NunStory: Meditation

We were getting ready for evening prayer, Vespers when Mother Therese handed me a book,

"This is for you to use at meditation. You cannot recite the rosary during the meditation hour. Newcomers tend to want to do that. It is silent meditation."

I was very dismayed on hearing that, it was just what I had intended to do.

And that was all the instruction given to me on how to meditate.

I would say, meditation is one of the hardest of spiritual exercises for anyone new to it.

The book was on the passion of Jesus.

I devised my own method. 

Monday, I would engage in Jesus' agony in the garden.

I would imagine myself with him on that mountain, dark with his disciples sleeping.

I would tell him I am awake and with him there.

I imagine his agony of mind and soul, his sweat pouring out as blood.

Tuesday, it would be the scourging at the pillar.

I would drag the scene out.

In a similar manner I occupied my meditation hours.

It was still very tortuous but the one spiritual exercise I applied myself seriously to.

I was not very much into Mass.

I would see Sister Bridget pouring over preparation for the Mass,

going into near ecstasy talking about the liturgies.

I relate even less to the Divine Office which was in Latin when I entered.

"It does not matter if you do not understand it," my novice mistress told me,  "God would hear you regardless."

Very often I did not get the pages correctly marked.

At night prayers, or Matins, I would fall asleep while reciting the divine office.

I would sway to and fro standing on my feet, and woke up, eyes blurry and unfocused.

Very often, I would stare fixedly at the mother prioress until my eyes focus.

Often, she appeared in strange shapes before coming into focus.

And I would look at her with terror on my face.

It spooked her, the way I stared at her, as though she was some kind of monster.

It was almost like a precursor of things to come.

She would turn out to be one of my staunchest of adversaries.

A persecutor in later years when I revolted and walked my own way to God.

She was also held as very holy by the nuns.

To me, she was cold and distant.

Her mind always seemed to be somewhere else, caught in day dreams or thoughts of her own.

As a result, she always appeared distracted and disconnected.

She shared about having to leave the monastery during the Franco Spanish war.

She lived with her cousins during those years.

She confided that it was terribly hard returning to the monastery when the war was over. 

I often wondered if she should have returned at all. 

I entered the monastery to find God.

Somehow, I just knew meditation was the means to finding God for me.

It was not the liturgy or Divine Office but meditation and I applied myself to it seriously, putting all efforts into it.