So, what are the “things that come out from within you”? That’s what Jesus asks this week in Mark’s gospel. As the religious leaders challenge Jesus and his followers for not following the rules, Jesus challenges the self-proclaimed “religious” folk to look within. Following the rules can be ok, Jesus teaches, but it can also lead to complacency, self-righteousness and being judgmental. In other words, following the rules is no guarantee that one is “religious.” To be truly religious, to be living in the Spirit, looking within is essential.
The looking within is not always easy. Jesus tells us we will discover some pretty rough stuff: evil thoughts, unchastity, malice, greed, arrogance and folly, to name a few. Yet discovering our emotions and motives is important, even when these are unpleasant. Because an honest look at our interior isn’t meant to shame us but to transform us, to help us move from fear, brokenness, defensiveness, resistance, and selfishness. Because as we acknowledge these realities and move even deeper within, we discover something truly wonderful at our core, at our center: the Center of All, Love, Eternal Life—God.
Thomas Keating teaches us that this is the purpose of Contemplative prayer: it is a process of interior transformation. He says if we persevere in such prayer (as the gospels, especially Luke, tell us that Jesus did, in his many “escapes” to remove himself from the crowd and find a “lonely place” to pray), then “a restructuring of consciousness takes place which empowers one to perceive, relate, and respond to everyday life with increasing sensitivity to the divine presence in, through, and beyond everything.”
How good it is to discover that deeper than all the “stuff” that fills our hearts, there is, at the deepest level, Love, loving us and waiting for us to let Love become what “comes out from within us.”
Peace and every good,
Father Liam