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Using a Mantra in Prayer
In his youth John Cassian (c360-433) had experience of monastic life in Palestine and Egypt. After spending some time in Constantinople and Rome, he moved to Gaul and began founding monasteries in 415 AD. In order to instruct the new members of his communities he gave a number of conferences on the spirituality of the desert fathers. In one of these, Conference Ten on Prayer he tackled the question, how does one pray without ceasing as the New Testament teaches us to do?. This particular conference was very influential. Apparently it was read in the refectories of religious houses for hundreds of years afterwards. When I used to teach spirituality courses in All Hallows College I can remember devoting two classes to what Cassian had to say. Whereas I expected the students to be disinterested, in fact they were fascinated and I realized that the teaching of was still relevant today.
Cassian’s Teaching
John Cassian said that in the East the monks had discovered an effective way of praying always. They had a prayer formula or mantra which “was given to us by a few of the oldest fathers.....They did not communicate it except to a few who were thirsty for the true way.” Apparently, the older monks thought that the entire spirituality of the bible, whether that of the Old or New Testament, could be encapsulated in one verse. “To maintain unceasing awareness of God” says John, “keep this verse ever in mind: “O God come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me.” Ps 70:1. This verse has rightly been selected from the whole bible for this purpose. It fits every mood, every temptation, every circumstance. It contains a call for divine help, a humble confession of faith, a meditation upon human weakness, a confidence in God’s answer, an assurance of his on-going support.” It strikes me that Ps70:1 expresses complete and trusting dependence on the person and providence of God not only for salvation but also for all one’s other needs.
Cassian then goes on to show by a series of practical examples how this verse can be invoked at different times e.g. when you can’t sleep during the night; when you can’t keep awake during prayer; when you are troubled by impure thoughts; when you are feeling conceited about some success; when you are worried about some future event etc. He says that prayerful repetition of the verse “will be a saving formula in your heart, will guard you from the attack of demons, will cleanse you of the stains of earthly life, lead you to contemplate the unseen things of heaven and carry you up to the highest forms of prayer which very few have experienced.”
Conceptual and non-conceptual prayer
Later Cassian says that it is better not to think about the verse or ponder its possible meaning. If perchance the mind wanders - as it often will - it is important to gently bring it back to the reverent recitation of the verse. “This formula,” he says, “the mind should go on grasping until it can cast away the wealth and multiplicity of other thoughts and restrict itself to the poverty of this single verse.” In this way one becomes poor in spirit. “Such a one truly confesses himself the beggar of the Lord, like the psalmist who said, “I am a beggar and a poor man: God himself helps me” Ps 40:17.” If one invokes the verse hundreds of times during the day, it seems to penetrate the unconscious mind so that it becomes second nature to recite it. In that sense one is praying ceaselessly even when engaged with practical, everyday tasks.
Although Cassian favours a conceptless, imageless relationship with the incomprehensible mystery of God, he does encourage people to engage in scriptural prayer. He says that the faithful recitation of Ps 70:1 prepares the mind to penetrate the spiritual meaning of scripture like a surgeon’s scalpel. As a result: “There are times when a person understands God’s scriptures with the clarity with which a surgeon understands the body when he opens up the marrow and the veins. These are the times when our experience seems to reveal the meaning before we understand it intellectually.” Then he goes on to say that the verse, “O God come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me” sums up whatever insight one might have gleaned as a result.
Sometime later he asserts that as a result of this kind of prayer, “The mind shall attain that purest of pure prayers; the prayer which looks to see no visual image, uses no concepts or words.....the mind is rapt upward; and devoid of the aid of the senses or of anything visible or material, pours forth its prayer to God with groanings and sighs that cannot be uttered. This explains the system of spiritual discipline,” he concludes, “there can be nothing more sublime than to fold the recollection of God into the little space of meditation upon a single verse, to summarize all the prayerful feelings in one sentence.”
A One Word Mantra
The prayer of recollection which originated in the East and introduced to the West by Cassian, has been maintained and developed throughout European history. For example, Walter Hilton who may have written The Cloud of Unknowing, advocated the use of a one word mantra. “If you want to gather all your desire into one simple word that the mind can easily retain, choose a short word rather than a long one. A one syllable word such as “God” or “love” is best. But choose one that is meaningful to you. Then fix it in your mind so that it will remain there come what may. This word will be your defense in conflict and in peace. Use it to beat off the cloud of darkness above you and to subdue all distractions, consigning them to the cloud of forgetting beneath you. Should some thought go on annoying you demanding to know what you are doing, answer with the one word alone. If your mind begins to intellectualize over the meaning and connotations of this little word, remind yourself that its value lies in its simplicity. Do this and I assure you these thoughts will vanish. Why? Because you have refused to develop them with arguing.” As a person gets to be proficient in this form of prayer the chosen word, which encapsulates all one feels and knows about God, will begin to pray itself within the person's spirit in an unceasing way.
Conclusion
Isaac of Nineveh wrote in the seventh century: “Once the Spirit comes to dwell in someone, the latter will not be able to stop praying, for the Spirit will never stop praying inside him. Thus, whether he sleeps or wakes, prayer will never be absent from the person’s soul. Whether she is eating or drinking, or sleeping or working, the sweet fragrance of prayer will effortlessly breathe in his heart. Henceforth he no longer prays at fixed times, but continuously.” John Cassian and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing have shown us a simple way of fulfilling Paul’s advice in Eph 5:20: “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.”
REIKI REPORT Over the years a number of people have asked me what I think about Reiki. To tell the truth, more often than not, I have had to admit that I do not know much about the subject, but that it sounds a bit like a New Age form of healing to me. Recently, I was delighted to find that, in March 2009, the doctrinal committee of the American hierarchy, consisting of eight archbishops and bishops, had published a lucid and helpful document entitled Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy. It begins by echoing the teaching of Sirach 38:1-15, when it says there are two kinds of healing, natural and divine. On the one hand, we can be healed by human means such as surgery, psychotherapy and medicine, while on the other hand God can heal us by means of such things as the anointing of the sick and the charism of healing. In this connection the bishops refer to the Instruction on Prayers for Healing which was published by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2000, and to par. 1508 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The bishops point out that charity demands that we should not neglect natural means of healing people because even the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses. A Zen Buddhist monk, Mikao Usui, discovered Reiki in the mid nineteenth century in Japan. At the end of a 21-day meditation on Mount Kurama he achieved a spiritual awakening and received the knowledge of Reiki, i.e., how to attune to the universal lifeforce or energy. According to Reiki, sickness is ultimately due to an imbalance of the universal life force in the human body. So a Reiki practitioner brings about healing by placing his or her hands in certain key positions on the patient’s body in order to facilitate the flow of Reiki or universal energy. Rather than being the ultimate source of this healing energy, the healer is merely a channel for something that exists everywhere and in everything, including the healer. To become a practitioner of Reiki healing a person must receive an “initiation,” or “attunement” from a Reiki master, i.e. someone who has reached a high level of attunement as a result of completing an advanced stage of training. Is Reiki a Natural Means of Healing? When one reads books and articles on Reiki it becomes clear that its beliefs are mainly expressed in spiritual and religious terms of a pantheistic kind. Such literature is filled with references to God, the Goddess, the “divine healing power,” and the “divine mind.” The life force is described as being directed by the “Higher intelligence,” or the “divine consciousness.” Furthermore Reiki healers make use of Japanese sacred symbols and engage in religious type ceremonies. Reiki is often referred to as a way of living governed by five ethical precepts. As the bishops point out, in some respects Reiki is similar to a religion. That said, many practitioners such as nurses, use Reiki as a purely natural form of healing. However, there is no empirical evidence to show that this form of alternative medicine has any good effects. In fact it lacks credibility in so far as the universal life energy that Reiki talks about is unknown to modern science. As the bishops observe, the justification for this form of therapy must necessarily come from something other than science. As I know from personal experience, some modern day Christians such as priests, nuns and charismatics, try to harmonise Reiki with Christian healing. To do so they have to accept, at least in an implicit way, the central tenets of the worldview that underpins Reiki healing. Many of these tenets are incompatible with Christian thinking. This is so, for instance, because Christians see divine healing as a free gift of God’s grace, which is not within human control, whereas Reiki practitioners believe, in a Pelagian way, that healing can be reliably experienced as a result of human insight and effort. The American document points out, “the fact remains that for Christians access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as Lord and Saviour, while the essence of Reiki is not prayer but a technique that is passed down from the ‘Reiki Master’ to the pupil, a technique that once mastered will reliably produce the anticipated results.” Apparently, some practitioners of Reiki, who are influenced by New Age thinking, consult with angelic beingsIt e r c e and spirit guides when they are ministering healing to others. The American bishops point out that this practice can open a channel to sinister demonic influences. They observe, “This introduces the further danger of exposure to malevolent forces or powers.” This point may explain why I have heard quite a number of people say that, having received Reiki healing, they developed all kinds of problems ranging from depression to headaches and physical ailments. Indeed, a man who had been a Reiki master rang me up one day to say that he had heard me warning about the dangers of this form of therapy in one of my recorded talks. He told me that he had come to see the truth of my words from his own personal experience and that of his clients. I was pleasantly surprised when he revealed that he was giving up Reiki because he had discovered that it sometimes had a very dark side. While some practitioners attempt to Christianise Reiki, in a syncretistic way, by adding a prayer to Christ and using Christian symbols, the American bishops point out that these cosmetic changes do not alter the essentially pagan nature of this form of therapy. For these reasons, Reiki cannot be identified with what Christians call healing by divine grace. The bishops conclude by observing that “for a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems.” They say that a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki ends up “operating in the realm of superstition, the noman’s land that is neither faith nor science.” The bishops warn that superstition corrupts the person’s worship of God by turning religious feeling and practice in a false direction. They explain that while “sometimes people fall into superstition through ignorance, it is the responsibility of all who teach in the name of the Church, to eliminate such ignorance as much as possible.” That was the main reason why I wrote this short article. The document ends with these salutary words, “Since Reiki therapy is not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence, it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health facilities and retreat centres, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or provide support for Reiki therapy.” (Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy is available online at:
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Sharing During a Time of Need
A call to be generous to others in this time of economic hardship.
by Fr Pat Collins C.M.
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What does the Bible say? Let’s look at what the Bible has to say. The friendship between David and Jonathan is recounted in 1 Sam 18-20. We are told: “Jonathan became one spirit with David and loved him as himself…He swore eternal friendship with David because of his deep affection for him. He took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, together with his armour and also his sword, bow and belt.” This ideal of shared love being expressed in a community of goods was to come to fruition in the life of the early Church. When St. Luke described the first Christian community, he saw it as the fulfillment of the Old Testament ideal. United by their faith in Jesus, the first believers “were one in heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32). It is evident that Paul encouraged the better off members of the gentile Church to be generous to fellow Christians who were in need, especially those in Jerusalem. He promised: “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God” (2 Cor 9:11-12). Sometime later the author of 1 Tim 6:17-18, who was well aware that the love of riches was the root of many evils, said: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” The earth is the common possession of all In the Post Apostolic era, the Fathers of the Church added another dimension to Christian thinking when they wrote about the tension between the right to the necessities of life and the right to private property. For instance, in the Didache 4:8 (150 A.D.) we read: “You shall not turn away from someone in need, but shall share everything with your brother or sister, and do not claim that anything is your own. For you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more so in perishable things.” St. Ambrose stated in Duties of the Clergy, 1. 132 (391 A.D.), “God has ordered all things to be produced so that there should be food in common for all, and that the earth should be the common possession of all. Nature, therefore, has produced a common right for all, but greed has made it a right for a few.” The implications of these teachings are outlined in par. 2403 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The right to private property, acquired by work or received from others by inheritance or gift, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind. The universal destination of goods remains primordial, even if the promotion of the common good requires respect for the right to private property and its exercise.” In other words the right of everyone to the fruits of the earth is prior to anyone’s right to private property. Prayer Group generosity to man who lost the job Many years ago I was a member of a Charismatic community group that tried to live like the community described in Acts 4:32-36. I wrote about it in an article entitled “Fasting From Criticism” in Goodnews, (Sept/Oct 2006). One thing I didn’t mention was the fact that the group was formed at a time of economic difficulty in Northern Ireland. At one point, a member, whose wife was also in our community group, lost his job. Although he was entitled to unemployment benefit and child allowances, he and his six children really did not have enough to live on. As a result the members of the group decided to make weekly financial contributions to supplement his income. To do so required sacrifice and belt tightening by all of us. As far as I can remember the weekly payments were required for nearly a year. The couple who were being helped were amazed and edified by the generosity of the prayer group. When the man eventually got another job, he didn’t forget the kindness that he and his family had experienced. In thanksgiving, he founded a charity that collected thousands of pounds for people in need in other countries. Sacrificial giving will bring benefits I’m convinced that more and more of our fellow Christians will experience economic hardship as the economic downturn worsens. If we wish to live in accord with the urgings of God’s love within, we should be prepared to share what we can with those in need. This kind of generosity requires sacrifice by digging in to savings and cutting back on non essential spending, while trusting in Him who looks after the lilies of the field and the birds of the air (cf. Mt 6:26). I can remember reading many years ago how John Wesley used to give a tenth of his income to his Church. When he grew wealthier as a result of book royalties and donations, instead of giving a tenth of his larger income, he continued to live on what he got as a young priest and gave all the rest to the Church. It may be that Christian groups and parishes should begin to ask their members to give such things as money, food, clothing and furniture to a contingency fund which could be used for the foreseeable future to help those in need, firstly, in their own midst, and if possible outside the community. I am convinced that this kind of sacrificial giving will have many beneficial effects. Firstly, it will help those in need. Secondly, it will bear witness to the providential love of God in a practical and credible way. Thirdly, it will build and strengthen the bonds of unity. Fourthly, it will call down a spiritual blessing on those who give generously. As Deut 15:10-11 says, “Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land’.” “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us” (2 Cor 9:11)
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As the worldwide recession kicks in, more and more people are losing their jobs and incomes. As well as having to continue to pay mortgages and debts they struggle to buy the necessities of life. Faced by an uncertain future it is not surprising that many of them are very anxious. How should Christians react to those who are experiencing such hardships?
