Totally Open

"What people today are seeking above everything else is a practical method of prayer and meditation. That's why thousands and thousands of people come to India eveiy year in search of meditation, a way to God you could say. One of the distressing facts that we find day by day that I would say almost 60% of the people who come to our ashram are Catholics or other Christians who have left the Church. They leave the Church to find God.

It's a paradox today. Somehow the way the faith that is presented to them in their schools and parish churches and so on doesn't answer their need. Again and again they tell me 'Until I was 15 or 16 I went to Mass regularly and to confession - I did all the right things, then I gave the whole thing up'. Not for any solid reason, but dissatisfaction. It didn't answer the need of the growing person...

Love is relationship; you cannot have love in a pure identity. It leads us into the depth of the Godhead and to that communion of love. And that's the last thing I want to point out. As wo go into meditation in the spirit through Christ to the Father, the more you become open to humanity as a whole. Authentic meditation and contemplation does not separate you. And Jesus himself is the model.

He is totally open to the Father, totally surrendered. The Son does nothing but what he sees the Father doing, but at the same time he is totally open to humanity, he gave his life for the world. And that is the model, the total openness to the beyond, total giving, so this kind of contemplation can lead you to your deepest centre into daily life and into what you have to do. And the Church should have that message to help anybody, an atheist, agnostic, to help open himself, to discover his true being. And once you have got to that depth, you can't avoid God. you are just exposed to the reality of God.

~ Father Bede Griffiths