Miss Walter's Words: Enjoy the Silence

"Contemplation is nothing else than a secret, peaceful, and loving infusion of God, which if admitted, will set the soul on fire with the Spirit of love." - St. John of the Cross 

    I am not strictly an introvert or an extrovert. I am what is classified as an “ambivert,” meaning that I am both. I love to be around people, but I also need quality alone time to be by myself and recharge. Almost all of my friends are strictly extroverted, which can be difficult to deal with at times. It can be puzzling or even frustrating to them when I act really quiet in public or decline invites to hang out just because I’d rather have the time to myself. It’s not because I’m sad or trying to avoid them — I just need to recharge!

    So… what does this have to do with spiritual contemplation?

    I’ve noticed that it is difficult for so many of us, in a world dominated by extroverted expectation, to embrace the quiet, introverted sides that we all have. In this silence is where God wants us to seek Him. By simplifying our loud, busy lives and embracing a prayerful silence that so fervently begs to be heard among the cries of a million earthly responsibilities, we can open our ears to His voice and spiritual promptings.

    It is probably easier for introverts rather than extroverts to understand this concept. By definition, extroverts typically do not like to spend time alone reflecting when they’d much rather be out socializing or doing something fun. Calming down and setting aside time to pray and reflect may even seem alien to those who are not used to it.

    Based on personal experience, here are some techniques for all personality types to test out in order to incorporate spiritual contemplation into their everyday lives. I encourage you all to give them a try. It may be difficult, especially at first, but I encourage you to persevere for a significant amount of time in order to see if any of these techniques benefit your life and your relationship with God. Even if you do not find these methods helpful, I hope that they spark a new spiritual perspective on contemplation in your everyday life.

1. Simplify your schedule

    Although this is the most difficult step to take, it is an essential leap towards a more spiritual and contemplative life. Start by praying for guidance from the Holy Spirit in order to find gaps in your schedule to insert quiet prayer time. Personally, I like for prayer to be the last thing that I do in a day, so I usually have a 45-minute block before I go to bed in which I have reserved for meditation, scripture study, and quiet reflection.

    Social media and electronics in general should be put aside at least an hour in advance of bedtime or quiet time (which doesn’t have to be right before bed!) This may make me sound like an annoying parent, but many scientific studies have been done that prove how electronics stimulate the brain like crazy, making it hard to wind down. In fact, science isn’t even necessary in this case to prove how electronics affect us! Just look around, especially at the younger generations — our society is full of citizens with potential who are growing less and less productive because they are too distracted by the shallow concept of social media and screen-to-screen communication as opposed to face-to-face meeting.

    Without going off on an extreme tangent, I will simply put it this way: there are so many things that distract us in our daily lives that can be removed. Distractions vary from person to person, but we all suffer from them. If you notice something in your life that is keeping you from reaching your goals, or equally importantly, blocking you from personal time with God, get rid of it or at least try to lessen it. Ask others to pray for you so that your eyes are opened to the changes that need to be made for your own improvement.

2. Embrace the silence

    Silence is not something to fear! I know too many people who are almost afraid of spending time alone and try so hard to avoid the thoughtfulness and contemplation that silence alone brings. I’ll say it again, do not be afraid of silence! There is so much you can learn about yourself and about God from spending time alone in the quiet.

    The way I have observed it, there are a few different types of silence in which we can quiet our minds and our lives to hear the Lord. We should try to embrace them all, for spiritual and mental health.

    The first kind is basic silence, or simply just allowing yourself to be. In this silence, you are not actively searching for God or trying to rummage through your thoughts for meaning. You are simply opening your mind to whatever decides to pass through it. This can be used to clear the mind after it has been busy for the entire day. In a way, you are allowing yourself to enjoy the silence and prepare for prayer.

    The second type of silence is a prayerful, meditative state. In this silence, you are actively praying to God, or allowing yourself to stay open to however He wants to speak to you. Praying the rosary or reciting a mantra are some forms of prayer that can be used to bring a person into a meditative state. Both are very repetitive, yet are an extremely powerful expression of the soul through which the person praying can bring their focus to the power of God which resonates so deeply within us. It is difficult to describe just how this form of prayer works, but for those in deep meditation, its power is very real.

    The third type of silence is a free-flowing, soul-spilling method of prayer or scripture reading. Often times when it is hard to talk to God, or there doesn’t seem to be much to say, many people will resort to this method. This type of silence captures two extremes of prayer. From both ends of the spectrum, this is the “talk to God” method. Whenever I hear that phrase, I think of a person standing with Jesus, simply talking to Him. They aren’t reciting prayers or scripture, they are merely having a conversation with Jesus. Sometimes when our lives are a mess and we are so desperate to hear God’s voice, we will plead desperately to him in our own words. This is one extreme, when we are at our lowest, and we have lost all control and are in dire need of God’s voice in our lives. The other extreme is when we feel detached from God at certain points in our lives. We may be bored, or even lazy, and not know where to start with our prayer. At this end of the spectrum, we are not really sure what to do, so we try to “talk to Jesus” in an almost literal sense. This is a rambling, often unstructured prayer that is unsure in nature. Alternately, some people may even just crack open a bible and read whatever page they land on. In sincerity, this can be a form of prayer too, if the reader is paying attention to and taking to heart what the scripture says. Overall, this is a basic, yet still important form of silent prayer that can be used in a multitude of situations, and especially if they're opening themselves to listen to God while reading.

     While praying, if you find it boring just sitting, staring at a wall or closing your eyes, allow outward expressions such as drawing, painting, or even writing to take place if any of those come naturally to you. You can even take a walk or do yoga while you pray, since these forms of movement often help the spirit to connect with the body, and even help some to be more focused on prayer. Contrary to the ideas of some, meditation and prayer can take place even when you are actively doing something!

Contemplation: Every Chance We Get!

"Disengage yourself a while from earthly care, and give yourself for a time to think of God, and to repose a little in Him. Then, having closed the door of your senses, say with the affection of your soul: O Lord, behold I am in quest of Your lovely Countenance; teach Your poor servant how to find it." - St. Augustine


At the end of some days each week, I think to myself, "Huh. I haven't really talked to my Lord yet today, have I?" Now I might have talked to Him in the morning of the day and at night before I go to sleep, but I realize at some point sometimes that I haven't really talked to Him, talked to Him with a more personal attitude enough in a day, or at least not enough. Obviously it's never really enough, both for us and for Him, for as Saint Augustine says, "our hearts will not rest till they rest in Thee". It is never enough for us while we're still here and not with our Lord in Paradise.

So what can I do to get more time to speak with Him? What can we all do? Sometimes it feels like we never have time to talk really personally with Him, like we can only do the memorized prayers at specific times in the day that we've set aside. This is obviously a good practice to do, but we also all need to talk with the Lord at other, more random times. To get to know Him better, to fall more deeply in love with Him, and to devote ourselves completely to Him, we need to talk with Him every chance we get, especially when we think we're too busy with something. Saint Francis de Sales once said, "Everyone of us needs half an hour of prayer each day, except when we're busy - then we need an hour." In our kind of world where so many people feel the need to be doing something at every moment, we need to pray more and more often as we get busier, for how else are we going to be able to do the things we need to do?

However, I'm not only saying that we need to take even small bits out of our day at random times, though that is good to do. We also especially need to pray during everyday activities like homework, working at a job, walking, driving, waiting for someone somewhere, anything! We need to talk to our Lord whenever we can, even if it's just thanking Him for the day so far, for the people around us, and even just for small things like a lunch. And don't just thank Him and be monotonous; talk to Him like a best friend, because that's what He is for us. Talk to Him like the most beloved person in your life, because that's what He should be always and everywhere. Talk to Him on the bus, talk to Him in the car, talk to Him in class and/or at work, talk to Him every chance you get, especially the chances you think you don't have at first.

Saint Augustine, in his "Confessions", wrote "You were with me but I was not with you." Our Beloved King of Kings is constantly waiting for us to start a conversation with Him, to even simply say, "Hi, Lord! Thank you for today!" We so often simply go through our day without talking to the One Who wants to have our day be a day of love, a day when we can be given more and more to Him, coming closer to His love where we can finally rest, and we need it. We all need to talk to the One Who loves us beyond words, beyond anything, because how else can we know what His will is and how we can go about doing it? What better way to know how to love Him than by talking to Him every minute of the day?

All of you holy men and women and all of you angelic hosts, please pray for us! Mother Mary, please obtain for us the graces necessary to go past our laziness and talk with Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ!

All of you readers, please pray for the writers of the blog!

Contemplation Series: The Hidden and Silent Place

"We must remember that the Word, the Son of God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is hidden in essence and in presence, in the inmost being of the soul. That soul, therefore, that will find Him, must go out from all things in will and affection, and enter into the profoundest self-recollection, and all things must be to it as if they existed not. Hence, St. Augustine says: "I found You not without, O Lord; I sought You without in vain, for You are within." God is therefore hidden within the soul, and the true contemplative will seek Him there in love, saying, 'Where have You hidden Yourself?'"  - St. John of the Cross, 'Spiritual Canticle of the Soul'


I was reading Saint Augustine's "Confessions" recently, and something that struck me was this pervading sense of passion for the Lord Jesus in all the words of Saint Augustine. As he is a saint, this is obvious, but unlike the normal idea of passion as loud and explosive, the passion of Saint Augustine and all the Saints for Christ is a silent, calm burning of love, and although the Saints were always the most outgoing about Jesus, talking about Him and barely, if any, about anything else, they sought him not only in the people they loved, but also in their secret moments with Him, the moments in "the hidden place". It is a place of silence, of listening, of relinquishing oneself to the love of God that He is eternally and infinitely pouring out for us, asking us to join him at the still waters (Psalm 23:2) where He waits for us with eager expectation, just like we long for Him always and everywhere in the deepest part of our hearts.

The problem most people have when they learn about the importance of the hidden place where God awaits them is both knowing where it is and getting there. In Saint John of the Cross' "Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ", the Bride, the soul, cries out in pain, "Where have You hidden Yourself?" The soul seeks its Beloved but doesn't know where to find Him, searching at first in the places of the world, and then in the places made for God, and then finally, knowing no other place to look, the bride-soul looks into itself and sees at last its Beloved Lord. Christ told us that He is always with us (Matthew 28:20), and we ourselves are temples of the Holy Spirit. So it is within us, in the depths of the soul, that God rests, that the Beloved awaits us.

Although we know where He is now, actually getting there is the true challenge. Saint John of the Cross continues to write in the same Spiritual Canticle that the bride-soul, seeking the Beloved in the depths of itself, must give up its desires for everything else, for everything that does not lead it to the Bridegroom Christ. This is one of the most difficult, if not the most, challenges we have today; giving up things that do not lead us to Christ. There are so many distractions around us that stop us from growing closer to Him and even some that take us away from Him! These are things we don't need in our lives, in our seeking our Beloved. These are things that will never make us truly happy, so why should we keep them? This is how we can be still, quiet, and silent, by giving up our distractions even for just a few minutes every day and taking time to simply listen to our Beloved Jesus and be in His presence.

Obviously, we're not all called to live in a monastery somewhere, and in fact I'm guessing most of us are not. But it is of the utmost importance to live with the calmness that comes from being simple, from seeking the secret, hidden, and silent place. The Chris Tomlin song titled, "In the Secret" has as its chorus, "I want to know You, I want to hear Your voice, I want to know You more. I want to touch You, I want to see Your face, I want to know You more", because it's all about knowing and being with Him more, loving and being in love with Him more and more everyday, and the best language of lovers is the pure silence between them.

St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Jesus, Pope St. John Paul the Great, St. Augustine, and all of you holy men and women and angelic hosts, please pray for us!

Contemplation: A Series!

"Yes, dear brothers and sisters, our Christian communities must become genuine 'schools' of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly "falls in love". Intense prayer, yes, but it does not distract us from our commitment to history: by opening our heart to the love of God it also opens it to the love of our brothers and sisters, and makes us capable of shaping history according to God's plan." - Pope Saint John Paul the Great


It's been three months since the last series, and for that I apologize as the writer of this blog. There have been less and less articles each month, and I hope and pray that will change. In everything, especially with this, God's will be done!

Autumn is here, and with it comes a certain melancholia that begins to pervade everyday life, a tiredness that enters our hearts and brings a soft silence. In  this world of constant actions and words, with movies, music, Facebook and other apps, texts, and so on, a lot of the time it feels like we never have time for silence, or, even worse, that silence is somehow a bad thing. We want so often to be doing SOMETHING, and so often this detains us from the importance of silence, of contemplation.

When most people think of contemplation, they think it's a sort of simple introspection, a looking at one's inner thoughts and trying to understand their meaning. However, we, as Christians, are not called to focus on our own thought, but instead on the thoughts of our Lord: "How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!" (Psalm 139:17) We are called to speak with our Lord whenever we can, especially in the silence of our hearts, in what Saint John of the Cross calls "the hidden place". That place is where we should go to in prayer, where we may talk with God freely and lovingly.

This series will focus on going to that place, living in contemplation even in everyday life, finding our way especially in the silence and darkness, and, through all of that, loving, giving ourselves, to our Lord Jesus Christ, to have Him, as a great friend of mine once said, as the love of our life.

Miss Walter's Words - Service: A Personal Sacrifice

"The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist." - Pope St. Gregory the Great


“If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.”

This quote is perhaps my favorite one from C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. It speaks such a profound truth, one that (unfortunately) many Christians do not like to admit to.

Some of us, myself included, often times try to convince ourselves of the illusion that we can be true followers of Christ and live a comfortable life at the same time. Sure, we can read the bible, debate theology, wear symbols or our religion, and proclaim our love for Jesus to our neighbors, but we must keep in mind that, “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26). We are all called to devote our lives to Christ, but we also must act upon our faith. In this discussion specifically, I am speaking of active, face-to-face giving of time, talents, attention, counseling, and/or other services to the poor, sick, and others in need.

It is easy for so many of us to just donate money to a charity and call it a day. But God wants so much more from us! He wants us to treat the poor as our brothers and sisters by getting to know them and showing them that we care by their actions. This calls for personal sacrifices in our own lives to be made, in order to give to those who really need our help. We are called to know the poor by name, to make them feel loved and to prove to those that look down on them that they are dignified just as much as the rich are through Christ’s love for them. This action of reaching out is such a powerful sacrifice of self-giving. So many Christians feel that it is too time consuming or annoying to help the poor. Others don’t feel that it is really an obligation. However, Jesus set for us so many examples of how we should help those in need through the gospels. Many saints devoted their lives to helping the poor as well. It is very humbling to reach down to those in need, and also helps us become more Christ-like.

Think about how blessed you are. I am particularly thankful for my parents, my safe neighborhood, a bed to sleep in, and food on the table. Regardless of where you live, how much money you make, or what you've been through, you still have an excess of blessings, whether physical or spiritual or somewhere in between. In this excess you must find ways to help others that are in need — even if you must search far and wide for an opportunity. Jesus calls us to go the extra mile in finding ways to serve his people. If we really want to improve ourselves and become more like Christ, we must find ways to be actively charitable, even if these ways “pinch or hamper us.”