Monthly Archives: August 2022

Aug092022

Diary of a Country Priest conversation

‘And when you do,’ I said, ‘you’ll discover God. Uh, no doubt I’m putting it very clumsily. And besides, you’re no more than a child. But at least I can tell you this: you are setting off with your back turned on the world, for the world does not stand for revolt, but for submission, submission to lies, first and foremost. Go ahead for all you’re worth, the walls are bound to fall in the end, and every breach shows a patch of sky.’

‘Are you saying all this for the sake of talking-or are you-‘

‘It is true the meek shall inherit the earth. And your sort won’t try and get it from them, because they wouldn’t know what to do with it. Snatchers can only snatch at heaven.’

She was blushing deeply, and shrugged her shoulders.

‘You make me feel I could say anything. . . . I’d like to insult you. I won’t be disposed of against my will. I’ll go to hell all right, if I want to.’

‘I’ll answer for your soul with mine,’ I said impulsively.

She washed her hands under the kitchen tap, without so much as looking round. Then she quietly put on her hat, which she had taken off when she started working. She came slowly back to me. If I did not know her face so well, I might have said it looked tranquil, but the corners of her mouth trembled a little.

‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ she said, ‘if you’re what I think you are.’

‘The point is I am not what you think I am. You see yourself in me, as you might in a mirror, and your fate as well.’

‘When you talked to mother I was hiding under the window. And suddenly her face became so-so gentle. I hated you then. I don’t believe much in miracles, not any more than I do in ghosts, but I did think I knew my mother. She cared no more about pretty speeches than a fish for an apple. Have you a secret, yes or no?’

‘It’s a lost secret,’ I replied. ‘You’ll rediscover it, and lose it again, and others after you will pass it on, since your kind will last as long as the world.’

‘My kind? Whatever do you mean?’

‘Those whom God sends on and on forever, who will never rest while the world remains.’

George Bernanos

Aug082022

Embracing anonymity

Aug082022

Purposeful Silence

Keeping silent is not a spontaneous or natural attitude. It demands a decision and a purpose. To enter into silence, we must want it, and we must know why we want it. If we intend to become men of silence, we must assume responsibility for our quest.

First of all, we have the responsibility to observe silence towards others. “Love for our brothers should show itself firstly in respect for their solitude” (St 4.4) Each and every one of us is entrusted with the exterior and even interior silence of those he associates with. Silence is rarely a purely personal affair. Our role towards our brothers is firstly concerned with exterior silence; whether the places where we are help recollection or induce dissipation depends on a careful attitude on our part that radiates a genuine concern for peace and silence.” The places where they work, like those where they live, should be so arranged as to be conducive to interior recollection… it should be quite apparent that they are a home where God dwells and not mere secular buildings. ” We can make a difference also by the number of words we utter, and first of all the quality of these words, so that these words coming from us contribute to recollection and not to dissipation. “if, by chance, we come to know something of events in the world, we must be careful not to pass it on to others; news of the world should rather be left where it is heard.” (St 6.7)……..

We speak of entering into silence, but what is the silence of the contemplative made up of? Is it like a stone falling in a big gaping hole? It is possible that we may confuse true prayerful silence with this kind of event of the material world. In reality silence is “a tranquil listening of the heart that allows God to enter through all its doors and passages.” (Cf. St 4.2). Silence is a kind of listening : not a feverish waiting for some word that would come and knock on our ear or fill our heart, but a peaceful waiting, in a state of availability for the One who is present and who works in our most intimate selves. This is why it is said that our solitude “is holy ground, a place where, as a man with his friend, the Lord and his servant often speak together; there is the faithful soul frequently united with the Word of God; there is the bride made one with her spouse; there is earth joined to heaven, the divine to the human” (St 4.1). Silence associates the absence of words, on the lips and in the heart, to a living dialogue with the Lord. We do not need to explain this at length. We simply need to turn to Saint Bruno who noted: “only those who have experienced it can know…” And “God has led us into solitude to speak to our heart.” (St 4.11). Here is what silence truly is: to let the Lord utter within us a word which is equal to Himself. It reaches us, we don’t know which way it followed, we cannot discern its traits with any precision, the very Word of God comes and resonates in our heart.

Charterhouse of the Transfiguration

Aug072022

Contradiction and being human

XVII

I know you were afraid last night. I saw you turn toward the wall trembling with fear.

It was the darkest part of the night. The wind had died down and the clock with the broken minute hand began to tick and every second was absurd.

I saw you push the lamp against the wall. I saw your hands shaking and your fingers quivering. I heard the gnashing of your teeth and the labored galloping of your heart.

And now you come to me with a look of strength and purity, and with magnificent gestures and a newborn smile, you speak to me of life, and you have never spoken so wisely.

But last night, before the smile and before the gestures, I know you were afraid.

Poetry prose by Dulce Maria Loynaz

Aug072022

The destructiveness of the inability to endure suffering

Aug032022

A start in Duruelo

Fray Juan (St John of the Cross) neared the man, he saw that he was weeping and that the gray thing he had seen was a donkey.

“Why do you weep, fellow?”, Fray Juan inquired kindly as he came up.

“My donkey Sancho has just died”, the man said through his tears. “He was the only thing I had left in all the world”

“Then you are fortunate indeed'”, Fray Juan said. “For if all that you had in the world is gone, all that remains is God.”

“Do you make fun of me?” the man shouted.

“No indeed”, Fray Juan replied. “I am in earnest. Will you tell me your story?”

The man began to tell the story of a hard life. He had been a soldier, had been taken prisoner by the Turks and had suffered much in captivity. But at last he had escaped. And thanks to the generosity of his captain, he had been able to buy the donkey. He had been on his way to his own village, where he intended to earn his living using the animal as a beast of burden.

“What work did you do as a prisoner? Fray Juan asked.

“Stonemason”, he replied. “We built the Pasha’s palace.”

Without hesitation Fray Juan said, “I can offer you something like that. Help me build a palace. But not for the Pasha, for God.”

“What are you paying?” the man inquired, eyeing Fray Juan dubiously. In his rough serge habit he looked more like a beggar than a friar.

“First I will help you bury your donkey, for it has already begun to stink”, said Fray Juan.

As they had no spade, they began to dig with an iron pike. It had been a hot, dry summer, and the earth was as hard as rock.

“My name is Fray Juan de la Cruz”, he began as they worked. “I am on my way to a place calle Duruelo. I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there. All I know that I am going to Duruelo to build a palace to God and that Providence has put you on this road. For I confess I was beginning to wonder how I was going to build it on my own.”

The man had stopped digging. He was leaning on his spike. It was a hot day, and he was breathing hard. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, staring at Fray Juan, not quite sure he had heard right.

Fray Juan calmly continued, “I am a Carmelite. The friary I have been sent to Duruelo to found is to be dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is our patron saint”

The man’s expression cleared. He began to prod and scrape at the hard earth again.

“Spare your breath, Brother, ” the man said as he worked. “If Our Lady is involved in this, there is nothing more to be said. I am in her debt. And it seems the time has come to settle the score.

Fray Juan listened with great interest to the story of how he owed his life to the Blessed Virgin.

“Take care,” Fray Juan warned, “for Our Lady has a habit of calling in such debts with interest. I will not deceive you. It will be hard work, and I cannot pay you. But I can offer you a place to lay your head at night and peace of mind in the knowledge that you will be doing God’s work.”

Fray Juan’s brother Francisco tells of the Duruelo friary:

For all its simplicity, the place had a charm of its own, tucked in a nook of a rolling valley studded with holm oaks. The friary, which they called “the palace”, was as tidy a piece of work as I ever saw, for the lay brother had some skill in stonework. And bare though the church was, having no more adornment than the figure of Christ, it inspired devotion. How the laborers of those parts marveled to see the transformation they wrought on the old abandoned cottage. Whenever a number of them came together, Fray Juan would preach and then hear confessions. When the church was finished, the friars no longer had to go out and beg for food, for the country tolk would bring it to them. But if they had more than they needed, Fray Juan would not accept their generosity, saying that they must live in poverty. Once we were invited by a laborer to dine at his master’s house. This invitation Fray Juan politely declined. Later he told me he did not accept their charity because he needed no payment or thanks for doing God’s work.

He only accepted bread, and then only if he could not avoid it, for the lay brother made a vegetable garden that provided them with all they needed. My brother used to say that Providence would answer all his needs. But what would have become of him if he hadn’t met that lay brother. Not only was the man a skilled builder, he also had some skill in the cultivation of plants, medicinal herbs and herbs for seasoning food. In all such matters Fray Juan deferred to the lay brother’s greater knowledge, doing his bidding without question in the garden and in other matters unrelated to the soul. Yet my brother always found a way of wedding one to the other. And he would take every opportunity to reflect upon such things to their mutual benefit. Their first crop was garbanzos. As they were threshing them, my brother said how sweet it was to work with these mute little creatures. He saw the hand of God the Creator in everything, even garbanzo beans, and he marveled greatly at it. But still more greatly did I marvel at his words, by which he endeavored to convey how much he loved the simplicity of life in that remote corner, and how little he desired to return to the hurly-burly of the world.