The Hidden Room

Thomas Merton once described a moment in his Louisville hermitage when he realized his hours of centering prayer had not made him holier than the people walking past on Fourth Street. They were, he wrote, "shining like the sun." Philippians 2:3-4 asks us to count others as more significant than ourselves — not as a moral exercise, but as a way of seeing that contemplative practice slowly unveils.

In silence, we discover something unsettling. The ego we bring to prayer — the one cataloging its spiritual progress, measuring its depth against others — is precisely what must be surrendered. Teresa of Avila called this the work of the interior castle's early mansions: recognizing how relentlessly we orbit ourselves. True humility, she insisted, is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less, because your gaze has been drawn elsewhere entirely.

This is what the ancient practice of kenosis invites. We empty not to become nothing, but to make room — room for the Other, room for the neighbor whose needs Paul says we must look to before our own. Each period of sitting in silence is a small rehearsal of that emptying. We release the grip on our opinions, our urgencies, our need to be seen.

The pastoral invitation is simple and difficult: sit in God's presence today without an agenda. Let the silence strip away your self-importance. Then rise, walk into the world, and notice — truly notice — the person in front of you. That noticing is humility made flesh.