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Mar112023

Spirit of prayer calls for surrender

The ease with which contemplation can take place when a soul is accustomed to approach God with a deeper surrender of itself is evident in this passage. The great soul at this time, on the other hand, as mentioned already, lies in an excessively conscientious approach to prayer that resists adaptation. And in a real sense, this involves a lack of surrender to God. The conscientiousness to “do prayer” as taught in one’s training is not necessarily a virtue; it actually can be a fault that makes a soul reluctant to alter its ways. The person may have become accustomed for many months, sometimes for years, to fill a silent time of prayer with an imaginative gaze on the Gospel or in searching for spiritual insights. The familiarity of the method has trained the person to seek satisfaction in the acquisition of new thoughts or in the enjoyment of some felt sense of loving God. The virtuous resolutions that may conclude such
prayer give the time of prayer a sense of a purposefulness. For many souls, it becomes very hard to accept that a prayer less active, less searching, a prayer more inconclusive, more open-ended, can be an advancement in prayer. The suggestion to remain quiet seems to invite the laziness of nonactivity into prayer and to yield fruitless results. As we have mentioned, these souls, if they are receiving contemplative graces, are the fervent and dedicated people of the spiritual life. They are people who do give themselves generously in charity and to the will of God. They work hard and spend themselves. Otherwise, the grace of contemplation would not be occurring. But it is precisely this conscientiousness that can work against them at this time. They are not acclimated to a more receptive acceptance of subtle graces from
God. If the person can trust inwardly and allow the soul to follow its deeper instinct of love, as described in the fifth sign, then the door opens to the graced inner desire to seek nothing but to love God in prayer. Unfortunately, an active mentality may tend for a time to resist the “apparent” abandonment of concrete fruits from its prayer. Such a soul may prefer, as Saint John of the Cross comments, to do over and over again what has been done and completed already. The aversion can be strong to doing what is thought to be doing nothing. Yet how mistaken this may be. Saint John of the Cross employs a striking image: removing the rind from a piece of fruit, so that it is ready to eat, and then trying to peel it once again:

“Many behave similarly at the beginning of this state. They think that the whole matter [of prayer] consists in understanding particular ideas and in reasoning through images and forms (the rind of the spirit). Since they do not encounter these images in that loving, substantial quietude where nothing is understood particularly and in which they like to rest, they believe they are wasting time and straying from the right road; and they turn back to search for the rind of images and reasoning. They are unsuccessful in their search because the rind has already been removed. (AMC 2.14.4)”

Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation written by Father Donald Haggerty

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Mar102023

Accepting Consolations

In the interior of the soul a sweetness is felt so great that the soul feels clearly the nearness of its Lord. This experience is not merely one of devotion moving a person to shed many tears – which give satisfaction-either by thinking of the Passion of the Lord or of our sins. In this prayer of which I speak, that I call “quiet” because of the calm caused in all the faculties (for it seems the person has them well under control although sometimes the experience is not like this, because the soul is not so absorbed in this sweetness), it seems that the whole man interiorly and exteriorly is comforted. It’s as though there were poured into the marrow of one’s bones a sweet ointment with a powerful fragrance. If we were suddenly to enter a place where this fragrance was strong and not from one thing but from many, and we did not know what it was or where it came from except that it permeated everything, we would have some idea of this most sweet love of our God. He enters the soul and does so with wonderful sweetness. He pleases and makes it happy, and it cannot understand how or from where that blessing enters. It would not want to lose that good; it would not want to stir or speak or even look lest the blessing go away…

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It seems that while the soul is in this delight that was mentioned it feels itself totally engulfed and protected in this shadow and kind of cloud of the Divinity. From it come inspirations and a delightful dew which indeed rightly takes away the weariness that worldly things have caused the soul. The soul feels there a kind of repose that will even make breathing wearisome to it. And the faculties are so quiet and calm that the will would not want them to admit any thoughts, even good ones, nor does it admit any by way of inquiry or striving after them. There’s no need to move the hand or raise it – I’m referring to reflection-for anything, for the Lord gives from the apple tree (to which she compares her Beloved) the fruit already cut, cooked, and even chewed. So she says that His fruit is sweet to her taste. For in this prayer all the soul does is taste, without any work on the part of the faculties; and present in this shadow of the Divinity-well does she say “shadow,” since we cannot see It clearly here below but only under this cloud-is that brilliant Sun. This Sun sends, by means of love, the knowledge that His Majesty is indescribably close. I know that anyone who has undergone this experience will understand how truly this meaning can be given to these words spoken by the bride.

St Theresa of Avila Meditation on The Songs of Songs

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Mar092023

Family enrichment

Edward Smith is an English artist, uncle to Gerald Manly Hopkins. I find the extensive cultured aspect of Gerald Manly Hopkins upbringing interesting. Protestant in roots, Hopkins’ 1800s family is populated by male and female artists, poets, and intellectuals. His father was a poet who engaged in a competitively friendly artistic relationship with his son. His brothers were artists and illustrators promoting his own drawing efforts. Exploring the world through creative efforts, promoting artistic talents in one another, understanding the value of life–and therefore one’s spiritual life–was enhanced by the appreciation and exercising of the arts is rarefied air anymore. I am not the most knowledgeable about Hopkins’ conversion to Catholicism or his formation into a priest, yet I do find it disconcerting that he destroyed his poetry in the process. Alas, there is so much one does not know.

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Mar082023

Priest, poet, and rich family background

Gerard Manley Hopkins is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era. However, because his style was so radically different from that of his contemporaries, his best poems were not accepted for publication during his lifetime, and his achievement was not fully recognized until after World War I. Hopkins’s family encouraged his artistic talents when he was a youth in Essex, England. However, Hopkins became estranged from his Protestant family when he converted to Roman Catholicism. Upon deciding to become a priest, he burned all of his poems and did not write again for many years. His work was not published until 30 years after his death when his friend Robert Bridges edited the volume Poems. Quote from Poetry Foundation. A Gerald Manly Hopkins poem.

Nondum (Latin: Not Yet)

God, though to Thee our psalm we raise
No answering voice comes from the skies;
To Thee the trembling sinner prays
But no forgiving voice replies;
Our prayer seems lost in desert ways,
Our hymn in the vast silence dies.

We see the glories of the earth
But not the hand that wrought them all:
Night to a myriad worlds gives birth,
Yet like a lighted empty hall
Where stands no host at door or hearth
Vacant creation’s lamps appall.

We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King,
With attributes we deem are meet;
Each in his own imagining
Sets up a shadow in Thy seat;
Yet know not how our gifts to bring,
Where seek Thee with unsandalled feet.

And still th’unbroken silence broods
While ages and while æons runs,
As erst upon chaotic floods
The Spirit hovered ere the sun
Had called the seasons’ changeful moods
And life’s first germs from death had won.

And still th’abysses infinite
Surround the peak from which we gaze.
Deep calls to deep, and blackest night
Giddies the soul with blinding daze
That dares to cast its searching sight
On being’s dread and vacant maze.

And Thou art silent, whilst Thy world
Contends about its many creeds
And hosts confront with flags unfurled
And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds
And truth is heard, with tears impearled,
A moaning voice among the reeds.

My hand upon my lips I lay;
The breast’s desponding sob I quell;
I move along life’ tomb-decked way
And listen to the passing bell
Summoning men from speechless day
To death’s more silent, darker spell.

Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond,
To shew Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
And lead me child-like by the hand
If still in darkness not in fear.

Speak! whisper to my watching heart
One word-as when a mother speaks
Soft, when she sees her infant start,
Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks.
Then, to behold Thee as Thou art,
I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks.

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Mar072023

The truth of sin

“Lord, great and awesome God,
you who keep your merciful covenant toward those who love you
and observe your commandments!
We have sinned, been wicked and done evil;
we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.
We have not obeyed your servants the prophets,
who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes,
our fathers, and all the people of the land.
Justice, O Lord, is on your side;
we are shamefaced even to this day:
we, the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem,
and all Israel, near and far,
in all the countries to which you have scattered them
because of their treachery toward you.
O LORD, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers,
for having sinned against you.
But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!
Yet we rebelled against you
and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God,
to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.”

Prophet Daniel

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