Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

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                                               Meaning Behind The Icon

 

                How the Virgin Mary can guide our new year 

                                     How Mary can guide us in this New Year

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https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/union-with-god?utm_source=CEArticle&utm_medium=Dwyer16Dec20&utm_campaign=Dwyer16Dec20

Spiritual Classic Introduces Readers To

                             The Wisdom Of St. John Of The Cross

CLAIRE DWYER

" In a new edition of his spiritual classic, he illuminates St. John of the Cross as “a master of the contemplative life,” which is simply a life which “directly seeks intimacy with God.” A Life Meant For All

“The supreme grandeur of the human person,” Fr. Gabriel says, is “to be called to live eternally in intimate companionship with his God; alone with God alone, in an inexpressible contact with Him.”  Contemplation, the deeper prayer in which the soul is drawn by God, is a type of anticipation of that eternal intimacy.  And this prayer is not only meant for religious:  St. John of the Cross taught laity and religious alike about the contemplative life, a life of prayer and mortification because he knew it could prepare them to receive a more intimate experience of God’s love.  In giving these teachings to the laity, he never wanted to water them down or diminish them in any way, for it was “not only the crumbs from his sumptuous table that the saint allotted to seculars” but his entire doctrine. In this book, Fr. Gabriel masterfully compiles this doctrine, laying out the map of the ascent to union drawn by the saint and explaining it beautifully in a succinct summary which does exactly what I suspect it was meant to – it leaves one desiring to turn to the original works and devour them all.  Let’s explore the key themes he lays out."

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Australia

https://www.amazon.com.au/Union-God-According-John-Cross/dp/1622828585

(Also available on Kindle)

"Christian perfection consists in the twofold way of charity: service of neighbor and our direct quest for God’s love. Many of us discover ways to love our neighbor, but few achieve intimacy with God. Why? Because we don’t know how to prepare ourselves properly to reach this exalted goal. In these pages, Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen lays out for us a time-tested path toward achieving complete intimacy with God, the path first mapped out centuries ago by the Church’s acclaimed master of the contemplative life, St. John of the Cross (1542-1591). St. John showed that God hungers for union with each of us but also requires arduous efforts on our part, the many details of which Father Gabriel explains in these enlightening pages. Do you perceive holiness as an unattainable goal for you? Or is fear of the fatigue of such an effort holding you back? Absorb this book, and allow gentle St. John to take you by the hand and lead you ― as he has led so many others ― to true intimacy with our Lord."

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Bishops grapple with Pope’s decree on new religious orders

https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/popes-new-rules-on-establishing-religious-orders-getting-mixed-reviews/13581?utm_source=NewsLetter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=0107mailjet

 

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Excerpt: Pope Francis has justified the change by explaining that "discernment about the ecclesial nature and reliability of charisms" is the responsibility of the bishops, but it involves "the wider horizon of the universal Church".   "A charism always has a universal dimension and it is therefore legitimate for the pope to speak out," said Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon, whose diocese in southern France is often seen as a "laboratory" for new forms of consecrated life.

 

Edited January 7, 2021 by BarbaraTherese

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Dance defiant

Bent, stumbling

Supported

Moving lonely sole forward into the light

Defiant forward they dance

tears of tears

Out of the mirage, movement forward

Begins again

Silence speaks

 BDH                                                                                                                                                                                    13.6.20

                          

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St Albert wrote in his Ancient Rule for Carmel that "common sense is the guide of all the virtues".  In today's world with all the stresses and demands on family life especially, there are probably many demands and duties that must come before studying "divine truths".  One would be very wrong in putting aside the duties of one's state in life in order to devote time to study.  Common sense informs that it would be wrong.  That is not to state that the study of Scripture and Church teaching is not important.  It is rather to recognize that the "possession of Heaven" does not come about only through study and knowledge.  It is to recognize that The Holy Spirit has endless means at His disposal to guide us to Heaven - and the duties of our state is one of them.

Common sense is indeed the guide of all virtue.

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                                                                         lessons repeat

                                                                            fiddler plays

                                                                         Rome is burning

 

            

 

                                                                     

                                                                         context wood

                                      trees spot the ambiguities including nonverbal communications

                                                                               Reality

 

 

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I am puzzled by their laughter since every cause must be en masse

keeping busy in some light or just a number called and then full departed

unless a jewel in some base crown proclaimed or hidden

no salt or any leaven and empty vessels making many sounds

on any available handy surface

as the earth erupts reflecting pain as down the ages till but a shadow

not remembered or even heard nor full lesson ever learnt - nor then ever enter . . .

asks risk and a death by category

there are rather empty promises from gilded halls and podium robbing empty tombs and jeweled robes abandoned and no reflection anyway . . . and shining cars and phones and internet and yearly holidays and every trapping insults earth and heaven where none . . . and waiting judgment just like me we won’t escape it .....and images keep flashing of hope abandoned tears full falling, flowing...... The scratching scribe keeps pushing in one helpless way or is reaching to a mighty tree or a mustard seed a bushel glowing . . . sights a beckoning veiled silhouette a philosophical abstraction - foundational to vanities in motives . . . ominous . . . calling . . . unanswered and unheeded Here is this western cemetery . . . of vapid eyes and words confirming of ears that hear only the inner need with honey words and all touched is somehow tainted and is knowing and reaching tired and sweating palms . . . fearful . . . caught the message winging . . . ......because of him and his lonely life and dying .......a shadow calling in the mist, now spilt is silent until the caller calls again I see a mist misting glow glowing – all is merging there that beckoning in-between that unknown presence in the haze – somewhere beyond the haze? and no miasma and the secret silent calling called again I wish I could leave some actual hope and some a motive and go on hoping with nothing ever in my hands stillness – quiet - all is well moving on moving on quietly in this endless waiting . . . and there is housework and the dishes a pause or two for reasons like the rubbish and on out into it yet again the madness on the bus unless it calls in or on the phone . . . Say? If I ne'er write another poem? .....I do not care at all  and just the way I am and now tis finished and unfolded just like me tired spent needing sleep and rest and place to lay this aching and all that sort of undeserving just like all the rest . . . I think . . . perhaps?. . . or not? I guess he surely left his reasons . . . well . . . somewhere or other . . . I guess . . . I never listen to his tape somewhere in all these empty aspirations but I'll lift my game and keep on walking with nothing else to do . . . just like him in his grave and me soon enough in mine Wherever the caller is, the sun will rise again clearing any clutter and all uncertainties and such, I think – perhaps? – or not? I wish I could lock the door and lose the key and break the auctioneer ruling by default a wanton dereliction and terrible revenge and all . . . somewhere . . . well, I guess, surely . . . born to a thankfully transitional hell of caring . . . or purgation, well I don't know! and disinterested in any via negativa . . . and surely via negativa indeed! Death, that strange Samaritan will claim me in the end empty handed or full and wasting hope not needed in hopeful Sunday best . . .  Aye? He said? and Bob . . . Catch 22 . . . and Sadie and Monk and Amos, Garfield, Gaffy, John and Brad and Emma and all the rest . . . my Mum and Dad . . . the maimed by truly caring and all the broken, and the lost of hope . . . and somewhere I can only hope catharsis and a resolution and hope again is dressing up . . . probably a funeral . . . well I guess, I guess . . . it always is sooner or somewhere later . . . and all memories with words conjured painfully . . . gone soon enough . . . in someone's time . . . I guess . . . or not . . . you sort of get used to it all now and then . . . a familiar drill . . . images . . . drowned and strangled well here and there perhaps I can sleep it off this time . . . waken to better signs of life even if life's illusions thin with thinning ranks . . . Goodbye my friend . . . living inside these maddening chosen polarities and barriers . . . I guess one's not supposed to care . . . not really . . . breaking rules creating discomfort . . . too long epitaphs . . . messy breakdown . . . come some straw . . . . . . Daniel's vision by the water . . . weighted by the numbers a vision and a holocaust and all those quite distasteful things – hallucinations? Perhaps Or not 

and $3.70 Oxazapam keeps on keeping me from their crypt . . .

I wish I could rest and see the end but I fear that it will just begin again

cast the millstone then,

let it be!

    

                                              

 

                                     St Joseph, Patron of The Church, please pray for us

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                                                           The Grace to view Suffering as Gift

                                                                             Aleteia Article

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Excerpt: "With God's help, we can recognize his presence in every affliction.

While it is relatively easy to be thankful to God for good health and prosperity, do we ever give thanks to God for suffering?         It is difficult to see God’s presence in affliction and most often, we think that God is somehow absent from it.   Yet, with God’s help, we can see suffering as a (His) gift."

 

 

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Hippocrates (460-337 BC:  "The people ought to know that the brain is the sole origin of pleasures and joys, laughter and jests, sadness and worry as well as dysphoria, and differentiate between feeling ashamed, good, bad, happy   Through the brain we become insane, enraged, we develop anxiety and fears, which can come in the night or during the day, we suffer from sleeplessness, we make mistakes and have unfounded worries, we lose the ability to recognize reality, we become apathetic and we cannot participate in social life   We suffer all those mentioned above through the brain when it is ill"   

 

 

                              

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Tertullian:   Repentance (203 or 204 A.D.)

[2, 11] A good deed has God for its debtor, just as also an evil one; for a judge is the rewarder in every case.
[4, 1] If there be repentance pardon will on that account be granted for every sin, whether committed in the flesh or in the spirit, whether in deed or in desire, by the same God who otherwise determines their punishment in the judgment.
[6, 4] How very inconsistent it is, to expect pardon of sins when repentance has been subverted and is not completed.
[7, 10] [The devil's] poisons are foreseen by God; and although the gate of repentance has already been closed and barred by Baptism, still, He permits it to stand open a little. In the vestibule He has stationed a second repentance, which He makes available to those who knock. . .
[12, 1] If you are inclined to draw back from confession [of sins] , consider in your heart the hell which confession extinguishes for you, and imagine first the magnitude of the penalty, so that you will not hesitate about making use of the remedy . . . .Therefore, when you know that after the initial support of the Lord's Baptism there is still in confession a second reserve against hell, why do you desert your salvation? Why do you hesitate to approach what you know will heal you?

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When I was in my teens, a very wise and holy priest said to me that God will not of necessity grant the Grace to deal with one's imagination.  He will, however, unfailingly grant the Grace to bear what actually does occur in life.

Every time we pray the Our Father, we pray to The Lord "Thy Will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven".  I guess one could either say (not pray) those words without reflection at all, or one can reflect and mean what one prays (not just say) and place total and full investment in the words.  In this petition from The Our Father, is contained the whole of our Catholic Doctrine of Divine Providence #302 - 314 Catholic Catechism and read: https://catholicspirit.com/news/god-carries-out-his-plan-divine-

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Catholic Catechism: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c3a1.htm143 By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God.2 With his whole being man gives his assent to God The Revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith".3

I. THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH

144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. 

 

 

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https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p4s1c3a2.htm727 We must also face the fact that certain attitudes deriving from the mentality of "this present world" can penetrate our lives if we are not vigilant. For example, some would have it that only that is true which can be verified by reason and science; yet prayer is a mystery that overflows both our conscious and unconscious lives. Others overly prize production and profit; thus prayer, being unproductive, is useless. Still others exalt sensuality and comfort as the criteria of the true, the good, and the beautiful; whereas prayer, the "love of beauty" (philokalia), is caught up in the glory of the living and true God. Finally, some see prayer as a flight from the world in reaction against activism; but in fact, Christian prayer is neither an escape from reality nor a divorce from life.

2728 Finally, our battle has to confront what we experience as failure in prayer: discouragement during periods of dryness; sadness that, because we have "great possessions,"15 we have not given all to the Lord; disappointment over not being heard according to our own will; wounded pride, stiffened by the indignity that is ours as sinners; our resistance to the idea that prayer is a free and unmerited gift; and so forth. The conclusion is always the same: what good does it do to pray? To overcome these obstacles, we must battle to gain humility, trust, and perseverance.

 

 

 

One either believes and invests in what Scripture and The Church teaches, or one might hear what seems to me to be the almost perennial statement "Yes........... but............"   Faith asks the virtue of trust - and trust asks that one invests in one's daily life and living in all that Faith teaches.  Short of a miracle, that is not achieved by an event, rather it is a (probably long) journey of up hill and down dale, of straight course and much veering off course and around bends.  Hence all that asks fortitude and perseverance and a huge and trustful investment in The Loving Mercy of The Lord through many falls, picking oneself up again and going on in the journey.

 

                          

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                                                        Benefits of Living The Gospel

Excerpt: "Let it be my care diligently to meditate upon it and let it be habitually present to my thoughts. Thus will the love and fear of God be cherished and operate powerfully in me, to my being, led to all manner of holy conversation and godliness. By the word of Thy mouth and under the influence of Thy Spirit, sin shall become more hateful to me, holiness more lovely, and I shall make the glory of my God and Savior my great and governing end in the whole of life."

 

                                                                        -o0o-

 

 

           

                                                Missionary Mandate at Baptism

            All baptized Christians are challenged to spread the Gospel, no matter their state in life.

                         St. John Paul II reiterated this point during a homily in 1998.

 https://aleteia.org/2021/01/10/lay-people-are-given-a-missionary-mandate-at-baptism/?utm_campaign=NL_en&utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=mail&utm_content=NL_en

Excerpt: "Baptism is also a source of apostolic dynamism. The missionary task of the baptized, in conformity with their own vocation, is extensively considered by the Council which, in the Constitution Lumen gentium, teaches: “Each disciple of Christ has the obligation of spreading the faith to the best of his ability” (n. 17). In the Encyclical Redemptoris missio, I stressed that by virtue of Baptism all lay people are missionaries (cf. n. 71)."