Monthly Archives: September 2016

Sep062016

Purging

This severe purgation comes to pass in few souls—in those alone whom He desires to raise to some degree of union by means of contemplation; and those who are to be raised to the highest degree of all are the most severely purged.  This happens as follows.  When God desires to bring the soul forth from its ordinary state—that is, from its natural way and operation—to a spiritual life, and to lead it from meditation to contemplation, which is a state rather heavenly than earthly, wherein He communicates Himself through union of love, He begins at once to communicate Himself to the spirit, which is still impure and imperfect, and has evil habits, so that each soul suffers according to the degree of its imperfections; and at times this purgation is in some ways as grievous to the soul whom it is preparing for the reception of perfect union here below as is that of purgatory, wherein we are purged in order to see God in the life to come.  St John of the Cross ‘Living Flame of Love’

Lamentations Chapter 3

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of His wrath;
He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light;
surely against me He turns His hand again and again the whole day long.
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones;
He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation;
He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.
He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; He has put heavy chains on me;
though I call and cry for help, He shuts out my prayer;
He has blocked my ways with hewn stones, He has made my paths crooked.
He is to me like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding;
He led me off my way and tore me to pieces; He has made me desolate;
He bent His bow and set me as a mark for His arrow.
He drove into my heart the arrows of His quiver;
I have become the laughingstock of all peoples, the burden of their songs all day long.
He has filled me with bitterness, He has sated me with wormwood.
He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes;
my soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, “Gone is my glory, and my expectation from the LORD.”
Remember my affliction and my bitterness, the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

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Sep052016

Boats out on the horizon

The light has come, the convictions are well founded, the evidence is such, that the things of God are perceived almost as we perceive first principles; we remember, we look, we attend, and this is enough. This does not hinder this view from being sometimes more luminous, sometimes weaker and more veiled. By its very nature it is somewhat obscure and confused, because it proceeds mostly by way of general views, not stopping at details, pretty much as we take in at a single glance a whole landscape. –Rev Dom Vitalis Lehody ‘The Ways of Mental Prayer’

MaryMerge

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Sep042016

Side Menu Note

I have posted a new collection of photographs, ‘Museum of Divine Statues: Former St Hedwig‘, from an amazing Catholic hideaway in Lakewood, Ohio. We spent the afternoon lingering at the former St Hedwig church, now splendidly being presented as the Museum of Divine Statues. The proprietors have done an amazingly high quality job of restoring, displaying, and preserving the holiness of statues from defunct Catholic churches throughout the Cleveland diocese. Every aspect of the Museum of Divine Statues evokes a sense of care, high-quality, and authenticity. Utilitarian, the lighting, sound, and electronic displays possess an exquisite attention to fine detail. Visitors are supplied with a tablet able to scan QR codes for instant information on individual statues, stained glass, and other items of interest. The cost for admittance is ten dollars, easily justifiable once the professionalism and extensive effort behind the display is comprehended. It is a must visit for those relishing their Catholic faith.

 

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Sep042016

Today before Labor Day

Simplify, eradicate demands, density scarce, tension released,
Distractions arrayed within a lessening, pulverizing angst,
Lowering expectations, increasing attention,
Peace infused, muttering fewer incantations,
Muzzling ranting prayers, quiet, and quieter still,
Scrupulosity identified, surrendering self-immersed confrontations,
Pleasure and sweetness no longer pursuing religious perversity,
Needing not to be the center of conversation, needing not clever recanting,
Needing not mental victories, needing not rationalizations, needing not romantic fantasies, needing not the lunatic fringe,
Grounded and real; natural—smooth and easy within the warring,
Suffering attacks of insecurity without consternation, genuine, aspiring to progress, reflecting ideas of purity,
Behavior and thought cleansed as a consequence, vivaciously surrounding life with honest gentle relationships,
Able to be generous, loving and sympathetic, lastingly building wholesome and true,
Detaching from harsh self-retribution, patient and kind onto one’s self, normal and sane,
Acceptance within love and compassion, knowing imperfections, standing in the center of humility,
Reducing acts of creative determination, debasing the self-dramatic debutant, smashing the stirrings of angry singularity,
Knowing artistically rarer occasions of individual humiliation, infrequently imagining a multitude of wrathful retributions,
Preserving in order to maintain deeper Divine intimacy, gracefully relieved from the burden of self, sustaining,
Opened wide and heavenly sound, grateful and dumb during worshipping, softly singing harmoniously,
Curtailing the noisy winds of self-dismay, asking not too much, despair and resolve petering out into diminutive waves, drifting, aimless and free,
Merging within concepts of forgotten readings, elapsed learning settling unconsciously within memories of sorrow, slight accumulation within the expanding,
The humanity of Abbot Lehody flowering into an exquisite example, profoundly consecrated and cloistered,
Refusing the need of reducing that which grasps onto the finest imitation,
Allowing proper self-loathing to latch on into the lightness of being,
Prayer of quietude without meditations nor elucidations,
Eliminating youthful desperate clinging, adolescent worldly ambitions hiding within spiritual aspirations,
Enough is enough, pride led before growing up, a baby weaning upon milk,
Not even regret lingers within the loitering on into nothingness, acknowledgment unaware, a psyche change, different ways,
Rooted natural, smooth, and easy within the warring, the battle churns on, fortitude and perseverance,
Everything is the same within the changing, transformation through the years, memories and a life, growing old,
Get back to where you once belonged,
Abiding within the Church.
Jesus, Joseph and Mary.
All you saints and angels pray for us.

Layers

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Sep032016

Adoration refined

“Sometimes the whole soul concentrates herself within herself, and is buried in a profound silence; the admiration she is in, at what she feels and what she beholds, stifles her voice and prevents all speech; the astonished spirit keeps the senses suspended, and can only by her sighs convey to God the fervor of her desires.” The mind then remains fixed upon God, whose presence it feels; leaving reasoning aside, it keeps silence and looks with admiration; it enfolds its Well-Beloved in one long look, which, without any words, says a great deal, because it expresses the astonishment, the Joy, the charm, and the love by which the soul is fascinated. The will, plunged in God, inflamed by its union with God, expanding itself in God by a fusion full of sweetnes is not inclined to formulate a multitude of acts. It is enjoying God in a union that is calm, tranquil, and full of unction. It is reposing deliciously on the bosom of its Divine Master in a silence full of love. The whole soul, like to a mother who devours her infant with her eyes, passes into this ardent look. The more she contemplates, the more she is inflamed. The more she is inflamed; the more pleasure she takes in contemplating. She loves without saying so; but the fire of her eyes, her tears, her sighs, her attitude, the dispositions of her heart, the immobility of her astonishment, the discreet outburst of her tenderness, all speak with eloquence and ravish Him who is charming her. The intellect and will remain silently occupied with God, often during a somewhat long time; some simple and ardent acts, at the most, are made by the heart, just what is needful to sustain this loving Union. –Father Dom Vitalis Lehodey ‘The Ways of Mental Prayer’

Dom Vital Lehody

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Sep012016

Deeper spiritual direction: the left hand does not know what the right is doing

And thus the soul must be attached to nothing—nay, not even to any kind of meditation or sweetness, whether of sense or spirit.  For the spirit needs to be so free and so completely annihilated that any thought or meditation which the soul in this state my desire, or any pleasure to which it may conceive an attachment, would impede and disturb–that it would introduce noise into the deep silence which it should observe, according both to sense and to spirit, so that it may hear the deep and delicate voice of God which speaks to the heart in this secret place, as He said through Osee, in the upmost peace and tranquility, so that the soul may listen and hear, as David heard, the words of God, when He speaks this peace in the soul.  When this comes to pass, and the soul is conscious of being led into silence, and harkens, it must forget even a loving advertence of which I have spoken, so that it may remain free for that which is then desired of it; for it must practice that advertence only when it is not conscious of being brought into solitude or rest or forgetfulness or attentiveness of the spirit, which is always accompanied by a certain interior absorption

Wherefore at no time or season, when once the soul has begun to enter into this pure and restful state of contemplation, must it seek to gather to itself meditations, neither must it desire to find help in spiritual sweetness or delight, but it must stand in complete detachment above all this and its spirit must be freed from it, as the prophet Habakkuk…’I will stand upon my watch over my senses—that is, leaving them below—and I will fix my step upon the munition of my faculties—that is, not allowing them to advance in thought—and I will watch to see that which will be said to me—that is, I will receive that which is communicated to me’.  For we have already said that contemplation is receiving, and it is not possible that this loftiest wisdom and lineage of contemplation can be received save in a spirit that is silent and detached from sweetness and knowledge.  –St John of the Cross ‘Living Flame of Love’

St John of the Cross. Euclid, Ohio.

St John of the Cross. Euclid, Ohio.

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