The Love That Prays Us

In the practice of centering prayer, there comes a moment when all words fall away. The sacred word dissolves. Thoughts drift past like clouds. And in that fertile silence, something astonishing happens — you discover that you are not the one doing the loving. You are being loved.

This is the mystery John points toward when he writes, "Love is from God" and "God is love." Not that God merely feels love or offers love, but that God is the very ground and substance of love itself. Thomas Merton described this realization as finding "the point of nothingness at the center of our being" where we are held in pure, unearned tenderness by the Divine.

Teresa of Avila knew this intimately. In her Interior Castle, she described the deepest chamber of the soul as the place where God already dwells, already loves, already prays within us. We do not journey toward a distant God. We sink inward toward the Love that has been whispering our name since before we drew breath.

The contemplative path teaches us that love is not first an action we perform but a Presence we consent to. When we sit in silence — even for ten fumbling, distracted minutes — we practice opening our hands to receive what was always being given.