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Dead Flowers

On the purgative path, we must try not to pay attention to either sensual or spiritual delights. Any inordinate attachment blocks the road to higher state of happiness for which we are destined.  Sensory goods, enjoyed outside of God, are like flowers that bloom and whither with every passing season.  There is no reason to pay heed to any of these unstable blooms if they “detain (us) from seeking (out) Love in the mountain and riversides of virtues and trials”   (Ascent of Mount Carmel)

–Susan Muto ‘Deep into the Thicket’

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A prayer from Susan Muto

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.

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Perpetual advancement of humility, allowing proper mortification and prayer, thus a deepening and expanding of the virtues

When one fails to advance in perfection because one fails to advance in humility, it is easy to grow discouraged and backslide.  Lost is the spirit of perseverance.  Replacing it is the delusion that doubling up on spiritual exercises will increase satisfaction.  Instead one only feels more aridity.  Motivated by self-seeking rather than by self-denial, one misses the mark of real advancement, stubbornly refusing to take counsel and reasonable instruction from one wiser than he or she.  It is hard to admit that what seems so right has proven to be so wrong.  Moral deeds have been done, but for the motive of increasing joy in oneself, not submission to God.  Hardly anyone escapes this danger.  Before long this “outstanding citizen,” this “pillar of the church,” this “mirror of virtue” grows slack in love of God and charity to others and may even fall into corruption he or she so publicly abhorred.  

Susan Muto ‘John of the Cross for Today: The Ascent”.  The originator of the wonderful term ‘wasting time gracefully’

There are certain spirits I am immediately and intensely attracted to.  Susan Muto is one.  I find her to be a beautiful woman, immensely wise in the subtly of profound spiritual growth.  I enjoy contemplating her physical beauty as a woman.  I heard it said that though St John of the Cross is a name tossed about by many, few truly comprehend the depth and ascension of his thought.  The previous statement basing the idea of comprehension upon a demanding utilitarian aspect.  Vital comprehension of St John of the Cross involves application rather than knowing.  From a distance, I rest assured Dr Susan Muto is a soul attuned to St John of the Cross.

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