Christian Contemplative Prayer

Matthew records Jesus’ primary teaching on prayer as “Enter into a private place to pray, shut the door, and then commune there with your Father privately, and your Father, the Hidden One, who observes you secretly will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)

This is the essence of Christian contemplative prayer, the prayer of the heart. And it is to this vision of prayer that the House of Prayer is committed. There is no other reason for us to exist, than to teach this one crucial path – the Way to God found in the inner recesses of each human breast. It is this discovery, that God, rather than being found apart from us, is waiting in our own inner recesses, where communion with God restores each human being to right relationships, not only with God but with all Creation, with whom we are all connected in a hidden unity. The Gospel of Philip makes this passage even clearer: “’My Father dwells in secret, so go into the hidden chamber and shut the door and commune there with the One who is in this hidden place within you.’ The Father is there in your innermost being, and there is no other place transcendent to this, which is the Fullness beyond all ‘place’.”