Resting in the Beloved

In the monastery of the Incarnation in Avila, Teresa of Avila once described prayer not as speaking to God but as "being with the One we know loves us." She understood what the apostle John meant when he wrote, "God is love." Not that God possesses love or distributes it — God is love, the way fire is heat, the way the ocean is wet.

Thomas Merton spent years in the Abbey of Gethsemani wrestling with words, filling journals, writing brilliant theology. But near the end of his life, he confessed that the deepest prayer was simply consent — a quiet yes spoken in the center of the soul where the Beloved already dwells.

This is the mystery of 1 John 4:7-8. John does not command us to manufacture love. He says love "comes from God." It originates in the Divine source before we ever reach for it. Our task is not production but reception — settling into the silence long enough to discover that Love has been loving us since before we drew breath.

In centering prayer, we release our grip on thoughts, agendas, even our own spiritual striving. We sit with open hands. And in that vulnerability, the love that is God seeps into the cracks of our defended hearts.

This week, try twenty minutes of silence. No requests. No words. Just presence. You may feel nothing. But love does not require your awareness to do its work. You are already held by the One who is love itself.