— in memory of the late Father Tommy Murphy ssc
The former spiritual advisor of the World Community for Christian
Meditation(HK) since 2009 who passed away in January this year, wrote this
article a few years ago to show how meditation helped his missionary life.
Daily meditation is like an anchor in my life as a missionary priest. An anchor links a boat to a solid foundation no matter how rough the waters become on the surface. My missionary life has been full of twists and turns, most of which have come as sudden surprises. The practice of meditation has been part of my life for over twenty-five years and meditation has helped me to meet the challenges of mission in the several different countries and cultural contexts where I was called to serve. In the midst of some turbulent moments and unnerving challenges, the twice-daily practice of meditation has helped me in at least three different dimensions: distance, depth, direction.
Meditation has enabled me to put some distance between myself and many seemingly impossible demands. No matter how tangled my work became, I knew that the time spent in meditation would create the space I needed to step back from life’s challenges and look at them with a more detached mind and a less disturbed heart.
Meditation offered a distance from the urgency and immediacy of the many problems that life brought into my path. This distance was not an isolating experience. Rather, it was for me an opportunity to gain a more objective view of the seemingly difficult situation I was facing, and then to re-engage the reality with a clearer heart.
Meditation has regularly allowed me to go deeper into my reality in God and get in touch with that innermost and true part of myself. In this depth I sensed the presence of God that assured me that all of life’s problems are in God’s care. The daily practice of meditation continually offers me a reminder that God is at the heart of all life, and that includes my own.
This experience of meditation continually steered me in the direction of trust and gratitude and expectation. When I remain in the flow of this direction, most of life’s problems seem to either solve themselves, disappear, or turn out to be not so insurmountable as I had perceived them to be.
As I continue to meditate, I sense more and more that it is the Spirit of God that is directing me in all things. The daily discipline of meditating using the mantra stops me from getting lost and over-entangled in the daily problems of life. It helps me to be in touch with the source of all true love and power. And it helps me to return to these problems with deeper trust and a more serene heart that contains an expectancy that life will move forward in a positive direction.
Note: This article was originally published from a book
Prayer and the Priest by Medio Media in 2015.
