The Prayer That Prays You

In the monastery at Gethsemani, Thomas Merton described a moment when his carefully constructed spiritual identity simply fell away. He had spent years building what he thought God wanted — the perfect monk, the disciplined contemplative. Then one afternoon on a street corner in Louisville, he saw ordinary people walking past, and something shattered. He realized he had been carrying a self that was never his to keep.

This is what Jesus means in Luke 9:23 when He says we must deny ourselves daily. It is not the denial of pleasure or comfort, though it may include that. It is something far more radical — the releasing of the false self we have constructed, the one we mistake for our identity.

In centering prayer, practitioners learn this surrender in miniature. A thought arises, and rather than grasping it, you gently let it go, returning to the sacred word. Again and again, the mind reaches for control, and again you open your hands. John of the Cross called this process a kind of noche oscura — dark night — where God strips away everything that is not God.

Taking up your cross is not gritting your teeth harder. It is consenting to be undone. It is discovering, in the silence beneath your thoughts, that the One who calls you to follow has been carrying you all along.