Contemplative Prayer and Breath

By Fr. James Farfaglia
12/3/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Contemplative prayer is an immense gift of the Holy Spirit

Everyone can be a contemplative. Everyone should ask for this gift. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that "Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, of the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and who wants to respond to it by loving even more".

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - Contemplative prayer is an immense gift from the Holy Spirit. We do not have to be a Saint Theresa of Avila or a Saint John of the Cross to receive this awesome gift.

Everyone can be a contemplative.

Moreover, everyone should ask for this gift.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be open to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened" (Luke 11: 15).

What is contemplative prayer?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that "Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, of the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and who wants to respond to it by loving even more. But he knows that the love he is returning is poured out by the Spirit in his heart, for everything is grace from God. Contemplative prayer is the poor and humble surrender to the loving will of the Father in ever deeper union with his beloved Son" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2712).

My dear friends, with Pope Benedict XVI we have begun a journey through the Year of Faith.
As the Year of Faith began, I initiated a presentation for Catholic Online on contemplative prayer.

We have seen how centering prayer and lectio divina are two preferred methods of prayer that dispose our soul to receive the gift of contemplative prayer.

We have also considered the importance of openness to God, silence, stillness and solitude. Let us now continue our discussion by considering the importance of breath.

Prayer and meditation in Non-Christian eastern religions place a lot of importance on breath. We should not be reluctant in learning methods from other religious trations if they can help us receive more fully the gift of contemplative prayer as Christians.

We must also remember that the importance of breath is not something only emphasized by Non-Christian eastern religions. It is a part of the Christian tradition, both in eastern and western Christianity. God gave us breath and breathes His breath into us!

Let us take a look at the importance of breath in the Bible.

"Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being" (Genesis 2: 7).

"After saying this he breathed on them and said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained'" (John 20: 22-23).

"When Pentecost day came around, they had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting." (Acts 2: 1).

"The Lord Yahweh says this to these bones: I am now going to make the breath enter you, and you will live. I shall put sinews on you, I shall make flesh grow on you, I shall cover you with skin and give you breath, and you will live; you will learn that I am Yahweh" (Ezekiel 37: 5-6).

"And after the fire there came the sound of a gentle breeze. And when Elijah heard this, he covered his face with his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave" (1 Kings 19: 12-13).

My dear friends, we live in an extremely hyperactive world. Moreover, many people live extremely isolated lives glued to some sort of screen. Our senses of sight and hearing are bombarded by a very noisy technological world.

Focusing on our breath will quiet our mind, our heart and our senses.

Focusing on our breath when we pray will help bring calmness and silence to our minds and hearts.

Attention to our breath will allow us to slow down and be in touch with the rhythms and cycles of our own body.

Contemplative prayer is an immense gift of the Holy Spirit. Contemplative prayer is God praying within us. During this Year of Faith, I invite you to ask for this gift.

Be still, be silent, breathe and let God love you.

-----

Father James Farfaglia is a contributing writer for Catholic Online and author of Get Serious! - A Survival Guide for Serious Catholics. You can visit him on the web at www.fatherjames.org.

- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: contemplative prayer, centering prayer, lectio divina, year of faith, father james farfaglia, catechism of the catholic church

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1 - 9 of 9 Comments

phil malone
5 months ago
2 Corinthians 6:14-18. Read the Bible!!
Fr. James Farfaglia
5 months ago
Joe:

There was a Second Vatican Council and here we are fifty years later. Despite what some people may think, the Second Vatican Council has provided a path for the Church to follow. It is a valid council just like any other council in the history of the Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict XVI, with the Year of Faith, has called us to study the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is in these two sources that we must find our criterion for how we are to think and deal with different issues as Catholics. If we remain guided by other sources or our own unfounded opinion, we will remain confused.

First of all, in my series of articles on contemplative prayer, I have not once used the concept "emptying our mind." You and others like Mario keep trying to bring us there. I have spoken about silence. There is a true sense of emptiness in Christianity, but it is the kenosis of Philippians 2: 6-11. Christian kenosis and Busddhist emptiness are not the same thing. Keep in mind that John of the Cross' contemporaries accused him of being a Buddhist. Whatever. Let's remain objective here.

When considering contemplative prayer, the importance of breath and body postures there are aspects of non-Christian eastern religious practices that may be helpful. I am not suggesting that they are helpful for everyone, simply that they may be helpful.

"The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.(4)

The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men" (Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate, 2).
Joe Guglielmo
5 months ago
I am confused by what was written. We are to embrace eastern practices? The Bible never tells us to empty our minds but to come and let us reason together. When it speaks of meditation we are meditating on the Word of God. I think it is a dangerous practice to incorporate pagan practices into our faith. Prayer is communicating with God and that is the reason Jesus came. You see, sin separated us from God and when Jesus said, "It is finished" the curtain in the Temple was torn from top to bottom. This veil separated the holy place from the most holy place, the place where God dwelt in the Temple. Now we can have access to God the Father through Jesus and we can speak to Him and by His Spirit He will speak to us in accordance with the Word of God. Be careful going down this path of eastern religious practices that are contrary to the Word of God!
J. Bob
5 months ago
Here is a little prayer I say, in beginning daily silence:

Holy Spirit, come to me
In the darkness, let me see
In the silence, let me hear
In the desert, please be near
In the dark night, banish fear
Holy God, dwell in me.
Fr. James Farfaglia
5 months ago
Mario:

Thank you for your comment. I think that we are going to have to agree to disagree. There is nothing with centering prayer that would conflict with the CDF document. I have studied the document carefully. Your sources from the spiritual direction sites have no credibility because they seemingly come from Regnum Christi. What credibility do they have? Physician heal thyself. The last source is a joke...extremely confusing and not objective at all.
christie
5 months ago
Yes, Fr. Farfaglia, during this year procalaimed by our Holy Father to be the Year of Faith, I am looking for some habit-forming changes in my prayer-life, whereby I know that i am in the presence of God. To know that we are in the presence of God, even through our working moments, gives us the connectivity to God which recognises His omnipresence. I desire to respond to Mother Mary who always beseeches the faithful to pray the rosary. Dear Jesus, the rosary is truly contemplative prayer, the mysteries of which give us the chance to think about and meditate on Christ's Incarnation, birth, teachings, suffering and death. Dear Jesus, You are given to us in the Holy Mass in word and sacrament. Send us the Holy Spirit with His wonderful gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, discernment, counsel, piety and fear of the Lord. Give us great focus on You, dear Jesus. May we grow in wonder of you. May we always know that You are near. Dear Jesus, may I get the opportunity to take part in a conference in Brunei next year. May my daughter Sharon bear a healthy child free of fagile X complications. Grant health of mind and body to my little grandson. Amen.
Mario V.
5 months ago
Fr. James,

We have corresponded before via this medium. I hope you remember me.

I sincerely hope that you take a closer look at Centering Prayer from its opponents. While the Church hasn't referenced it by name, it has made reference to and warned against practices that attempt to combine Christianity with Eastern religions, especially since they open the door to the dangers of syncretism, the mixing of religions. Of particular note is the mention of erroneous practices in prayer that attempt to reach an emptying of the mind (CCC 2726).

The fact that there are articles from reliable Catholic resources that warn against it (that virtually condemn it) should be enough precedent to re-examine this practice. In fact, it should help in discouraging it. Also the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has released a document that touches on questionable practices of meditation (link below).

I am including below articles that talk about Centering Prayer. One important aspect to note is that Fr. Keating and Fr. Pennington are mentioned by name and directly:

IS THERE ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT CENTERING PRAYER?
http://rcspiritualdirection.com/blog/2011/05/19/is-there-anything-good-about-centering-prayer

CENTERING PRAYER (I.E. KEATING, MENNINGER, HERINGTON)
http://rcspiritualdirection.com/blog/2009/06/05/centering-prayer-ie-keating-menninger-herington

LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON SOME ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
See #12
http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfmed.htm

Same article above from CDF at the Vatican website:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19891015_meditazione-cristiana_en.html

CENTERING PRAYER AND THE VATICAN
http://annefeaster.accountsupport.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/centeringprayerandthevatican.pdf

Sincerely in Christ,

Mario
Eric Nielsen
5 months ago
Wonderful article Father James.
I have meditated and reached this place and I would like to add my two cents to help others in their journey toward God.
Your readers need to know that the breath that is spoken of in the bible has nothing to do with actual breathing, although sitting calmly in prayer for long periods of time, one will naturally notice that if the mind is calm the breath will also remain calm. When the mind wanders the breath will excite and loose its calmness.
This restlessness is the practitioners mind moving from closeness to God, to again returning to the desires created by the ego mind, in order to keep one locked in this physical world. One must remember that the goal is to ultimately leave this physical world behind for an instant, so that one can have the spiritual awaking of experiencing their soul. This is Jesus' Within.
If your readers would like to learn more about what the breath really is they can read the story of Therese Neumann (Google It), who from 1923 onward, had abstained completely from food and drink, except for the daily swallowing of one small consecrated wafer.
The energy she lived on for years is the breath you have mentioned in the article. She was able to get it directly out of the cosmic energy of God, which surrounds all of us. This energy is also the wind which one will hear as they pray and go to the deepest levels of their interior world, where God can be found.
My purpose of speaking up here is to let your readers know that one must not be concerned with having God as the goal of prayer. The thought of God is understood by God as you begin your prayer. To desire God is to be wanting, and as we all know "Thou Shall Not Want." Trust me, when I began meditating the instructor never told me that meditation and prayer was designed for reaching God. Therefore you can imagine when I became stripped down to my soul, how surprised I was by the event.
Because I didn't know I was searching for God by meditating, the main lesson I learned is that he can only be reached by not making the goal of prayer a desire. Ultimately, a practitioners success is leaving this world full of stimulus, which causes desire, and ending up in a situation of forgetting or dying to this world, in order to experience the pristine soul in the Kingdom of God.

Eric Nielsen
http://www.EricRobertNielsen.com
Author of: "Beyond God's Veil... A True Story of Piercing the Cloud of Unknowing"
Lydia
5 months ago
I have found Fr. Thomas Dubay to be a wonderful resource about contemplative prayer. He has several books that are helpful, and there is a whole audio series of his on EWTN that goes in depth about contemplative prayer: http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/seriessearchprog.asp?seriesID=7103&T1=dubay Anyone wanting to deepen their prayer life should also inquire about Spiritual Direction. Dan Burke has a new book called Navigating the Interior Life, which can be found at his website about spiritual direction, http://rcspiritualdirection.com/ I got a lot out of the book.

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