Why I Sleep in Church

It happens time and time again. I go in for my Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament. I usually bring far too many books and journals for a mere 60-minute slot. I have high expectations—first, I’ll do morning prayer, then pray a rosary, then read the Gospel, then journal, then… five minutes into it all, my eyes get heavy, my body relaxes, and the nodding off begins for the next 55 minutes. And by the end of it all, I feel like I have wasted my time, been rude to my Divine Guest, ignored the King of Kings, and instead of receiving graces, indulged in the most egregious case of sloth.

            Then, one night, while reading Story of a Soul by St. Therese (not in adoration, of course), I read the following:

The fact that I often fall asleep during meditation, or while making my thanksgiving, should appall me. Well, I am not appalled; I bear in mind that little children are just as pleasing to their parents asleep as awake; that doctors put patients to sleep while they perform operations, and that after all, "the Lord knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust."

Bam. Justification. If St. Therese (that is, Doctor of the Church St. Therese) can fall asleep in meditation, why can’t I? In fact, it’s probably a sign of supreme holiness… or something…

            And while St. Therese should not be used for prideful justifications of sloth, she does articulate a very important point of the spiritual life: meditation and contemplation are not meant to be work or effort, they are not meant to be active. Rather, our greatest blessings and graces come when we are receptive—after all, Our Lady’s fiat was the epitome of receptivity, and with it she received the King of the Universe in her womb.

            Josef Pieper, in his must-read Leisure: The Basis of Culture, writes:

Leisure is not the attitude of one who intervenes, but of the one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who lets go, who lets himself go, and go under, almost as someone who falls asleep must let himself go… The surge of new life that flows out to us when we give ourselves to the contemplation of a blossoming rose, a sleeping child, or of a divine mystery—is this not the surge of life that comes from deep, dreamless sleep?... the greatest, most blessed insights, the kind that could never be tracked down, come to us above all in the time of leisure.

It is only in leisure, in stillness, that we recognize beauty, that we hail mystery, that we see and know. This stillness requires no effort, no words. Just silence and openness. Why is it that lovers so easily fall asleep in each others’ arms? Because there everything seems safe, everything is still. No words are necessary. There is only a letting go, a fiat.

            There was a man who would enter St. John Vianney’s church in Ars, France, every day. He would sit and look at Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament for nearly an hour each time he came. He would say nothing, write nothing, read nothing. One day, John Vianney asked him, “What do you say to Our Lord when you sit here day after day?” The humble farmer replied, “I say nothing. I look at Him, He looks at me. That is enough.”

            Thus resting in the Lord is a sign of inner peace, the peace of a lover resting in the arms of her beloved. Only in this rest do we truly reach the heights of contemplation. Only in being still do we know that He is God!

 Note: I am not advocating sleeping during Mass. The Sacrifice of the Mass and private meditation serve two different purposes in the spiritual life. But more on that to come, perhaps, in future posts.