How can the Church ensure that its worship, life and mission flow from an encounter with the God of love, mercy and faithfulness? How can its members develop and sustain a loving personal relationship with Jesus? How can it ensure that it places itself in all it does and thinks under the guidance of the Holy Spirit? In other words how can it ‘Realise the Sacred’ both in the sense of ‘coming to know’ the Sacred and of ‘bringing it about’ – by turning to the ways of contemplation? Can these ways bring unity to the rich diversity of the Church and hence hope and love to a fractured world? In 1980 Eric Doyle OFM wrote: ‘The greatest challenge to organised religion in the western world now is whether it can guide individuals along the paths of their own inner depths and show how the riches in those depths can be recognised, accepted and put at the service of all creation and closely related to this, whether it can teach people to commune with God and nature.’ This work seeks to address this challenge by encouraging all Christians to embrace the contemplative practice of silent prayer as the basis for all worship, life and mission of the Church, consciously and with full-hearted intent.
