Those who Meditate are Saved; Those who Don't Meditate are Lost
COMMENT: When Simon helped Jesus carry His cross (Mt 27:32, Mk 15:21; Lk 32:26), was that a symbol of us picking up our cross?
COMMENT: I always thought, the meaning of "Pick up your cross and follow Me"(Mt. 10:38, Mk 8:34, Lk 14:27) was when I suffered from what someone else did because he was not conforming to me!
You can see now that you don't pick up your cross, that your whole motivation is the very opposite: to take delight in yourself. But then the next question would be, what do you do about it? The answer is very simple: it is in the nature of the will. If people want to sin, they read dirty books, look at dirty pictures, or tell dirty jokes, because the very nature of the will is that it is moved by the intellect. In fact, the way the will works is that it moves the intellect to contemplate the thing in which the will wants to take delight. So if you realize how much you gravitate to take delight in yourself, and that you are moved to take delight in God only when you can't take delight in yourself, then if you want to be practical about it, you would realize that meditation is absolutely essential, because in meditating you're doing with God what the person is doing with dirty books: you're moving your mind to take delight in some desired good, in this case the merciful love of God. And if you don't do that, you're on your way to hell, because your center of gravity is in yourself. A famous spiritual teacher once, summed up the spiritual life by saying, "Those who meditate are saved; those who don't meditate are lost," because if you don't meditate to convince yourself of the goodness of God, you inevitably go the way of your fallen nature, moved by a perverse appetite to take delight in yourself. I spent years convincing myself that God could love me, because I thought it was impossible. So examine yourself on that: how little time and energy you devote to convincing yourself of the goodness of God. And if you see that you're malicious in yourself and that you don't meditate on his love, what justification would you have before God?
You learn how to do something by doing it. So if you’re really serious about, saving your soul and becoming holy, you would make a resolution to make God your center of gravity, not yourself. Remember in the Gospel where Jesus talked about separating the sheep from the goats, and said, "I was hungry, and you gave Me not to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me not to drink." (Mt 25:42) Well, the ones who are lost aren't lost for what they did, but for what they didn't do. So if you don’t meditate, if you omit that necessary meditation, what do you have to give others except the stench of your own self-love?
Meditation, then, is not only the source of conforming yourself to God. It is the principle of charity to others, because when you become convinced through meditation of the merciful love of God for you, what would be more natural than to be merciful to others? "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." (Mt 5:7) So don't think that omitting to meditate is negligible just because it is mere omission. Meditation is the consummation of practical knowledge.
You know that in yourself, by your natural center of gravity, you would always move toward loving yourself, and God is showing you that in everything you do, but you just refuse to see it. What could be more loathsome than that? Or than omitting the meditation that makes you aware of what you are doing?
Here is a very simple example: Suppose you found that in steering your car, the wheels were always going to the right, and you did nothing to have it fixed. It wouldn't be very long before you had an accident because any moment of inattention could bring disaster. The rectification of that steering is what you do through meditation, because when you're straight, you're steering towards God. Summing it all up, don't think you're innocent by neglecting meditation. The root of all malice is that neglect. Of course, one of the favorite ways of eradicating it is to say you're too busy. But you always have time to do what you want; and if anyone teaches you any other way than that, he is a liar, because there is no other way.
I think it might be good to consider a little more the way the will works, because people think of the will as a kind of thrust, as though you just give yourself a kind of push. But the plain and simple fact is that the will by its very nature is a rational appetite, which is moved by reason. So the only way you can will anything is by directing your mind through your will to the object in which you want to take delight. It is obvious that someone who wants to commit murder will consider how evil the man he wants to murder is or how desirable his wife is. But the will can only work by moving the mind to take delight in the object in which it wants to take delight. I'm almost sure that if you examine your conception of the will, you think it is something which just moves you of itself, like a blind impulse. So if the problem is that there is an evil object you want to take delight in, the only way you can cure this is by moving your mind to a good object in which it wants to take delight. The key to the whole thing is delight, because one thing is sure: the will is always going to turn to something in which it wants to take delight. Now the principle of all delight is the connaturality in a certain proportion. When you want to play tennis, you don't take delight in it in the beginning, because all your power is concentrated on mastering the game. So the only problem in training the will is to move your mind to the goodness and mercy of God, because that is what you would really want, if it were made accessible to you by faith and understanding. So the whole foundation of your will is to convince yourself of the gratuitousness of the goodness of God, and then you will want to rest in it. You can't produce the connaturality, because it is there, but you have to know it. You could starve to death in a room if you didn't know the food was there.
So when you meditate, what you're really doing is making the goodness of God connatural. You're conforming your mind to that object just like in tennis you're conforming your body to the problem of hitting the ball. So if you don't meditate, the goodness of God won't be connatural to the way you are in yourself. That is why "those who don't meditate will be lost," because they'll be gravitating to the connaturality of their sensuality and self-love. So if you see you're dirty, you don't just get depressed by it; you recognize how important it is for you to convince yourself that God loves you even though you're dirty.
COMMENT: Do you mean that meditation reflects what is already connatural to you by your fallen nature?
Yes. And if you don't meditate, you won't become conformed to God, because you won't realize that His love is yours.
COMMENT: Could you explain how the will works in moving you to meditate?
There is something that you want; it makes no difference whether it is meditation or something else. As soon as you want something, the way the will works is to move the mind to consider the thing in which it wants to take delight. So if you want to study, for example, you would think about the usefulness of studying. The will can't work any other way, no matter what good you are drawn to. You move your will that way in relation to God because that is the way the will works. So don't try to understand the will in relation to God as such, what we're saying now is true of the will just because it is the will.
Now in the case of sex, for example, if a person wants to sin and he looks at a dirty picture, he has no problem because his natural center of gravity is to that object. But our relation to God isn't that way. The will must move the intellect to convince itself of the goodness of God. You don't have to convince yourself of the desirability of genital pleasure, but you have to convince yourself of the goodness of God. You have to convince yourself that He loves you only because He is good, and you have to remove the misgiving that you can't be loved because you're bad. You have to convince yourself that God's love is merciful in order to have the foundation for turning to Him. You don’t just say, I’ll turn to God's merciful love. The whole meaning of Jesus dying on the cross is to convince you that He loves you for nothing, but how much do you believe that? Everyone has a natural instinct to be loved by God, but because of our fallen nature, it isn't very efficacious, and unless you meditate, this instinct will never become efficacious. So at this point, you're trying to move your will to embrace God's merciful love, and the way the will does that is by meditating, especially by considering the Cross. The whole meaning of the Passion is just that, to convince you that God can't love you for anything you do, and that any good you do is because you're convinced that He is good and makes you good. It all comes from Him, and if you don’t meditate that way, you won't save your soul, because you’ll gravitate naturally to your malice and to its chief effect, namely, to look for evil in others.
So to sum it up, don't fool yourself; if you don't meditate, you’ll go to hell, because without meditation, you’ll naturally gravitate towards malice. And notice, if you don't meditate, it is an omission, something you don't do, so you could make the mistake of not noticing it. You could spend your whole life not even being aware that you're not doing it. So the next time you see yourself looking for evil in others, which is one of the chief sins of malice, you should say to yourself, the reason I'm doing this is because I don't believe I'm loved. Misery seeks company, and so I want to feel that others are as dirty as I am.
COMMENT: Is this why it is so difficult for a person who wants to be faithful to continue to live in the midst of perverse people?
Without meditation, he has no bulwark against their perversity or his own.
COMMENT: But even if he meditates, his mind would continue to feed on their perversity, just by seeing it.
Imagine this situation: Here is a room with a crucifix and a picture of a nude woman. Two people go into the room. What would the person who meditates look at? He would look at the picture and then realize what he is and turn to the crucifix. But the other person would look at the dirty picture and say, what's wrong with that?
COMMENT: So through meditation the will becomes more developed, more sensitive to what is right?
All discipline is a kind of spontaneous conformity to the good. When you start playing tennis, you don't anticipate where the ball is. There has to be a habit of coordination which grows with practice. So with meditation there is a habit of spiritual coordination, whereas the habit you have without meditation is directed to some evil object. There is a whole organism of evil that operates spontaneously. The simple kind is taking delight in the evil object, but when you start trying to rationalize this and to liquidate the guilt yourself, that is where the malice comes in.
And you recognize it in the critical spirit: you want to see that others are worse than you. If you believe you're loved, why would you want to see evil in others? I think the thing that horrifies God more than anything else is a world filled with filthy hypocrites who are trying to convince themselves of their own innocence.
COMMENT: No one ever taught me how to meditate like that.
COMMENT: Meditation meant reading Scripture or something, and there was a basic assumption that you knew you were loved by God.
So thank God that you have such a good teacher!
COMMENT: I always thought, the meaning of "Pick up your cross and follow Me"(Mt. 10:38, Mk 8:34, Lk 14:27) was when I suffered from what someone else did because he was not conforming to me!
You can see now that you don't pick up your cross, that your whole motivation is the very opposite: to take delight in yourself. But then the next question would be, what do you do about it? The answer is very simple: it is in the nature of the will. If people want to sin, they read dirty books, look at dirty pictures, or tell dirty jokes, because the very nature of the will is that it is moved by the intellect. In fact, the way the will works is that it moves the intellect to contemplate the thing in which the will wants to take delight. So if you realize how much you gravitate to take delight in yourself, and that you are moved to take delight in God only when you can't take delight in yourself, then if you want to be practical about it, you would realize that meditation is absolutely essential, because in meditating you're doing with God what the person is doing with dirty books: you're moving your mind to take delight in some desired good, in this case the merciful love of God. And if you don't do that, you're on your way to hell, because your center of gravity is in yourself. A famous spiritual teacher once, summed up the spiritual life by saying, "Those who meditate are saved; those who don't meditate are lost," because if you don't meditate to convince yourself of the goodness of God, you inevitably go the way of your fallen nature, moved by a perverse appetite to take delight in yourself. I spent years convincing myself that God could love me, because I thought it was impossible. So examine yourself on that: how little time and energy you devote to convincing yourself of the goodness of God. And if you see that you're malicious in yourself and that you don't meditate on his love, what justification would you have before God?
You learn how to do something by doing it. So if you’re really serious about, saving your soul and becoming holy, you would make a resolution to make God your center of gravity, not yourself. Remember in the Gospel where Jesus talked about separating the sheep from the goats, and said, "I was hungry, and you gave Me not to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me not to drink." (Mt 25:42) Well, the ones who are lost aren't lost for what they did, but for what they didn't do. So if you don’t meditate, if you omit that necessary meditation, what do you have to give others except the stench of your own self-love?
Meditation, then, is not only the source of conforming yourself to God. It is the principle of charity to others, because when you become convinced through meditation of the merciful love of God for you, what would be more natural than to be merciful to others? "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." (Mt 5:7) So don't think that omitting to meditate is negligible just because it is mere omission. Meditation is the consummation of practical knowledge.
You know that in yourself, by your natural center of gravity, you would always move toward loving yourself, and God is showing you that in everything you do, but you just refuse to see it. What could be more loathsome than that? Or than omitting the meditation that makes you aware of what you are doing?
Here is a very simple example: Suppose you found that in steering your car, the wheels were always going to the right, and you did nothing to have it fixed. It wouldn't be very long before you had an accident because any moment of inattention could bring disaster. The rectification of that steering is what you do through meditation, because when you're straight, you're steering towards God. Summing it all up, don't think you're innocent by neglecting meditation. The root of all malice is that neglect. Of course, one of the favorite ways of eradicating it is to say you're too busy. But you always have time to do what you want; and if anyone teaches you any other way than that, he is a liar, because there is no other way.
I think it might be good to consider a little more the way the will works, because people think of the will as a kind of thrust, as though you just give yourself a kind of push. But the plain and simple fact is that the will by its very nature is a rational appetite, which is moved by reason. So the only way you can will anything is by directing your mind through your will to the object in which you want to take delight. It is obvious that someone who wants to commit murder will consider how evil the man he wants to murder is or how desirable his wife is. But the will can only work by moving the mind to take delight in the object in which it wants to take delight. I'm almost sure that if you examine your conception of the will, you think it is something which just moves you of itself, like a blind impulse. So if the problem is that there is an evil object you want to take delight in, the only way you can cure this is by moving your mind to a good object in which it wants to take delight. The key to the whole thing is delight, because one thing is sure: the will is always going to turn to something in which it wants to take delight. Now the principle of all delight is the connaturality in a certain proportion. When you want to play tennis, you don't take delight in it in the beginning, because all your power is concentrated on mastering the game. So the only problem in training the will is to move your mind to the goodness and mercy of God, because that is what you would really want, if it were made accessible to you by faith and understanding. So the whole foundation of your will is to convince yourself of the gratuitousness of the goodness of God, and then you will want to rest in it. You can't produce the connaturality, because it is there, but you have to know it. You could starve to death in a room if you didn't know the food was there.
So when you meditate, what you're really doing is making the goodness of God connatural. You're conforming your mind to that object just like in tennis you're conforming your body to the problem of hitting the ball. So if you don't meditate, the goodness of God won't be connatural to the way you are in yourself. That is why "those who don't meditate will be lost," because they'll be gravitating to the connaturality of their sensuality and self-love. So if you see you're dirty, you don't just get depressed by it; you recognize how important it is for you to convince yourself that God loves you even though you're dirty.
COMMENT: Do you mean that meditation reflects what is already connatural to you by your fallen nature?
Yes. And if you don't meditate, you won't become conformed to God, because you won't realize that His love is yours.
COMMENT: Could you explain how the will works in moving you to meditate?
There is something that you want; it makes no difference whether it is meditation or something else. As soon as you want something, the way the will works is to move the mind to consider the thing in which it wants to take delight. So if you want to study, for example, you would think about the usefulness of studying. The will can't work any other way, no matter what good you are drawn to. You move your will that way in relation to God because that is the way the will works. So don't try to understand the will in relation to God as such, what we're saying now is true of the will just because it is the will.
Now in the case of sex, for example, if a person wants to sin and he looks at a dirty picture, he has no problem because his natural center of gravity is to that object. But our relation to God isn't that way. The will must move the intellect to convince itself of the goodness of God. You don't have to convince yourself of the desirability of genital pleasure, but you have to convince yourself of the goodness of God. You have to convince yourself that He loves you only because He is good, and you have to remove the misgiving that you can't be loved because you're bad. You have to convince yourself that God's love is merciful in order to have the foundation for turning to Him. You don’t just say, I’ll turn to God's merciful love. The whole meaning of Jesus dying on the cross is to convince you that He loves you for nothing, but how much do you believe that? Everyone has a natural instinct to be loved by God, but because of our fallen nature, it isn't very efficacious, and unless you meditate, this instinct will never become efficacious. So at this point, you're trying to move your will to embrace God's merciful love, and the way the will does that is by meditating, especially by considering the Cross. The whole meaning of the Passion is just that, to convince you that God can't love you for anything you do, and that any good you do is because you're convinced that He is good and makes you good. It all comes from Him, and if you don’t meditate that way, you won't save your soul, because you’ll gravitate naturally to your malice and to its chief effect, namely, to look for evil in others.
So to sum it up, don't fool yourself; if you don't meditate, you’ll go to hell, because without meditation, you’ll naturally gravitate towards malice. And notice, if you don't meditate, it is an omission, something you don't do, so you could make the mistake of not noticing it. You could spend your whole life not even being aware that you're not doing it. So the next time you see yourself looking for evil in others, which is one of the chief sins of malice, you should say to yourself, the reason I'm doing this is because I don't believe I'm loved. Misery seeks company, and so I want to feel that others are as dirty as I am.
COMMENT: Is this why it is so difficult for a person who wants to be faithful to continue to live in the midst of perverse people?
Without meditation, he has no bulwark against their perversity or his own.
COMMENT: But even if he meditates, his mind would continue to feed on their perversity, just by seeing it.
Imagine this situation: Here is a room with a crucifix and a picture of a nude woman. Two people go into the room. What would the person who meditates look at? He would look at the picture and then realize what he is and turn to the crucifix. But the other person would look at the dirty picture and say, what's wrong with that?
COMMENT: So through meditation the will becomes more developed, more sensitive to what is right?
All discipline is a kind of spontaneous conformity to the good. When you start playing tennis, you don't anticipate where the ball is. There has to be a habit of coordination which grows with practice. So with meditation there is a habit of spiritual coordination, whereas the habit you have without meditation is directed to some evil object. There is a whole organism of evil that operates spontaneously. The simple kind is taking delight in the evil object, but when you start trying to rationalize this and to liquidate the guilt yourself, that is where the malice comes in.
And you recognize it in the critical spirit: you want to see that others are worse than you. If you believe you're loved, why would you want to see evil in others? I think the thing that horrifies God more than anything else is a world filled with filthy hypocrites who are trying to convince themselves of their own innocence.
COMMENT: No one ever taught me how to meditate like that.
COMMENT: Meditation meant reading Scripture or something, and there was a basic assumption that you knew you were loved by God.
So thank God that you have such a good teacher!