In the face of tragedy...

Meditation sharpens our sense of how many unnatural forces are at work today. The alienation from our own spiritual—boundless and compassionate—nature can only be corrected by learning again what our true nature is. [. . . .] [B]y finding our true nature, with our consciousness mirroring and partaking of the divine consciousness, we experience both peace and liberty. The peace arises from the certain knowledge that our very nature is rooted in God and is as real as God. It is the all-empowering peace of belonging to what we know will never reject or disown us, the self-confidence of love. Liberty springs from . . . knowing that what we belong to belongs to us. Rootedness allows expansion, just as St Benedict’s vow of stability permits continuous transformation.

In the face of our contemporary crises we need to ask why we meditate. We ask it not to undermine our commitment but to refine and deepen it. We are not in pursuit of interesting experiences. Meditation is not information technology. It is about knowledge that redeems, pure consciousness. . . .This redemptive and recreative knowledge is the wisdom our age lacks. We can recognize it and discriminate between it and its counterfeits because it neither claims nor parades any possessive pronoun. No one claims it as their own. . . .It is the consciousness of the Holy Spirit and therefore it is the womb of all truly loving action.

In the face of the most disheartening tragedy it is as close to us as we are to our true selves.


From Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter Four” in THE WEB OF SILENCE (London: DLT, 1996), pp. 42-43.