Finding God in meditation, marriage, and life

by Fr. Pete Szafran

Seminary Spiritual Directors in the 50’s and 60’s tried to teach me to meditate. I never got it – kept falling asleep.

I made my first individually directed retreat in 1972 (2 weeks), when the Jesuits were rediscovering the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. I made the whole 30 day retreat in 1974 and I learned to meditate and contemplate and what the difference was according to Ignatius. I directed people through these exercises for 5 years. I prayed in silence in the great outdoors and in chapels and had some wonderful experiences and some very dry times also.

Then I got married. Life got in the way of silence and going apart. I learned that my wife was Jesus for me and all of our interactions were prayer. The most important thing was to live with an awareness of God who is love. When we love we are in God and God in us.

This is a quote from “The Spirituality of Compassion” by Matthew Fox” “No one put the difference between solitude and withdrawal, between courage and fear, more directly than Meister Eckhart, who teaches, ‘Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, by running away from things or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one needs to learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever one may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.’ Thus it is in “things” in the sense of events, news, work, play, people, pain, nature, music, the universe, that we are to find God and celebrate. Letting go leads to finding God.”

I agree that married priests have much to offer to people living in the world and not separated from it. For example, what if the church taught that emotional and physical intercourse were forms of prayer and a ways for people to come closer to God? Would we not have healthier marriages at this time in history? Can we do this? Are people ready for it? What if the teachings were to respect and care for nature and not just use it up for our benefit? Would we not have a healthier, more productive world? Can we let go of our old image of God and move to a new understanding?