Monthly Archives: June 2020

Jun292020

Enduring in Spirit

Returning to daily Mass at a Church I’ve become loyal to, I realized it took me six months to make it to the church under such conditions. The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul brought forth scripture:

…Suddenly the angel of the Lord stood by him
and a light shone in the cell.
He tapped Peter on the side and awakened him, saying,
“Get up quickly.”
The chains fell from his wrists.
The angel said to him, “Put on your belt and your sandals.”
He did so.
Then he said to him, “Put on your cloak and follow me.”
So he followed him out,
not realizing that what was happening through the angel was real;
he thought he was seeing a vision.
They passed the first guard, then the second,
and came to the iron gate leading out to the city,
which opened for them by itself.
They emerged and made their way down an alley,
and suddenly the angel left him.
Then Peter recovered his senses and said,
“Now I know for certain
that the Lord sent his angel
and rescued me from the hand of Herod
and from all that the Jewish people had been expecting.”

The last six months have been intense personally and nationally/globally. I am convinced God is calling forth a deeper faith. Trust being the virtue of wisdom. During the COVID isolation, lacking daily Mass, a profound self-awareness emerged. I understood myself better. A deep-seated anger revealed itself. Without the Church, without God, bareness abandons me to a broken psychology. I understand what it feels like to desire war, to fantasize about violently dispensing with enemies. My mind can be cruel, judgmental, and harsh–consumed with being right. Reading the Remnant Newspaper online and other conservative/traditional secular and religious sources, I discovered similar minds, yet also cautionary instincts warned. Spiritually, I must trust God more than rely upon myself. In confession, a priest warned against a reactionary life, always responding to others. A reactionary mind, rather than concentrating upon my prayer life and relationship with God and the Church, allows the world to dictate. If I permit others, especially those of opposing views, to direct the narrative of my mind, I have allowed the world to usurp God. It may be true as GK Chesterton wrote in “The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare”, however I am convinced God is not calling me to defeat dark forces. God desires my loving attention and trust. Chesterton’s turn of the century insight applicable to current social conditions:

First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?”

“To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. “We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honor and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.”

Centered upon eternity, being right or wrong is being abolished for me in a certain sense. Opposite of the anarchist Chesterton identifies, I find the elimination of being right or wrong in the eyes of others a necessity. I am convinced my contemplative spirit does not call for open engagement. It disrupts my spirit, forcing upon my mind alcoholic thoughts. I need an easier softer way: Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. 

With the reality separation occurs. The personal complications of my life have created a distancing from certain family members. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. I find those who do not support, nor nourish, my spiritual life are being eliminated. In a delightful way, their presence becomes greater as they become fixtures within my prayer life. I remember my time with the Franciscans, the religious prayer life, and the authenticity of those in my family being distant, yet so deeply entrenched within my prayers. My love for them grew. My appreciation for them increased. Pleasant memories of childhood experiences would arise.

Lord do with me as you please,
Your wisdom sustains,
Your grace maintains,
Your protection ever present,
Overwhelms senses and mind.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who have been called according to His purposes. Romans 8:28

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Jun282020

Purposeful Good News

Jesus said to his apostles:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

“Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man’s reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”

Gospel of Matthew chapter 10

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Jun252020

MY HOPE

Saint Therese, Carmelite of Lisieux

Though in a foreign land I dwell afar,
I taste in dreams the endless joys of heaven.
Fain would I fly beyond the farthest star,
And see the wonders to the ransomed given!
No more the sense of exile weighs on me,
When once I dream of that immortal day.
To my true fatherland, dear God! I see,
For the first time I soon shall fly away.
Ah! give me, Jesus! wings as white as snow,
That unto Thee I soon may take my flight.
I long to be where flowers unfading blow;
I long to see Thee, O my heart’s Delight!
I long to fly to Mary’s mother arms,
To rest upon that spotless throne of bliss;
And, sheltered there from troubles and alarms,
For the first time to feel her gentle kiss.
Thy first sweet smile of welcoming delight
Soon show, O Jesus! to Thy lowly bride;
O’ercome with rapture at that wondrous sight,
Within Thy Sacred Heart, ah! let me hide.
O happy moment! and O heavenly grace!
When I shall hear Thee, Jesus, speak to me;
And the full vision of Thy glorious Face
For the first time my longing eyes shall see.
Thou knowest well, my only martyrdom
Is love, O Heart of Jesus Christ! for Thee;
And if my soul craves for its heavenly home,
‘Tis but to love Thee more, eternally.
Above, when Thy sweet Face unveiled I view,
Measure nor bounds shall to my love be given;
Forever my delight shall seem as new
As the first time my spirit entered heaven.

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Jun242020

Number 4 of Four Quartets

 

LITTLE GIDDING

III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between The live and the dead nettle.
This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the future as well as the past.
Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent.
History may be servitude,
History may be freedom.
See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.

If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.

We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar
Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

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Jun232020

Trust and Love

Conversely, in one of her letters Therese says that what hurts God most, our most serious failings in this regard, is our lack of trust. “What offends Jesus. What wounds His heart, is lack of trust.” God does not first expect of us that we be absolutely perfect (that will come little by little) but that we give him our trust. This is a remnant left of original sin: man distrusts God, is scared of God, runs away from God instead of trusting him completely.

Therese fully understood how trust draws God’s grace down on our lives. If we have an attitude of trust, we can be certain we are open to God’s love. We also need the good will I spoke of earlier, as well as humility, of course, but trust has a special power. Therese loved this quotation from St John of the Cross: “One obtains from God as much as one hopes for.” “Be it done for you as you have believed,” Jesus says in the Gospel.

–Father Jacques Phillippe “The Way of Trust and Love: A Retreat Guided by St Therese of Lisieux”

 

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Jun202020

Troubled times…for all time is troubled

Jeremiah said:
“I hear the whisperings of many:
‘Terror on every side!
Denounce! let us denounce him!’
All those who were my friends
are on the watch for any misstep of mine.
‘Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail,
and take our vengeance on him.’
But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion:
my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.
In their failure they will be put to utter shame,
to lasting, unforgettable confusion.
O LORD of hosts, you who test the just,
who probe mind and heart,
let me witness the vengeance you take on them,
for to you I have entrusted my cause.
Sing to the LORD,
praise the LORD,
for he has rescued the life of the poor
from the power of the wicked!”

–Jeremiah chapter 20

Jesus said to the Twelve:
“Fear no one.
Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.
What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light;
what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.
And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;
rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna.
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
But whoever denies me before others,
I will deny before my heavenly Father.”

–Gospel of Luke

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