Come Away With Me A While: Drawing Close to the Lord through Contemplative Prayer

Last summer, after my first year of studying at St. Bernard’s, I decided to take the summer Retreat Course offered by St. Bernard’s at The Abbey of the Genesee. I had heard Professor Lickona talking about it all year, and it sounded like it would be a wonderful experience. Since I live in the south, I thought it would be an exciting adventure and a great opportunity to visit St. Bernard’s campus in Rochester and come together with my professor and other classmates in person to share a unique experience. In addition, a few years before I started at St. Bernard’s, I had been pursuing a vocation in religious life for a number of years, and I remembered well the beautiful gift that a week-long retreat could be, a precious time away with the Lord. Last year’s retreat course was on Contemplative Prayer, and I knew that it would be a wonderful way to learn more about this way of prayer and have a deeper encounter with Christ.

After enjoying the adventure of a long road trip and having the opportunity to meet some of my professors and tour the St. Bernard’s campus, I arrived on Monday morning at the Abbey of the Genesee to begin our retreat. Professor Lickona, my fellow classmates, and I stayed at a retreat house on the property of the Abbey a little way down the road from the Abbey itself. I knew immediately that this was going to be a special experience. The Abbey was located in a place that was far out in the country and was beautiful, peaceful, and remote. The single road with no lines that led us there passed through corn fields, tall grasses, and trees, and you could walk from the main building of the Abbey down further along the road to the retreat houses on either side. The retreat house itself was the former monastery and was a beautiful and simple place.

The first time that I was in the main chapel at the Abbey was after our first morning’s conference on contemplative prayer led by Fr. Isaac Slater, one of the monks of the Abbey. We entered the chapel as a group, finding places to sit on our own in the visitors’ pews, ready to enter into a period of ‘practicing’ contemplative prayer. No books or journals, nothing was needed, not even a watch, as Fr. Isaac would let us know when the period of prayer would be concluded. Just coming to sit with God, to be in His presence, and be present to Him. To listen, to be alone, to be present to God. The chapel was so still and quiet that you couldn’t hear anything other than the soft chirping of birds under the eaves of the stone walls, letting in fresh air and just a little soft light. Once everyone was seated and still, it felt like you were the only one there. The time period of thirty minutes seemed to never end: it felt like time stopped, like it was just you and God, and then suddenly it was over. Throughout the days of the retreat, we had the opportunity to have many more times of solitude and silent contemplative prayer in the chapel, as well as on our own in our rooms or walking the grounds at the retreat house.

This kind of experience of solitude and true silence is one of the most beautiful gifts of a retreat. The intentional withdrawal from the modern world and the familiar routines of daily life allow us to encounter God in a new way and become more aware of His presence within our hearts.

In our day-to-day lives, how seldomly do we truly get any time like this? We may pray daily, have our structured prayer routines, petitions, and favorite prayers and devotions, and all of this is good. But do we make time to just sit and be still with God? It can be almost impossible to find the spaces and times to give that kind of undivided attention to God’s presence.

St. Alphonsus Liguori reminds us,

“The Lord said to St. Teresa one day, ‘I would speak to many souls, but the world makes so much noise in their ears that they cannot hear my voice. Oh, if only they would stand a little apart from the world!' Sometimes, we need to step away from the world for a time… for a weekend, a day, even a few hours, and reconnect with God’s presence with us and in us. The Lord calls us to himself, to retreat from the world and its many voices and come away a while with Him to listen to His voice. St. John Vianney said, 'It is in solitude that God speaks to us.'”

Are we aware that God speaks to each one of us personally? How often do we make the time to actually listen to Him in our prayer? This is the gift of a retreat… it allows us to deepen our awareness of God’s presence and discover what He wants to speak personally to each one of us.

However, we cannot remain on retreat at all times… we have jobs, responsibilities, families, community. How does God call us to remain in His presence in the midst of our daily lives? How do we allow God to speak to us every day?

The clear answer from my retreat course last summer was contemplative prayer. Contemplative prayer is just being with God, resting in His presence, and letting Him speak and reveal to you whatever He wishes to say to you. Unlike other forms of prayer (verbal, meditation, petitions), contemplative prayer is less about what you do and say and more about what God does in your heart. It is letting Him look at you with love and reveal His heart to you. He loves you more than you can ever imagine and only wants to pour out His heart of love for you. Contemplative prayer is the place where this can happen.

We can sit in contemplative prayer before the Lord whenever and however we can. Maybe you can start with 10-15 minutes a day, just resting with Him in a place apart, a chapel, a quiet room, an outdoor space. Just giving God your undivided attention and allowing Him to speak to you personally, to your heart.

For some people, this kind of contemplative prayer may seem foreign or strange, or we may struggle to believe that God actually desires to speak to us and be present with us. We may believe that we are not worthy enough or loveable for God to want to be close to us. Many of our past sins, expectations, and disappointments can make us believe that we are unworthy or unloved.

One of the most fruitful insights for me from last summer’s retreat course was something explained by Fr. Isaac: “We all carry a lot of armor and defenses, those walls of armor that we put up around our hearts, which can prevent us from entering into a deeper, more authentic and vulnerable encounter with God. Contemplative prayer can help us to slowly dissolve these walls, this armor.”

We must truly believe in the abundant goodness of God. The Lord meets us where we are in prayer, even if we have wandered far away for a time, even if we are still heartbroken and questioning and doubting at times, even if we “do not know how to pray as we ought.”

The Lord draws us back to Him, saying, “Come away with me a while," and “fall in love with Me again.” He wants leads you back to His Heart.

There is nothing that you have to do, nothing that you have to be, nothing that you have to prove, for God to love you. When you sit with Him in contemplative prayer, you come to know that truth personally. You sit before Him and experience being truly and unconditionally loved.