, running, running, and we call them sometimes distractions. But they’re basically just our thoughts. Full of thoughts, full of feelings, full of desires, full of fears, full of all kinds of perceptions. And we know that we have to bring order to this. It has to somehow come together to move in a particular direction, which is our happiness. That’s what it’s all about.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Our happiness, we need to direct all this stuff in us to a place where that’s going to be a happy thing. So if we are Christians, we have particular beliefs about the nature of the world and ourselves, which already begin to direct how we’re going to collate or unite or deal with all the impressions we’ve ever had. People say they have distractions in prayer. Well, prayer is largely about distractions, it’s about trying to pull together an integral harmony, all the different things that we do and experience and desire or detest. So-
Cy Kellett:
But that’s very hard to achieve. Integral harmony is hard.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s hard, but it’s not hard in the sense that… It’s the same way as saying, it’s hard to earn your daily bread.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s hard to learn a profession. It’s hard to keep up relationship. It’s hard to raise children. It’s hard to clean your room. Basically anything in life, which is we’re doing that you need to do is going to be hard.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And the fundamental thing we need to do is to be so focused on what really actually is the case regarding our personal self and our judgments of ourselves and our destiny so that we can direct ourselves. Intellect, will, emotions, senses, that includes the five external senses, but also imagination memory towards our true happiness. And that’s what meditation is all about.
Cy Kellett:
May I?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Now that…
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Go ahead.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Please, please.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s a long introduction. It may have bored some people, but…
Cy Kellett:
No, well, not me. I-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
There’s a lot of information there.
Cy Kellett:
Here’s my problem. You said it’s hard doing all these other things, but there’s a way in which bringing order to the interior, to the self is different than cleaning your room because your room is not fighting back against it. You see what I’m saying?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Sure.
Cy Kellett:
No, my room is very passive. It will allow me to clean it or leave it alone. But the self seems to be-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You don’t know, it may be passive aggressive.
Cy Kellett:
Possibly. Well, I’ll use that as an excuse. Next time my wife complains, but-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
My room hates me.
Cy Kellett:
The room fought back. I tried, but the room fought back. But you see what I’m saying? The self does fight back. The self doesn’t like to be told, be attentive.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. And here we light on the particular Christian aspect of meditation.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And that is that it’s not simply a reflection on oneself, an attempt to shed the things that might keep us from being happy. And of course in the Buddha tradition, it’s basically just shed a desire, to shed him emotions.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Not in a cold-hearted way. That’s not a fair way to represent them, but in a way that you’re no longer troubled by not having what you so ardently desired before.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Same thing The Stoics were about. The Stoics, right. Basic truth, and they are true as far as they go. Like a certain Holy indifference, as our writers say is a good idea. And you meet people where they’re not going to have a fit because someone put cream in their tea instead of milk. Yeah. Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So, the difference here is that in our meditation, it’s not simply a psychological exercise, which is what I’ve been describing up to this point.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s one which is a personal and explicitly religious exercise. That is our meditation is meant to be a conversation, as St. Teresa of Avila says, “A conversation with one whom we know loves us.” That is we begin with the conviction that we place ourselves before God, who wants our hearts and wants them whole and entire, wants to heal and strengthen and comfort and chasten and perfect our being. And that if we place ourselves in his presence or rather in the end, it’s him placing us in his presence. But we have to make the effort just because he insists on this charade that we’re doing all the work, we’re really not. But whatever.
Cy Kellett:
It’s like a four year old it’s stirring the cake-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
He’s like is teaching children, [crosstalk 00:11:55] take it. Right. Great job.
Cy Kellett:
Mommy really needed you to stir that cake.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I just shot you through with mystic arrows of burning love and good job. You’ve actually managed really well, Theresa. Right. Good job. Transverberation of your heart. We really had to work on that. How many years did you work on it?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s why the scriptures, when they mentioned great conversions or manifestations to divine grace, they use the word suddenly so often. For St. Paul on the way to the Damascus, for the descent of the Holy spirit. There are many places which is suddenly, to emphasize that there wasn’t a lot of preparation beforehand. God just came down and-
Cy Kellett:
Did it.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Zapped it. And so often, good Catholics who read about prayer. They think of it in terms of something which you have to do habitually. You have to do a certain amount of time every day. And if you keep doing it, you’ll make some progress. And eventually some things might start to happen. Now that description is cold and it’s true to an extent, but the fact is prayer is as St. Teresa says, “A conversation with one whom we know loves us.” And so when we place ourselves before the savior in prayer, or before any of the citizens of heaven or any person, the bus of Trinity, the bus is sacrament. When we place ourselves before these things and put our lives, which means all of our experiences and everything, and our desires and hopes and fears, and sins and everything in the presence of those things and relate our life to those things. Then we can make some progress through Christian meditation.
It’s not an emptying of the mind completely. Now there are Christian traditions and in fact, all of them, at some point move toward the direction of saying prayer doesn’t consist any particular images or imaginations.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And that’s precisely true, because that’s true of our theology. We know that once we’ve said everything, we can say about God, what we have said is infinitely less than what we know is there, by what we negate. When we say, God is the creator, but he’s not a creature, right. God is good, but not good in any way that a creature is good.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You know that, that his excellencies so far exceed what we’ve had experienced of that they’re basically negations in the presence of the actual facts. St. Thomas Aquinas says that, “The negations we make about God are more precise and more scientific than the affirmations.”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Now, you think about that in the Summa, how many affirmations we make about God, it’s still good. We have to is catechism, it’s the faith, it’s the creed. We make affirmations. But at the end of it, you have St. Thomas saying on his deathbed, great mystic that he was, after what I’ve seen… Not his deathbed actually was after his experience during Holy Mass in St. Nicholas Day before he died. Just a few months before he died. He said, “In comparison to what I’ve seen. Everything I’ve written seems like so much straw.”
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Now, what that means is that God is beyond our understanding. So we bring our whole human nature there, but then it’s for God to pick up where our human nature leaves off. What we cannot do, he can do for us. But in the meantime, we work with the nature we have. So we do meditate imaginatively on the events [inaudible 00:15:18] to life and rosary. And we look at sacred images and icons, and we use words and gestures in order to express the disposition of our soul. Even none of those things come close to entering into who God really is. You were going to say something.
Cy Kellett:
Well, as you were saying that I was thinking about the part that we do and the part that God does that quieting ourselves is something that we can do. And then we can develop habits around it and learn to do it. And I remember a priest one time, when I was very young saying, “It’s not so bad to fall asleep while praying, because praying is very close to sleep.” That to get yourself disposed-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Physiologically him.
Cy Kellett:
Is that a fair thing to say?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It could well be. It’s certainly true. They say that people that engage in prolonged prayer, they have physical effects, which are similar to that of hospital effects. And Theresa [inaudible 00:16:17] simply says that it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t mind. She falls asleep. Jesus doesn’t care.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. No.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Just like you don’t mind my baby for not paying attention to you.
Cy Kellett:
Right. That’s the-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Unless you’re nuts.
Cy Kellett:
Well, that’s right. And then someone else needs to take that baby. But if that’s going to bother you, but… Okay. Just one other question then, and I’ll let you continue. I’ve forgotten the question. I had a really good one. It was too good. So good too, but go ahead.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Babies.
Cy Kellett:
It’s not going to be.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Okay. We’ll get to it. This is the whole call apophatic, cataphatic theology thing. All right. So those are technical terms for, we affirm in what we believe, and those are dogmas, which we express in verbal formularies and which are found in the scriptures. But then we also recognize as a theological fact that God is utterly beyond all affirmation or negation. He’s totally excellent and beyond all human thought or characterization. And that’s a wide open sea of experience of God and love of God that cannot be comprehended by the human mind. So when we pray, we do what is in us, and we do that consistently and lovingly, knowing that what God has for us is far greater than anything that our human nature could muster up. And we say, well, where do you distinguish between where God is working and we’re working?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, God is always working in us, he moves us even when we’re just using our natural powers. But he could move our natural powers in a natural way because he created all of that.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That is, it doesn’t have to be as some special mystical grace, but we normally characterize as mystical or as moving into the direction of contemplative prayer, or really deep meditation. Experiences whereby we are aware that we are not the actors at all, that somehow our mind goes blank, and yet we’re attentive. We become quiet and yet we’re not seeing anything or saying anything. And yet we’re still there. And that’s when one enters into the more passive aspects of prayer, you might say that where the action of God is more evident. I would not say that he’s not acting before, but it’s more evident.
And then the gifts of the Holy spirit began to work more profoundly, where people have insights into mysteries of the faith or certain convictions or natural judgments they make that are simply based upon what ultimately is the love of God, that is poured into their hearts little by little. And that’s why his eye has not seen nor his ear heard, nor is it into the heart of any man, what God has prepared for those who love him. So we do what the eye sees and the ear hears and what comes into our heart, but then what God has prepared for us is completely beyond that. And so we enter into prayer believing that, whereas the Buddhist, depending upon the tradition is not so sure about the content of the ultimate experience. We don’t know either what the content is. And that’s why a lot of their speech about prayer and contemplation doesn’t sound that different from our mystics actually, to be quite honest.
But the fact is we have the conviction with Teresa of Avila, beautifully puts forward, and it’s read in the church at her matins on her feast day that we never lose sight of, or lose contact with in our prayer with humanity of Jesus Christ. That is it’s the who not the what is going on. Our prayer is a preparation for if we’re quieting ourselves down, using natural techniques to calm down on that kind of thing. It’s so that we can enter into a living conversation with the living Lord, who loves us personally, and is present to us and our souls by grace and the sacrament of the altar and in our neighbor, the whole field of the work of the gifts of the Holy spirit. So we’re going about that business, but with a Christian consciousness, that this is about a personal relationship with persons, the three persons, the bus of Trinity.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
We [inaudible 00:20:34] with the Trinity. So much with the Trinity on all that, that’s magnificent, that her experience where she actually experienced the three divine persons differently, even though they’re all one God. Now, we know that they’re different and whatnot. We can say certain things about theologically, but who of us, except if we’ve reached high levels of mysticism has an experience of the son, his son as the father, his father is spirit of spirit.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
What we do a little bit and that helps us to move on, but that’s where we’re going. And we know where we’re going. That’s the great blessing of Christian prayer. So that in our techniques and meditations, we’re able to use anything which is compatible with human nature. There’re certain aspects of say certain Buddhist meditation that involves sexual activity. Well, obviously that’s out of the question for us, and I don’t know enough about that to even say exactly what they mean by it or what not, but I’ve heard that. But on the other hand, anything that has to do with how I might calm down, so as to be able to focus on what I want to focus on.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s not satanic. Even if you learned it from a Buddhist, if it’s just a purely psychological technique. The problem is the danger of being drawn into another perspective about what constitutes a true happiness from those meditation techniques. So all those things I’m going to be controversial, but yoga, certain kinds of centering prayer or, or even the… What’s it called? The term, they even have it in the New York Times on the second page. What’s that-
Cy Kellett:
Mindfulness.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Mindfulness. Yeah. Mindfulness. They have little mindfulness things like they used to, they would have had a little thing from the meditation on the scriptures or something.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Even in secular papers. Now they have mindfulness possibilities. Like as you go to pick up your brioche and your favorite bagel on your way to your IT job.
Cy Kellett:
Don’t forget.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You can be mindful. It’s so funny. So far moved from anyone, except for certain people. [crosstalk 00:22:32] materially, just like eating Indian food is not going to make you a Hindu or a devil worshiper, even though the food is called Hindu food. Hindu is a name for a culture, not just a religion.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And then just like eating Japanese food is not going to make you a Zen profess… These natural things that are human-
Cy Kellett:
They’re just natural.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
They’re just natural. And so they give you a technique. If you have a doctor who has that religion, you can still follow his advice about your exercise, or about your psychological balance. You can take his recommendation. So too, in the area of prayer, it’s better to take help from Christian adepts who know about this, who really understand it about Christian prayer and whatnot, but on the basic level of preparation, how to calm down and whatnot, these things are not necessarily evil. I think that you can find everything you need just by looking at Christian sources, you don’t need to go looking at all this other stuff.
Cy Kellett:
But say that it might be, I don’t know if this is the case, but it might be that a person would find their way toward Christian prayer through a path of investigating these things. And so they learn these other techniques and now it’s okay. You’ve learned those things, bring them with you when you come to pray to Jesus Christ.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. Right. Exactly. Because God has allowed all of these things to happen. He doesn’t positively will, except in the opinions of some people, but we’ll see, he doesn’t positively-
Cy Kellett:
Moving on Father.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Other people have the religion other than that of Christ but… Well, he doesn’t, it’s not controversy it’s truth, but on the other hand, he does permit it and he permits it for a good, and so there you are. So you can use all that, just like we say at Catholic charismatic. Sure. Your movement came from a 19th century Protestant movement that began to bigger Canyons, Kansas, it was full of all kinds of madness.
Cy Kellett:
But it brings you to Jesus.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But it finally answered a need for post conciliar Catholics who had been deprived of all sense of supernatural religion by the wonderful changes-
Cy Kellett:
That’s an interesting analysis of that.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Oh, yeah. The wonderful changes of [inaudible 00:24:29] about, the mystery of liturgy and all that [crosstalk 00:24:33] was completely. And that attitude of the saints and whatnot. And the proof of that is that these same people are the ones that promote Marian apparitions, [inaudible 00:00:24:42], divine mercy and all that. But the point is you can take something from another tradition and Catholicize it or Christianize it. It’s not a problem. We did it all the time.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
There’s even a famous writing attributed to John of Damascus, St. John Damascene called the life of Barlaam and Ioasaph, which is the story of the Buddha.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. That’s right. Of the Prince Bar-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, right. But they simply took it from that into version and made it into two Catholics of Christian Saint.
Cy Kellett:
If I may, I would really like the… I know you would too, that reader of the New York Times to come to Christian prayer because coming to Christ is more important than anything else that can happen to you. But I wonder how much the modern plugged in self is just exhausted. It’s just exhausted by the constant stimulus and doesn’t know itself as exhausted. And it does the things that exhaust it for relaxation. So that just becomes more exhausted. I just watch another movie. I’ll just binge another TV show, and this is actually exhausting the soul. And what this person really needs on a natural level is rest. And so what they’re doing when they seek mindfulness is just trying to find rest.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. Yeah, that’s good. And it’s very good spiritual advice. Like, look, first, are you getting seven, eight hours of sleep a day?
Cy Kellett:
No.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
First, okay. Do that. And don’t stay up binging on the latest series that you find on Netflix.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
God forbid, but any case. But that’s one thing. Absolutely. And then also this notion that it’s supposed to be about being able to feel better about ourselves. That’s a by-product, but what we want is to find the true path of happiness. And our Lord Jesus Christ he spent whole nights in prayer.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And you think, what did he need prayer for? He was the cause of mysticism. He’s the cause of prayer and everybody else.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, he gave the example. He prayed all night for the salvation of the world. As the apostles says with loud cries and tears to God, he wasn’t just sitting in a Lotus position, sometimes he was stretched out on the rocks. And that example of prayer, which he sets for us, which is perhaps one of the more powerful things of the gospel that might be a rosary decade that you could do. Do a decade in honor of Lord’s all night prayers. We can always meditate on any aspect of our Lord’s life in the rosary, there’s an example about how he did that. And our lady, when she was living in the temple, as a little girl, we’re coming up with her feast day, very soon, November 21st, she spent time in receding from the world in St. Gregory Palamas, the great Eastern teacher says that, that’s when our lady learned, how to intercede for mankind.
And so it was so many things that we do in prayer that are powered by the life of our Lord and his blessed mother and the saints that is, when we come in contact with misses our faith, they’re not just simply focused points of meditation. They have real power to accomplish in us the things that we are considering. We’re conforming our mind and our heart to something real that is the cross of Christ, his sacraments and all of that. And that’s where it really finds its power. And that’s why it’s not the same thing. Christian prayer is absolutely an essentially different from any other kind of prayer. Even though materially, bodily, psychologically, it may look the same, but like Satanist could fast, and a Carmelite could fast. Well, it would look the same, but it’s not. Okay.
And the intention means everything and people don’t understand how important intention is that when we’re intending to do something in order to come in union with the triune God, through Jesus Christ, who is born of the Virgin Mary. So as to be able to receive more abundantly his graces of salvation, so is to arrive at eternal life, along with all the people we love. If we understand our prayer that way, then we can pretty much do whatever we want and we won’t go wrong.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That is we’re free to pray the way we would like. There are techniques of prayer, and I thought you were going to ask me about, how do you do a meditation? Well, I could answer that question, but there are so many different ways, but basically it just means placing yourself in God’s presence. Just getting quiet, whichever way you do that. I don’t recommend lying down is you will fall asleep.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
At least I hope you do. And you can sit, you can kneel, you can stand, go and present the bus of sacrament. That’s very powerful. Or if you’re in an Eastern church that doesn’t have that tradition so much and just stand before the icon, stand in front of the icons and be aware of God’s presence and the presence of his saints, and the Holy ones include them too, because that’s really helpful. And then find some matter for consideration, some texts of the gospel from today’s mass. Some other thing you want to consider in our Lord’s or our lady’s life, or one of the virtues or acts of the Christian life, but basically start with the Bible and always have something in hand. St. Teresa of Avila says, “Even if you pray very freely without any text, always have a book with you in case you get dry and you need to have something to lighten up, re-enkindle your affections.”
Cy Kellett:
I never heard that advice.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
She says, just always have something there. So that when you’re praying happily without anything like that, and it soon goes flat. We’ll just pick up and just read and you’ll find some inspiration there, probably. And you consider what you’ve read. You read as far as you want to. And when some thought hits you, you stop and consider it in a conversation with the Lord or this blessed mother or your guardian angel, whoever it is. But up there.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But most of all, with the Lord. And then continue on and don’t feel like you have to finish anything because prayer is not an assignment. You don’t have to read a whole chapter of the gospel, like you set yourself a goal.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I’ll read a chapter a day. Fine. Well, if you want to do that fine, but for your prayer, it’s whatever, if you just stop on the first three words, that’s okay. And same with anything else. And then considering that I’m bringing into prayerful conversation with the Lord, then see how that might reflect on your life and ask him for help to bring it about in you, and maybe you want to make a little resolution. A lot of writers, they like the idea that you need to make a resolution, decide to do something. That can be a little exhausting if you’re trying to do that every day.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So basically I recommend that you have certain basic resolutions about your life that you want to maintain, and your prayer supports those every day, but don’t try and make a new resolution every day.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Because people around you will notice also, Oh, that must’ve been his good deed for the day.
Cy Kellett:
It’s like a person who gets the word of the day and then you hear them use it. Oh, precocious was the word of the day, I guess.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yes you are. Anyway, boring is a word that comes to mind, but what can I say?
Cy Kellett:
Well, see that’s who we’re sitting across from Father.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. But the fact is this prayer is not as hard is made out to be. And basically if you use the rosary, you’ll be fine. If you make these the rosary well, because that keeps your body occupied with your hands on the beads and it keeps your lips occupied with the hail Marys. And then your mind can go to the mysteries of faith and you can meditate on them any old way you want. There isn’t an obligation to meditate on any specific set of mysteries. It’s any aspect of the faith whatsoever. It’s the same with the stations of the cross. There are 14 stations, but the church gives indulgences for that prayer to just going from station to station meditating on the passion of Christ. That’s it, you don’t have to stick to the theme of the particular, that is you’re meant to pray.
And that movement and stations are great because they’re the closest thing we have in the Latin, right? In the Roman church, to what people in Eastern churches, at least those who don’t have pews feel really free to do. They can move around the church when they pray and then go from image to image and make their bows and the sign of the cross. And like we do in front of the station and whatnot, and keep themselves bodily occupied while they pray. And that helps to drive away distractions and also can help to give you that human feeling of, I actually did that.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I did those things. So the rosary and the stations, I recommend highly, everything else of course is recommended highly. The Psalter the Psalms, the divine office, the lives of the saints, the writings of the saints on prayer, all kinds of things, but just take it easy. Just allow yourself to be inspired by a few lines and then converse with the Lord. The main thing is to talk to him. And if you don’t want to talk about what you’re reading, just tell him how you feel at the moment. And don’t say, Oh, he already knows how I feel. That’s not the point. He wants you to express your love for him in a way which increases your confidence and your ability to know yourself as you should. So there’s nothing to be lost by just wasting time blathering before the Lord. Just like a little child, father knows everything she knows, but she still tells him.
Cy Kellett:
But the conversation is important.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Oh, you hurt your finger. Oh, let me see that. It’s okay.
Cy Kellett:
We have to wrap up Father. I thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Would you give us your blessing before we go?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
[foreign language 00:34:04].
Cy Kellett:
In a certain sense, I suppose we’re all familiar with the logic of searching and seeking and there are every religion that has ever existed, every philosophy in certain senses is searching and seeking. But why not respond to the God who is searching and seeking for us? I think that’s the basic idea of Christianity is that in a very personal way, God has come looking for us, let him find us. And that’s one of the main things about Christian meditation about Christian prayer is letting God find us, not just always being on the search for God, but letting him come to us, show us the way. I’m always grateful for Fr. Hugh. It’s great to have Fr. Hugh with us.
It’s great to have you here with us. Thanks for joining us. We’d appreciate it, if you’d subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, that way you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. Also, if you’d give us that five star review that helps to grow the podcast. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please like, and subscribe on YouTube, help us grow the podcast that way. If you’d like to communicate with us, we’d love to communicate with you. Just send us an email focus@catholic.com. focus@catholic.com and you can always support us financially. We do need your financial assistance to keep doing this. You can do that by visiting our website, givecatholic.com. I’m Cy Kellett your host, off to meditate now. See you next time, God willing right here on Catholic Answers Focus.