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Epilogue The Trinity Prayer as Spiritual Exercise In the preceding pages, I have regularly recommended doing your spiritual exercise—in this case by invoking the Trinity Prayer—as often as you can. Let me recapitulate here. When Jesus says, in the Sermon on the Mount, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7), he presumably is not entertaining the response “How often, Lord?” Rather, he is surely referring to a lifelong rhythm and its promise. The goal, then, is to “pray without ceasing,” according to the apostolic injunction that I have referred to a number of times (1 Thess. 5:17). Still, a journey of a thousand miles does begin with a single step—and it continues with single steps. I have suggested some specific steps in the preceding chapter and have encouraged you from the very beginning of this narrative to start exercising spiritually without delay, using the Trinity Prayer. Early on in these explorations, too, I suggested that this is precisely the correct order: start practicing the Trinity Prayer and keep practicing it constantly, whether or not you feel comfortable about it, because while practice does not make perfect, practice can make possible. If you wait for the moment when you will “feel comfortable” with the Trinity Prayer, that moment may never arrive. If you run or jog for exercise, when you first started, you probably didn’t feel comfortable about that either. But you kept at it, and that was a good thing. Then, I also suggested that, as you practice this prayer, you can let your consciousness be suffused with spiritual meanings. The sometimes winding and occasionally steep path we have followed in this book has, I hope, given you the meanings you need to allow you to do that. This leads me to another, more practical question. How can you possibly call forth all of the spiritual meanings we have identified along the way in these lengthy explorations when you pray such a short prayer? The answer is: you cannot. My purpose thus far has been to introduce you to the many and varied meanings that I believe are given with the Trinity Prayer so that they might hover, as it were, in your subliminal mind and heart—not to suggest that all those meanings must somehow gather in your conscious mind when you pray. 239 Still, my hope is that, as you practice the Trinity Prayer, a number of those meanings will emerge, now and again, from your subliminal mind and heart and give your prayer a breadth of awareness that it might not otherwise have. But it is surely sufficient, also, simply just to say the words. Say the words and trust in the Spirit to elicit the meanings in your mind and heart—but do note that you may not grasp those meanings consciously. Keep in mind the words of the Apostle: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:26-27). On the other hand, I have found that some coded meanings that are reflective of the long journey of spiritual exploration that we have just completed can be helpful. I don’t always consciously rely on these coded meanings. Much of my own praying of the Trinity Prayer is simply saying the words of the prayer and allowing meanings to surface in my conscious mind—or not—as the Spirit may or may not elicit them. But when I find the time and the appropriate place—swinging by myself in the Hidden Garden, for example, or during that long flight to London, or when I stand before the crucifix next to my bed first thing in the morning—I do find that such coded meanings sometimes can be helpful. They offer a way to enrich the mind and the heart at any given moment, without requiring you to be burdened by the thought that you can barely remember the many spiritual meanings that you know are given with the Trinity Prayer. So use these coded meanings or not—or use coded meanings of your own making—as the Spirit may or may not give...

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