Practicing the Presence

C. Gourgey, Ph.D.

Nada te turbe;
nada te espante.
Todo se pasa;
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia
todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene,
nada le falta.
Solo Dios basta.

May nothing disturb you,
may nothing frighten you.
Everything passes;
God does not change.
Patience
attains everything.
Those who have God
want for nothing.
Alone, God suffices.

These words were written by St. Teresa of Avila in the sixteenth century. They have become immortal, and the way people often remember her. They were transformed into a beautiful hymn still sung in Spanish-speaking churches. I often sang that hymn for my Spanish-speaking hospice patients, and it always comforted them. These words have given me hope as well.

I believe that when one hears these words sung, one can be transported into a state of faith. Teresa’s faith was deep, and it was intense. She devoted her life to practicing that faith, practicing the presence of God.

What gave Teresa the faith to utter these words? She is one of those great spiritual figures in religious history, brushed by an unseen presence that transformed her life and that gave her assurance even in troublesome times. There were many such figures: John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Thérèse of Lisieux, Francis of Assisi are among the most notable. We cannot really get inside their experience to know what created their great faith, but fortunately they did leave writings that at least afford us some small sense of it. So let us now consider: Can we, too, attain anything close to the faith these great people had, “a very present help in trouble”?

There is one biblical figure who has shared some insights into his own faith transformation, and that is Paul. We know Paul underwent a spiritual experience that profoundly changed him. Luke tells us about it in Acts 9, 22, and 26, and reading these accounts gives us a sense of this experience’s power and finality. But they are Luke’s words, not Paul’s. Fortunately we do have Paul’s own words:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

Paul’s transformation

Paul says Christ appeared to him, and places this appearance on the same level as the resurrection appearances to the original disciples. That is how profoundly it affected him. But can we say more? Paul says more:

It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven - whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person - whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows - was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthans 12:1-10)

Scholars are virtually unanimous in maintaining that in this passage Paul is speaking about himself. Paul tells us a lot here. Note the following characteristics:

He was transported to a heavenly realm.

He suggests having had an out-of-body experience.

He entered paradise.

He received many revelations there, and a great expansion of his knowledge.

He was overtaken by a deep sense of God’s grace.

This grace enabled him to meet adversities (“weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities”) that previously might have thrown him.

The experience permanently changed him, physically and spiritually.

All these occurrences are hallmarks of what today we would call a shared-death experience. A shared-death experience (SDE) is very similar to a near-death experience (NDE), except that it comes not from being close to death oneself but from proximity to the death of someone else to whom we are connected. And we know from Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road that this someone else was Christ. (Some commentators think what Paul had was a near-death rather than a shared-death experience, but I don’t believe this is tenable. The heavenly experience Paul describes is far more likely connected to his encounter with Christ than to any personally life-threatening event such as his being stoned. Paul himself attributes his transformation to being “in Christ,” not to having survived a stoning, and his testimony shoulld carry some weight. The effects of NDEs and SDEs are also very similar and can be difficult to distinguish.)

Both NDEs and SDEs are very real. I do not believe they are just hallucinations or figments of an overactive imagination. Those who have had such experiences can tell you they are of a different nature. Apparently Jesus’s spirituality was so strong that it could exert an influence on people connected to him in some way, such as the original disciples, and even Paul, who was strongly caught up in Jesus to the point of persecuting his followers.

The great revelation of the New Testament, the real “good news,” is the realization of a different order of existence than the familiar time and space we are used to. We call that other order “eternity” or “eternal life,” complementing our temporal existence. Jesus called it the “kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven.” The two orders are not separate; there are points of contact between them, though usually most of us are not aware of it most of the time. But in something like what Paul experienced, the veil separating the two orders becomes thinner, and one gets a more direct sense of the eternal. In Celtic spirituality, points at which the veil thins and we actually feel the presence of eternity are called “thin places.” The Bible scholar Dale Allison says that some people are particularly attuned to these thin places, and he calls them “thin people.” Paul became a thin person.

On some level Paul must have known the nature of what he experienced, that it came from a direct sharing of Jesus’s death. It made him a completely different person, a better person, and he desperately wanted others to share what he found, especially since he thought the end was near and the final judgment about to arrive. But how to do that? How to give others the gift he received if they did not have the same experience he had? Paul’s response was to initiate a new kind of baptism, different from John the Baptizer’s “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” It was a baptism into the very death of Christ, which affected Paul and changed him so completely. He wanted it to change others the same way.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:3-5)

I believe these words are further evidence for Paul’s having had a shared-death experience, and cannot be comprehended apart from it. Taking that experience into account, these words make perfect sense. Paul thought that if we all share in Christ’s death, we can all share in his resurrection. Paul felt the transformation he experienced through sharing Christ’s death made him better, made him whole, and even destined him for resurrection, the symbol of eternal life. He wanted others to have this too.

Was he successful? That is certainly a debatable question. Contemporary Pauline scholarship, by scholars like N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn and others, has brought to our attention ways Paul has traditionally been misunderstood. I have my own views on how Paul has been misinterpreted. Those debates need not concern us now. More to the point is the tough problem Paul faced: how to transmit an essentially inner experience to others outside himself, so that they can experience it too.

We can be helped by the work of many Christian mystics, such as those mentioned earlier, who have transmitted their own revelations and also their spiritual struggles during which they found tremendous faith.

Other witnesses

Julian of Norwich lived in the fourteenth century and was no stranger to suffering. She lived through the Black Death and became seriously ill herself, including paralysis starting in her legs and spreading throughout her entire body. And yet she could write the following:

Jesus gave me all that I needed. “Sin is inevitable,” he said, “yet all will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.”

This is not simply a denial of the world, since Julian recognizes the reality of sin and its painful consequences. In spite of that, she found a sense of well-being. This came from her experience of a divine presence being always with her. That presence placed her in contact with a different reality. We can call it eternal life, in which the intractable conflicts of this world are finally resolved. We may not know how or when. But we do know that all suffering is temporal, time-limited, while the reconciliation and resolution are eternal. Meanwhile the divine presence is with us now as a guide through difficulty until we experience the resolution.

This brings to mind the very first patient I met when I entered the Cabrini Hospice inpatient unit as its new music therapist. The man was dying and he knew it. I began to converse with him and asked him how he was doing. Doing well, he responded. “The same God who has guided me up till now will guide me through this as well.” From where does such faith come, I wondered. He too must have known the experience of a divine presence with him.

Then there was Muriel, a patient at another hospice in which I worked. Muriel was feisty for someone so ill. She loved to challenge me. “Do you want to know where God is?” she quizzed me the first time I encountered her. She slapped the sides of her wheelchair and exclaimed: “God is here, right in this chair where I am sitting, and right now.” Since she left no room for questioning, I knew it must be true. She too knew the divine presence, right in the midst of her adversity. Her illness, a form of cancer, made her vomit frequently, and she always had a plastic basin in front of her. Once when she had to do that in my presence she said, “So what? What’s a little thing like vomiting when God is here with me?”

All will be well and every kind of thing shall be well. That’s what Muriel was telling me.

In hospice I met many like Muriel, patients who had incredible faith in spite of what they were facing. I used to wonder, how did they acquire such faith? No one could explain it to me. I did find partial answers: they were fortunate to have been brought up in faith, or they led exceptionally loving lives. This was true, but I knew there had to be more: how one can acquire such faith if one has not been previously exposed to it.

It is important to understand the common elements of such faith, what we should or should not be able to expect from it. First, what faith does not mean: it does not mean protection from harmful occurrences, or the expectation of miraculous outcomes. Miraculous things may happen, but faith cannot depend on them. Of what does this faith consist?

The gift of the Spirit: Angelic presence

Let’s see what Jesus has to say.

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:7-11)

Did Jesus really mean it? How often do we ask for things and not get them? So what is he talking about? Note that the verse says “give good things.” It doesn’t say what good things.

Luke’s version is both more explicit and more emphatic:

So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:9-13)

Instead of stones, snakes and scorpions! This is serious business. But Luke’s version is also more specific as to what we are given. We are given the Holy Spirit.

What is the Holy Spirit? It is the guiding presence of God. The Gospel of John calls it paraclete, the one “called to our side,” the one who accompanies us. It is an accompanying presence, experienced by some as an “angelic presence,” or even as a guardian angel. This angelic presence helped Teresa release her fears and express the deep love for God in her heart, and it assured Julian that all will be well. I don’t see how they could have had the power to say what they did without this angelic presence.

How is this presence felt?

The angelic presence does not provide immunity from grief, illness, or loss. But it can save us from despair by anchoring us in love.

It can guide us away from harm, by giving a subtle warning, delaying an impulsive response, or redirecting our steps.

It can direct us toward the proper word or action to heal a hurtful encounter.

If we are harmed it can help us become whole again, even extracting benefit from a hurtful event.

It provides directionality to our lives, conforming the events in our lives toward a redeeming destiny.

Above all, it brings us awareness of eternal life and the sense that we are loved. Above all, it is presence, informing us we are not alone.

An important question now remains: If we have not had the gift of a great mystic, or a transformative experience that changes us and brings the angelic presence into our lives, is there a way to attain it? This is what I used to wonder when I contemplated the deep faith of many of my hospice patients who somehow found this faith. What about the rest of us? Do we too have a way?

Inviting the angelic presence

Some of the great teachers tried to provide a way. Ignatius of Loyola proposed his Spiritual Exercises as a way of bringing people there. But his program is rigorous and demanding, very austere with much talk of death and hell – just not appropriate for most today who are seeking God’s presence. Spiritual growth is very individual; there is no one method that fits everyone, and we need to “work out our own salvation” as Paul put it. Nevertheless, perhaps we can consider something very simple here, that can be integrated into a busy life and adapted to individual need:

A Program for Practicing the Presence

Choose a dedicated space for prayer, one to which you can associate meeting the divine presence and where you can avoid distractions. It can be a chair, a windowsill, or a quiet corner of the room. Return to this space whenever you need to remind yourself of the reality of the presence, and become grounded again.

Begin each day within this space, naming the desire to know the presence. Call it what is most meaningful to you: God, angelic presence, divine presence, Holy Spirit, Christ, guardian angel. Can you find a name that stirs you from inside?

State your intention; this opens the door. You can even say it out loud: “I open myself to the presence of the divine. May I be guided, accompanied, and reminded of love’s presence with me this day.” This is just an example. Word it as sounds best for you.

This may be the most important step: Sit quietly, breathe slowly, and listen. Ask the angels, or the presence, or the Holy Spirit, to draw near to you and to feel its peace. Then sit in patient, wordless silence. You may feel a physical change, a warmth or a tingling, or maybe just a deep quiet. This may crystallize into a sense of presence, a feeling you are not alone. We are not alone. The divine presence surrounds us always. The idea is to open ourselves and allow it to enter. We can stay in this state as long as we need.

If we sense nothing dramatic, that is no cause for alarm. The spiritual presence does not announce itself with fanfare. It brushes against us in subtle movements. There is a reason the Gospels describe the Spirit as “descending like a dove.”

Reading a short passage of scripture may help to make the presence real. Perhaps this one (Psalm 91:11): “For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.” Or this one (Psalm 34:7): “The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” Find one that speaks to you.

End with a prayer of gratitude for God’s continuing presence in your life.

Come back to your sacred space whenever you need a brief retreat. If you feel nothing right away, don’t worry. This is spiritual practice, not spiritual perfection. You may notice subtle changes over time. You may notice that God speaks in quietness. Find that center of quietness in every present moment. And who knows, over time, this divine presence may become unmistakable, because love’s persistence is already its expression.

What other kinds of effects might one expect? It can be very simple, like feeling surrounded by a general sense of peace. Or you may notice it influencing your contact with others - during chance encounters you may just want to touch their spirit and make them feel loved. That is a sign the presence is working.

It is more than possible that through a practice like this one you will begin to feel accompanied by a higher presence, held in love, no longer alone. But if you feel that is not happening, remember this parable:

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ’Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ’Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:1-8)

The image of yourself like this persistent widow, continually knocking at the door, seeking God’s presence, not giving up, should inspire love. Jesus told us that our task in this life is love of God and love of others. One who seeks this ceaselessly draws forth divine compassion, and should draw ours as well. Our persistence in seeking God is already an expression of love. And in that love God is already present. Perhaps more than we know. “Surely the LORD is in this place - and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16). You are already practicing the sacred presence, even before you realize it.

The great mystics who knew this presence as their constant companion preserved their visions because they wanted us to know it too. May we all come to know it, and may it strengthen our faith in times when we need it most.

September 2025