Looking in the mirror and seeing Christ

“Now knowledge of self must be seasoned with knowledge of Me (God), lest it bring the soul to confusion. For self-knowledge would cause the soul to hate its own sensitive pleasure and the delight of its own consolations. But from this hatred, founded in humility, it will draw patience. With patience it will become strong against the attacks of the devil, against the persecutions of man, and towards me, when, for its good, I withdraw delight from its mind. –Catherine of Siena ‘Little Talks With God’

I admire the distinguishing of the two levels of self-knowledge detailed in ‘The Book of Privy Counseling’. The utilitarian salvific level is the recognition of one’s sinful nature. I am a creature drawn toward pleasures and tendencies that will destroy eternally. Original sin is a fact of my birth. Compounding original sin is my upbringing in a world immersed within sin and worldly delights. Many things I want and desire I must reject. My thoughts must be kept holy, disciplined and focused through the sacraments, prayer, and the living of a healthy joyful life. Grace builds upon nature. I must seek that which is good for the devil is a roaring lion seeking to devour souls. Daily, moment by moment, a conscious effort must be made through the awareness of my sinful nature to live a holy life. I know and accept my limitations. I am at peace with my imperfections and weaknesses. Delusion, imagination, fantasies, false aspirations are acknowledged as childish, a lesser way. I live in a world of Christian reality. Yet the contemplative level of self-knowledge magnifies the awareness of myself, transcends myself, when my heart and being goes out to the Lord in silence and stillness. Strengthening myself daily through Eucharistic adoration, simply being with Christ, asking him day to day who are You? And who am I?–As Pope Francis says when I allow the gaze of Christ to rest upon me daily, a greater self-knowledge is nurtured. My self-knowledge is now founded NOT upon my frailties, misdeeds, and failures. It is not founded upon reason and rationalizing. Mentally and vocally, I do not identify myself as nothing more than a sinner, or an alcoholic. That is the yearning of Satan. The passionate evil one relishes in sin to the highest and most destructive degree. Satan lustfully desires that I become so absorbed in sin, so miserable in self-hate, that all I can focus upon is myself. The Divine Mercy of God is the ultimate disgust and affront to the hater of man. The compassionate tender heart of Jesus to sacrifice himself for man is beyond Satan’s reality. Advancing upon the contemplative path, my self-knowledge humbly builds upon the magnificence of a loving and merciful God, an unknowable omnipotent creator effusing a love so intense I can only quiet and glorify with, through, and in His mercy and love. In the process, as St Francis de Sales so strongly urges, I develop the virtue of patience–patience with myself, learning to love and accept myself I am not a mistake. God loves me.

Aug202015

Detachment from self on into passive activity

If we keep the vanity of all things constantly in our thoughts, we will be able to withdraw our affections from trivial things and fix them on eternal things….We must be very careful, for as soon as we begin to grow fond of small things we must withdraw our thoughts from them and turn our thoughts to God….we must become detached from ourselves. It is difficult to withdraw from ourselves and oppose ourselves, because we are very close to ourselves and love ourselves very dearly.

This is where true humility can enter. True humility and detachment from self always go together. You must embrace them, love them, and never be seen without them. –Teresa of Avila ‘The Way of Perfection’

Although I have encouraged you to set out in the contemplative way with simplicity and boldness, nevertheless I am certain, without doubt or fear of error, that Almighty God himself, independently of all techniques, must always be the chief worker in contemplation. It is he who must awaken this gift in you by His grace. And what you must do is make yourselves completely receptive, consenting, and suffering His divine action in the depths of your spirit. Yet the passive consent and endurance you bring to this work is really a distinctively active attitude; for by the singleness of your desire ever reaching up to your Lord, you continually open yourself to His action. –‘The Book of Privy Counseling’

This beautiful artwork by J. Tissot presents the Virgin Mary prayerfully kneeling on Mt. Calvary. She casts her eyes downward to the hole that held the Cross her Son died upon. She embodies the forsaking of self, allowing the ascendancy of God within one’s life

Aug132015

Detachment, fine tuning focus

It is certainly permitted and even expedient for beginners to find sweetness and pleasure in images, oratories, and other visible objects of devotion, since they have not yet weaned their desire from things of the world, so that they can leave one pleasure for the other. They are like a child holding something in one of its hands; to make it loosen its hold on it we give it something else to hold in the other hand in case it should cry because both hands are empty.

But the spiritual person who would make progress must rid himself of all the pleasures and desires in which the will can rejoice. Pure spirituality is bound little to any of those objects, but only to interior recollection and mental conversation with God. Although he makes use of images and oratories, he does so only fleetingly; his spirit at once comes to rest in God and he forgets all things of the senses. –St John of the Cross ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ presented by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

St John of the Cross Adoring

Aug072015

Friday Adoration

Maturity on a grand scale tonight, an evening of piercing adoration. I returned to St Andrews Benedictine Abbey for a Friday evening weekly Eucharistic exposition. It is a must from here on out when my schedule allows. It appears I will be working first shift on Fridays so all glory goes to God. A brother invited me to the adoration when I toured the abbey as a part of the diocese’s superb concentration upon the consecrated life a month or so back. The experience was much more than anticipated. Adoration starts at seven with the entire community gathered. I missed the opening prayers, although I was summoned into the presence of the silent community, seating myself alone amongst the empty congregational chairs. I thought it would be a public service. I was alone seated. The intimacy of the moment humbled, making me feel small. Before taking my seat, I knelt before the Eucharist, head bowed, hands held forward in praise, the community and a handful of discerning younger men holding silence. A cough and unseen yet heard movement, moved me into my chair, Rosary beads wrapped around my hand, no Rosary was prayed, awed silence my offering. There is something pungently tangible amidst a religious community in silent prayer before the Eucharist–a presence to behold. St Andrew’s community is something special. The communal Holy Hour ended with an uplifting song of praise, Salve Regina sung as the religious men rose from the choir stalls standing together in harmony with words of wonder for Our Blessed Holy Mother—exactly as we ended our evening Holy Hour at the friary. Underneath everything was the awareness of a Benedictine community in North Dakota. After the community and their discerning guest dispersed, a single brother (possibly a Father) remained. I lingered, now praying a silent Rosary, sitting content with an unknown, barely visible, brother for the hour.

Driving to evening mass, I had time to kill so I decided to explore Dodd’s Camera downtown. I have been intending to buy a camera, and a recent email greatly stirred my interest. The store proved excellent in adventure. A saleswoman edified, while displaying various purchasing options, showing me the exact Nikon DSLR 3300 series my email offered. The staff at the store are friendly and fun, intelligent and approachable. As she educated me, a younger man walked by mentioning there is a pristine used one still in the box she should show me. I would leave with the camera, a 55-200 mm lens, and an amazing used bag all for just over four hundred dollars. I also left with a hunger for an amazing zoom lens, a Tamron B016, 16-300 mm. The speed of the focus while zooming in and out is stunning. It is a must, yet that lens alone cost over six hundred dollars. A tripod is also a must, although I felt Dodd’s were high in price, hovering around two hundred dollars. I am confident I can find an excellent quality tripod online in the hundred dollar range.

Photographic goals ground within the contemplative. I want my own images to become an expression of my interior life and my exploration of the world. My cellphone presents an image from St Andrew Abbey. I admire the presence of circles, perfection symbolized amidst the holy setting.

A minimalist Benedictine house of worship, choir stalls a plenty.

Aug062015

Prayer expansion to the passive

…the soul at this point now has both the substance and the habit of the spirit of meditation. The goal of reasoning and meditation on the things of God is gaining some knowledge and love of God. Each time that the soul gains this through meditation, there is an action. And just as many actions, of whatever kind, end by forming a habit in the soul, many of these actions of loving knowledge that the soul has been making one after another from time to time come through repetition to be so continuous in it that they become habitual.

God wants souls to achieve this end without the intervention of actions by setting them at once in contemplation. So what previously the soul was gaining gradually through its labor of meditation on particular facts has now through practice changed into a habit of loving knowledge, of a general kind, and not distinct as before.

Therefore, when the soul gives itself to prayer it is now like one to whom water has been brought, so that he drinks peacefully, without labor, and is no longer forced to draw the water through the aqueducts of past meditations and forms and figures. Then, as soon as the soul comes before God, it makes an act of knowledge, loving, passive, and tranquil, in which it drinks of wisdom and love and delight. –St John of the Cross ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ presented by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Aug052015

A return to the Ascent

Natural knowledge in the memory consists in all the kinds of knowledge that the memory can form concerning the objects of the physical senses—hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. The soul must empty itself of all these forms of knowledge and strive to lose their imaginary achievements, so that there may be left in it no impression of knowledge or the trace of anything at all. Rather, the soul must remain barren, as if those forms had never passed through it, and in total forgetfulness and suspension.

This cannot happen unless the memory is reduced to nothing in all its forms in order to be united with God. It cannot happen except by a total separation from everything that is not God. God does not come under any definite form or kind of knowledge in dealing with the night of the understanding. Christ says: No one can serve two masters. So the memory cannot be united both with God and with knowledge. Since God has no form or image that can be comprehended by the memory, then when the memory is united with God it remains without form. Divine union empties its imagination, sweeps it clean of all forms of knowledge, and raises it to the supernatural.

…..

The operations of the soul in divine union are from the Holy Spirit; the actions of such souls are only those that are seemly and reasonable. God’s Spirit teaches them what they ought to know and causes them to be ignorant of what they ought not to know, to remember what they have to remember, and to forget what they should forget. It makes them love what they have to love, and not to love what does not pertain to God…. This spiritual person needs habitually to practice caution: Everything that he hears, sees, smells, tastes, or touches, he must be careful not to store up or collect in his memory, but he must allow himself to forget them immediately.

…..

The first evil (through memory) and, which comes from the world, consists in the souls subjection, through knowledge and reflection, too many kinds of harm, such as falsehoods, imperfections, desires, opinions, loss of time, and many other things that breed impurity in the soul…..The soul is free from all these things if the memory enters into darkness with respect to every kind of reflection and knowledge.

Imperfections meet the soul at every stop if it sets the memory on what it has heard, seen, touched, smelled, and tasted. If it does, some sort of feeling has to cling to it, whether pain, fear, hatred, vain hope, or vain enjoyment…..Many occasions of judging others will also come, since in using its memory, the soul cannot fail to discover the good and the bad in others….. There is no one who can completely free himself from all these kinds of evil, except by blinding the memory and leading it into darkness with regard to all these things.

Let the soul, then, remain “enclosed,” without anxieties and troubles; and the One who entered in physical form to his disciples when the doors were shut and gave them peace, though they neither thought that this was possible nor knew how it was possible, will venture spiritually into the soul without its knowing how he does so, when the doors of its faculties—memory, understanding, and will—are enclosed against all things. He will fill them with peace coming down on the soul, as the prophet says, like a river, taking it from all the misgivings, suspicions, disturbances, and darkness that caused it to fear that it was lost or was or was on the way to being so. Let it not grow careless about prayer, and let it wait in detachment from the world and in emptiness, for its blessings will not be long in coming.

–St John of the Cross ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ presented by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

St John of the Cross Adoring

Jul292015

Divine Will

The mind a creature is, yet can create,
To nature’s patterns adding higher skill ;
Of finest works with better could the state
If force of wit had equal power of will.
Device of man in working hath no end,
What thought can think, another thought can mend.
–St Robert Southwell

Made in the image and likeness of God, man has the ability to create, to enhance the wonders of creation. Man can create beauty. In my story clip introducing the scriptural Bleeding Woman, Naomi is given a small home. The home represents her life, disordered, disheveled, and in the process of decay. Possessing the ability to create, undergoing a process of purgation, she brings her gifted home to a state of beauty. The home attains utilitarian and ascetic appeal. Relishing within her accomplishment, Naomi observes the sea. Ruminating upon the words of her friend regarding the new teacher and healer, a process of illumination is experienced, a voice internalizing. She is being prepared to meet Christ, to touch the hem of His garment amidst the thronging masses.

Within man’s ability to create exist the birth of evil. Relying upon free will man introduces perversion. Perversion being that which is not aligned with God, a wandering away from all that is good, the exercising of free will. Pope Francis writes in his encyclical Laudato Si’: “Once we lose our humility, and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment. It is not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude God from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong.”

The subtleties of losing the ability to discern God’s Will is truly the challenge. A nonbeliever confronts nearly impossible chances of creating consequences that in totality will bring about goodness. An extreme example would be Marx or Hitler, who in their hearts were convinced their ways were for the good of the world, yet in truth their diabolic scheming introduced horrendous consequences, intense suffering, acute miseries. On a smaller more intimate level, the deviations of being unable to coalesce with Divine Intent, an inability to comprehend who we truly are, we hurt each other. Within families, blood relationships of love, we hurt and wound one another. Children are devastatingly damaged by their parents. Parents, loving their children immensely, inflict severe psychological damage. In friendships based upon faith, we hurt and wound one another. In attempts at romantic relationships, we hurt and wound one another. In community activities, we hurt and wound one another. I cannot identify the fact as evil, while recognizing the consequences as distressing. Imperfect beings, broken, needing, trying to bring happiness about, self-protecting and fearful, we operate through that which is easiest and that is our schemes and manipulations. I think of a drowning man within a rough and tossing sea attempting to grasp a life preserver. Anymore for me, it seems all the saints writings end up focusing upon unifying with the Will of God, learning to interact with the world through the love of God.

Creation feeding upon an enhancement of man

Catholic Contemplative Life

A journey of recovery within Christ and His Church

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