Blessed Henry Suso

Apr142015

Henry Suso axioms for the serious contemplative

The nature of some people has not been broken enough, and in this case the outer man remains present outside.

One disorder calls forth another.

Purity, understanding, and virtue make one rich in the natural realm. It sometimes happens, when those having such qualities withdraw, they become less before all creatures; and when this turns out well, they are directed to what is more perfect.

For a friend of God to be without victory is to have conquered.

A truly detached person should strive for four things. 1. To be completely upright in his conduct so that things flow from him without his activity. 2. To be proper and calm in his senses and not casting about…so that the inner senses might have a leisurely journey. 3. Not to be attached. One should be careful not to allow anything mixed with impurity to arise. 4. Not to be quarrelsome, but kind to those through whom God wants to help one withdraw.

Remain firm in yourself until you are taken out of yourself without your doing it yourself.

See whether intimate contact with good people arises from whim or simplicity. The first is too often the case.

All who use freedom wrongly take themselves as a model.

When a person wants to dwell in truth, his self-abandonment lights up his interior and he notices that a creature is still within him he wanted to have gone. He bears himself in patience and sees that he really is not yet free of things. To endure oneself thus is to become simple. Withdrawing causes weariness; in turning away it disappears.

Free yourself from everything your external judgment chooses, which binds your will and causes pleasure to your memory.

Letting one’s senses wander about far and wide removes a person from inwardness. See to it that you take up no business that carries you outward. When such business is looking for you, do not let it find you. Turn quickly inward to yourself.

Natural life manifests itself in movement and the activity of the senses. For anyone forsaking himself and losing himself, supernatural life begins in stillness.

Some people ascend without difficulty, but they do not long remain there.

–Henry Suso ‘The Exemplar: The Life of the Servant’

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Apr132015

Too much, too soon

After the first battles that arise when one checks the flesh and passions, a person comes to a deep pool in which many go under. This is capricious reasoning, when a person is freed from crass sinfulness and is released from images to which he was attached, and freely lifts himself above time and place, which previously bound him so that he could not at all enjoy his inborn nobility. But when the eye of the intellect begins to open and a person is searching to fulfill a different and better kind of pleasure, namely, (knowledge of) the truth, enjoyment of divine blessedness, the sight of the present “now” of eternity, and the like, and when the created intellect begins to understand a bit the eternal uncreated intellect in itself and in all things, it then in some strange way happens to a person that he looks at himself–what he was before, and what he now is– And he realises that before he was miserable, godless and in need, completely blind and far from God. But now it seems to him he is filled with God and there is nothing that is not God; further, God and all things are a simple one. He grasps things too quickly, not taking enough time, then he becomes unstable…. He rushes to that which he understands or what is presented injudiciously (unwise) to him by someone who is in the same situation. He is supposed to listen to this person alone and to no one else. Then he views everything as it pleases his thinking; and things elude his grasp as they really are in themselves, be it hell, heaven, devil or angel, because such persons have only grasped God in things and have not penetrated the things with knowledge that distinguishes them in their ground, things according to their permanence or transitoriness. These people are like bees making honey. When they mature and, for the first time, storm out of the hive, they fly confused this way and that and do not know where to go. Some fly off wrong and are lost, but others return to the hive in proper fashion. This is what happens to these people. When they see God with their uninformed intellect as all in all according to their undeveloped intellect, they want to leave this or that but do not know how. It is certainly true that everything must be removed from people if they are to become perfect, but they do not yet understand how this ridding (one’s) self of everything is to take place.

–Henry Suso ‘The Exemplar’

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Mar252015

Mary darkness experienced

It was a sad thing to hear and see. Oh, it was all endurable as long as I had my Child with me. But when they tore my dead Child from my deadened heart, from my arms embracing Him and from my face pressed against Him, and buried Him, one can hardly imagine how wretched I felt. When it was time to depart, what grief and anguish one saw in me! When they parted me from from my Buried Love, this parting was like death wrestling with my heart. Helpless, I walked supported by the hands of those leading me. I was utterly without consolation. My heart was grieving and longing again for its love. My trust was unbroken. Among all people I alone showed Him complete loyalty and true devotion to the grave.

Dear, gentle lady, this is why all hearts greet you and all tongues praise you, for all the goodness the heart of the Father wanted to give us flowed through your hands. You are the beginning and mediatrix. You shall also be the end. O gentle, pure Mother, remember today that sorrowful parting. Think of the bitter departure you took from your tender Child and help me never to be separated from you or his joyous sight…

–Henry Suso

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Mar242015

Imitation of Christ

Christ, is superior to all other men in that he is the head of Christianity, just as one speaks of the head of a man in relation to his body, as it is written that all those whom he has foreordained, whom he has prepared, would become of the same form as the image of God’s Son, that he is the firstborn among many others. Hence, whoever wants to achieve a true return and become a son in Christ, let him in true detachment turn to Him and away from self. –Henry Suso

Crucifix

Crucifix

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Mar192015

Stern guidance

By nature the soul is inclined toward harmful pleasure. And so I cover its path with thorns. I fill all the gaps with adversity, whether it likes it or not, so that it not escape me. I strew all its path with suffering so that it cannot take one step to pursue it’s heart’s desire except in the heights of my divine nature. –Henry Suso ‘Little Book of Eternal Wisdom’

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Mar062015

Interior Purgation

The highest angel likes nothing better than to satisfy My will in all things.  And if it knew that My Glory depended on pulling out nettles and other weeds, this would be what it would most desire to do.  –Henry Suso ‘Little Book of Eternal Wisdom’.

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Mar042015

Chosen One

How Some Men Are Drawn by God Without Their Knowing It

I have loved her and sought her out from my youth and have chosen her for my bride”. (Book of Wisdom)

An undisciplined spirit, as it first ventured forth, strayed onto the paths of error. There, eternal Wisdom in an indescribable spiritual form confronted him and drew him by means both pleasant and unpleasant until it brought him to the right path of divine truth. And, when he reflected deeply on how wondrously he had been drawn, he addressed God thus: “Dear gentle Lord, since I was a child, my spirit has been searching with unslaked thirst for something. And what this was, Lord, I have never yet fully grasped. For many a year, Lord, I have pursued it feverishly, yet could never attain it because I never really knew what it was; and yet it is something that draws my heart and soul to itself and without which I cannot ever really find peace. Lord, in the early days of my childhood I would search for it as I saw others do before me—in creatures. And more I sought, the less I found; and the closer I came, the farther away I got. Concerning every form that I looked at I heard an inner voice, and before I would occupy myself with it completely or devote myself to it in peace, it would say: ‘This is not what you are searching for’. Always I had this force driving me away from all things. Lord, my heart is raging to possess it because I want it….

Response of eternal wisdom: Don’t you recognize it? It has, after all, lovingly embraced you and has often stood in your path until it gained you for itself alone.

The servant: Lord, I never saw or heard it at all. I don’t know what it is.

Response of eternal wisdom: That is not surprising. It was caused by your intimacy with creatures and your unfamiliarity with it. But now open your inner eyes and see who I am. It is I, eternal Wisdom, who chose you for myself in eternity with the embrace of my eternal providence. I have blocked your path whenever you would have been separated from me if I had let you be. You always found something repugnant in all things. This is the surest mark of my chosen ones, that I want them all for myself.

–Henry Suso ‘Little Book of Eternal Wisdom’
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