Gaze of Jesus

A session with Dr. Nichta today. Going in, I felt there was nothing of consequence to discuss. After what seemed like a couple breathes and a flood of words, the fifty minutes concluded. The overall message established: I am being moved into a new realm of maturity. Afterwards sitting in front of the Eucharist at St Paschal Baylon, a woman, Shirley, approached me asking if I would repose the Eucharist at nine. The person signed up to come in at eight texted her, informing her they could not make it. I was honored, truly humbled and touched. Shirley showed me the routine, proper placement within the Tabernacle, providing keys, showing me around the sacristy, how to extinguish candles and turn off lights. Once, she left me alone with the Eucharist tears burst forth, my heart beating with joy, adoration, and a sense of wonder. I feel God is trying to tell me something, yet I am not quite sure regarding details. Sitting for the final hour, I pleaded, praying, begging for understanding. To be made aware how He wanted me to serve Him. Abstinence and sobriety I am proud to offer, yet there is so much more I feel I have to give. I was not sure about time since I did not bring my telephone into the church, however bells at the half hour made me confident there would be hourly bells. Sure enough, a wonderful sounding occurred, before nine distinct individual tones announced the arrival of 9:00 PM. Reposing, positioning myself behind the monstrance and altar, kneeling, looking up at the Eucharist, I just felt an overwhelming love to serve. It was a marvelous way to end a day.

Driving home, listening to Pope Francis expound upon Mercy, a prayer concept was presented: the gaze of Jesus, allowing Jesus to look upon us:

“I found three different manners of Jesus’ gaze upon Peter”.

The first is found at the beginning of the Gospel according to John, when Andrew goes to his brother Peter and says to him: “We have found the Messiah”. And “he brings him to Jesus”, who “fixes his gaze on him and says: ‘You are Simon, son of John. You shall be called Peter”. This is “the first gaze, the gaze of the mission” which will be explained “further ahead in Caesarea Philippi”. There, Jesus says: “‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church’: this will be your mission”.

…in the meantime, Peter has become an enthusiast of Jesus: he follows Jesus…Gospel of John, chapter 6, Jesus speaks of eating his body and so many disciples say at that moment: ‘This is hard, this word is difficult’”. Thus, “they begin to withdraw”. Jesus then “looks at the disciples and says: ‘Do you want to leave too?’”. And it is “Peter who responds: ‘No! Where would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life!’”. This is “the enthusiasm of Peter”. This is the first gaze: the vocation and the first declaration of the mission”. And, “how is Peter’s spirit under that first gaze? Enthusiastic”.

The second gaze we find late at night on Holy Thursday, when Peter wants to follow Jesus and approaches where He is, in the house of the priest, in prison, but he is recognized: “‘No, I don’t know him!’”. He denies Him “three times”. Then “he hears the cock crow and remembers: he denied the Lord. He lost everything. He lost his love”. Precisely “in that moment, Jesus is led to another room, across the courtyard, and fixes his gaze on Peter”. The Gospel of Luke recounts that “Peter cried bitterly”. Thus, “that enthusiasm to follow Jesus has become remorse, for he has sinned, he has denied Jesus”. However, “that gaze transforms Peter’s heart, more than before”. Thus “the first transformation is the change of name and of vocation. Instead “the second gaze is a gaze that changes the heart and is a change of conversion to love”.

“We don’t know what the gaze (third) was like in that encounter, alone, after the Resurrection. We know that Jesus encountered Peter, the Gospel says, but we don’t know what they said. The third gaze is the confirmation of the mission; but also the gaze in which Jesus asks for confirmation of Peter’s love. Indeed Jesus ask three times—three times. Peter denied Him three times; and now the Lord for the third time asks him to show his love. Each time when Peter says yes, that he loves Him, he loves Him, He gives him the mission: ‘Feed my lambs, tend my sheep’”. Moreover, at the third question — “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” — Peter “was grieved, nearly weeping”. He was sorry because “for the third time” the Lord “asked him, ‘Do you love me?’”. And he answered Him: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you”. And Jesus replied: “Feed my sheep”. This is “the third gaze: the gaze of the mission”.

Three gazes of Jesus upon Peter. The first is the gaze of the choice, with the enthusiasm to follow Jesus. The second is the gaze of remorse at the moment of that sin so great of having denied Jesus. The third gaze is the gaze of mission: ‘Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep”. It doesn’t end there: ‘you did this for love and then? Will you receive a crown? No. I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go”

Rembrandt and the face of Jesus

Lesson on St Paschal Baylon from Catholic online:

Franciscan lay brother and mystic. Born to a peasant family at Torre Hermosa, in Aragon, Spain on Whitsunday, he was christened Pascua in honor of the feast. According to accounts of his early life, Paschal labored as a shepherd for his father, performed miracles, and was distinguished for his austerity. He also taught himself to read. Receiving a vision which told him to enter a nearby Franciscan community, he became a Franciscan lay brother of the Alcantrine reform in 1564, and spent most of his life as a humble doorkeeper. He practiced rigorous asceticism and displayed a deep love for the Blessed Sacrament, so much so that while on a mission to France, he defended the doctrine of the Real Presence against a Calvinist preacher and in the face of threats from other irate Calvinists. Paschal died at a friary in Villareal, and was canonized in 1690. In 1897 Pope Leo XIII declared him patron of all eucharistic confratemities and congresses.

Jun252015

Spiritual Direction

We read in the Chronicles of St Francis, that a secular asked a good religious, why St John Baptist, having been sanctified in his mother’s womb, should retire to the desert, and lead there such a penitential life as he did. The good religious answered him, by first asking this question: pray why do we throw salt upon meat that is fresh and good? To keep it the better, and to hinder it from corruption, replied the other. The very same answer I give you, says the religious, concerning the Baptist; he made use of penance as of salt, to preserve his sanctity from the least corruption of sin as holy Church sings of him, “that purity of his life might not be tarnished with the least breath.” Now, if in time of peace, and when we have no temptation to fight against, it is very useful to exercise our bodies by penance and mortification, with how much more reason ought we do so in time of war, when encompassed with enemies on all side? St Thomas, following Aristotle’s opinion, says that the word chastity is derived from “chastise,” inasmuch as by chastising the body we subdue the vice opposite to chastity; and also adds, that the vices of the flesh are like children, who must be whipped into their duty, since they cannot be led to it by reason. –St Alphonsus Rodriguez ‘The Practice of Christian and Religious Perfection’.

Chastise: 1. To discipline, especially by corporal punishment. 2. To criticize severely. 3. Archaic to restrain; chasten. 4. Archaic. To refine; purify.

St Alphonsus Rodriguez writes guidance for the religious, yet I find his harsh, demanding perspective practical in contemplative pursuits as a layperson, while also touching upon a consideration into living a fully consecrated life. We are either fully in, or we are out. No dabbling. This is not a game of casualness, times of allowing explorations into the secular and nonreligious without salting ourselves. If we are not fully in, we must respect those fully in. Consideration and kindness are deeper than being casual and brash. Defenses must be up, ramparts in place, when journeying through life. I am reading a novel, ‘All We Know of Heaven” by Remy Rougeau, a Canadian Benedictine monk writing about a nineteen year old entering a Cistercian monastery. The novel captures me with its concise matter-of-fact, drab delivery; a boringness to the entire endeavor that pleases. Brutally honest realism, I suppose, with respect to Thomas Merton’s ‘Seven Story Mountain’. Poignantly ironic, I find the work of fiction realistic, and the biography delusional. In the novel there is not an underlying need for the author to establish himself as a recognized intellectual, an academic authority, a pop culture religious/literary celebrity. This is simply a monk telling a simple story. There is no great exploration of larger than life ideals, no religious history, nor romanticizing through flowery language, no desiring to expose the mystical and supernatural (a criticism I should consider reflectively), no tendency toward psychological self-absorbing introspections, no exposing of one’s inner-most being, no long sentences—saying so many things in a quick spewing. It is a simple realistic view into the occurrences within the life of a young man entering a Canadian Trappist monastery. Ordinary, yet set apart, an original thing in the world. Things can be defined by what they are not. “He walked into the house (his parent’s home after a week at the monastery) and felt as though he had returned from a foreign country; the television seemed a very odd contraption.”

No time, and thoughts are not coming out. I was aiming for the idea that God did not sacrifice His Son over two thousand years ago, and aside from the Church, basically disappear from the ways of man accidently. A God of order, there is a divine plan in place. It is difficult, demanding penance, mortification, and dedication, obviously trust and confidence, as well as obedience and surrender, the following of the ways of the Church if serious depth is to be achieved. Within and through the ordinary, the boring and mundane, we come into actualization, yet the process is difficult, the ways of the saints rigorous, brutal, and nearly impossible in regards to application. Divine assistance please subtly abide. The extraordinary existing within the ordinary takes a fine process of revealing; romantic traps, emotional enticements, egotistical needs, the desire for intellectual gratification, artistic expression, boredom, and the flesh are always posed for a gradual or immediate devouring. Not sure I am pleased with this entry, struggling personally with respect to perfection and longing for Ann–some days are difficult, yet never will I fully concede defeat, for as St Liguori teaches, the greatest defeat is to lose hope. My friend with the Catholic bookstore has a sign above her front door, above a holy water dispenser, ‘All yee who enter, abandon despair’. Always through faith, hope, charity and GRADUALNESS within fortitude, perseverance, and understanding–‘gratefulness for progress achieved’ maintained as a driving force, I move forward. To dabble or sit casually still is to die. The sitting still must be done with precise purpose, adorably and prayerfully in the presence of the Eucharist. Dentist appointment this morning, natural world calls, salting performed.

Jun182015

The same prayer song twice

Let’s repeat words regarding prayer from St Jane Francis de Chantal, musing, applying to others as well: …full of faith that He is more in us than we are in ourselves… Is that saying if we quiet–soothing and healing emotional and psychological disturbances and complexities associated with identity, and remain in a state of grace, we will reveal God within prayer? I am one confident I need the sheltering of the Eucharist when making myself so vulnerable. I remember Franciscan Holy Hours, evenings especially for there were two, being blessed with extreme immersion in the sanctity of the Franciscan chapel. Absorption, losing one’s self, sensing Father David Mary seated above, a seemingly soaring, roaring eagle protecting. May we always remain under the mantle of the Queen of Heaven and the Church, abiding, obedient to priest and religious, calling upon the saints and angels, especially the defender St Michael. Let us not wander aimlessly where angels fear to tread. I advance never without the presence of the Eucharist.

Sacrifice of the Eucharist

Jun112015

Discernment

Discerning, slipping slowly into the ethereal, while my feet trudge drudgingly though the mud, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration waft through, with, and in sound, and vision, and yet something more. I am watching, waiting, praying, understanding there is no place else I would rather be, right now. The sisters have elevated their spiritual life to no compromise, beyond words, opinions and identity. There is a reason I have become focused upon them. Open minded, moving away from judgment, I take note of how they are doing day after day. What people think means nothing in the longevity of time and the continuing of days. Immediate community companionship, a threat, it still allows the opportunity for exercising love, while St Teresa of Avila and others exist to suppress and instruct. Everything centered in prayer. Life is truly religious. I watch, ruminating. Thy will be done. A life to be lived, yet like the single life, it is a dangerous life, even more, dangerous because it is more difficult. Marriage excites, properly holding to Tobaih and Sarah, to embrace the eternal with another, the reduction of immaturity and imperfections just really does not seem possible. Damage accumulates and surmounts within those faltering within broken single lives, children in the spiritual life, playing through selfishness, religion just a means of entertainment and the claiming of a superior identity. Patience and prayer, a struggle with my interior conflicts with my vicious inclinations and the performance of acts of the contrary virtues. To run away to the cloistered contemplative life improperly is a grave mistake. It will crush, induce insanity; sloth becoming a sin patiently, aggressively inducing a horrible death. Witnessing, there is a Trappist monastery, identity left alone, in which failure has become a way of life. God instructs through example. The vocational director, a friend I have not contacted in years, blunders deeper and deeper into insanity. My love for him is tremendous. My heartbreaks every time I speak to him. The communication becomes absurd at times. Matter of fact, I see him so clearly, the monastery will be a destination this weekend, the Ozarks always a sensation to encounter. A weekend retreat appears, becomes a reality, with the thought of ascending descending into the morning. Clearly, the need for reflection and peace manifests itself. God is good, giving, and instructing. The Trappist lifestyle lived to a struggling state of stagnation will be shared.

Ah, My child, aren’t you convinced yet that you can only take as much light, grace, variety and virtue as you know about? Of course there have been saints who have always done My Will, but they have taken from My Will only as much as they knew about. They knew that doing My Will was the greatest deed, the one that honored Me the most and which won sanctification. They acted with this intention and this they took, because there is no sanctity without My Will and no goodness or sanctity, great or small, can exist without It.

This Mary statue is from the Trappist home. It captures my fancy through the neglect shown to it. There are no Rosaries being prayed for Our Beloved Mother. The absence of prayer is tangible, knowing the situation I see it in the photo. Whenever I observe the photo, the thought is forefront of Our Holy Mother being neglected. I was with my familial mother this weekend, spending time at my father’s gravemarker with my mother and my son, sounding Hail Marys and a prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The cemetery is holy, a place of prayer; peace and quiet warmly extended, a pond center, the presence of water present. My mother spoke excitedly to us about plans to install a sitting bench in front of my father’s gravemarker. It will be her seat for praying the Rosary. Places of prayer attain a presence easily to immerse ourselves within. St Paul’s Shrine is such a divine connecting space. Our Lady of Sorrows does not possess such warmth in this statue. Still, she radiates and calls forth.

Mary Assumption

Father,
I honor the Sacred Heart Of Your Son,
Brutalized by the corruption of my deeds,
Yet symbol of the triumph of love,
Pledge to all that I am called to be,
Teach me to see Christ in all the lives that I touch,
Allow my life to be a living worship to you My Lord
through love-filled service to my brothers and sisters,
Through the Sacred Heart of Jesus wash me from my iniquities,
Cleanse my heart,
so I can love greater,
Amen

Hidden Abode, an Ozark alcove.

Jun052015

Psychological evaluation leading to contemplative fervor

Dr. Nichta visit, always an insightful day. We expanded upon the idea of personality types, the good and bad sides. I appreciate how he says a devoted gone bad is an overly dependent person. If not properly nurtured, utilized, or understood a devoted personality, one prone to loyalty, charity, and caregiving devolves into a dependent, demanding person. For myself he stressed a religiously oriented prayerful man becomes an alcoholic or a fearful man of seething anger and resentments. Thoughts for reflection, the other personality types and their associated disorder. It is not so important to define and limit, as if we are all one and nothing of the others. The subject is useful on the contemplative level in that any and all types of psychological understanding and healing produces greater clarity upon the contemplative level. A sound emotional, properly identifying, pleasant disposition man is a more effective prayerful man.

Style (tendency) Disorder

Conscientious Obsessive-Compulsive
Self-confident Narcissistic
Vigilant Paranoid
Mercurial Borderline
Leisurely Passive-aggressive
Sensitive Avoidant
Idiosyncratic Schizotypal
Adventurous Antisocial
Self-sacrificing Self-defeating
Aggressive Sadistic
Serious Depressive

We also explored the idea of other’s perceptions, stressing the importance of understanding that people are very insightful regarding comprehension of the truth about people and situations. If we are a prayerful, sincere man others see it. If the Holy Spirit fills us people recognize the matter, even if not properly identifying. I love the earlier scriptural quote on Saul and David. Saul becomes dependent upon the soothing effect of David’s music without clearly identifying it is the spirit he lacks that attracts him. His rebellion and abandoning of God produces a condition treatable for another man of God. Expanding beyond one lost and one filled, two people coming together attuned to the Holy Spirit produce even greater fruit. I wish others could witness Dr. Nichta and myself talking. Disregarding egotistical concerns or the idea that two men can accomplish what God cannot do on his own, it is the event of observing two men on fire with the Lord advancing one in the progress of understanding himself, an educated psychologically wise man of God supporting and nurturing another man of God growing in the Holy Spirit. God is truly good and providing.

Daily mass readings covering the Old Testament story of Tobit. I love the story. The idea of Raphael being the archangel of guidance I adore. Consumed with my devoted personality type, the idea of loving on a spiritual and natural level, I am moved by the experience of Tobiah and Sarah.

Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife,“My love, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance. She got up, and they started to pray and beg that deliverance might be theirs. And they began to say: “Blessed are you, O God of our fathers, praised be your name forever and ever. Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever. You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support; and from these two the human race descended. You said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.’ Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.” They said together, “Amen, amen,” and went to bed for the night.

May312015

Benediction: Corpus Christi

To go beyond formality and tradition, to see the truth and essence of words, thoughts, conceptions, possibilities and the deepest penetrating realities, I find the words of the the Benediction hymns profound, worthy of continual contemplation. Terms to consider: saving victim; immortal Godhead, one in three; native land; down in adoration falling; ancient forms departing; newer rites of grace prevailing; feeble senses fail; faith for all defects supplying; the Trinity beautifully unveiled.

O Saving Victim, opening wide
The gate of Heaven to man below:
Our foes press on from every side,
Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.
To Thy great Name be endless praise,
Immortal Godhead, One in Three:
Oh, grant us endless length of days
In our true native land with Thee. Amen.

All heavenly and saintly beings hail the Lord present upon the earth.

Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail;
Lo! over ancient forms departing,
Newer rites of grace prevail;
Faith for all defects supplying
Where the feeble senses fail.
To the Everlasting Father,
And the Son Who reigns on high,
With the Spirit Blest proceeding
Forth from Each eternally,
Be salvation, honor, blessing,
Might and endless majesty. Amen.

Thou hast given them Bread from Heaven.
Containing in Itself all delight.

Let us pray (oremus)
O God, Who in this wonderful Sacrament
has left us a memorial of Thy passion,
grant, we implore Thee,
that we may so venerate the sacred mysteries of Thy Body and Blood
as always to be conscious of the fruit of Thy Redemption,
Thou Who livest and reignest forever and ever.
Amen

Old Testament prefiguring. The Mercy Seat, the Monstrance.

May122015

Abridged Commonweal article: Poetry and the Contemplative Life

Christ on the Cross is the fount of all art because He is the Word, the fount of all grace and wisdom. He is the center of everything, of the whole economy of the natural and supernatural orders. Everything points to this anointed King of Creation Who is the splendor of the eternal light and the mirror of the Godhead without stain. He is the “image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature… in Him were all things created, by Him and in Him… He is before all and by Him all things consist… in Whom it hath pleased the Father that all things should dwell… for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead corporeally,

Christ is our inspiration, and Christ is at the center of the contemplative life. Therefore, it would seem fairly evident that the one thing that will most contribute to the perfection of Catholic literature in general and poetry in particular will be for our writers and poets to start leading lives of active contemplation….prayer will become the life of our soul, and we will be able to carry on affective prayer everywhere.

…He insists that the highest experience of the artist penetrates not only beyond the sensible surface of things into their inmost reality, but even beyond that to God Himself. More than that, the analogy with mystical experience is deeper and closer still because, as he says, the intuition of the artist sets in motion the very same psychological processes which accompany infused contemplation.

The Augustinian psychology, which forms the traditional substratum of Christian mystical theology, distinguishes between an inferior and superior soul….the soul (inferior) acts through its faculties, making decisions and practical judgments concerning temporal external things…The ‘superior’ soul is the same soul..the principle or actus primus…flow from…inner principle…the superior soul…strictly the image of God within…if we are to contemplate God at all, this internal image must be reformed by grace…we must enter within ourselves by recollection, withdrawing our faculties from external things into this inner sanctuary which is the substance of the soul itself. The majority of people, even those who possess the gift of sanctifying grace, never enter into this inward self, which is an abode of silence and peace and where the diversified activities of the intellect and will are collected, so to speak, into one intense and smooth and spiritualized activity which far exceeds in its fruitfulness the plodding efforts of reason working on external reality with its analyses and syllogisms.

…The artist, the poet, the metaphysician is, then, in some sense already naturally prepared and disposed to remove some of the principal obstacles to the light of infused contemplation. He will be less tempted than the ordinary man to reach out for sensible satisfactions and imaginable thrills. He will be more ready to keep himself detached from the level of feeling and emotionalism which so easily make the devotion of less wary souls degenerate into sentimentality….

Mystical contemplation is absolutely beyond the reach of man’s activity. There is nothing he can do to obtain it by himself. It is a pure gift of God. God gives it to whom He wills, when He wills, and in the way and degree in which He wills….the voiding and emptying of the soul, clearing it of all images, all likenesses of and attachments to created things so that it may be clean and pure to receive the obscure light of God’s own presence. The soul must be stripped of all its desires for natural satisfactions, no matter how high, how noble or how excellent in themselves….As long as it rests in creatures, it cannot possess God and be possessed by Him…once again a case of God’s light shining in the darkness, “and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1.5)

…poetry can, indeed, help to bring us rapidly through that part of the journey to contemplation that is called active: but when we are entering the realm of true contemplation, where eternal happiness begins, it may turn around and bar our way….Mystical prayer, on the contrary, enriches man a hundredfold more both in time and in eternity…

Online article from Commonweal. Linked to complete article. Background of Commonweal from Wikipedia: American and liberal journal of opinion, edited and managed by lay Catholics, headquartered in The Interchurch Center in New York City. It is the oldest independent Catholic journal of opinion in the United States. The word “commonweal” is a reference to an important term in the political philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, who argued that legitimate leaders must prioritize the “common good” of the “commonweal” in making political decisions. A perfect way of expressing the wisdom espoused by Rush Limbaugh.

An Ending Poem: Abrogate

A writer who had to cease, desist,
In order, proper to form, foregoing,
Appropriately,
To be in fullness human,
Completing image and likeness,
Fulfilling the superior,
He had to stop putting words to screen,
Sacrificing effort and art,
End the poetry,
Burn the books,
Terminate imagination,
Halt,
Even the image of Christ being crucified abandon,
Abnegate to subordinate,
Stop seeing,
An inner scream of silence release,
Into Your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit
Left unsaid, nothing written,
Infusion, patiently, prayerfully, await.

Catholic Contemplative Life

A journey of recovery within Christ and His Church

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