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’

Mar162015

Acceptance: Strife of Life

…he has placed his confidence in God alone and has accepted in advance all that his good Master may be pleased to ordain. This obviously is not the peace of paradise, but it is the most perfect peace possible here below. God does not will that we should enjoy absolute repose here on earth or enduring happiness. We cannot avoid tribulation. The cross will pursue us wherever we go. –Abbot Vital Lehodey.

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.

Mar062015

Interior Purgation

The highest angel likes nothing better than to satisfy My will in all things. And if it knew that My Glory depended on pulling out nettles and other weeds, this would be what it would most desire to do. –Henry Suso ‘Little Book of Eternal Wisdom’.

Mar052015

St. Gregory of Narek

Prayer 5

Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart

And now, I, earthbound
and preoccupied with the cares of everyday existence,
numbed by the deceitful wine of foolishness,
I, who lie in all things and am truthful in none,
marked with these faults,
how shall I come before your judgment, Just Judge,
terrible beyond words and telling, mighty God of all?
The more I compare my sinful ingratitude with your loving-kindness,
the more I prove that your law is always stronger,
and my lawlessness, always defeated.

You made me in your glorious image,
favoring a weak being like me
with your sublime likeness,
adorning me with speech,
and burnishing me with your breath,
enriching me with thought,
cultivating me with wisdom,
establishing me with ingenuity,
setting me apart from the animals,
endowing my character with a thinking soul,
embellishing me with a sovereign individuality,
giving birth as a father, nurturing as a nurse,
caring for me as a guardian,
You sowed a wayward being in your courtyard,
irrigated me with the water of life,
cleansed me with the dew of the baptismal fount,
nourished me with heavenly bread,
quenched my thirst with your blood,
acquainted me with the impalpable and unreachable,
emboldened my earthly eyes to seek you,
embraced me in your glorious light,
permitted my unclean earthly hands to make offerings to you,
honored my base, mortal ashes,
like a flicker of light,
imprinted upon a worthless wretch like me your father’s image,
awesome and blessed,
out of your love for mankind.

You did not scald my mouth for daring to call myself your co-heir,
did not reprimand me for arrogantly associating with you,
did not darken the sight of my eyes for gazing upon you,
did not exile me in shackles with those condemned to death,
did not break the wrist of my arm for improperly reaching to you,
did not crack the digits of my fingers for touching the word of life,
did not engulf me with fog for dedicating this to you, fearsome Lord,
did not crush the rows of my teeth for chewing your communion, infinite Lord,
did not turn in anger as I did with you, as with the stubborn house of Israel,
did not dishonor me at your wedding party,
I, who am unworthy of singing and dancing,
did not scold me for my disheveled clothes, I, who am disorderly,
did not cast me into the dark, my hands and feet shackled.

And I exchanged all these portions of
goodness, patience and forgiveness from you,
O beneficent, blessed and always-tolerant God,
for all manner of waywardness of the flesh and the ego,
for the wavering passions of the mind and the diversions of worldliness.
Yes, that is how, my God and Lord, I repaid you for your abundant goodness.
Thus did I offer you evil in the manner of Moses’ ingratitude.
Abandoning wisdom and pursuing foolishness,
thus did I foully dissipate the bounty of your favor with the ways of vanity,
thus in a storm of mindlessness did I lose the beacon of your ineffable grace glowing with your care,
God most high.

And although on many occasions you attempted
to draw me to you by reaching out your helping hand,
I rejected it, as the prophet accused Israel.
And although I promised and made a covenant to please you,
I did not keep it, but again perverted it into something evil.
Reverting to my old ways,
I sowed the field of my heart with thorns of sin for a harvest of dissension.
The words of the God-fearing holy prophet apply to me,
for you expected grapes but instead I sprouted thorns.
I became an unappetizing fruit of bitterness,
outcast from the garden.
Swaying violently in unsteady winds,
always blowing to and fro, I wavered.
Like the voice of blessed Job, I followed my path of no return.
I built my house upon the sands in foolishness.
Misled by the broad gate, I missed the narrow gate to life.
I closed myself off from the pilgrimage of exodus.
I spitefully uncovered the abyss of destruction.
I blocked my hearing against your teaching of life.
I covered the eyes of my soul against the cure of life.
I did not recoil from the wasting of the mind from torpor,
in spite of your trumpet of wrath.
I was not sobered by the reports of the fiery trial,
on the day of judgment.
I did not awaken from the slumber of mortal sleep.
I did not give comfort to your Holy Spirit in my bodily tabernacle.
I did not inhale the allotment of grace you granted me.
With my own hand I wreaked havoc, in the words of the proverb teller,
killing my living soul.

And what is the use of composing these meager and paltry verses
in my state of remorse which passes all measure and evades all cure?
Now it is up to you to offer life to my dead soul
and without vengeance to visit me, a condemned prisoner,
O Son of the Living God, to you be all glory.