Living Monstrance

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• 1 david bentley hart // Jun 17, 2008 at 12:09 pm

  Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
  In a meditation completed thirteen days before his death from pancreatic cancer, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin movingly describes what he calls “letting go.” He writes:
  “One theme that arises on the surface more than any other takes on new meaning for me now — the theme of letting go. By letting go, I mean the ability to release from our grasp those things that inhibit us from developing an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus. Letting go is never easy. Indeed, it is a lifelong process. But letting go is possible if we understand the importance of opening our hearts and, above all else, developing a healthy prayer life.

  This is the “lifelong process” of the prayer of examen. As we pray it daily, we may perceive more clearly the things “that inhibit us” from what our hearts most deeply desire: “developing an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus.” Increasingly we will seek “to release from our grasp” all that limits our spiritual freedom and so to grow in love of the Lord. Examen becomes indispensable in our lives when “we understand the importance of opening our hearts” to the God whose “still small voice” ceaselessly calls us to inexhaustible newness of life.
  Bernardin’s words reflect what is probably our own experience as well:
  “Still, letting go is never easy. I have prayed and struggled constantly to be able to let go of things more willingly, to be free of everything that keeps the Lord from finding greater hospitality in my soul or interferes with my surrender to what God asks of me. . . . My daily prayer is that I can open wide the doors of my heart to Jesus and his expectations of me. This is the heart itself of the examen: to seek unceasingly “to be free of everything that keeps the Lord from finding greater hospitality in my soul,” from everything that “interferes with my surrender to what God asks of me.” It is a “daily prayer” that “I can open wide the doors of my heart to Jesus.”

  Finally, Bernardin speaks of the self-emptying (Philemon. 2:7) that frees our hearts to surrender to God:
  “God speaks very gently to us when he invites us to make more room for him in our lives. The tension that arises comes not from him but from me as I struggle to find out how to offer him fuller hospitality and then to do it wholeheartedly. The Lord is clear about what he wants, but it is really difficult to let go of myself and my work and trust him completely. The first step of letting go, of course, is linked with my emptying myself of everything — the plans I consider the largest as well as the distractions I judge the smallest—so that the Lord can really take over. ”

  God does indeed speak “very gently” to us when “he invites us to make more room for him in our lives.” Our hearts need to be finely attuned and daily attentive to hear the voice of that loving invitation. That is why, as we have said from the beginning, the prayer of examen is at the heart of the spiritual life. So much depends on hearing the promptings of a God who speaks “very gently” in calling us forward on our spiritual journey.

  As Bernardin notes, “the Lord is clear about what he wants.” Our struggle, like Bernardin’s, is “to find out how” to respond and then “to do it wholeheartedly.” To find out daily, and then to do: this is a powerful description of the prayer of examen.

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