Monthly Archives: December 2022

Dec232022

Advent readings

Song of Songs

Hark! my lover–here he comes
springing across the mountains,
leaping across the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Here he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.
My lover speaks; he says to me,
“Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one,
and come!
“For see, the winter is past,
the rains are over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of pruning the vines has come,
and the song of the dove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.
Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,
and come!

“O my dove in the clefts of the rock,
in the secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me see you,
let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet,
and you are lovely.”

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Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.

Give thanks to the LORD on the harp;
with the ten-stringed lyre chant his praises.
Sing to him a new song;
pluck the strings skillfully, with shouts of gladness.
Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.

But the plan of the LORD stands forever;
the design of his heart, through all generations.
Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.
Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.

Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield,
For in him our hearts rejoice;
in his holy name we trust.
Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.

Hannah brought Samuel with her, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine, and presented him at the temple of the LORD in Shiloh. After the boy’s father had sacrificed the young bull, Hannah, his mother, approached Eli and said: “Pardon, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood near you here, praying to the LORD.  I prayed for this child, and the LORD granted my request.  Now I, in turn, give him to the LORD; as long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the LORD.” She left Samuel there. –1st Samual

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Dec202022

A Biblical son is born

There was a certain man from Zorah, of the clan of the Danites,
whose name was Manoah.
His wife was barren and had borne no children.
An angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her,
“Though you are barren and have had no children,
yet you will conceive and bear a son.
Now, then, be careful to take no wine or strong drink
and to eat nothing unclean.
As for the son you will conceive and bear,
no razor shall touch his head,
for this boy is to be consecrated to God from the womb.
It is he who will begin the deliverance of Israel
from the power of the Philistines.”

The woman went and told her husband,
“A man of God came to me;
he had the appearance of an angel of God, terrible indeed.
I did not ask him where he came from, nor did he tell me his name.
But he said to me,
‘You will be with child and will bear a son.
So take neither wine nor strong drink, and eat nothing unclean.
For the boy shall be consecrated to God from the womb,
until the day of his death.’”

The woman bore a son and named him Samson.
The boy grew up and the LORD blessed him;
the Spirit of the LORD stirred him.

The Book of Judges

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Dec182022

I must decrease……

A soul aspiring to union with God must truly allow itself to be emptied and purified in radical ways. The road of purification can take a long time, or it can be relatively short in duration, depending in large part on how serious we are in mortifying our own self-absorbed tendencies. This is the primary lesson of these pages on the spiritual vices at the beginning of The Dark Night. The great need of our soul is to refine our desire to please God alone and to leave ourselves empty and unimportant in our own estimation. We have to give ourselves away, strip ourselves of self-preoccupation; it is never sufficient simply to be generous in charitable actions. The Gospel admonition to lose ourselves for love is an effort of interior and exterior demands that allows no compromise and no turning back on self. Such efforts are not without effect. They are the preparation for the purer longing for God and the accessibility to God that are traits of a soul ready to receive the grace of contemplation. –Father Donald Haggerty “St John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation”

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Dec172022

The struggles of a saint

Insofar as I know, my confessor, as I say–who was a truly holy father from the Society of Jesus–gave this same reply. He was very discreet and deeply humble; and this humility that was so great brought upon me many trials. For since he was a learned and very prayerful man, and the Lord didn’t lead him by this path, he didn’t trust in himself. He suffered many great trials in many ways on my account. I knew that they told him to be careful of me, that he shouldn’t let the devil deceive him by anything I told him; they brought up examples to him of other persons. All of this made me anxious. I feared that I would have no one who would hear my confession, but that all would run from me. I did nothing but weep.

By God’s providence he wanted to continue to hear my confession, for he was such a great servant of God that he would have put up with anything for God; so he advised me that I shouldn’t turn aside from what he told me or fear that he would fail me, and that I shouldn’t offend God. He always encouraged and comforted me. He always ordered me not to hold anything from him. I never did. He told me that if I followed this advice the devil wouldn’t be able to harm me even if the vision did come from him, but that rather the Lord would draw good out of the evil the devil desired to do my soul. This father strove for my soul’s perfection in every way he could. Since I had so much fear, I obeyed him in everything, although imperfectly; for on account of these trials he suffered a great deal during the three years or more that he was my confessor. –-St Teresa of Avila from her autobiography

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Dec162022

Build your secret slowly

First, it describes this dark contemplation as ‘secret,’ since, as we have indicated above, it is mystical theology, which theologians call secret wisdom, and which, as Saint Thomas says is communicated and infused into the soul through love.[213] This happens secretly and in darkness, so as to be hidden from the work of the understanding and of other faculties. Wherefore, inasmuch as the faculties aforementioned attain not to it, but the Holy Spirit infuses and orders it in the soul, as says the Bride in the Songs, without either its knowledge or its understanding, it is called secret. And, in truth, not only does the soul not understand it, but there is none that does so, not even the devil; inasmuch as the Master Who teaches the soul is within it in its substance, to which the devil may not attain, neither may natural sense nor understanding.

And it is not for this reason alone that it may be called secret, but likewise because of the effects which it produces in the soul. For it is secret not only in the darknesses and afflictions of purgation, when this wisdom of love purges the soul, and the soul is unable to speak of it, but equally so afterwards in illumination, when this wisdom is communicated to it most clearly. Even then it is still so secret that the soul cannot speak of it and give it a name whereby it may be called; for, apart from the fact that the soul has no desire to speak of it, it can find no suitable way or manner or similitude by which it may be able to describe such lofty understanding and such delicate spiritual feeling. And thus, even though the soul might have a great desire to express it and might find many ways in which to describe it, it would still be secret and remain undescribed. For, as that inward wisdom is so simple, so general and so spiritual that it has not entered into the understanding enwrapped or cloaked in any form or image subject to sense, it follows that sense and imagination (as it has not entered through them nor has taken their form and colour) cannot account for it or imagine it, so as to say anything concerning it, although the soul be clearly aware that it is experiencing and partaking of that rare and delectable wisdom. It is like one who sees something never seen before, whereof he has not even seen the like; although he might understand its nature and have experience of it, he would be unable to give it a name, or say what it is, however much he tried to do so, and this in spite of its being a thing which he had perceived with the senses. How much less, then, could he describe a thing that has not entered through the senses! For the language of God has this characteristic that, since it is very intimate and spiritual in its relations with the soul, it transcends every sense and at once makes all harmony and capacity of the outward and inward senses to cease and be dumb. —St John of the Cros ‘Dark Night of the Soul’

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