We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God;

for, beholding His greatness, we realize our own littleness;

His purity shows us our foulness;

and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.

Teresa of Avila

Let no one think on starting of the reward to be reaped: this would be a very ignoble way of commencing such a large and stately building.

If built on sand it would soon fall down. Souls who acted thus would continually suffer from discouragement and temptations, for in these mansions no manna rains

What a farce it is! Here are we, with a thousand obstacles, drawbacks, and imperfections within ourselves, our virtues so newly born that they have scarcely the strength to act (and God grant that they exist at all!) yet we are not ashamed to expect sweetness in prayer and to complain of feeling dryness.

Do not act thus, sisters; embrace the cross your Spouse bore on His shoulders; know that your motto should be: ‘Most happy she who suffers most if it be for Christ!’

All else should be looked upon as secondary: if our Lord give it you, render Him grateful thanks. You may imagine you would be resolute in enduring external trials if God gave you interior consolations:

His Majesty knows best what is good for us; it is not for us to advise Him how to treat us, for He has the right to tell us that we know not what we ask.

Remember, it is of the greatest importance – the sole aim of one beginning to practise prayer should be to endure trials, and to resolve and strive to the utmost of her power to conform her own will to the will of God.

Be certain that in this consists all the greatest perfection to be attained in the spiritual life, as I will explain later.

She who practises this most perfectly will receive from God the highest reward and is the farthest advanced on the right road.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582): Interior Castle 2,1,13-15.

Taken from, “Let Nothing Disturb You,” by Teresa of Avila

Day Six

MY DAY IS ENDING

Let nothing, O Lord,

disturb the silence of this night.

Let nothing make me afraid.

Let me wake refreshed,

ready to love and care for my neighbor

as you have loved and cared for me,

and indeed as I love and care for myself.

For if I do not love others

I cannot fool myself into believing

that I love you.

I am, I know, as this day ends

very far from such a love.

But hear my prayer.

When I see others,

let me see you.

Let me show them

the same reverence and respect

that I would show you.

If I love them,

I will love you,

and I will want for nothing.

The Definitive  Indefinite Article is conducting an pilot program of unauthorized
content recontextualization 

The Critical Reader: You mean Plagarism?

TDIA:  That is an ugly word but in essence yes.  You can voice your criticisms via the reader poll below.  Anyway here is today’s pilot recontextualization:

The Virgin Mary has disputed claims that she will appear at the Knock Basilica on December 5th as she has a long-standing engagement to appear at the tree …

via Virgin Mary disputes claims she will play Knock on Dec 5th.

The Critical Reader: While entertaning and informative, this is still plagarism.

TDIA: Like I said, you can have your say below with the rest of them. As the Alabama congressman said to the Taliban: Vote early!  Vote often!

Teresa of Avila

I, myself, have sometimes been troubled by this turmoil of thought.

I learnt by experience, but little more than four years ago, that our thoughts, or it is clearer to call it our imagination, are not the same thing as the understanding.

I questioned a theologian on the subject; he told me it was the fact, which consoled me not a little.

As the understanding is one of the powers of the soul, it puzzled me to see it so sluggish at times, while, as a rule, the imagination takes flight at once, so that God alone can control it by so uniting us to Himself that we seem, in a manner, detached from our bodies.

It puzzled me to see that while to all appearance the powers of the soul were occupied with God and recollected in Him, the imagination was wandering elsewhere.

…We cannot stop the revolution of the heavens as they rush with velocity upon their course, neither can we control our imagination.

When this wanders we at once imagine that all the powers of the soul follow it; we think everything is lost, and that the time spent in God’s presence is wasted.

Meanwhile, the soul is perhaps entirely united to Him in the innermost mansions, while the imagination is in the precincts of the castle, struggling with a thousand wild and venomous creatures and gaining merit by its warfare.

Therefore we need not let ourselves be disturbed, nor give up prayer, as the devil is striving to persuade us. As a rule, all our anxieties and troubles come from misunderstanding our own nature.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582): Interior Castle 4,1,8-9.

Teresa of Avila

Sensible devotion is very desirable if the soul is humble enough to understand that it is not more holy on account of these sentiments, which cannot always with certainty be ascribed to charity, and even then are still the gift of God.

These feelings of devotion are most common with souls in the first three mansions, who are nearly always using their understanding and reason in making meditations.

This is good for them, for they have not been given grace for more; they should, however, try occasionally to elicit some acts such as praising God, rejoicing in His goodness and that He is what He is: let them desire that He may be honoured and glorified. They must do this as best they can, for it greatly inflames the will.

Let them be very careful, when God gives these sentiments, not to set them aside in order to finish their accustomed meditation. But, having spoken fully on this subject elsewhere, I will say no more now.

I only wish to warn you that to make rapid progress and to reach the mansions we wish to enter, it is not so essential to think much as to love much: therefore you must practise whatever most excites you to this. Perhaps we do not know what love is, nor does this greatly surprise me.

Love does not consist in great sweetness of devotion, but in a fervent determination to strive to please God in all things, in avoiding, as far as possible, all that would offend Him, and in praying for the increase of the glory and honour of His Son and for the growth of the Catholic Church.

These are the signs of love; do not imagine that it consists in never thinking of anything but God, and that if your thoughts wander a little all is lost.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582): Interior Castle 4,1,6-7.

Teresa of Avila

I will now describe, as I promised, the difference between sweetness in prayer and spiritual consolations.

It appears to me that what we acquire for ourselves in meditation and petitions to our Lord may be termed ‘sweetness in devotion.’ It is natural, although ultimately aided by the grace of God.

I must be understood to imply this in all I say, for we can do nothing without Him. This sweetness arises principally from the good work we perform, and appears to result from our labours: well may we feel happy at having thus spent our time.

We shall find, on consideration, that many temporal matters give us the same pleasure….I have seen people weep from such happiness, as I have done myself. I consider both these joys and those we feel in religious matters to be natural ones.

Although there is nothing wrong about the former, yet those produced by devotion spring from a more noble source—in short, they begin in ourselves and end in God. Spiritual consolations, on the contrary, arise from God, and our nature feels them and rejoices as keenly in them, and indeed far more keenly, than in the others I described.

O Jesus! how I wish I could elucidate this point! It seems to me that I can perfectly distinguish the difference between the two joys, yet I have not the skill to make myself understood; may God give it me!

I remember a verse we say at Prime at the end of the final Psalm; the last words are: Cum dilatasti cor meum – ‘When Thou didst dilate my heart’ (Psalm 118:32).

To those with much experience, this suffices to show the difference between sweetness in prayer and spiritual consolations; other people will require more explanation.

The sensible devotion I mentioned does not dilate the heart, but generally appears to narrow it slightly; although joyful at seeing herself work for God, yet such a person sheds tears of sorrow which seem partly produced by the passions.

I know little about the passions of the soul, or I could write of them more clearly and could better define what comes from the sensitive disposition and what is natural, having passed through this state myself, but I am very stupid. Knowledge and learning are a great advantage to every one.

My own experience of this delight and sweetness in meditation was that when I began to weep over the Passion I could not stop until I had a severe headache; the same thing occurred when I grieved over my sins: this was a great grace from our Lord.

I do not intend to inquire now which of these states of prayer is the better, but I wish I knew how to explain the difference between the two. In that of which I speak, the tears and good desires are often partly caused by the natural disposition, but although this may be the case, yet, as I said, these feelings terminate in God.

Sensible devotion is very desirable if the soul is humble enough to understand that it is not more holy on account of these sentiments, which cannot always with certainty be ascribed to charity, and even then are still the gift of God.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582): Interior Castle 4,1,4-6.

Teresa of Ávila by François Pascal Simon Gérard

A soul which gives itself to prayer, either much or little, should on no account be kept within narrow bounds.

Since God has given it such great dignity, permit it to wander at will through the rooms of the castle, from the lowest to the highest.

Let it not force itself to remain for very long in the same mansion, even that of self-knowledge.

Mark well, however, that self-knowledge is indispensable, even for those whom God takes to dwell in the same mansion with Himself.

Nothing else, however elevated, perfects the soul which must never seek to forget its own nothingness. Let humility be always at work, like the bee at the honeycomb, or all will be lost.

But, remember, the bee leaves its hive to fly in search of flowers and the soul should sometimes cease thinking of itself to rise in meditation on the grandeur and majesty of its God.

It will learn its own baseness better thus than by self-contemplation, and will be freer from the reptiles which enter the first room where self-knowledge is acquired.

Although it is a great grace from God to practise self-examination, yet ‘too much is as bad as too little,’ as they say; believe me, by God’s help, we shall advance more by contemplating the Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves, poor creatures of earth that we are.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582): Interior Castle 1,2,9.

Today is the feast day of Teresa of Avila.

To honor her, I thought I’d mention a few books that newcomers to her work might find helpful.

Teresa’s writings fill three large volumes, not to mention her letters which fill up another two books. But for students of the contemplative life, three works are truly essential: her autobiography, and two manuals of instruction in prayer and mystical theology: The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. Here are my recommendations for exploring each of these:

The Book of My Life is Teresa’s autobiography; this edition features a contemporary translation by Mirabai Starr that beautifully captures Teresa’s enthusiastic voice.
The Way of Perfection: Study Edition is from the definitive translation of Teresa’s work published by the Institute for Carmelite Studies.
The Interior Castle with Spiritual Commentary features the classic translation by E. Allison Peers, along with new annotations from Redemptorist Father Dennis Billy.

The Interior Castle is one of the truly essential works of Christian mysticism. But it can be a dense and challenging work, in which Teresa’s profound theology is often as not obscured rather than helped by her rambling, stream of consciousness writing style. Thankfully, a number of contemporary scholars have written guide books to help us explore the Interior Castle. Here are three commentaries you might find particularly useful:

Entering Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle by Gillian T. W. Ahlgren
Interior Castle Explored by Ruth Burrows, OCD
Where Lovers Meet: Inside the Interior Castle by Susan Muto

Gillian Ahlgren, Ruth Burrows and Susan Muto are all recognized as authorities on Teresa and/or on the spiritual life in general, and each of these books are accessible and handy guides to Teresa’s masterpiece.

Finally, let me wrap this up my letting the great mystic speak for herself…

The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.

— Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Ávila by Peter Paul Rubens

If Christ Jesus dwells in a man as his friend and noble leader, that man can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. He is a true friend.

And I clearly see that if we expect to please him and receive an abundance of his graces, God desires that these graces must come to us from the hands of Christ, through his most sacred humanity, in which God takes delight.

Many, many times I have perceived this through experience. The Lord has told it to me. I have definitely seen that we must enter by this gate if we wish his Sovereign Majesty to reveal to us great and hidden mysteries.

A person should desire no other path, even if he is at the summit of contemplation; on this road he walks safely. All blessings come to us through our Lord. He will teach us, for in beholding his life we find that he is the best example.

What more do we desire from such a good friend at our side? Unlike our friends in the world, he will never abandon us when we are troubled or distressed. Blessed is the one who truly loves him and always keeps him near.

Let us consider the glorious Saint Paul: it seems that no other name fell from his lips than that of Jesus, because the name of Jesus was fixed and embedded in his heart.

Once I had come to understand this truth, I carefully considered the lives of some of the saints, the great contemplatives, and found that they took no other path: Francis, Anthony of Padua, Bernard, Catherine of Siena.

A person must walk along this path in freedom, placing himself in God’s hands. If God should desire to raise us to the position of one who is an intimate and shares his secrets, we ought to accept this gladly.

Whenever we think of Christ we should recall the love that led him to bestow on us so many graces and favours, and also the great love God showed in giving us in Christ a pledge of his love; for love calls for love in return.

Let us strive to keep this always before our eyes and to rouse ourselves to love him. For if at some time the Lord should grant us the grace of impressing his love on our hearts, all will become easy for us and we shall accomplish great things quickly and without effort.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582): The Book Of Life, ch. 22,6-7.14; second reading from the Office of Readings for October 15th

Today is the feast day of Teresa of Avila, one of my very favorite saints. This sixteenth-century Spanish noblewoman is patroness of writers and migraine sufferers, perhaps best known to us for three things: reforming the Carmelites, writing The Interior Castle, and her cheeky retort to being summarily dumped in a stream by her horse. Looking up to heaven, she cried, “If this is how you treat your friends, Lord, no wonder you have so few of them.”

Oh, yes, and her poetry. In Spanish, of course.

Let nothing trouble you,
let nothing frighten you.
All things pass away, but God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
She who possesses God, wants for nothing.
God alone suffices. 

Sometimes motherhood hurts. Sooner or later, we all get knocked on our butts in the proverbial stream of life.

For some women, the labor of motherhood begins even before the first labor pang — especially for those who are “reproductively challenged.” The examinations. The tests. The failures. The ache of longing unfulfilled. The burn of impertinent questions. The regret of the empty cradle.

With adoption, we mothers experience many of the same joys other mothers experience — the thrill of childhood milestones, the warmth of a child’s affection, the satisfaction of occupied arms and hearts. However, there are times when we also experience unique challenges, and even heartache.

This week two dear friends reminded me of the silent struggles of adoption, the secret misgivings. The self-doubt. The anxieties. However much we love our children, there are certain parts of our children’s lives — set in motion by their first parents – that we cannot overcome through sheer force of will. We can love them. We can guide them. We can encourage them. We can correct them. But we cannot change who they are at the most primal level. Not with a million specialists. We cannot turn back the hands of time.

But the thing is . . . it’s okay. The God of the universe, who set those wheels in motion, who created that little life with all the gifts and challenges that are unique to them, loves our children even more than we can. His plans for them far outstretch our own. And when we come to the end of ourselves, and wonder if our best efforts will in the end be good enough, we can echo the words of that great Carmelite . . .

“God alone suffices.”

Tomorrow is the day we remember Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).

The famous Teresa was a reformer from the center of Spain, along with her protégé, St. John of the Cross. In response to the radicals of the protestant reformation, which was like an earthquake in the Church of their time, they wanted to return their order to the ways to the hermits that founded it near Elijah’s well in Palestine, on Mt. Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). They ended up with an offshoot of the Carmelites called the “barefoot” or “discalced” Carmelites. [As a total aside, we stayed in Aylesford Abbey last year when in Kent, the site of the first convocation of Carmelites in England in 1240. They had a yard full of elementary kids when we arrived, befitting the order’s traditional love of children.].

When we were in Avila a few years ago, Gwen and I went to the house where Teresa got started on her remarkable, influential ministry. For some reason we were the only pilgrims at the site and had a great museum all to ourselves. On the stairs there was a mannequin of a little boy, replicating one of the moments of ecstasy that popped up in Teresa’s prayer. One day, as she was preparing to ascend stairs leading to the upper rooms of the convent she met a beautiful child. He asked her “Who are you?” She replied, “I am Teresa of Jesus, and who are you?” To which the child responded, “I am Jesus of Teresa.”

Biographers say that encounter with the Lord, as a child, affected her so deeply that whenever  Teresa set out to found a new house (she founded eighteen in all) she always brought a statue of the Child Jesus with her. She did a lot of teaching on contemplative prayer and encouraged everyone to leave their hearts open to visions and mysterious connections with God. But she didn’t want people to seek them or to rely on them.

In Carmelite spirituality there is an ancient custom of choosing a name which uniquely expresses a member’s personal relationship to the mysteries of the faith. Thus there are people like Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, and Elizabeth of the Trinity. In honor of these ancestors in the faith, I have been pondering what name I should have.

If the risen Lord were to ask you today, “Who are you?” How would you answer? If you were a Discalced (or other kind of) Carmelite, what new name would you choose for yourself? What mystery of the faith has been central to your life-journey in Christ?

When I pondered this in Teresa’s honor, I realized I have been blessed with so many ways to connect with God that it is hard to choose something central (and Teresa cobbled together another name for herself, as well, since she couldn’t quite decide either). Rod of Jesus works for me, too. Rod of the Silence. Rod of the Pioneers. But mainly, I think, Rod of the church. The mystery of the body of Christ in action: restoring people to their rightful place, redeeming the creation, fulfilling what is left of the Lord’s suffering as a living organism of many diverse parts – I have never been diverted from my passion for it.  Maybe that is why I have a hard time figuring out a name – I would prefer to be named, by my brothers and sisters, as they recognized Jesus in me, Jesus living through me to contribute what I have been given to share.

“Who are you?” How would you answer?

Tom Butler-Bowdon

Morris: Of all the non-religious works that were composed before (let’s say) the 20th century, which one of them were you most surprised to find is relevant today?

Butler-Bowdon: My personal favourite of the 19th century is Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, published on the same day as Darwin’s The Origin of the Species in 1859. Smiles was a Scottish doctor cum journalist who had begun giving inspiring talks to working men in the north of England, drawing on many of the Victorian success stories of his time. The book is a wealth of examples of people who beat the odds and did something great with their lives, and although it is dated to the extent that he included almost no women, it is still a brilliant motivational work that deserves a bigger readership today. During his lifetime Smiles was quite famous, and it was said that many homes only had two books: the Bible and Self-Help. It was also the inspiration for Orison Swett Marden, the founder of Success magazine in the US and the author of books like Pushing to The Front.

Morris: To me, “spiritual” has always been an elusive term to define. What did you decide when selecting and then discussing the works in the 50 Spiritual Classics volume?

Butler-Bowdon: First, it was never going to be 50 Religious Classics. I was less interested in famous theologians or works of orthodoxy than whether a book had deeply moved or inspired people, whether it was written five or five hundred years ago. And I wasn’t bothered if some writings would be seen by others as sacrilegious (I wrote about a book on Wicca, for instance) or even a bit ‘trashy’. I was very keen to highlight that this has been a golden era in terms of modern spiritual writing, with books like The Celestine Prophecy, The Power of Now, Conversations With God and The Way of the Peaceful Warrior representing a new canon that lay totally outside established religion. Again, as with the previous 50 Classics books, I wanted to show that, even though many of them had been huge bestsellers, and people’s lives were being changed by these writings, they had not been given due critical recognition.

Having said this, I was also keen to cover many of the famous spiritual writings by authors such as Augustine, Teresa of Avila and Al Ghazzali. I wanted 50 Spiritual to be a treasury of inspiration covering many centuries.

Finally, my aim was to make this a spiritual book for people who don’t necessarily believe in God. The point I make is that, whether or not you believe in a divine entity, there is an unseen order that moves the universe, and that getting in tune with it provides for a magical, purposeful life. You become a vehicle for this force, helping to advance the universe in a positive way.

If you wish to read the complete interview, please contact me at interllect@mindspring.com.

Also, you are invited to check out this Web site:

http://www.Butler-Bowdon.com/

“Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world.”

—–Teresa of Avila

I woke surrounded by warm pink light. Dawn filled the room like a rosy fog and drew me outside to look at the eastern sky. Banks of darker clouds, edged in gold, piled above the rose glow. Within minutes the sky darkened. Thunder rumbled. Rain fell gently throughout the morning and afternoon.

I spent the whole day chasing after that rosy suffusion which called me to awareness. But the light had flown to some other window, some other sleeper. I was left with a soft kiss, a sweet promise, and an ache in my heart that burned like a flame.  

This day my prayer was bare and to the point: I want you – not my way, my plans, my hopes, my dreams. Not peace on earth, healing for the suffering, hope for the broken hearted, or justice for the oppressed. I want YOU- giver of dawn and rain and this yearning in my heart for something unnamable, but ever compelling and true.

“The soul is not thought, nor is the will controlled by thought. It would be a great misfortune if it were. The soul’s profit then consists not in thinking much, but in loving much,” advised Teresa of Avila. I would rather think, connive, plan, strategize, manipulate, control – anything, but love this Author of our Being. But love is the way, says Teresa, as well as a whole company of others, including the Beatles.

Little renders us more vulnerable than love. A desire, a longing for someone, something beyond my grasp requires me to recognize my need and my limits. To love is to esteem the freedom of the Beloved and bear the pain of the essential separation of oneself from what is other than oneself. Love asks us to suffer the anguish of the reality that we may never fully possess what we love. Love asks us to be poor and naked in our need and our dependence upon the mercy of our Beloved.

No wonder we try to satisfy our longing for love by attachments to things which appear at first glance to deliver more and ask less of us than the uncompromising call of Christ. No wonder we attempt to extract from people, possessions, and work what only the Source of Love can give us. However, we soon find ourselves enslaved to and sucked dry by the insatiable demands of such false lovers.

Today I am sick, sin-sick, of my attachment to the world and my ego with its endless unappeasable needs.  I am weary and sore from the brutality and violence of a drive to succeed, ignoring my limits, and trying to do too much and be too much. Who can save me from myself, this body of death?

Only Love, Vulnerable Love entering into our misery as Christ Jesus, summoning us from our sleep, whispering, “Let go. Let go of it all. Follow me. I am all you will ever need.”  

So this day my prayer is a famished stumbling after Love. It is holding out my heart saying, “Here take it. I am yours.” It is Peter telling Jesus, with that desperate hope, “Lord, there is no one else that we can go to! Your words give eternal life. (John 6:68 CEV)  

Today my prayer is bearing the pain of this mystery, this rosy dawn which woos and embraces us all.  Amen.

More about prayer -
www.fromholyground.org, www.theprayinglife.wordpress.com

Contact Loretta -
lross@fromholyground.org, www.fbook.me/sanctuary

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Jesus tells us:

Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile,
but the things that come out are what defile.
For it is from within,
from the human heart,
that evil intentions come:
fornication, theft, murder,
adultery, avarice, wickedness,
deceit, licentiousness, envy,
slander, pride, folly.
All these evil things come from within,
and they defile a person.

OCD-Washing My Hands by Ms. Tina

In the gospel lesson for Sunday, Jesus is eating with his friends and disciples, and the Pharisees challenge him.  These strictly observant Jews are aghast and even offended that some of these friends and disciples had not performed the proper acts of ritual cleanliness before eating.  They sound rather like a tattling younger brother, But Mo-om!  You made me wash up, but HE didn’t wash his hands before dinner! And the response that Jesus makes sounds every bit as exasperated as that of a mother who has been working in the kitchen and trying to keep an eye on her children: So what?  Good for you that you washed your hands, now could you pay some attention to making the rest of you pleasant to be with?

Of course, Jesus doesn’t use these words.  Rather, he challenges the idea that clean hands equal a clean heart, that ritual cleanliness is a true representation of reverence and piety.  Jesus uses some harsh words — it is from the human heart that evil intentions come — with a listing of a whole bunch of terrible sins against other humans.  The Gospel of Mark does not tell us how the crowd reacted to these accusations.  Did the Pharisees grow angry and shout back at him?  Were they grudgingly silenced, knowing in their hearts that they were guilty of these things?  Did they rush Jesus and try to take him?  What did Jesus’ disciples think?  Was Peter clutching Jesus’ clothing and hissing through his teeth, “Shut UP, Jesus!  They’ll kill us if you keep this up!”?  Were the disciples trying to slip away and fade into the marketplace?  We don’t know.

So if evil intentions come from within the human heart, then what about good intentions?  Where do those come from?  The writer of  the letter of James gives us an answer.  He tells us that every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.  Of course, this can be a little confusing.  If good gifts come from God, then doesn’t this contradict what Jesus says?  Doesn’t this mean that good intentions come from the outside?  It could… except that this isn’t how God works.  God works within us, in the deepest places of our being; God plants good intentions within our hearts.  James tells us that it God’s word planted in our hearts that blossoms into good intentions and loving actions.  We don’t need freshly-washed hands to comfort a widow or to take in an orphan.  We don’t need to be pronounced clean from contact dermatitis in order to bring gifts to a homeless shelter.  And a menstruating woman can indeed volunteer at a soup kitchen.

Weeds by the Tracks by Bill Barber

James uses this same metaphor of planting and growing, when he advises us to rid ourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, to weed out the evil intentions and sinful urges that grow within our hearts.  If our hearts are gardens, then we need to carefully tend and water and grow those good seeds that began as God’s word.  And we need to find and pull the weeds that could choke out the good parts of us, the weeds of lying or stealing or being prideful.  We don’t want the garden to become overgrown, tangled in weeds and vines, where we can’t find the beautiful blossoms or the wholesome vegetables and fruits that will feed us.  When this happens, we risk tearing out the good plants with the bad, and we know that the weeds will keep popping up until we can get rid of all the roots.  It will take time and lots of hard work to bring the garden back to health and order, to being able to produce nutrition and beauty again.

St. Teresa of Ávila, Spanish mystic and Doctor of the Church, also uses the garden as a metaphor for our souls.  The work of prayer, she writes, is like the work of watering the garden.  When we first begin the work of prayer, it is difficult, like fetching water from a well.  To get water from a well, you can

Lower the Bucket and Let's Drink by Valerie Everett

only pull up a bucket at a time, through hard work, and then you must carry the water bucket to the garden to water the plants, and then go back to the well and repeat this again and again.  As we continue to work at prayer, it becomes a little easier, as though we’re bringing in water through an aqueduct or a hose.  The next stage is even easier, like a stream flowing through the garden and bringing water to the roots of all the plants.  And when we achieve union with God, it is as though our inner garden is watered by a gentle rain from heaven.  She continues by saying that even one who has worked and practiced at prayer for years experiences all four of these methods of watering the garden.  When we feel like God is far away from us, we trudge to the well and back, over and over.  When we can perceive God more nearly, we can expend less effort and simply soak in God’s love.

I invite you to close your eyes for a moment, to take a deep breath, and then to call up the image of the garden of your heart.  What does it look like?  Is it full of flowers, fruits, trees?  Are the plants in orderly rows or in a more natural arrangement?  Are there weeds you hadn’t noticed before?  Are the plants withered and dry, or are they ripe and healthy?  Walk through your garden.  Listen to the sounds under your feet.  Are you walking on bare soil, on crunchy gravel, on crackling leaves, or on mulched ground?  Do you hear birds taking refuge in the garden?  Are bees buzzing

Olbrich Gardens Spring Afternoon, by WisDoc

industriously from blossom to blossom?  Reach out your hand, so that as you walk, your fingers brush the leaves as you pass.  What do the leaves feel like on your fingers?  Are they warm?  Are they dry and crackly, or are they plump and moist?  Continue walking until you come to a place to sit.  It might be a bench, a log, or even a clear patch of moss or grass.  Sit down there and experience your garden with all your senses.  Is there a fragrance, like sweet blossoms or spicy herbs?  What sounds do you hear?  What does the seat feel beneath your legs?  This is your garden, your heart, and there is no other like it in the world.

Now, invite God into your garden with you.  You may call on one of the persons of the Trinity, or you may call on God by another name.  Ask God to join you, there in the garden of your heart.  What might you say to God?  Would you ask God a question?  Or would you just take God’s hand and walk through the garden in companionable silence?  With God there, you begin to hear water.  What did you hear?  Where is the water coming from?  Did you hear an apple fall into a well?  Or did you hear the rush of water through an aqueduct or stream?  Or do you feel on your face and arms a cool, soft, gentle rain?  How do you feel about your garden?  Can you share this with God?  What might you say to God about your garden?  Would you say thank you?  Would you ask God to help you with the weeding and pruning and harvesting?  Would you invite God to make a home here, in the garden of your heart?

When you are ready, say good-bye (or maybe, see you later!) to God, and make your way back from your garden to your surroundings.  James invites us to welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.  It is this implanted word that enables us to reject the rank growth of wickedness that becomes the evil intentions Jesus listed.  Now that you have seen and heard and touched and smelled the garden of your heart, you know where God’s word has been planted and where there are weeds.  You know that you possess within you a place of great beauty and potential, a place worthy for God to come and walk with you.  From this place can come both good gifts –

Fruit of the Tree by Living Juicy

love and care and help for others — and the evil intentions Jesus warns us against.  Only you and God know what is growing in your garden.

As we finish our walk in the garden, I invite you to pray with me the Collect for Sunday:

Lord of all power and might,
the author and giver of all good things:
Graft in our hearts the love of your Name;
increase in us true religion;
nourish us with all goodness;
and bring forth in us the fruit of good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever.

Amen.

Holiness by Linda Nardelli

I know the notion of becoming a Saint or achieving Holiness is one that may provoke disbelief or wry smiles to even those who may consider themselves “the faithful,” not to mention the hoots of derision from the pagans in our midst. But it was the singular thing I learned after my conversion that I never knew or expected on the way to my becoming Catholic. And it didn’t come by way of RCIA classes or even at the Masters in Ministry classes I am taking at St. John’s Seminary. It was totally gratuitous in a way, something I came across in my readings: first in Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain and then in Fr. Robert Barron’s And Now I See.

I subscribe to an Amazon Discussion Forum called “What Makes Us Catholic?” and unfortunately I have to say this is NOT the answer to that question.  But this is what fully confirmed me in my faith: It is what made ME a Catholic, although oddly enough it happened after I had already taken the step. I see it almost as if God came along cleaning up after my messy first attempts, saying, “No, no, this is why you are here.” And lest anyone misunderstand here, having achieved this is NOT what I’m talking about; realizing it is perhaps the first step.

I’m going to dedicate this post to Sr. Kathleen at St. Luke’s in Belmont MA who gave me just what I needed when I needed it.

So I ask you to consider an anecdote that Thomas Merton relates in The Seven Story Mountain when he first encounters the thought of becoming a Saint from his friend Robert Lax:

Therefore, another one of those times that turned out to be historical, as far as my own soul is concerned, was when Lax and I were walking down Sixth Avenue, one night in the spring. The Street was all torn up and trenched and banked high with dirt and marked out. with red lanterns where they were digging the subway, and we picked our way along the fronts of the dark little stores, going downtown to Greenwich Village. I forget what we were arguing about, but in the end Lax suddenly turned around and asked me the question:
“What do you want to be, anyway?”
I could not say, “I want to be Thomas Merton the well-known writer of all those book reviews in the back pages of the Times Book Review,” or “Thomas Merton the assistant instructor of Freshman English at the New Life Social Institute for Progress and Culture,” so I put the thing on the spiritual plane, where I knew it belonged and said:
“I don’t know; I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic.”
“What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?”
The explanation I gave was lame enough, and ex pressed my confusion, and betrayed how little I had really thought about it at all.
Lax did not accept it.
“What you should say”—he told me—”what you should say is that you want to be a saint.”
A saint! The thought struck me as a little weird. I said:
“How do you expect me to become a saint?”
“By wanting to,” said Lax, simply.
“I can’t be a saint,” I said, “I can’t be a saint.” And my mind darkened with a confusion of realities and unrealities: the knowledge of my own sins, and the false humility which makes men say that they cannot do the things that they must do, cannot reach the level that they must reach: the cowardice that says: “I am satisfied to save my soul, to keep out of mortal sin,” but which means, by those words: “I do not want to give up my sins and my attachments.”
The Seven Storey Mountain pp 236-7

Fr. Robert Barron reflects on this moment in his book And Now I See:

“Merton said that this strange answer (Becoming a Saint by wanting to) changed his life: from that moment on, he knew that Christianity was not primarily a matter of getting his ideas straight but rather getting his life straight. Hans Urs von Balthasar said that the only true theologians are the saints — those who have practiced the life of Jesus.
Christianity — like baseball, painting, and philosophy — is a world, a form of life. And like those other worlds, it is first approached because it is perceived as beautiful. A youngster walks onto the baseball diamond because he finds the game splendid, and a young artist begins to draw because he finds the artistic universe enchanting. Once the beauty of Christianity has seized a devotee, he will long to submit himself to it, entering into its rhythms, its institutions, its history, its drama, its visions and activities.
And then, having practiced it, having worked it into his soul and flesh, he will know it. The movement, in short, is from the beautiful (It is splendid!) to the good (I must play it!) to the true (It is right!). One of the mistakes that both liberals and conservatives make is to get this process precisely backward, arguing first about right and wrong. No kid will be drawn into the universe of baseball by hearing arguments over the infield-fly rule or disputes about the quality of umpiring in the National League. And none of us will be enchanted by the world of Christianity if all we hear are disputes about Humanae vitae and the infallibility of the pope.
Christianity is a captivating and intellectually satisfying game, but the point is to play it. It is a beautiful and truthful way, but the point is to walk it.”  

Ralph Martin in his book Called to Holiness elaborates more on this theme:

JESUS SUMMED UP His teaching in a startling and unambiguous call to His followers: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Perfect in purity of heart, perfect in compassion and love, perfect in obedience, perfect in conformity to the will of the Father, perfect in holiness – when we hear these words we can be understandably tempted to discouragement, thinking that perfection for us is impossible. And indeed, left to our own resources, it certainly is — just as impossible as it is for rich people to enter heaven, or for a man and a woman to remain faithful their whole lives in marriage. But with God, all things are possible, even our transformation.

John Paul II — and he himself may be among those recognized as a Doctor one day — in his prophetic interpretation of the events of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first Novo Millennio Ineunte, points out that the Holy Spirit is again bringing to the forefront of the Church’s consciousness the conviction that these words of Jesus are indeed meant for every single one of us. He points out that the Jubilee of the year 2000 was simply the last phase of a period of preparation and renewal that had been going on for forty years, in order to equip the Church for the challenges of the new millennium.

Pope John Paul II speaks of three rediscoveries to which the Holy Spirit has led the Church beginning with the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in 1965. One of these rediscoveries is the ‘‘rediscovery of the universal call to holiness.”

All the Christian faithful, of whatever state or rank, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.

John Paul further emphasizes that this call to the fullness of holiness is an essential part of being a Christian.

To ask catechumens: “Do you wish to receive Baptism?” means at the same time to ask them: “Do you wish to become holy?” It means to set before them the radical nature of the Sermon on the Mount: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48)… the time has come to repropose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction.

Before we go much further in our examination of the spiritual journey, let’s take an initial look at what “holiness” really means. In the Book of Ephesians we read, “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4). To be holy is not primarily a matter of how many Rosaries we say or how much Christian activity we’re engaged in; it’s a matter of having our heart transformed into a heart of love. It is a matter of fulfilling the great commandments which sum up the whole law and the prophets: to love God and our neighbor, wholeheartedly. Or as Teresa of Avila puts it, holiness is a matter of bringing our wills into union with God’s will.

Thérèse of Lisieux expresses it very similarly:

Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be…who resists His grace in nothing.” As she said towards the very end of her life: “I do not desire to die more than to live; it is what He does that I love.”

John Paul II goes on to call the parishes of the third millennium to become schools of prayer and places where “training in holiness” is given.

“Our Christian communities must become genuine schools of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly “falls in love.” . . . It would be wrong to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life.”

John Paul cites several reasons why this turn to holiness of life and depth in prayer is important. Besides the fact that it is quite simply part and parcel of the Gospel message, he points out that the supportive culture of “Christendom” has virtually disappeared and that Christian life today has to be lived deeply, or else it may not be possible to live it at all. He also points out that in the midst of this world-wide secularization process there is still a hunger for meaning, for spirituality, which is sometimes met by turning to non-Christian religions. It is especially important now for Christian believers to be able to respond to this hunger and “show to what depths the relationship with Christ can lead” (NMI 33, 40).

Recognizing how challenging this call is, John Paul makes clear that it will be difficult to respond adequately without availing ourselves of the wisdom of the mystical tradition of the Church — that body of writings and witness of life that focuses on the process of prayer and stages of growth in the spiritual life. He tells us why the mystical tradition is important and what we can expect it to provide for us.

This great mystical tradition…shows how prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit’s touch, resting filially within the Father’s heart.

How is this extraordinary depth of union with the Trinity possible? It. is indeed the answer to this question that the Catholic mystical tradition gives us. John Paul makes clear that this depth of union isn’t just for a few unusual people (“mystics”) but is a call that every Christian receives from Christ Himself “This is the lived experience of Christ’s promise: ‘He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him’ (John 14:2 1).”

“It is a journey totally sustained by grace, which nonetheless demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no stranger to painful purifications (the “dark night”). But it leads, in various possible ways, to the ineffable joy experienced by the mystics as “nuptial union.” How can we forget here, among the many shining examples, the teachings of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila?

John Paul identifies four principles that are basic to a proper understanding of the spiritual journey

1. Union with God of this depth is totally unattainable by our own efforts; it is a gift that only God can give; we are totally dependent on His grace for progress in the spiritual life. Yet we know also that God is eager to give this grace and bring us to deep union. Without Him, we can do nothing, but with Him all things are possible (cf. John 14:4-5, Luke 18:27, Philemon 4:13). Without God, successfully completing the journey is impossible, but with Him, in a sense, we are already there, He is truly both the Way and the destination; and our lives are right now, hidden with Christ, in God (Colossians 3:3)
2. At the same time our effort is indispensable. Our effort is not sufficient to bring about such union, but it is necessary. The saints speak of disposing ourselves for union. The efforts we make help dispose us to receive the gifts of God. If we really value something we must be willing to focus on doing those things that will help us reach the goal. And yet without God’s grace we cannot even know what’s possible, or desire it, or have the strength to make any efforts towards it. It’s God’s grace that enables us to live the necessary “intense spiritual commitment “You will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29)
3. As the Gospel tells us, it’s important to assess what’s required before undertaking a task (before starting to build a tower, or entering into a battle in war) if we want to successfully complete it. Much has to change in us in order to make us capable of deep union with God. The wounds of both original sin and our personal sins are deep and need to be healed and transformed in a process that has its necessarily painful moments. The pain of purification is called by John of the Cross the “dark night.” It is important not to be surprised by the painful moments of our transformation but to know that they’re a necessary and blessed part of the whole process. “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
4. And finally, we need to know that all the effort and. pain is worth it! Infinitely worth it. The pain of the journey will appear in retrospect to have been light, compared to the weight of glory that we were being prepared for (see 2 Corinthians 4:16-18).Deep union (the “nuptial union” or “spiritual marriage” or “transforming union”) is possible even in this life. Teresa of Avila tells us that there’s no reason that someone who reaches a basic stability in living a Catholic life (“mansion” three in her classification system) can’t proceed all the way to “spiritual marriage” in this life (mansion seven).

We all probably know in some way that we’re called to holiness but perhaps struggle to respond. Feeling the challenge of the call and yet seeing the obstacles, it is easy to rationalize delaying or compromising and avoid a wholehearted and immediate response. Everyone seems to pass the buck on this: lay people pass to those priests and nuns, priests and nuns who feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities and have such a busy pace of life might suppose that it’s the cloistered orders who are truly in a good position to respond wholeheartedly to the call to holiness.

What really holds us back is not really the external circumstances of our lives, but the interior sluggishness of our hearts. We need to be clear that there will never be a better time or a better set of circumstances than now to respond wholeheartedly to the call to holiness. Who knows how much longer we’ll be alive on this earth? We don’t know how long we’ll live or what the future holds. Now is the acceptable time. The very things we think are obstacles are the very means God is giving us to draw us to depend more deeply on Him.

The source of all our unhappiness and misery is sin and its effects, and the sooner the purification of sin and its effects can take place in our life, the happier we will be and the better able to truly love others. Only then will we be able to enter into the purpose God has for our life. Truly, in this case, better sooner than later.

Finally, it’s important to realize that there is only one choice; either to undergo complete transformation and enter heaven, or be eternally separated from God in hell. There are only two ultimate destinations, and if we want to enter heaven we must be made ready for the sight of God. Holiness isn’t an “option.” There are only saints in heaven; total transformation is not an “option” for those interested in that sort of thing, but is essential for those who want to spend eternity with God.

Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

The whole purpose of our creation, the whole purpose of our redemption is so that we may be fully united with God in every aspect of our being. We exist for union; we were created for union; we were redeemed for eternal union. The sooner we’re transformed the happier and the more “fulfilled” we’ll be. The only way to the fulfillment of all desire is to undertake and complete the journey to God.

I know when our little RCIA group finished up at St Lukes, we all wanted to continue in some way and I realize now we were asking for our parish to become a school of prayer so our “training in holiness” could continue. I moved on to another parish and entered another program, neither which really answered this need. Perhaps the closest I have come to it is this self-argument I have mounted here on this blog.

There are so many different definitions of prayer.  The one I love and use most is one that I heard several years ago – ‘prayer is wasting time with God’.  So much of the time I am conscious of not wasting time, of making the most of every minute – and yet here I am being encouraged to be reckless with time, and to waste it ; to practise abandon, and dwell with God.  It is a definition that runs counter to everything in our western culture, and yet I get the sense that if I can practise this recklessness with time, there will be a richness to be found in being with God.

I also love Teresa of Avila’s reference to prayer as being ‘nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends ; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us’.  Again, there is the idea of recklessness in relation to time – it is a learning curve for me.  I have written a short reflection on Prayer – there may be more to follow