The image that has drawn me in my ministry is Touching the Sunrise. I believe each person, no matter where they are and what they have lived, is a temple of the Trinity and can, indeed, taste the presence of God within. You can find resources for healing and prayer and follow me at touchingthesunrise.com.
In the Gospel passage that recounts the calling of the tax collector, Matthew Jesus shows us that he is where we are. Whether we are living a holy life, struggling with temptations inundating us like a hurricane, or lost in the mire of vice or sin, Jesus is always passing by.
Jesus is not passing by intent on avoiding us. He is passing by in order to see us, to show us that we are seen with the eyes of respect and love. Jesus sees us, as we most deeply are. He delights in us, for he has made all things good.
There are many reasons why I want to avoid your gaze, Jesus. I don’t feel worthy. I don’t know how to respond to you. I’m afraid. But here you are, passing by, seeing me as you saw Matthew.
The grace we are asking of God: a deeply felt awareness of how God in all of history and most powerfully in the Word made flesh draws us into the unfolding of the mystery of his love which always is extravagant and which is ever seeking to save us. We desire that in doing this we enter into a process of healing and conversion that we might love Jesus and follow him more intentionally, completely, and wholeheartedly.
Horizons of the Heart is inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and my own notes from my thirty-day Ignatian retreat in 2022.See an index for the whole series.
Ignatius is a master as he leads us to become like unto Christ in the deepest manner possible. He understands human nature so well that like a surgeon he puts his finger precisely where we are deeply conflicted: what we know intellectually for our lives to change is opposed by the murky area of our feelings and desires.
If we were to remain at a simple explanation of Ignatius’ prayer method, it could seem that the point of Ignatian Contemplation is to simply imagine with our five senses, for example, to imagine ourselves using our senses in whatever Gospel passage we are praying with: smelling, tasting, and touching our way through the wedding feast of Cana, for instance, or smelling the Sea of Galilee and touching Peter’s boat at the call of Peter. The problem with this interpretation is that first, a person would need a vivid imagination to pray in this way, and second, this would not lend itself to the general goal of loving Jesus and following him more intentionally, completely, and wholeheartedly. Or, as Ignatius puts it, seeing more clearly, loving more dearly and following more nearly.
Ignatius was a master, instead, at a very contemporary focus on the body as a conduit for contemplation and discernment. This way of praying, as Gemma Simmonds, CJ has written, “can lead to the concretisation of whatever movements the Spirit is prompting, as we reach a deeper understanding of our own senses by experiencing and sharing how the embodied eternal Word uses his. Our imitation of Christ becomes more exact as we feel each sensation with and in him” (Thinking Faith, March 7, 2018).
We can use the senses as a means of prayer and discernment. In a deeply contemplative prayer we can be present to Jesus as he acts through his own bodily senses.
Gemma Simmonds helps us see the power of this contemplative presence:
“It helps to think how often we refer to bodily sensations in order to describe a powerful and instinctive reaction: ‘I had a gut feeling’, ‘I found that hard to swallow,’ ‘it took my breath away.’ We incarnate within our bodily sensations some of our strongest responses, and in the gospel we see Jesus doing the same. In the English translation of John’s Gospel, we find him deeply moved as Mary weeps for her dead brother Lazarus. The Greek verb indicates the snorting of a horse or the growling of an angry creature. It is a strong bodily reaction indicative of many possible emotions: grief, frustration, anger – a general sense of being overwhelmed by his own feelings and those of others.”
We can see from this that “to sense” means more than imagining with our five senses. Instead, when we pray, we are present to the way Jesus “senses” a situation. As we see in this quotation from Simmons, “to sense” includes mental as well as bodily processes, intuition and emotional feelings.
Just think of how a person responds when they are told that someone they love has died in an accident, or, conversely, when they receive into their arms a newborn child. More than noticing they see something, hear something, and touch something, their experience is visceral, intense, moving, transforming, emotional, deeply meaningful. We cannot remain coolly at their side, noticing what is happening through our five senses. No. We are drawn into their experience through sympathy and love. When we are present to Jesus as he “senses” a situation—with all the intensity in Jesus that we can see and hear and touch and taste and smell as he lives a deeply human experience viscerally, intensely, emotionally, intuitively—our feelings and desires attach themselves more closely to him, and we ultimately will make decisions based on Jesus’ values, desires, and demands.
The Spiritual Exercises certainly teach us to pray, but Ignatius says from the outset of the Exercises that their purpose is to rid us of disordered attachments and to “order our lives” (Spiritual Exercises, no 21). In this prayer we gain a deep inner knowledge of Jesus precisely in those areas that are for us the source of confusion and ambiguity: our feelings and desires. In this prayer we are present to the way Jesus’ senses the events in his life so that we gradually re-order our patterns of feelings and desires, our visceral responses and attitudes, our intuitions and emotions, on those of Jesus.
I invite you to a simple exercise I have found helpful in entering into Jesus and Mary “through sensing,” in the experiences of their life. To walk you through it I will use the passage from Scripture for the call of Peter. You can pray the same way with any event or action of Jesus recounted in the Scriptures.
Read the call of Peter as found in the Gospel of Luke:
Jacopo Bassano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him (Luke 5:1-11).
Let’s choose one moment in this narrative: he saw two boats.
It would seem that Jesus had been watching the fishermen as they disembarked and were washing their nets. His attention was drawn to Peter. Yes, the crowds were there and the other fishermen, but he watched Peter. Maybe he watched for a couple hours. Maybe Jesus observed Peter over several days. What is Jesus’ gaze like? What does he see when he sees Peter?
What is Jesus thinking about Peter? What does he feel about Peter as he gets to know him from a distance? What does he begin to like about this burly fisherman? How are his feelings drawn into his Father’s pronouncement at creation: “It was very good.”
Jesus moves closer and now he can hear the conversation among the fishermen. How does Jesus listen to Peter? What does he notice? Is he listening with critical ears or with joy and esteem? Remember, the fisherman had been out all night and had caught no fish. What must that conversation among them have been like? Or was it sullen silence? Or was it exhausted banter back and forth? What was in Jesus’s heart as he listened to them? How did he viscerally react to their conversation, he who was the Word of God made flesh? Let Jesus, as he hears, reach deeply into the disordered way you yourself may listen to others, and let him re-order your life in that place.
Continue in this contemplation in this way, moment by moment.
Jesus watches Peter interact with the other fishermen. Notice what is in Jesus’ heart as he observes Peter. Notice the way he rests his eyes on Peter over a long period of time. Is he praying to his Father while he does so? Is he laughing along with their jokes? Is he sympathizing with their frustration? Is he praying for Peter? How does Jesus experience this moment on every level of his being? Emotionally? Intuitively? Spiritually? Mentally? How does he experience the wind, the sun, the waves on the Sea of Galilee? Let Jesus draw you into his experience so that you can “tune” your own experience to his. Is there a lightness to his spirit? What kind of a person is this Jesus? In time He will show you precisely those places of disorder within you, and by remaining with him he will put them in order.
Jesus walks up and talks to Peter for the first time….
Jesus takes Peter by the hand in a handshake….
Jesus walks with Peter apart from the others….
You could try praying in this way about the following subjects of meditation: how Mary rises and spends the first hours of her day; the house of Nazareth and Joseph’s workshop; the dinner table at Nazareth; the apostles around the campfire in the evening along with Jesus; the moment Mary says, Do whatever he tells you, at the wedding feast of Cana, etc.
The grace we are asking of God: a deeply felt awareness of how God in all of history and most powerfully in the Word made flesh draws us into the unfolding of the mystery of his love which always is extravagant and which is ever seeking to save us. We desire that in doing this we enter into a process of healing and conversion that we might love Jesus and follow him more intentionally, completely, and wholeheartedly.
Horizons of the Heart is inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and my own notes from my thirty-day Ignatian retreat in 2022.See an index for the whole series.
Begin by relaxing. Take a deep breath, hold it, and then let it out with a sigh. As you do this several more times, intentionally relax the muscles in your face, your shoulders, your arms, your legs. Offer a quiet prayer of gratitude. Rest in your Father’s arms.
As we begin our contemplative prayer today we are going to focus on the way awareness of our senses and sense perceptions can be a powerful way to quiet our whole being before God. As you pray with this guide, lead longer and longer pauses for silence, stretching the outer limits of your comfort zone just a little each time.
Begin by noticing what you hear around you…. Then notice what you hear within you…. What two things are you grateful for?
Next, notice what you see around you…. When you look within you what do you see…. What two things are you grateful for.
Become aware of where you are sitting. Any physical feelings. Anything you are touching such as the arms of a chair. You might reach out and touch a flower or plant, put your hands around a cup of coffee or glass of wine. What feelings accompany these actions. Physical feelings of touch. Emotions. Connection. What two things are you grateful for.
Observe your thoughts. Do not judge them or follow them. Just observe that you are thinking. Imagine that you see Jesus on the other side of your thoughts. Or that the Father is reaching his arms out to you, as he stands on the other side of the curtains created by your thinking. As if you could turn a key and turn off the generator, just let your thoughts stop for a moment. Notice the silence, if even only for an instant.
Settling into Prayer
Ask Jesus that every aspect of this prayer will please him and will give glory to God.
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. (Mt 2:13-14)
Slowly read the passage for your meditation once. Leave some moments of silence and then read it again with the intention of entering into the story, of observing the details of what is happening. Take some time to set the stage and picture the environment in which the story takes place.
When praying with this passage from the Gospel of Matthew my attention was drawn to the dwelling of the Holy Family in Egypt. I noticed a few things about it.
First, it was very quiet and peaceful compared to the noisy bustle outside on the street.
Danna Segura from Cathopic
Second, I noticed St Joseph come back from the market with food for the family. I immediately sensed a lightness, even a joy about him. There was no heavy worrying about whether he would be there a long time, if he might miss the sign to go back, whether he might mess up his vocation as the foster-father of Jesus. There was no regret that he and Mary were no far from their family for an undetermined length of time. There was just peace, a peace that radiated from him and gave him a sense of strength. He was someone I could lean on.
Let the story expand from the few verses that are recounted in Scripture to what that would have been like for Jesus or Mary, what they would have experienced or needed or felt, how they lived these events interiorly, how they expressed themselves. With your senses immerse yourself into the event. Is there any way you can be of help to them. If so, imagine yourself entering the story through these actions. Look around for a particular moment that seems to be of greater importance to you, to catch your attention.
The “particular moment” that attracted my attention was in the evening when Mary and Joseph were sitting on the “front doorstep” (whatever that might have looked like back then!). She was leaning her head on his shoulder as they looked out at the stars. I was a little girl and a slipped down beside them on the other side of Joseph. He looked down and then pulled me close, putting his arm around me.
Ask for the grace “to know Jesus intimately, to love him more intensely, and so to follow him more closely.”
Entering into the Mystery
This deeper contemplation of Jesus in the Gospels is an apprenticeship of our feelings and senses in which we are formed in such a way that we feel with Jesus, that our feelings becomes those of Jesus, and our spontaneous reactions of personal promotion and self-protection are gradually curbed and re-invented so that we spontaneously react as Jesus does.
Entering into the mystery of what we contemplate, we humbly allow Jesus to be our Master, to educate our senses and feelings according to the pattern of his own life and teachings. It is a matter of becoming saturated with Jesus’ own way of being and feeling. It is learning how to resonate with everything Jesus resonates with, as we gain this felt understanding through our contemplation, and of rejecting whatever Jesus rejects.
I sensed to the very depths of my being how Joseph and Mary were at peace. They had no fear, no anger at their plans being changed by the Almighty, no worry about getting back to life as it was in Nazareth. They weren’t wondering when they would return, what that would look like, how to prepare. They were simply at peace.
Entering still deeper into the mystery of Christ, allow your heart to taste, to smell, to touch the infinite gentleness and sweetness of Jesus or Mary. Allow your spirit to soak up what has been felt and known in this contemplative prayer.
As you do this your mind’s activity will fade into the background, and the mystery you are intuitively contemplating will begin to take over and engulf you, planting within your spirit an inner knowledge of the Lord.
You will at some point begin to intuitively sense the difference between the way Jesus spontaneously feels, speaks, and acts in a situation and the way you yourself feel, speak, and act in similar situations in your own life.
As I sat beside them I could feel the “non-peace” within me. I’m always two steps of myself and at least three ahead of God. I have contingency plans in motion just in case. I need to be at an appointment or the airport two hours in advance to feel calm. I agonize over what is going to happen and what I should be doing…. People tell me how peaceful I am. I guess I hide it well, but next to Joseph and Mary, I see that my heart does not rest in God, in trust, in stillness.
I allowed memories to arise about how this has been a part of my life in a particular way these past three years. I compare the way I am feeling with the way I sense Mary and Joseph feeling as we all three look up at the stars.
I see Joseph look down on me, hug me closer, then say, “Everywhere the Lord himself leads us is good.” Just that. One sentence. Then we all went back to looking into the heavens, so vast, and still, and beautiful. There was a sweetness there on the front doorstep. I soaked it in with great pleasure, seeing how beautiful Mary and Joseph are, so pliant and trusting in God’s hands. I could sense the delight God had in them. I soaked in their absolute childlike certainty that God was leading them. I liked these feelings more than my worried inner harassment.
I entered into the way Mary and Joseph used their eyes, their ears, their touch to take in the sweetness and power of a loving Father.
Rest in that awareness as Jesus helps you to resonate with what he resonates with. As you enter into his feelings and the way he uses his senses, you will gradually lose interest in your own spontaneous reactions, defenses, and self-promotions. Jesus will bring you to his way by attraction, sweetness, and beauty. He will make you feel safety, belonging, and hope.
Allow an image or object that encapsulates all these experiences to form in your mind. Take some time to speak with God about the meaning or significance of this object.
As I allowed the experiences of this meditation to soak into me, washing away my own spontaneous reactions with the attractive loveliness of those of St. Joseph, the image that encapsulated them all was that of a feather. A feather has no weight and thus floats gently wherever the wind takes it.
“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit,” said Jesus to Nicodemus (Jn. 3:8).
I spoke with Jesus about the meaning of this image given to me in prayer. As I discerned whether to accept a request or write an article or propose an idea, I stopped and reflected on that image of the feather. How would St Joseph go about these decisions? How would he take part in meetings? What would be different if I adopted the lightness of a feather in the way I expressed myself? …
Ask Mary, Joseph and Jesus to show you one specific gift they wish to give you. Receive it and remain in stillness and quietly relaxed presence under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
Reviewing the Graces of Prayer
When you finish praying, write down the main gifts and discoveries from this time of intimate contemplation. What is one concrete thing you can do to solidify these gifts in your life.
It’s not that the people couldn’t figure out that Jesus was the Messiah, that all the prophesies pointed to him, that he spoke with an authority that even the religious leaders didn’t have. Instead, Jesus called them “hypocrites.” We call someone a hypocrite who knows what is right or true but lives in denial of what they know to be right and true. Jesus was saying to them that just as they could interpret the signs of the earth and sky and forecast the weather, they did understand that he had come from God (so much so that the leaders determined very quickly they needed to kill him). They understood, but they were not willing to acknowledge and to accept he had been sent by God. To accept Jesus as the Messiah, to sit at his feet as Mary, to follow him closely as the Twelve, to be personally transformed by his parables and teachings and invitations to conversion like Zacchaeus would change them forever. This they could not accept.
I don’t believe Jesus spoke these words to the crowd with harshness or anger. The heart of the Master was too great, his love for them and for us is a love that led him eventually to the cross for our salvation. I hear in his words a determined effort to make them see what is right before their eyes. How many times Jesus has to shake us up, remind us of what we know, and then prod us forward to accept what he is revealing to us that we might allow our life to be changed.
It should have been a happy day, but tears flowed down my cheeks. I tried to stop them, to compose myself, to put on the expected reverent posture, but as I processed in for my 25th Jubilee of religious profession, the tears would not be stopped.
They spilled out of a heart that was transfixed with wonder at 25 years of religious life. They had not been easy. A stroke, subsequent collapses, depression, TLE…. Feeling set aside because of illness in those very early years in your twenties when I wanted to throw myself into the apostolate…. Spiritual combat on every front against my own pride and anger and….
But here I was at the culmination of all that and so many more memories both positive and difficult…weeping…tears dripping from a heart that was suddenly, unexpectedly, transported out of our Motherhouse chapel in Boston to…amazement at the beauty of my life and the God of wonder who was wrapping me in his presence and smothering me with a love that washed away the struggles so that only the morning dew of awe remained.
In Scripture “to fear God” is to be in awe of his power and knowledge. To fear God requires a daring heart!
Only a heart that fears God dares to believe that God created each one of us on this earth at this moment in time to know, love, and serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever. Can you dare to believe this about your family? Your enemy? The other both near and on the other side of the planet?
Only a heart that fears God can be joyful. Fear is a word that we typically interpret as referring to a state of emotional distress in the face of some danger to our personal safety. The term “fear of the Lord” appears over 100 times in the Old Testament. For example: And now, Israel, what does the Lord, your God ask of you but to fear the Lord, your God, and follow his ways exactly, to love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul (Deuteronomy 10:12). However, in the New Testament, the term is only mentioned two times and has been transformed into a sense of awe that is joyful rather than horrified. It is the gift of fear that gives us an unmistakable and irrefutable sense of God’s closeness and his ultimate victory over all evil in the world.
The gift of fear of the Lord gives us a greater sense of the greatness of God that should spark in our hearts a sense of amazement and awe that could bring us down to our knees. If we abandon astonishment we are left with a mediocre piousness.
To fear Him is to bow before mysteries we can never comprehend, like our freedom to choose, even though our free choices often have dire consequences for others, and another’s freedom to choose may have dire consequences for ourselves or one we love.
To St. Bonaventure fear of the Lord was “the most beautiful tree planted in the heart of a holy man which God waters continuously” [II.6]. This “most beautiful tree” bears the precious fruit of love and reverence for God. Fear of the Lord for St. Bonaventure was the sort of trembling before experiences of God’s majesty that we hear perfectly encapsulated in the hymn:
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth
Our full homage to demand.
The fear that St. Bonaventure had in mind is sort of a continuum that spans a certain range—depending upon one’s perfection in the life of grace—from “servile fear” to “filial fear” to a fear cast out by love which has taken over one’s whole heart (cf. 1 John 4:17-18).
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7) because it puts our mindset in its correct location with respect to God: we are finite, dependent creatures, and He is the infinite, all-powerful Creator.
Here are two things you can do to prepare your heart for the activation of the gift of the fear of the Lord:
Give yourself amazing experiences. People who contemplate the grandeur of nature (even on the TV set or Youtube or in their backyard if necessary) are more likely to emerge from their own utilitarian mind-set of duty and obedience and open up to the awe and grandeur of the God whom we worship and whose closeness can be deeply treasured.
Use Ignatius’ prayer method in praying with Scripture to more personally experience it. Rather than simple reading about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, for example, a person could imagine the details of the sights, sounds, and smells of personally being there. Stanford University Anthropology Professor Tanya Luhrmann has found that individuals randomly assigned to go through Ignatian prayer exercises in which they engage in this kind of imaginative prayer are more likely to report awe-inspiring mystical experiences than those assigned to listen to lectures on the Gospels.
Prayer
“My Lord and my God, all my good consists in being united to you and placing all my hope in You. If my soul were left to itself, it would be like a puff of wind…. Without You I can do no good, nor can I remain steadfast. Without You I cannot love You, please You. Therefore, I take refuge in You, I abandon myself to You, that You may sustain me by Your power, hold me by Your strength, and never permit to become separated from You” (St Bernard).
The parable of the landowner and the laborers hired to work in his vineyard is, on one level, about abundance. The landowner had a large enough vineyard that he needed to hire laborers repeatedly throughout the day to get the work done. As evening approached and the men lined up for their pay, the landowner paid all of them a denarius each. A “denarius” was a silver Roman coin used as payment for a full day’s wage. The owner of the vineyard didn’t need to scrimp and save. “Are you envious because I am generous?” he asked those who complained that all had been treated with equal generosity.
The landowner’s actions depict the endlessly loving heart of the Father that poured itself out onto his undeserving creation with the incarnation of his Son, the Word-made-flesh, God-with us. Jesus Christ became our brother, our Savior, our Friend, the Lamb of God, our Eucharistic Lord, generosity without limits. As he one day multiplied the loaves and the fish for a crowd of 5000, Jesus abundantly multiplies the gift of his presence to us in the Eucharist all over the world until the end of history. Generous abundance is a hallmark of the Kingdom. Jesus said: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10).
Against the backdrop of this image of this extravagant magnanimity the parable paints the stinginess and selfish demands of the workers of the first hour. They assumed that they would get more than what had been agreed upon because the landowner was doling out a full day’s wage to those who had come at the last hour and who had clearly done far less than they. As these tired laborers watched I can imagine them muttering among themselves that these latecomers were absolutely unworthy to be treated the same as they. The unexpected reversal of the parable is this: no matter how much or little we work, we are all equal recipients of God’s generous abundance, of the gifts of his forgiveness, holiness, mercy, salvation, eternal life.
How many times have I thought that I deserved more than the others because I had given more of my time, energy, and love than they. I have fallen into the trap that the others deserved less because of how little they worked or how selfish they had been. This parable frees us from thinking we need to win God’s endless love. This love is abundant and freely given to us all according to God’s own generous determination. Let us not be upset that others receive what we have been given, but rejoice that others have been gifted, included, loved, blessed as have we, for we all receive more than we could ever deserve.
Jesus, you surprise me by your love for me and your love for others who I sometimes feel don’t deserve that love. I am amazed at how you keep me in existence through your bounteous mercies, even when my love is so small and stingy compared to yours. Take my heart, O Lord, and make it just like yours. Amen.
Praying with this passage of Scripture
Lectio Divina is a way of listening to God as he speaks in his Word. It is a practice of communicating with God through Scripture and attending to God’s presence and what he wishes to tell us. In this slow and prayerful reading of the Word of God, we allow ourselves to be transformed by the Spirit who forms us into the image of Christ. There are four movement in Lectio Divina: Read (lectio), Meditate (meditation), Pray (oratio), Contemplate (contemplation).
Begin by finding a still space to pray. Breathe deeply and become quieter within. Abandon any agenda, worries or thoughts you bring to this prayer and entrust these things to the merciful care of God. Ask for the grace to be receptive to what God will speak to you through this Scripture reading. Grant me, Jesus Divine Master, to be able to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God and your unfathomable riches. Grant that your word penetrate my soul; guide my steps, and brighten my way till the day dawns and darkness dissipates, you who live and reign forever and ever Amen.
Read (lectio) Begin by slowly and meditatively reading your Scripture passage out loud. Listen for a particular word or phrase that speaks to you at this moment and sit with it for a time.
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Meditate (meditatio) – Read the same passage a second time. As you re-engage the text, let the word or phrase that stood out become your invitation to speak from your heart with God who wishes to share his heart with you. Allow this word or phrase to wash over you and permeate your thoughts and feelings. You may wish to repeat this phrase quietly and gently for a period of time.
Pray (oratio) – Read the text a third time. Listen for what God is saying to you. Speak heart to heart with God. Notice the feelings that this conversation with God raises up within you. Share with God what you notice about your response to this conversation. You may wish to return to repeating the phrase quietly and gently, allowing it to permeate you more and more deeply.
Contemplate (contemplatio) Read the text a final time. Now be still and rest in God’s embrace. Ask God to give you a gift to take with you from this prayer. You might ask God if he is inviting you to do some action, for instance, make some change in your thoughts, attitudes or reactions, in the way you speak or how you treat others. Thank God for this gift and invitation as you conclude your prayer.
Touching the Sunrise 