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Aug122022

The Living Flame of Love

O living flame of love
that tenderly wounds my soul
in its deepest center! Since
now you are not oppressive,
now consummate! if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!

O sweet cautery,
O delightful wound!
O gentle hand! O delicate touch
that tastes of eternal life
and pays every debt!
In killing you changed death to life.

O lamps of fire!
in whose splendors
the deep caverns of feeling,
once obscure and blind,
now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,
both warmth and light to their Beloved.

How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart,
where in secret you dwell alone;
and in your sweet breathing,
filled with good and glory,
how tenderly you swell my heart with love.

St John of the Cross

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Aug112022

St Teresa of Avila passing

He (St John of the Cross) arrived one night, and our mother (St Teresa of Avila) died on the morrow. It was as though she had been waiting for her beloved son. Over her last days she barely had the strength to fetch her breath. No sooner did she set eyes on him however, than the tension in her features ebbed away and her visage filled with joy. She could not say more than a few words. But what she did say before she breathed her last meant all the world to us. What Fray Juan said to her was also of great beauty. My wife and I, and one or two neighbors who were with us to help her in her hour of death, were all enraptured. When she died, we all fell to weeping with grief. Yet Fray Juan stood very still by her side. And when I looked into his eyes I saw they were dry.

“Why do you not weep, brother?”‘ I said through my tears. “Would it not comfort your soul?

“Why would I weep when I have just seen her going up to Heaven?” he replied.

He was very sure of this. Indeed, the only reason he allowed us to hold a funeral was so as not to give rise to idle talk, for she had no need of one. I was struck by the vision of which he had spoken. And I could not help asking him what Heaven was like.

To this he did not reply, either then or subsequently. He did speak about hell, but of Heaven he would not speak. It was the same with La Madre, who once had a terrifying vision of hell. But of Heaven she would say nothing…..

As I say, neither La Madre nor my brother presumed to speak of Heaven, it being a thing so ineffable that they could find no words for it. And it is said that something of the kind befell Saint Thomas Aquinas. After a lifetime attempting to explain God, he had a vision of God that rendered him so speechless that all he could say about his great work was that it was straw.

Fire of Love: A Historical Novel about Saint John of the Cross by Jose Luis Olaizola

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Aug112022

Christ’s words to a friend being formed into a lover

Follow your own road without fearing you’ll lose me. You will find me when you return, even if you’re a thousand years late.

Since your weak and you let life push you around, go wherever it pulls you. Why struggle if you’ll only struggle in vain.

I will be strong for you. I will build a mountain with your failures and sit atop the peak waiting for you.

Don’t worry. The night won’t frighten me and the cold won’t drive me away. There is no winter as cold as my winter, no night as deep as my night. I myself freeze the wind. I myself darken the sky.

Follow your road. While I wait for you. I will be immovable. Like a boulder. Or better yet. Like a tree (cross) clutching the earth with a savage fury.

‘Absolute Solitude’ Dulce Maria Loynaz

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Aug102022

Aftermath of an escape

The chirurgeon (surgeon), who, although a morisco [Moorish convert], was an illustrious physician, confided to me that my charge (St John of the Cross) was at death’s door and had been so for some time. Grievous harm had been done to him. When I told the Venerable Fray Juan (St John of the Cross) of this, he replied that those who have yet to fulfill their obligations to Our Lord Jesus Christ do not die. And he said he still had some work to do before going to meet his Maker. Nor did he die then, though there were times when I thought he was on the point of doing so. The dried sardines he had been fed on in prison had rotted his stomach and made him bilious. There were times when he could not even keep down milk, only some stewed pears that were sent from the convent. Yet despite his infirmity, he was never too sick or too tired to pick up his pen and work on some verses he had written in prison, going over them again and again until he was satisfied. Of these I can recall “The Spiritual Canticle” and “The Dark Night”, which I would often read in the evening to the mutual benefit of our souls. If there is anything on which I can fault him it is in this, that now and then, he stood a little in want of modesty as to his skill as a poet. But he would presently become sensible of it and repent, on occasion to excess. Once he went so far as to fear that it was all vain and foolish nonsense and told me he had a good mind to tear it up. I replied that if he did, I would give him up to the Calced so that they might teach him humility and truthfulness. He obeyed me. Nor could he have done otherwise, for during that time I was his confessor, there being no other. And without breaching the confidentiality of the confessional, I can divulge that no monastery ever surpassed the devotion that reigned in my house during those months. Besides the coachmen and grooms, my household consisted of a pair of maidservants, a doorkeeper and her niece, and another two or three servants. Some of them knew who my guest was. Others did not. But none of them would have denounced him-not out of respect for me, but because of the devotion he inspired in them. We celebrated Mass in a small oratory in the west wing. And when it fell to Fray Juan to officiate, my servants would quarrel about whose turn it was to attend, whereas if I was the celebrant, I had to remind them that it was Sunday or a feast day. He confided to me that during his imprisonment he had felt the deprivation of the Eucharist more keenly than that of food and that the Consecration was now attended by many special favors from the Lord. On one occasion, as he raised the Host, we saw him rise a little way off the ground. But he denied this, saying that we had imagined it and that on no account were we to speak of it.

When he heard that the troubled waters between the Calced and the Discalced were calm once more, he told me it was time to go. He set off for Almodóbar, where a chapter had been convoked for the month of October of the same year, 1578. I did my best to persuade him to stay, his health as yet being only slightly improved. He replied that his only reason for doing something as unseemly as to escape from prison by sliding down a rope had been so that he might play his part in the Reform of the Order. In view of this, he could not in good conscience pass up such an opportunity. I felt his departure keenly. And, but for my advanced years and the attractions of a life of ease, to which I had become too accustomed, I would have followed him.

Fire of Love: A Historical Novel about Saint John of the Cross by Jose Luis Olaizola

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Aug092022

Diary of a Country Priest conversation

‘And when you do,’ I said, ‘you’ll discover God. Uh, no doubt I’m putting it very clumsily. And besides, you’re no more than a child. But at least I can tell you this: you are setting off with your back turned on the world, for the world does not stand for revolt, but for submission, submission to lies, first and foremost. Go ahead for all you’re worth, the walls are bound to fall in the end, and every breach shows a patch of sky.’

‘Are you saying all this for the sake of talking-or are you-‘

‘It is true the meek shall inherit the earth. And your sort won’t try and get it from them, because they wouldn’t know what to do with it. Snatchers can only snatch at heaven.’

She was blushing deeply, and shrugged her shoulders.

‘You make me feel I could say anything. . . . I’d like to insult you. I won’t be disposed of against my will. I’ll go to hell all right, if I want to.’

‘I’ll answer for your soul with mine,’ I said impulsively.

She washed her hands under the kitchen tap, without so much as looking round. Then she quietly put on her hat, which she had taken off when she started working. She came slowly back to me. If I did not know her face so well, I might have said it looked tranquil, but the corners of her mouth trembled a little.

‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ she said, ‘if you’re what I think you are.’

‘The point is I am not what you think I am. You see yourself in me, as you might in a mirror, and your fate as well.’

‘When you talked to mother I was hiding under the window. And suddenly her face became so-so gentle. I hated you then. I don’t believe much in miracles, not any more than I do in ghosts, but I did think I knew my mother. She cared no more about pretty speeches than a fish for an apple. Have you a secret, yes or no?’

‘It’s a lost secret,’ I replied. ‘You’ll rediscover it, and lose it again, and others after you will pass it on, since your kind will last as long as the world.’

‘My kind? Whatever do you mean?’

‘Those whom God sends on and on forever, who will never rest while the world remains.’

George Bernanos

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Aug082022

Purposeful Silence

Keeping silent is not a spontaneous or natural attitude. It demands a decision and a purpose. To enter into silence, we must want it, and we must know why we want it. If we intend to become men of silence, we must assume responsibility for our quest.

First of all, we have the responsibility to observe silence towards others. “Love for our brothers should show itself firstly in respect for their solitude” (St 4.4) Each and every one of us is entrusted with the exterior and even interior silence of those he associates with. Silence is rarely a purely personal affair. Our role towards our brothers is firstly concerned with exterior silence; whether the places where we are help recollection or induce dissipation depends on a careful attitude on our part that radiates a genuine concern for peace and silence.” The places where they work, like those where they live, should be so arranged as to be conducive to interior recollection… it should be quite apparent that they are a home where God dwells and not mere secular buildings. ” We can make a difference also by the number of words we utter, and first of all the quality of these words, so that these words coming from us contribute to recollection and not to dissipation. “if, by chance, we come to know something of events in the world, we must be careful not to pass it on to others; news of the world should rather be left where it is heard.” (St 6.7)……..

We speak of entering into silence, but what is the silence of the contemplative made up of? Is it like a stone falling in a big gaping hole? It is possible that we may confuse true prayerful silence with this kind of event of the material world. In reality silence is “a tranquil listening of the heart that allows God to enter through all its doors and passages.” (Cf. St 4.2). Silence is a kind of listening : not a feverish waiting for some word that would come and knock on our ear or fill our heart, but a peaceful waiting, in a state of availability for the One who is present and who works in our most intimate selves. This is why it is said that our solitude “is holy ground, a place where, as a man with his friend, the Lord and his servant often speak together; there is the faithful soul frequently united with the Word of God; there is the bride made one with her spouse; there is earth joined to heaven, the divine to the human” (St 4.1). Silence associates the absence of words, on the lips and in the heart, to a living dialogue with the Lord. We do not need to explain this at length. We simply need to turn to Saint Bruno who noted: “only those who have experienced it can know…” And “God has led us into solitude to speak to our heart.” (St 4.11). Here is what silence truly is: to let the Lord utter within us a word which is equal to Himself. It reaches us, we don’t know which way it followed, we cannot discern its traits with any precision, the very Word of God comes and resonates in our heart.

Charterhouse of the Transfiguration

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