In today’s gospel reading, Jesus faces questions from the religious authorities trying to trap him in some violation to persecute him. Amid this effort, Jesus shows them a third way to answer the dilemma they present, which they never thought of. A core teaching today revolves around giving God what he is due. How is this accomplished daily when so many things in life trap us? It begins by peeling away the things that are trapping us. The main snarl we face is unloading life’s baggage of actions, thoughts, and sinful ways that separate us from his presence. How do we meet those actions and thoughts in blinding honesty before God? I would suggest a third way most of us have never explored: contemplative prayer. Most of us go through our daily lives carefully, consigning these sinful actions and thoughts that separate us from God into a neat little box we hide away until the fateful day we face them in front of our maker. But what are we waiting for? Why do we consign God to the afterlife and not our daily life? The searing judgment that awaits all at the end of life is something Fr. Rolheiser notes should be a daily occurrence. We are meant to bring ourselves, with all our complexities and weaknesses, into God’s full light daily. Genuine prayer brings us into that searing light. And, in the great prayer traditions, one particular form of prayer, contemplative prayer, is singled out as most helpful. That is prayer without words, without images, the prayer of quiet, centering prayer. Contemplative prayer is where you set off to pray, find a quiet place, sit or kneel, and consciously place yourself in God’s presence without protection, with no possibility of hiding anything. The silence and absence of prayerful conversation leaves you naked and exposed, like a plant sitting in the sun, silently drinking in its rays. Each day, we should set aside some time to put ourselves into God’s presence without words and images, where, naked, stripped of everything, silent, exposed, hiding nothing, completely vulnerable, we simply sit, full face, allowing this baggage to come forth before God’s judgment, trusting in his grace and mercy.