No men’s meeting today after early mass at Sacred Heart. I was disappointed, informed the meetings are held the second and fourth of every month. It will be a solid start of Lent to enjoy the first Saturday with a fellowship meeting with the men’s group. I was contacted yesterday by a woman from the St Clare parish regarding their weekly Lent gatherings, aligned with the parish of St Paschal Baylon. The idea of increasing my faith based social life intrigues mightily. Clearly, God is demonstrating forthright in ways to be and not to be–maturity expanding. Demonstratively, I will point out one of the disturbing experiences directing me further into healthy communal activity within the Church. Even if the religious life is discerned later in life, a retiring to prayer and a singular concentration upon God, I am convinced it is first important to establish the fact I am able to intimately interact with mature members of the Church. I have determined it is best to put distance between John the Hermit and myself. Over a week ago, he left a harmless, yet deeply disturbing message on my phone, declaring his psychological interpretations on the dangers and prideful nature of facial hair. Setting aside detail and argument, foregoing issues and dealing with core problems, the message sounded weird, deranged and spiritually unhealthy, unsettling on a spiritually intuitive level. I did not respond to the message, allowing patience and time to allow a greater revealing. He furthered matters by leaving more messages apologizing, and more words absorbed in an attempt to profoundly analyze facial hair through psychological expertise. The matter became humorous on a bizarre level. He is harmless, yet strange and isolated in his spiritual path. I have no interest in pursuing such matters. Abbot William writes of marching to his own drummer, yet that solitary state is pursued within obedience and acquiescence. He was able to humbly interact and share with others. He could establish friendships and associations of lasting depth. I have been leery, while admiring, John the Hermit based upon his intense spiritual acumen, although cautious due to the fact when he speaks it is always from the position of a spiritual master. He talks to everyone with an implied tone that he is spiritually superior. Undoubtedly, God presents a way not to be. That experience came on the heels of a Sunday with a friend from St Paul Shrine who asked for a ride after mass. I took the woman immediately across town, foregoing a Holy Hour, pulled away from socializing with coffee and donuts, in order for her to attend her second mass within a two hour time period. I sat in the church, observing the single woman of no family ties isolated from everyone, sitting preoccupied in prayer, completely distant from the families attending Sunday mass. I decided to wash my car, feeling disturbed by spiritual gluttony. There was something disturbing I was a part of, something foreign to propriety, something abrasive to a peaceful solitary contemplative Holy Hour following mass shared amongst the body of Christ. I am firm in my conviction to distance myself from weird, immature, ways of living the spiritual life. I am able to abandon God, becoming more authentic in my humanity, in order to draw closer to God.

It is inconceivable to see this holy being of Mary absolutely lost in Jesus, to see how profoundly She lives in Him, how what is proper to Her is destroyed and annihilated and how one sees and feels only a total abandonment and an absolute relinquishment; but more than all that, the donation of Her whole being is made with such a living, ardent and pressing need  that She is in a continuous act of  abandonment, feeling by Her ardent desires that it seems to Her that She does not belong enough to Him, wishing, were it possible for Her, to belong still more.  –Monsieur Olier a passionate mystic letter writer.

More than a friend to St Francis de Sales, Monsieur Olier must be associated with St Louis de Montfort. St Montfort (1673-1716) studied theology from 1695 to 1700 at Saint Sulpice, the seminary founded by Monsieur Olier. Olier died in 1657, but his spirit and his writings were very much alive and certainly greatly influenced St Montfort, the author of “The Secret of the Rosary”, “The Secret of Mary”, and “True devotion to Mary”.

Dios te salve, Maria.
Hail Mary,

Llena eres de gracia:
Full of grace,

El Seńor es contigo.
The Lord is with thee.

Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres.
Blessed are though amongst women.

Y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre:
Jesús.
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.

Santa María, Madre de Dios,
Holy Mary, Mother of God,

ruega por nosotros pecadores,
Pray for us sinners,

ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte.
Now and at the hour of our death.

Amén.

a oscuras y segura
por la secreta escala disfrazada,
¡oh dichosa ventura!
a oscuras y en celada
estando ya mi casa sosegada.

Secure, devoid of light,
by secret stairway, stealing
– O joyful flight! –
in darkness self-concealing,
my house, in silence, resting.

St John of the Cross. Euclid, Ohio.

Merry Christmas.  Unseasonably warm weather, rainy conditions, life undergoing the passing through of a threshold, settling into new employment, this Christmas has a strange sense of peace, discomfort within the calmness of acceptance.  Forefront, a bizarre situation presented itself, Christian fellowship demanding a response.  Extending Christmas wishes to a casual acquaintance from the Shrine, she confessed, speaking deeply of the fact she is struggling.  She was evicted from her home, left homeless, living out of her smaller SUV with her dog.  I was stunned naturally offering resources, the availability of time in order to help her bring order into her life.  It is a complex situation.  I will assist her in seeking solutions, remaining detached from her, encouraging her to embrace the truth of her life, the reality in all its complexity.  It is odd I would just have exposure to the Ignatian Spirituality Project, an active homeless organization.  The woman is a highly educated attorney, physically slowed by severe back problems, yet sober in every regard, a likeable and sociable woman of skill and intellect.  I feel overwhelmed, extending a couch, while honestly wishing I would have not been burdened.  I did not feel appropriate attending Christmas mass with her.  She is still married to her husband, yet I saw nothing else I could do.  I worried what Ann would think, while understanding the threshold I pass through is the detaching from Ann.  That is my true challenge.  During mass, I sat behind her and she is so central within my being it hurts tremendously to be aware of her presence and not share Christmas joy with her.  I understand everything we have been through.  I have much to feel shameful for.  There is such intense discomfort.  My heart aches immensely.  I am done reasoning and reflecting.  Sorrow remains.  Life changes and God calls.  Simplicity, I pray for, yet complexity presents itself.  I dismiss everything, focusing upon God, understanding I am a man of prayer, allowing God to bring to surface solutions to my call for simplicity; a refinement interiorly and exteriorly.  The Hospice called yesterday, scheduling a four hour bedside vigil for the evening.  It becomes anticipated, relished in opportunity, a lengthy time of prayer at the side of an unresponsive dying person a call to personal intimacy and closeness with God, equitable to Eucharistic adoration, the confronting of the image and likeness of God subject to free will enduring time and circumstance—a life coming to an end, myself reposing bedside in prayer.  On the day of the birth of our Savior, I find solace within the call.

A repost from just days ago:

The great overturn…occurs midway, at the fourth mansion, the starting point of true conversion.

What appears to be indisputable is that, in every life, thresholds are crossed beyond which things are no longer the same. As we reflect on this, we shall understand.

What Teresa of Avila calls the fourth mansion is this central experience which can be lived in thousands of ways. It often is a difficult ordeal; man gives up his limited human logic, his thoughts as man, as Jesus says to Peter, his self-sufficiency as an adult, to open himself to the radically new experience which comes from God, this childlike trust that the genius of Theresa of the Child Jesus expressed better than anyone else.  –Andrew Doze ‘Joseph: Shadow of the Father’