Blessed are the poor - 18 November 2011

In an article in the Tablet, Fr Laurence Freeman introduces us to Dr Pierre. Dr Pierre is co-ordinator of all the meditation groups in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. He is also a very bright doctor who is medical director of the one major hospital not demolished in the recent devastating earthquake. Although it was not that kind of hospital, Dr Pierre was obliged to take in a lot of patients with spinal cord injuries, and then set about getting the proper staff and equipment for them.

Eventually, also, he started a Christian Meditation group with these patients. In his spare time -- in his case a concept hard to understand -- he provides assistance and encouragement for Christian Meditation groups all over that ravaged land. Most of these are poverty-stricken people in a land of tragedy, endemic corruption, and exploitation. And yet, interestingly, suicide in Haiti is virtually unknown -- almost as though it is more a disease of affluence.

I don’t know how you teach Christian Meditation to desperately poor people. Perhaps you would need to be one yourself, as Jesus was. And yet, there is a sense in which contemplative life and prayer makes us all poor. Blessed are you poor, taught Jesus. Meditation introduces us to the poverty which is a gift for us to receive at levels deeper than all the knowledge and achievement, and of course all the outward show. This poverty is not anything bad or reprehensible. It is not a problem. When I am poor, wrote St Paul, then I am rich. Empty hands and a receptive heart are the necessary ground for love and grace.

Fr Laurence reminds us that prayer is more than consolation or relief from misery or anxiety. You can teach Christian Meditation to the poor precisely because it is a political act. It introduces people to a new personal dignity, it clears the mind, purifies the heart and releases wisdom and compassion. And so Dr Pierre adds to his medical skills the wisdom to teach not only the poor, but also men, women and children in long, probably partial recovery from spinal injury, to be still and silent. Who knows what healing this facilitates -- in the brain and spinal cord, or in the psyche, in the memories, the relationships, the courage to hope… and most certainly in the fears we have.