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Jul282015

Start of a week, the wise St Francis de Sales to guide

But be of good heart, I beg you; little by little train your will to follow God’s will, wherever it may lead you; see that your will is strongly roused when your conscience says: God wants this. Gradually the resistance you feel so strongly will become weaker and soon disappear altogether. But especially, you must try to stop acting out your inner struggle or, at least, to do so in moderation. There are persons who when angry or annoyed, show their displeasure by simply saying: “What is all this?”; but there are others who speak sharply and show, not only displeasure, but a certain arrogance and spite. What I mean is that you should gradually correct such outburst, moderating them every day.  –St Francis de Sales

Within the quote, the idea of the gradualism Dr. Nichta introduced is gently dealt with. Yesterday during and shortly after mass a confrontation exploded. Wrath dominated my being, an absolute conviction I was justified in venting anger. Following the will of God, surrendering through self-awareness, in a certain sense, only means we are vulnerable to the immaturity of those living entirely on free will. I possess confidence in my efforts, sincere in humility and charity. Consolations are not sought, yet they are being received. I am proud of who I am and where God has taken me. I have the strength to stand up for myself—the determination to preserve my energy in spiritual pursuits. I fear nothing in regards to taking my every thought, action, and interpretation of experiences to the church for validation or correction. I am fearless in my pursuit of God, understanding I will make mistakes. I do not fear the mistakes for my heart grows bolder through, with, and in Christ. I know who I am. I know my weaknesses. I see the weaknesses of others. If I do not know myself, I really have no chance of knowing others. I see others through delusion, brokenness, and manipulation. I am a spiritually immature person incapable of grasping the world honestly, rationalization riots. It takes such an incredible amount of energy to live a life dominated by free will that truth becomes inaccessible. The truths I do come upon are all of my doing. I may as well be watching TV evangelists for that is all the further I will be able to advance. My spiritual life is limited to what I can bring into being, fullness forsaken. I place myself in the role of creator, perversions pervading. Imagination, reasoning, scheming, plotting, making plans, conducting mental debates, arguing within exhausts profound potentialities. Infusion is impossible. The Holy Spirit is blocked. I cannot quiet myself during prayer since I am so busy accessing my imagination in order to interpret, dominate, and impose my will upon the world. Even during prayer my mind is busying putting into action scenarios and happenings in my favor.

Exclude the world from traffic with the mind:
Lips near to God, and ranging heart within,
Is but vain babbling, and converts to sin.
–St. Robert Southwell

There is no peace of mind when I am left alone. When I am alone my mind is constantly racing about putting everything in my order, the controlling unceasing. I praise God I have been lifted from such a mindset. A psychic change. I was so proud that during and after the confrontation I did not allow my imagination to run away with me. I easily calmed myself, upset I allowed the outburst, yet I will not beat myself up. The inner-turmoil concerns more than exterior events. I concentrate upon progress. Within imperfection, I seek diligently for perfection. I utilize the experience to strengthen resolve, to know myself even deeper. Peace reigns in order to drawer closer to God. Garnered and graced growth relied upon not to build pride, yet to instill confidence. I end with another St Francis de Sales quote:

In all things and everywhere we must live peacefully. If troubles, either interior or exterior, come upon us, we should receive them peacefully. If joy comes our way, we must receive it peacefully, without getting all excited about it. If there is some evil to avoid, let us avoid it peacefully, without anxiety; for otherwise, in running away from evil, we could fall and give the enemy time to do us in. Is there some good to be done? Let us do it peacefully, “Thus is my bitterness transformed into peace,”…

St Francis de Sales

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Jul202015

Freedom into obedient openness

St Francis de Sales on aligning with Divine Will, in respect to the freedom sweetly offered through the following of Christ, the opening of the heart of a Catholic man or woman to the necessary flexibility to unify with God’s will.  Rigidity, hardheadedness, or haphazard, flighty, efforts will not suffice.  The quotes moves forward from the freedom the previous St Francis de Sales quote established.

This freedom (of the Children of God) has two opposite vices: instability and constraint or, in the extreme dissoluteness and slavishness.  Instability is a kind of excessive freedom which makes us want to change our practices or our state in life for no good reason or without knowing if to do so is God’s will.  The least pretext is enough to make us change a practice, a plan, a rule; for the filmiest excuse we give up a rule or a good custom; it becomes like an orchard open on all sides, where the fruit is not for the owner but for all who pass.

Am I really pursuing God to satisfy my whims and boredom in life?  Do I use faith to suit my fickle interests and desires? In truth, am I really doing whatever I want, doing everything to suit me?

Constraint or slavishness is a certain lack of freedom that causes the soul to be unduly anxious or angry when it cannot carry out what it had intended to do, even though it could now do something better. 

My daily spiritual exercise is the attendance of mass and Eucharistic adoration at St Paul’s.  It is a demand, yet flexibility exist.  If I break my leg.  I must tend to my broken leg, missing mass and adoration without anxiety.  I may feel sorrow, yet not stress out about the matter.  If my work schedules me for first shift, I am obedient to work, again missing mass with no consternation, altering plans to attend an evening mass.  Doing something better is a more difficult discernment.  I place a session with Dr. Nichta in that category, again altering plans so an earlier mass obliges.  I would also consider involvement with the Blessed Sacrament Congregation, or such properly discerned efforts within the Church.

St Francis de Sales elaborates.

First of all, I must point out two rules which must be observed if we are not to fail in this matter.  First, we should never neglect our exercises and the common norms of virtue unless to do so appears to be God’s will.  Now the will of God is indicated in two ways: through necessity or charity. 

Necessity is obvious.  The broken leg a suitable example.  Charity needs consideration.

…when we use our freedom for charity’s sake it must be without scandal or injustice.  Example: I am certain I could be more useful somewhere far from my diocese.  I must not use my freedom to follow through with this, for I would give scandal and act unjustly since my obligation is here.  Therefore, it’s a false use of freedom for married women to absent themselves from their husbands without a legitimate reason, under pretext of devotion or charity.  Our freedom must never take us away from our vocation.  On the contrary, it should make us content each with our own calling, knowing that it is God’s will that we remain in it.

This example I cherish as sublime.  Meditate upon it.

…now I want to show you a “sun” that shines more brilliantly than any of these: a really open, detached spirit who holds on to the will of God alone.  I’ve often wondered who was the most mortified of all the saints…after much reflection, I decided it was St John the Baptist.  He went into the desert at the age of five, and was aware that our Savior was born in a place very close by, maybe two or three days’ journey away.  God only knows how much his heart, which had been moved to love his Savior from the time he was still in his mother’s womb, would have wanted to enjoy the Lord’s sweet presence!  Yet, he spent twenty-five years in the desert, without once coming to see Him; then leaving the desert, he went about catechizing without going to visit the Lord, but waited for the Lord to come to him.  Afterward, having baptized Him, he didn’t follow him but stayed behind to do his appointed work.  What mortification!  To be so close to his Savior and not to see Him!  To have Him so near and not to enjoy His presence! (Not to be recognized as an apostle!)  Isn’t this having one’s spirit completely detached, bound to nothing, not even to God, in order to do His will and serve Him; to leave God for God, and to not love God so as to love Him better?  –St Francis de Sales

St Francis de Sales

St Francis de Sales

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Jul182015

Breathing eternal light into freedom

Every good person is free of committing mortal sins and has no willing attachment to them. Such freedom is necessary for salvation, but that is not what I am talking about here. The freedom I’m referring to is the ‘freedom of the children of God’ who know they are loved. And what is that (freedom)? It’s the detachment of a Christian heart from all things so that it is free to follow the known will of God. You will readily understand what I’m trying to say if God gives me the grace to explain to you the characteristics and effects of this freedom, and the occasions when it is practiced.

…this freedom is not attached to consolations, but accepts affliction with as much docility as nature can manage. I’m not saying that the person doesn’t like or long for these considerations, but just that her heart isn’t bound to them….a person who has this spirit is not emotionally bound to her spiritual exercises…Again I’m not saying that she doesn’t like them, but that she is not attached to them. Third, she hardly ever loses her joy, for no deprivation can sadden a person whose heart is attached to nothing. –St Francis de Sales

Exploring the profound letters of St Francis de Sales and St Janes de Chantal I came across these words of guidance from the former. They expand upon the idea of spiritual maturity, and the idea of freedom and enslavement—broadening the idea of freedom beyond free will. Freedom eternally magnified to salvation. Freedom is not just doing what pleases. I am free to do whatever I want. Because I want to do certain things, things others are doing, even being glorified, does not mean I should do certain things. It is not the desire, yet the act which enslaves. Instant pleasure and redemption in the eyes of the word is enslavement, a duplicity created. Individuality becoming a habit, a struggle to be someone in the eyes of the world. Such an existence in all truth is impossible for one to smash, roots becoming so deep ruination seems inevitable. How can one fighting for survival and identity truly surrender? How can one pursuing faith for years remove one’s self from stagnation, an inability to mature? An individual of duplicity identifies, fights with everything, compares and contrasts, demands others to be stacked up against one another, forces others to fight with others, Everything based upon salvation sought exteriorly through the eyes of others, The interior life, barely breathing, reposes in critical condition, acting upon the world in a destructive broken manner, needing to define and inflict restrictions upon others. Everything, even within the greatest efforts of kindness and compassion, is a form of division through the attachment to identity and the need for consolations appeasing individual delusions and brokenness. Maturity goes beyond confrontation through the inducing of unification, a fullness breathing into being, an expansion through passive surrendering of individuality, nurturing the graced power to conquer the mighty strength of passions, concupiscence, and brokenness, released from self-identity, attaining a state of grace within imperfection. Thus a mature seeker learns to sit still before the Eucharist, heart open and aware, needing yet detached.

Lost within unification

The Eucharist: Lost within unification

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Jul012015

Imaginary perfection

…take the time to think about the vanity of the human mind and how easily it becomes confused and wrapped up in itself. I’m sure you can readily see how the interior trials you have experienced were caused by the multiplicity of reflections and desires that came about in your great hurry to attain some imaginary perfection. By this I mean that your imagination had formed an ideal of absolute perfection which your will wanted to reach, but, frightened by the huge difficulty, or rather, impossibility of attaining it, remained, as it were, heavy with child, unable to give birth. On this occasion your will multiplied futile desires which, like bumblebees and hornets, devoured the honey in the hive, while the true and good desires remained starved of all consolation….

Know that patience is the one virtue which gives greatest assurance of our reaching perfection, and, while we must have patience with others, we must also have it with ourselves. Those who aspire to pure love of God need to be more patient with themselves than with others. We have to endure our own imperfections in order to attain perfection; I say ‘endure patiently’ not ‘love’ or ‘embrace’: humility is nurtured through such endurance.  –St Francis de Sales in a letter oi spiritual direction to Mademoiselle de Soulfour.

St Francis de Sales

St Francis de Sales

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