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Feb272021

Emotional immaturity inducing exaggerated love

The three obstacles: the world, the devil, and the flesh. The world is the least difficult enemy. The devil is the hardest to understand. The flesh is the most tenacious of all and its assaults continue for so long as the old man exists.

The lack of attachment, the lack of attaching our hearts to creatures, not loving in conformant to the will of God. False beliefs, false exercising of dangerous love. Dangerous love: love that binds the heart that is not according to the Will of God, disorderly, in an exaggerated manner, an inordinate affection for another person—emotional immaturity inducing oppressive feelings that stifle the giver and receiver—neither recognized as a child of God.

Degree of intensity. A special love for those nearest to God, while a paternal love for those who were in most need of it, because they were farthest away from God; a sincere practical love for all, a predilection for those closest to God, and a paternal solicitude for those in greatest need.

The obsession of a disorderly love, confinement, attachment,
A childhood reared upon possessing, bewildered, reacting,
Feet kicking, lashing out against the pricks, responding to the pain,
A child of God, knowing not love in imitation of God, thrashing about,
Perpetually cutting teeth, sensitive to the touch, aware and observing,
Emotional immaturity inducing impossible demands, delusion,
Lacking a foundation, the strength of rigid pragmatic exertion,
A dreamer romantically demented, collapsing over and over again,
Time a turntable, cyclically returning, while annually advancing,
Expanding outward, an identity vanishes within struggle and demand,
Toil and strife self-inflicted, bruises—blood spilled underneath the skin,
Something new emerges, infantile, a combination divine while self-created,
Hidden from the world, sheltered from a final storm, granted further time,
Eyes upward, heart wounded, mind open, trusting, hopeful, always learning.

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Feb262021

Trust: submission to the moment, the release of fear…

The present moment is the ambassador of God to declare His mandates. The heart listens and pronounces its “fiat.” Thus the soul advances by all these things and flows out from its centre to its goal. It never stops but sails with every wind. Any and every direction leads equally to the shore of infinity. Everything is a help to it, and is, without exception, an instrument of sanctity. The one thing necessary can always be found for it in the present moment. It is no longer a choice between prayer and silence, seclusion and society, reading and writing, meditation and cessation of thought, flight from and seeking after spiritual consolations, abundance and dearth, feebleness and health, life and death, but it is all that each moment presents by the will of God. In this is despoilment, abnegation, renunciation of all things created, either in reality or affectively, in order to retain nothing of self, or for self, to be in all things submissive to the will of God and to please Him; making it our sole satisfaction to sustain the present moment as though there were nothing else to hope for in the world.

If all that happens to a soul abandoned to God is all that is necessary for it, then we can understand that nothing can be wanting to it, and that it should never pity itself, for this would be a want of faith and living according to reason and the senses which are never satisfied, as they cannot perceive the sufficiency of grace possessed by the soul. To hallow the name of God, is according to the meaning of the holy Scripture, to recognize His sanctity in all things and to love and adore Him in them. Things, in fact, proceed from the mouth of God like words. That which God does at each moment is a divine thought expressed by a created thing, therefore all those things by which He intimates His will to us are so many names and words by which He makes known His wishes. His will is unity and has but one name, unknown, and ineffable; but it is infinitely diverse in its effects, which are, as it were, so many different characters which it assumes. To hallow the Name of God is to know, to adore, and to love the ineffable Being whom this name designates. It is also to know, to adore and to love His adorable will at every moment and in all its decrees, regarding them all as so many veils, shadows and names of this holy and everlasting will.

It is holy in all its works, holy in all its words, holy in all its diverse characters, holy in all the names it bears.

‘Abandonment to Divine Providence’ by Jean-Pierre de Caussade

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Feb252021

Recognizing attachments

Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of Divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. —St John of the Cross

St John of the Cross Adoring

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Feb222021

Absence makes a pure Heart grow fonder

In order to rear in the heart of the purest Virgin this edifice of holiness to a height beyond all that is not God, the Lord laid its foundations accordingly, trying the strength of her love and of all her other virtues. For this purpose the Lord withdrew Himself, causing Her to lose Him from her sight, which until then had caused Her to revel in continual joy and delight. I do not wish to say, that the Lord left Her bodily; but, still remaining with Her and in Her by an ineffable presence and grace, He hid Himself from her interior sight and suspended the tokens of his most sweet affection. The heavenly Lady in the meanwhile knew not the inward cause of this behavior, as the Lord gave Her no explanation. Moreover her divine Son, without any forewarning showed Himself very reserved and withdrew from her society. Many times He retired and spoke but few words to Her, and even these with great earnestness and majesty.

This unannounced and unexpected change was the crucible in which the purest gold of the love of our Queen was cleansed and assayed. Surprised at what was happening, She immediately took refuge in the humble opinion She had of Herself, deeming Herself unworthy of the vision of the Lord, who now had hidden Himself. She attributed it all to her want of correspondence and to her ingratitude for the blessings She had obtained from the most generous and exalted Father of mercies. The most prudent Queen did not feel so much the privation of his delightful caresses, as the dread of having displeased Him and of having fallen short in his service. This was the arrow that pierced Her heart with grief. One filled with such true and noble love could not feel less; for all delight of love is founded in the pleasure and satisfaction given by the lover to the one beloved, and therefore He cannot rest, when he suspects that the beloved is not contented or pleased. The loving sighs of his Mother were highly pleasing to her most holy Son. He was enamored with Her anew and the tender affection of his only and chosen One wounded his heart (Cant. 4, 9). But whenever the sweet Mother sought Him out in order to hold converse with Him He continued to show exterior reserve. Just as the flame of a forge or a conflagration is intensified by the application of insufficient water, so the flame of love in the heart of the sweetest Mother was fanned to an intenser blaze by this adversity.

“The Mystical City of God” by Venerable Mary of Agreda

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Feb012021

I am the key to my healing

We may say with St Thomas, that this craving of ours to be esteemed, respected and honored is an effect of original sin, like concupiscence which remains to us even after our baptism; but God has ordained that these appetites and desires should remain in us in order that we might have occasion of mortifying ourselves and by such means we might gain the kingdom of heaven.

We need not be astonished nor sad when we feel these instincts within us. They belong to the wickedness of our corrupt nature and are remnants of the temptation of our first parents by the serpent, when he said to them: And you shall be as gods. Therefore, I repeat that these desires which arise from the weakness and depravity of our human nature must be borne with patience. If these desires gain: the mastery over us, it is because we have encouraged and given way to them; and a bad habit which we have formed ourselves can only be cured by ourselves, and therefore the mortification of the same also lies with us.  —‘Humility of Heart’ by Gaetano (Cajetan) Maria da Bergamo

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Jan302021

Humility at the Center

Reading the pages of Giustiniani on annihilation, we are reminded of Saint John of the Cross, who describes the soul that is purified and ready for union with God in these terms: “In this detachment the spiritual soul finds its quiet and repose; for, since it covets nothing, nothing wearies it when it is lifted up, and nothing oppresses it when it is cast down, because it is in the center of its humility; but when it covets anything, at that very moment it becomes wearied.”

The whole purpose of the solitary life is to bring the soul into “the center of her humility” and to keep it there. The hermit does not pretend to have acquired any esoteric secret or any exalted technique by which he penetrates into the mystery of God. His only secret is the humility and poverty of Christ and the knowledge that God lifts up those who have fallen: Dominus erigit elisos. Without this humility, the contemplative can be a prey to “all the illusions.” For “the true servants of Christ love God with all their being, and do not love themselves at all. They keep themselves so perfectly under the guardianship of humility as to be known by God alone, but unknown to men.”  —Blessed Paul Giustiniani

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Jan302021

Deeper love of God

How many there are who believe they are spiritual and wish to enjoy bodily and spiritual rest in God, not for love of God but for love of themselves. They prefer their illusory consolations to works of obedience and fraternal charity. They dislike whatever deprives them of the rest they think they find in God, but which they really seek in themselves. Their whole concern is to find peace: not, it is true, in things inferior to themselves nor in themselves, but in God. Yet that peace is desired for love of themselves, not for God’s glory. On the contrary, souls that have attained perfect love no longer desire for themselves either virtues, or sensible devotion, or tears, or spiritual consolations, or ecstasies, or prophecies. If they have such gifts, they value them lightly; if they have them not, they do not seek them, for it suffices them to love God alone in God.

There are spiritual men who pass for saints and who rejoice in the progress of their order or their monastery. But so far as their neighbor goes, they are not exactly sad at his progress — for that would be a crime — but they rejoice less at it than at that which concerns themselves. If they will examine their attitude they will discover that they desire their progress or that of their monastery more than God’s glory: they do not love God in Himself.

The soul which rejoices in God and in Him alone is willing to do without any consolation. If it could love God a bit more on condition that it never feel any actual devotion, spiritual tranquillity, or sweetness, and be deprived of all hope of these gifts in this life or the next, it would accept this exchange. For it loves God no less when it feels no consolation, no actual devotion. These are gifts of God, and we love Him equally whether we feel them or are deprived of them. If, by hypothesis, we even had to lose God for His glory rather than lessening His glory by possessing Him, then the soul consumed with love would desire that by its damnation God received a bit more glory. —Blessed Paul Giustiniani

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