The most contemplative time of the year can propel a most contemplative year

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” the singer Andy Williams crooned 60 years ago in his well-known Christmas song.   

For Catholics, the Advent-Christmas cycle can also be the most contemplative time of the year.  We’re invited to watch and wait, to journey more reflectively into starry nights, vivid nativity scenes and evocative biblical narratives featuring light and darkness, word and flesh, birth and death.

For those who enter Advent and Christmas at this deeper level of surrender, the truth of the Catechism’s teaching on contemplative prayer (#2713) resonates: “Contemplative prayer is the simplest expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gift, a grace; it can be accepted only in humility and poverty. Contemplative prayer is a covenant relationship established by God within our hearts.”

Just because the January soundtrack turns from soothing Christmas hymns to the pounding of treadmills or the drone of our everyday routine doesn’t mean that we must leave the contemplative spirit behind in pursuit of New Year’s resolutions to exercise more or to return to the former, pre-Christmas status quo.

The new year can also be a time to resolve to go deeper in prayer, to decide to “be” the prayer as much as simply the person who says prayers or adds more prayers in pursuit of progress.

Resolving to begin a contemplative practice is not as hard as it may seem.

As a pastor, I like to introduce candidates for the Sacrament of Confirmation to the basics of our Catholic contemplative tradition and practices as part of their final preparations.  Several weeks ago, as I began to lead a period of meditation, I noticed several students showing familiarity with taking up the proper position.  I asked them why they seemed so comfortable, and they said their soccer coaches regularly lead meditation sessions at the team practice.

I was very heartened but also a bit deflated to hear this.  It’s great that coaches and teachers are introducing meditation and mindfulness practices to students, but how much more exciting would it be for parents, catechists or pastors to pass on the fruits of their own contemplative prayer as a youngster’s invitation and “baptism” into such methods?

There is a subtle but profound difference between secular forms of meditation and classic contemplative practice in our Christian tradition.  While the former is popular and seems to be always gaining in popularity, the latter is decidedly counter-cultural, not only because of its explicitly God-centered focus, but because of its self-emptying and ego-cleansing potential which will never be popular in mainstream cultures.

Yet, if more of us develop first-hand experience with Centering Prayer, Christian Meditation, the Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina or other widely-practiced forms of contemplation in our Catholic tradition, not only do we make strides in pursuit of our truest self in Christ, we increase the odds that the next generation’s first impactful experience with meditation will be faith-based.  We can get started within minutes by simply plugging the names of these prayer forms into a search engine if we’re not familiar with how to pray them.  Centering Prayer (contemplative outreach.org) and Christian Meditation (wccm.org) even have their own websites, which are valuable resources and legacies to the modern teachers of these practices, Trappist Father Thomas Keating and Benedictine Father John Main, respectively.

As with any new or new year’s resolution, it’s one thing to get started, and it’s another to persevere. For contemplation to really take hold, we must make a commitment every day to pray in this fashion, and, if possible, to have the reinforcement of some others in our household or parish with whom to pray and/or to hold up our commitment.

New Year’s is a great time to make that contemplative start!  May this new year 2024 prove to be the most contemplative year for many more newcomers to the tradition.

Msgr. Kerrigan is pastor of St. Joseph Church, Bound Brook, and a founding member of the World Community of Christian Meditation contemplative clergy network.