This divine knowledge of God never deals with particular things. This sublime knowledge can be received only by a person who has arrived at union with God, for it is itself that very union. It consists in a certain touch of the divinity produced in the soul, and thus it is God Himself who is experienced and tasted there… –John of the Cross
St John of the Cross Adoring
Lord make me mindful of your nearness in every situation of my life. Help me to understand every happening as coming from Your hand. Ask Mary to help me see that. Lord never let my best plans and projects stand in the way of Your providential plan. Encourage me to be a channel, a vessel, an instrument, of its unfolding, in all the little things that make up my life. Lord eat with me, dress with me, drive with me, shop with me. Be there where I am, in my here and now, every day ordinary life. Mary stay at my side, so that I can see your Son in my situation. Sometimes Lord you know that I feel like a lost child rooming in a world that has become a foreign country. Let me always be led again to the place where I belong. Do not let me feel like a lonely ship lost in the night. Lead me to friends, to a faith community. Lead me to the Eucharist, so that where ever I am I will be found there with you. Lord you know that there is much about me that is still like a little child. I need to be shown. I need to be led. I need to be fed. Give me solid food Lord. The solid food of Your Word Lord, of the tradition I love. Let it feed me feed me when I most need to be nurtured, when I feel in danger of forgetting. St Alphonsus De Liguori on Mary offering her Divine Child in the Temple: ‘Consider Mary on her journey to Jerusalem to offer her son. She hastens her steps toward the place of sacrifice and she herself bears the beloved victim in her arms. She enters the Temple, approaches the altar and there, beaming with modesty, devotion and humility, she presents her Son to the Most High. In the meantime, the holy Simeon, who had received a promise from God that he should not die without have first having seeing the expected messiah takes the divine child from the hands of the Blessed Virgin, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, announces to her, how much the sacrifice, which she then made of her son, would cost her and that with him, her own blessed soul would also be sacrificed. Yes, she will suffer in her heart. Her compassion alone for the sufferings of this most beloved son was the sword of sorrow which is to pierce the heart of the mother as Simeon foretold. Mary, I say, knew all these torments that her son was to endure, but in the words addressed to her by Simeon and all the minute circumstances of the sufferings, internal and external, that were to torment Jesus in His passion were made known to her. She consented to all with a constancy which even filled the angels with astonishment. All this was involved in her sacrificial offering of her son this day in the temple. She consented completely to the will of God and the sword was indeed to pierce her heart and soul. To understand the violence which Mary had to offer herself in this sacrifice, it would be necessary to understand the love that this mother bore to Jesus. How ineffable the son. How noble the mother. How much it cost her and how much strength of mind she had to exercise this act by which she sacrificed the life of so amiable of Son to the cross. And so we pray. Mary, we know that your sufferings did not end in the temple that day. They only began. From that time forward, during the whole life of Jesus, oh Mary, you had constantly before your eyes, the death and the torments, he was to endure. Oh most compassionate lady, I cannot believe that you could have endured for a moment, so excruciating of torment, without expiring under it, had not God himself, the spirit of life, sustained you. In every moment, you lived dying. For in every moment, you were assailed by the sorrow of the certain death of your beloved Jesus. Mother of God, grant through your prayers, that we to will be able to walk with Jesus this path that is the fall and the rising of many. Oh Mary, make of us an offering, this day, in the temple of our situation.
Amen.
…prayer is an efficacious means of mortification….mortification of ourselves is the true fruit we must reap from prayer; and that we may, with reason, suspect that prayer which is not accompanied with mortification. For as, in order to shape iron, it is not sufficient to heat and soften it in the fire, but it must also be beaten with the hammer before it can receive its proper form; so it is not sufficient to mortify our heart by the heat of prayer, but we must also make use of mortification to fashion our soul…. –St Alphonsus Rodriguez
Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love,
Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need,
Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children
Because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exists in your heart,
Cast your compassionate eyes upon me,
See the snarl of knots that exist in my life.
You know very well how desperate I am,
My pain,
How I am bound by these knots.
Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children,
I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life.
No one, not even the evil one himself, can overpower your precious care.
In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
Powerful Mother, by your grace and intercessory power with Your Son and My Liberator,
Take into your hands today this knot…
I beg you to undo it for the glory of God,
Once for all, You are my hope.
O my Lady, you are the sweetest consolation God grants,
The fortification of my feeble strength,
The enrichment of my destitution
And with Christ the freedom from my chains.
Hear my plea.
Keep me,
Guide me,
Protect me,
O safe refuge!
‘contemplation is the soul’s free and clear dwelling upon the object of its gaze’. (Aquinas)
Three things are required for contemplation. First, the ordering of the corrupt affections, which ordering is a certain disposition towards contemplation, and this is had through the moral virtues. So the wings are moral virtues, such as patience and humility etc…Another wing is charity which greatly helps one to fly to contemplation…Another wing is wisdom, and by the wings of wisdom, truth is contemplated, for without these wings, one is easily taken into errors if divine things are contemplated…(Aquinas)
…Super Psalmos, the image of ‘wings’ occurs a number of times and most memorably, perhaps, when Thomas is referring to the power of Christ’s protection. Thus, commenting on the phrase Protect me under the shadow of your wings, he writes: ‘The two wings are the two arms of Christ extended on the cross’….
Now shade protects us from heat, just as God’s care refreshes us with safety. Like wise a hen protects her chicks in her wings against a bird of prey, just as God defends the just from the rapacity of the demons in his wings, which are charity and mercy. How often I wanted to gather you just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not. Mt. 23.37…
The actual life of contemplation, evoked by the phrase ‘contemplata aliis tradere’, is a way of life that can hope to survive and flourish only if it is able enjoy a serene, meditative environment….Those who ‘take flight’ in contemplation, and in particular those who make great progress in prayer, are not men and women of a complacent and self-satisfied disposition. No, the opposite is the case. Commenting on the text, This poor man called and the Lord heard him, (Psalm 33), Thomas (Aquinas) observes that the individual, in this case, was manifestly ‘poor in spirit (anawim), or poor in that way, or poor in earthly desires’. And it is men and women who are poor in that way, Thomas insists, whose prayer has real merit in the end, and who, because they cry out ‘with the intensity of interior desire’ find their prayers answered by God.
To me, poor wretch,
Come quickly, Lord!
My helper, my savior, my God,
Come and do not delay!
These lines of manifest poverty of spirit, and intense longing, comprise the short stanza which concludes Psalm 39. The Dominican Master, instead of simply commenting on the lines, expresses something of their meaning in his own direct and simple prose:
I am asking everything because by myself I am not able to do anything since I am a beggar…A beggar is someone who seeks from another what he needs to live, while a poor man is someone who has not enough for himself…I must out of necessity, therefore, beg God for the help of his grace. I am also a poor man, and what I possess is not enough for me. Because I recognize this, the Lord takes care of me. And, because I am needy, You, Lord, are my help. And, because of danger, Do not delay! Lord, come to my aid!
–Paul Murray OP ‘Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry’
Eucharist
You, I devoutly adore, hidden Truth, you
who under these forms, are truly hidden.
My whole heart submits itself to you for,
in contemplating you, I am at a complete loss.
Sight, touch, taste, in you are deceived;
hearing alone can be completely believed.
I believe all the son of God has said; nothing
can be more true than the Word of truth.
Upon the cross the Godhead alone was
hidden, but here the humanity is also hidden.
Truly believing and confessing both,
I beg what the penitent thief begged.
I do not see wounds, as Thomas did,
but I confess you as my God.
Make me believe ever more in you,
having hope in you, and loving you.
O memorial of the death of the Lord,
living bread that gives life to man,
Allow me always to live for you, and allow
me to taste your sweetness always.
One drop of which would be enough to save
the whole world of all its defilement.
Jesus, whom I now gave at veiled, when
shall that which I so desire come to pass?
So that seeing you, your face revealed, I may
be blessed with the vision of your glory.
English translation by Paul Murray, O.P.
I praise,
Glorify and bless you,
My God,
For the immeasurable
Favours shown to me
Who am unworthy.
I praise
Your kind forbearance,
Waiting on me for so long
And your gentleness
Appearing in the guise of a sharp reprisal.
I praise
Your tenderness
Calling out to me,
Your kindness
Supporting me,
Your mercy
Forgiving my sins
I praise
Your goodness for giving me
More than I deserve
And your patience
For not remembering
Past injuries
I praise your humility
That consoles me,
Your patience
That protects me,
Your eternity
That preserves me,
Your truth
That rewards me.
What can I say,
My God, about your ineffable generosity?
For you call back the fugitive,
You welcome the one who returns.
You support the one who falters.
You gladden the despondent,
You urge on the negligent.
You arm the warrior,
You crown the victor.
You spurn the repentant sinner,
You do not remember past crimes.
You set us free from many perils,
You soften our hearts for penitence.
You frighten us with chastisements,
You entice us with promises.
You correct us with scourges,
You guard us with a ministering angel.
Temporal things
You supply for us, eternal things you keep for us
In reserve.
You inspire us with grandeur of creation.
You draw us forward
With the mercy of redemption. You promise us
Blessings in reward.
For all these things
I cannot give sufficient praise.
I give thanks, however,
To your majesty,
For the abundance of your immense goodness,
May you always
Increase your grace in me,
Preserve that increase,
And reward what you have preserved.
Amen.
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