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Lacking the slightest affirmative consolation

No victories in the attaining of final victory.  Christ’s passion centers upon defeat, worldly weakness before the might of self-willed determination.  For the nonbeliever, those invested in impermanence, the events of the persecution and crucifixion of Jesus mean nothing.  There is no emotional arousal, never a crisis of conscious.  The depth of the events transpiring before their witnessing pass by them.  Believers overwhelmed by fear, for the most part, flee.  Those brave enough to endure intimately experience sheer horror.  No small victories are garnered.  There is no underlying genius perceptible to the wise.  No moments of reasoning and counsel providing assurance.  Faith is the only solace.  Christ, able to call down legions of angels, easily capable of conquering on a devastating level, acquiesces, complacent to suffer without even a word of protest.  He suffers completely without an ultimate hinting, no whispering affirmations beneath the blood.  There are no sly clever words announcing to followers that ultimate victory is at hand.  No winks behind the backs of those crucifying.  Everything is violently and outrageously real.  Powerlessness grotesquely pronounces itself to the innocent of heart.  The resurrection and ascension remain invisible mysteries to those loving Christ.  Anguish, the experiencing of events unimaginable in terror, establish temporary reality.  Anxiety, the accepting of injustice, overwhelming sadness, assail.  Confident in the majesty of Jesus, events prove devastatingly contradictory to the miracles and healings previously performed.  Confusion rips asunder the minds of the enlightened.  Divine love remains distant during the most crucial of moment upon moment.  No miracle providing worldly vindication will occur.  Obstinate arrogance is granted the right to justify, parading itself as powerful, able to drink the wine of personal satisfaction.  Those confident in self-righteousness feel nothing of doubt or the immensity of injustice being perpetrated.  They interact in a manner of terminal uniqueness, individuals committed to self-acclaimed self-righteousness.  Strong individuals amidst the events of life.  Weakness foreign, surrendering useless.  Those convinced of their own strength see nothing of value in the pathetic cries of the distressed, those loyal to one being taught a lesson for unacceptably challenging the ways of religious convention.  Flippantly, words of condemnation and challenge are voiced by those seeking personal victory, small moments of believing one’s ways are superior.  In reality, at the moment of the turning of eternity, the majority of the witnessing seek only their own short-sighted interest, salvific ignorance prevailing. Those able to intuitively cling to hope through faith in the One they love, know only despair.

Benjamin_West_-_The_Cave_of_Despair_-_Google_Art_Project

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Slowly Transcending the Original

Perfection discipline,
Say ‘no’ to myself,
Abnegation diminutive,
A denied phrase,
A brilliant thought reduced,
A tongue tamed,
A beautiful thing erased,
A friendly smile unpursued,
A twinkling eye left in reverse,
A beaming countenance subdued,
Innocence, appeal heavenly directed,
Practicing on into the greater,
Energy preserved,
Battles immense,
Long lasting, eternity rest
Submission of will,
Beautify, make pretty,
Divine, simplicity shine,
The path of progression provide,
Strength,
Graces a plenty,
Others and many,
Judgement and finality,
Be merciful and kind.

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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’

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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 Lehodeyvital_lehodey_tit_1

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Spiritual deconstruction

There can be no greater or livelier faith than to believe that God is managing our affairs with admirable wisdom and love when he seems to be destroying and annihilating us, when he frustrates our holiest designs, when he exposes us to calumny, obscures all our lights in prayer, dries up our devotion and fervor with aridities, ruins our health with infirmities and languors, reduces us to incapacity for doing anything at all.  –Abbot Vital Lehody

Dom Vital Lehody

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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

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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.

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