The Prayer Beneath the Prayer

In the practice of centering prayer, there comes a moment Thomas Merton called "the point of nothingness" — when the sacred word dissolves, when thoughts scatter like startled birds, and all that remains is raw, wordless presence before God. It feels like failure. It feels like nothing is happening.

But something is always happening in the silence.

Romans 8:28 tells us that God works all things together for good — yet Paul does not say we will see this working, or understand it, or feel it. The contemplative tradition knows this intimately. Teresa of Avila spent nearly twenty years in what she described as spiritual dryness, unable to pray as she wished, convinced she was abandoned. Yet those barren years were forming in her a capacity for God that comfort never could have carved.

Hope, in the contemplative sense, is not optimism. It is not the bright confidence that circumstances will improve. It is the quiet surrender to a Love that operates beneath our awareness, weaving meaning in the dark — the way roots push deeper in winter, unseen, drawing nourishment from frozen ground.

John of the Cross understood that the dark night is not God's absence but God's closest work, too intimate for the mind to grasp.

When your prayer feels empty and your suffering feels pointless, sit still. The Beloved is working all things together in the silence — especially the silence you cannot yet interpret. Trust the darkness. It is full of God.