How do I sit quietly before God? (I)

St. Paul encourages us in Eph. 4 to not behave like the rest of the world, and as Catholics we follow a higher standard. He tells us not to get lost in useless thoughts; futile thoughts he calls them. Because God gave us free will, we have total freedom of thought. We can think about anything imaginable. Our mind is continually generating thoughts, some good and some bad. Some thoughts are focused on meaningful things and some are of no value to us. Thoughts can build upon one another, grow and generate into rationalizations. Worthless thinking often leads us to sinful thoughts. Fr. Thomas Keating in one of his book on meditation refers to this continuous motion of thoughts running around in our mind as “the monkey mind.” Picture a cage with monkeys jumping around and screeching. They rush at you, then away from you and then at you again, always chattering and making a ruckus. That is often the state of our mind, an endless commotion. Our minds have almost unlimited creativity and freedom. But if we do not harness the great power of our mind it can cause a mess. We talk with someone while thinking about something else more important to us. We listen with interest to a Psalm, and suddenly drift off to other thoughts. We injure our relationships when we do this! St. Paul refers to still darker thoughts in this Epistle. This futility of our mind draws us to the edge; and we risk stepping off and into a darkness of sin. When we are interested, however, we do focus our thoughts. An exciting movie holds our attention. A good novel can grip our interest. When our interest is not captured though, it often takes great energy and discipline for us to pay attention to a person speaking to us. We allow our mind to wander because we get lazy. But God can work miracles through the great power of the mind. Our weapon of defense against a lazy, undisciplined mind is prayer. During Lent we pray “Lord, take from me the spirit of sloth.” We fight against the lazy, idle mind with “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” We fill our mind with “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great goodness. Blot out my transgressions.” (This text will continue next week) ■