Habit increasing the small into the insurmountable

…St Bernard writing upon the words of Job: “I am reduced to such an extremity that the very things I had a horror to touch are at present become ordinary food”. “Would you know”, says he, “what power practice or habit has over us? At first a thing will appear to you insupportable; but if you accustom yourself to it, in time it will seem less hard, afterwards you will find it easy, and in the end it will give you no pain at all, but a great deal of joy and delight”; so that you may say with Job–“I now take pleasure in feeding upon those things, which before I had difficulty to touch”. –Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez ‘The Practice of Christian & Religious Perfection volume I’

Mar252015

More pieces from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’

There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable-
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

–Sweet unction: dedicated to Ann Marie Najjar

Mar242015

Imitation of Christ

Christ, is superior to all other men in that he is the head of Christianity, just as one speaks of the head of a man in relation to his body, as it is written that all those whom he has foreordained, whom he has prepared, would become of the same form as the image of God’s Son, that he is the firstborn among many others. Hence, whoever wants to achieve a true return and become a son in Christ, let him in true detachment turn to Him and away from self. –Henry Suso

Crucifix

Mar172015

Dead Flowers

On the purgative path, we must try not to pay attention to either sensual or spiritual delights. Any inordinate attachment blocks the road to higher state of happiness for which we are destined. Sensory goods, enjoyed outside of God, are like flowers that bloom and whither with every passing season. There is no reason to pay heed to any of these unstable blooms if they “detain (us) from seeking (out) Love in the mountain and riversides of virtues and trials” (Ascent of Mount Carmel)

–Susan Muto ‘Deep into the Thicket’

Mar142015

Grace

Such also is the thought of St Teresa. In her ‘Interior Castle’ she teaches that “all our desires, all our meditations, all our tears, all the efforts we can make (in order to raise ourselves to supernatural quietude), are useless; God alone gives this heavenly water to whom He pleases; often He gives it just when we least think of it.” However, she requires as an indispensable disposition “humility, humility, since it is by this virtue that Our Lord allows Himself to be overcome, and is induced to grant all our desires…Let a soul be humble and detached from everything, in very truth, however, and not merely in imagination which often deceives, and the Divine Master, I have no doubt, will grant her not only this grace, but even many others surpassing all her desires.” –Abbot Vital Lehodey

Mar122015

The Spiritual Canticle (continued)

QUESTIONS TO THE CREATURES

O woods and thickets,

planted by the hand of my Beloved!

O green meadow,

coated, bright, with flowers,

tell me, has he passed by you?

ANSWER OF THE CREATURES

Pouring out a thousand graces,

he passed these groves in haste;

and having looked at them,

with his image alone,

clothed them in beauty.

St John of the Cross

Mar112015

A prayer from Susan Muto

Lord make me mindful of your nearness in every situation of my life. Help me to understand every happening as coming from Your hand. Ask Mary to help me see that. Lord never let my best plans and projects stand in the way of Your providential plan. Encourage me to be a channel, a vessel, an instrument, of its unfolding, in all the little things that make up my life. Lord eat with me, dress with me, drive with me, shop with me. Be there where I am, in my here and now, every day ordinary life. Mary stay at my side, so that I can see your Son in my situation. Sometimes Lord you know that I feel like a lost child rooming in a world that has become a foreign country. Let me always be led again to the place where I belong. Do not let me feel like a lonely ship lost in the night. Lead me to friends, to a faith community. Lead me to the Eucharist, so that where ever I am I will be found there with you. Lord you know that there is much about me that is still like a little child. I need to be shown. I need to be led. I need to be fed. Give me solid food Lord. The solid food of Your Word Lord, of the tradition I love. Let it feed me feed me when I most need to be nurtured, when I feel in danger of forgetting. St Alphonsus De Liguori on Mary offering her Divine Child in the Temple: ‘Consider Mary on her journey to Jerusalem to offer her son. She hastens her steps toward the place of sacrifice and she herself bears the beloved victim in her arms. She enters the Temple, approaches the altar and there, beaming with modesty, devotion and humility, she presents her Son to the Most High. In the meantime, the holy Simeon, who had received a promise from God that he should not die without have first having seeing the expected messiah takes the divine child from the hands of the Blessed Virgin, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, announces to her, how much the sacrifice, which she then made of her son, would cost her and that with him, her own blessed soul would also be sacrificed. Yes, she will suffer in her heart. Her compassion alone for the sufferings of this most beloved son was the sword of sorrow which is to pierce the heart of the mother as Simeon foretold. Mary, I say, knew all these torments that her son was to endure, but in the words addressed to her by Simeon and all the minute circumstances of the sufferings, internal and external, that were to torment Jesus in His passion were made known to her. She consented to all with a constancy which even filled the angels with astonishment. All this was involved in her sacrificial offering of her son this day in the temple. She consented completely to the will of God and the sword was indeed to pierce her heart and soul. To understand the violence which Mary had to offer herself in this sacrifice, it would be necessary to understand the love that this mother bore to Jesus. How ineffable the son. How noble the mother. How much it cost her and how much strength of mind she had to exercise this act by which she sacrificed the life of so amiable of Son to the cross. And so we pray. Mary, we know that your sufferings did not end in the temple that day. They only began. From that time forward, during the whole life of Jesus, oh Mary, you had constantly before your eyes, the death and the torments, he was to endure. Oh most compassionate lady, I cannot believe that you could have endured for a moment, so excruciating of torment, without expiring under it, had not God himself, the spirit of life, sustained you. In every moment, you lived dying. For in every moment, you were assailed by the sorrow of the certain death of your beloved Jesus. Mother of God, grant through your prayers, that we to will be able to walk with Jesus this path that is the fall and the rising of many. Oh Mary, make of us an offering, this day, in the temple of our situation.

Amen.

Catholic Contemplative Life

A journey of recovery within Christ and His Church

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