Michael Casey – The Undivided Heart

What I imagine will be a very useful book, The Undivided Heart: The Western Monastic Approach to Contemplation by Michael Casey O.C.S.O arrived on Saturday (thanks to The Rev’d Martin Davies, the Associates Coordinator for our sole Cistercian abbey – Southern Star Abbey for bringing the title to my attention, and for the recent photograph of Michael Casey). Casey has been a very formative influence on my understanding of prayer and spiritual desire (I'm thinking here of his PhD, no doubt edited, dedicated to the memory of his parents and published in 1987 as A Thirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs)

The book, The Undivided Heart is a collection of previously published (but hard to track down) essays – ranging from Seven Principles of Lectio Divina to Merton’s Notes on “Inner Experience”: Twenty Years Afterwards.

Helpfully in his essay on Lectio Divina Casey writes:

“Experience confirms that the most ordinary cause of “dryness” or “staleness” in prayer is a defect in genuine spiritual reading. Without consistent intake of the Word of God, prayer never comes naturally and interest in prayer declines. On the other hand, the first step in any program to revitalise the practice of prayer is always renewed contact with God’s Word…

However, many people continue to experience such dryness even though they devote regular periods to spiritual reading. This is usually due to the fact that the reading is not done in such a way as to provoke prayer….”

That’s one of my big challenges; not not reading, but reading less; reading slowly, reading in such a way as to “provoke prayer,” to draw prayer from me; reading in such a way as to make room for the inner movements of God. There is so much good and interesting material to read (whether it is books, journal articles, blogs etc) and it’s all too easy to read predominantly for information. It’s not an either/or situation, but one of imbalance in my life.

Comments

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You are not alone. I share that struggle of reading for information sake.... Oh God come to our assistance....