So the repetition of the Jesus Prayer requires a warm heart, removed from any notion of superiority, and a certain attention to presence in everything that happens…

Yes, exactly. The moment I assert myself, I separate myself from others and from the rest of creation. I come to make myself the centre, and this hardens the heart and reinforces the closing of the spiritual senses.

Established in what is authentic, in the truth about ourselves, we begin to notice another meaning in what happens, one that usually escapes us. It is a kind of language written through the things that happen. Each moment is a scene drawn by God as a new opportunity to meet Him. Placed in this way, you respond to different situations as you think would please God.

But God is beyond pleasure and displeasure…

In an abstract and conceptual sense you are right. Yet in your innermost self, what seems right or wrong to you shows itself clearly at every moment. An instant of silence allows us to realise it. That is why it is necessary to keep the fire burning in the heart; it gives greater depth to our actions. Without this small measure of humility, the mental narrative presents us with a different scenery. Everything is reduced to material causes and effects, and the sacred is conspicuous by its absence.

We must become convinced that without spiritual feeling life suffers a lack that makes it deformed and absurd. However many endeavours, projects, riches and tall tales we tell ourselves, we will not find meaning in it. What ends with death cannot have meaning.

I believe in life after death and in the resurrection, but that does not bring about any important change in my daily life…

Because it is a belief, as you rightly say. Faith implies a certain experience; that is what makes it incarnate, and that is why the life of those who have deep faith is transformed. This experience of transcendence, that is, of the immortality of the human spirit in God, is the coming of the Holy Spirit. And this shows us that the child of God that we are is called to immortality.

I don’t understand the insistence on the subject of death.

It is that until we accept that we are going to die, we do not remain in humility. The root of all humility is the awareness of finitude. This places the facts and situations of life in an unsettling perspective. It leads us to seek meaning, and in that search we turn to God. Death makes us feel orphaned and helpless, and at that moment we turn our face from the things of the world towards the things that are eternal.

That is why failures, suffering and disappointments teach us so much; they are like small deaths that gradually awaken us. You buy something beautiful that later gets ruined; that apparently great love stopped being one; the cherished dream was achieved and yet something is still missing… at some point one says: what is life all about? And at that moment grace touches us; it opens us to a necessary depth.

So, in concrete terms… let us pray as often as possible, even in the midst of our tasks, and let us be attentive to two things: that our heart does not grow cold or hard, and that in everything we do we act as we think would please God.

To be continued…

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