Binding Yourself to Christ

Ash Wednesday

I used to associate Ash Wednesday's arrival with a pre-Lenten scramble to find a spiritual exercise so I could arrive at Easter appropriately exhausted. But isn't it enough of discipline to intensify knowing more of Christ for a season?

Over the past weekend we sang the St. Patrick's Breastplate hymn, # 370, "I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity..." And then it trudges along. Thankfully with the 6th verse it dramatically changes tune and rhythm with the familiar words,

"Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger."

That's Lent.

There is currently a stir in the Episcopal Church because a candidate for bishop in addition to being a priest is an ordained Buddhist layman. I think that's fine. Whatever technique you can use to bind yourself to Christ is OK by me. As some of you know while duking it out with cancer and I have become a proponent of Centering Prayer which owes its origin to Zen meditation. The founder of this means Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO, is sensitive on the subject about how you invoke God's presence. He even required a Buddhist aspirant who became a Christian to cool down before re-starting his meditations so that it was centering prayer and not a Zen practice he was using.

That strikes me as interesting. Is the interior life you are entering the equivalent of a railway switch yard and who knows what track you might find yourself on?! For sure there must be an intention when you pray that's why I repeat, "Jesus Christ," as I get quiet and for when distracting thoughts come into consciousness. Eventually you center into God's presence, or, you tarry on a thought God wants you finally to consider. But what if you forget to say his Name? Will you find yourself in the spiritual equivalent of the backside of a seedy carnival?

Which brings me back to the hymn. We really underestimate what the Almighty has done in Jesus Christ if we think God sits and watches our spiritual exercises with arms folded. Remember in Baptism that "...you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever." Surely that counts for something when we stumble into some spiritual realm like a lost child.

Yesterday after visiting the hospital I stopped by St. Catherine of Sienna Church but I forgot to say a prayer at the foot of Jesus on the cross. I thought of this while eating lunch nearby. I wrestled with the silliness of the superstition of being neglectful but I couldn't shake that some relationship was unfinished. So I returned to the church entering just as the Mass continued with the refrain for responsorial Psalm 37, "Commit your life to the Lord and he will help you."

I stayed for the Eucharist, glad that Christ had interrupted and nurtured me. +gep