Fire Within

[scardella]

Anyone read it? Is it any good?

[img]https://www.ewtn.com/vcatalogue/images/items/263-1.jpg[/img]

[phatcatholic]

i hear its excellent, tho i haven't read it.

[franciscanheart]

i've just started it. i'm really enoying it. i highly recommend it.

[scardella]

I've started reading it. It reminded me of this poem:


[quote name='Sonnet XVII' date=' Pablo Neruda']
I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

-Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII
[/quote]

[Laudate_Dominum]

it's phat. my copy is at Luthien's house right now.

[Mary-Kathryn]

[quote name='scardella' post='1076058' date='Sep 26 2006, 08:45 PM']
Anyone read it? Is it any good?

[img]https://www.ewtn.com/vcatalogue/images/items/263-1.jpg[/img]
[/quote]

I am a Secular Carmelite and I am not so much reading the book, as slowly going through it. Fr. Dubay has much to say and there are alot of lessons to be learned in this book.

It is an excellent book and very down to earth. I think there is something in there for everyone. Just thumb through it and see what you think.

[scardella]

I've got a big Q:

Repeatedly, Fr. Dubay states that discursive meditation is to be abandoned once infused prayer is reached. Doesn't that conflict w/ lots of statements about saying the rosary every day (particularly in terms of apparitions)?

[philothea]

[quote name='scardella' post='1082213' date='Oct 2 2006, 05:12 PM']
I've got a big Q:

Repeatedly, Fr. Dubay states that discursive meditation is to be abandoned once infused prayer is reached. Doesn't that conflict w/ lots of statements about saying the rosary every day (particularly in terms of apparitions)?
[/quote]
If you're not able to finish a rosary because God is giving you infused contemplation, you should just go along with whatever God wants. You can at least [i]start[/i] a rosary every day.

I think it is often possible to kind of look at a mystery without discursively meditating on it. Some kinds of infused contemplation won't make you stop praying the rosary.

If you don't use some kind of external prompt, it may be hard to finish in a timely manner, though.

(That is one of my favorite books!)

[Aloysius]

You should never abandon the rosary as if you have outgrown it. If this were the book's assertion, the book would be wrong. The only way you can "outgrow" the rosary is by saying the 150 psalms on those beads with your aves. Prayer formulas are important because they keep you grounded to a truth which you can fully know is outside of yourself. to always only abandon yourself to meditative prayer outside of set formulas is to abandon the unity and teaching of the Church in your prayer and leave yourself unprotected from the trickery of satan. because of this, any meditation technique which purported to tell you that you should abandon the rosary because it is so much more sophisticated and higher-level is a trick of satan.

I don't know what this man discusses in his book, all I can say is never view your meditation, no matter how much it lifts you in intimate communion with God, as outgrowing formulated prayers. rather, infuse those formulated prayers with that deeper love and knowledge you have received; ever being faithful to the formulated prayers as well.

but it shouldn't become an either/or question until you have become so raptured in perpetual divine ecstacy that you never return to everyday activity... and if that happens (perpetually) then I'm thinking you'll be entering heaven shortly.

also, God never gives you anything that would distract you from the Holy Rosary. if He gives you this infused meditation while you are praying your rosary, continue with your rosary allowing this infused contemplation to give deeper meaning to the prayers. infused contemplation should never take away your ability to concentrate on the mysteries of the rosary nor your cognitave ability to pray aves through them.

[philothea]

Leaving aside Fr. Dubay's book, here's some of his source material--

From [url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/dark_night.vii.x.html"]St. John of the Cross[/url] Dark Night, Chapter Ten:[quote]DURING the time, then, of the aridities of this night of sense (wherein God effects the change of which we have spoken above, drawing forth the soul from the life of sense into that of the spirit—that is, from meditation to contemplation—wherein it no longer has any power to work or to reason with its faculties concerning the things of God [. . .]

The way in which they are to conduct themselves in this night of sense is to devote themselves not at all to reasoning and meditation, since this is not the time for it, but to allow the soul to remain in peace and quietness [. . .]

What they must do is merely to leave the soul free and disencumbered and at rest from all knowledge and thought, troubling not themselves, in that state, about what they shall think or meditate upon, but contenting themselves with merely a peaceful and loving attentiveness toward God[/quote]
From St. Teresa of Avila's [url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.ix.i.html"]Interior Castle[/url], describing the Fifth Mansions:
[quote]I said ‘some,’ but in reality there are very few who never enter this mansion: some more and some less, but most of them may be said at least to gain admittance into these rooms. [. . .]

Do not imagine that this state of prayer is, like the one preceding it, a sort of drowsiness (I call it ’drowsiness’ because the soul seems to slumber, being neither quite asleep nor wholly awake). In the prayer of union the soul is asleep, fast asleep, as regards the world and itself: in fact, during the short time this state lasts it is deprived of all feeling whatever, being unable to think on any subject, even if it wished. No effort is needed here to suspend the thoughts: if the soul can love it knows not how, nor whom it loves, nor what it desires. In fact, it has died entirely to this world, to live more truly than ever in God.[/quote]

I think, likely, saying a rosary in a group would still be possible, but I think solo vocal prayer it might become hard for an individual in either of the above-described states. Being unable to meditate at such a time would not be a failing on their part.

[franciscanheart]

[quote name='philothea' post='1082626' date='Oct 3 2006, 01:33 AM']
Leaving aside Fr. Dubay's book, here's some of his source material--

From [url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/dark_night.vii.x.html"]St. John of the Cross[/url] Dark Night, Chapter Ten:
From St. Teresa of Avila's [url="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.ix.i.html"]Interior Castle[/url], describing the Fifth Mansions:
I think, likely, saying a rosary in a group would still be possible, but I think solo vocal prayer it might become hard for an individual in either of the above-described states. Being unable to meditate at such a time would not be a failing on their part.
[/quote]
I think this is Father Dubay's message as well. I do not think he means anything other than what people have said thus far. It did not occur to me that he would be saying it any other way, at least.

[Aloysius]

I have not read the good priest's book, so I am just offering general advice. Notice St. John says " this is not the time for [reasoning and meditation]", this supposed that there are times for it; and if you set out a time for it (reasoning, meditation, i.e. rosary) then God will not send you anything that would distract you from completing it. this type of prayer is not a "graduation" from the other type of prayer as if the other type of prayer should no longer be practiced.. it should surely make those prayers more meaningful but it should not be done in replacement of them... because the mind and its reasonings are not things merely of this world but also of the next.

[scardella]

I guess to get at whether I'm understanding it properly, it's not when you've gotten to the 4th mansion that you should entirely abandon the rosary, but that when God is actively infusing prayer, to try anything else would be ludicrous. Is that accurate?

[franciscanheart]

[quote name='scardella' post='1082764' date='Oct 3 2006, 07:36 AM']
I guess to get at whether I'm understanding it properly, it's not when you've gotten to the 4th mansion that you should entirely abandon the rosary, but that when God is actively infusing prayer, to try anything else would be ludicrous. Is that accurate?
[/quote]
Sounds right to me.

[Aloysius]

and I still suggest that God would not send something to distract you from completing a rosary you set out to complete. it'd be like God giving you this infused grace in the middle of mass and you no longer paying attention to any of the words of the liturgy... it'd be ludicrous and it wouldn't be from God. if you're praying a rosary, it is time for reasoning and meditation. if you are meditating this way, then as St. John of the Cross says, it is not time for reasoning. Both times continue to remain vitally important.

personally, in many ways, I find myself with Hilaire Belloc on this type of prayer: "I don't say-I am not so foolish to say-that it is false. But I do say that I was never made for understanding this "union with God" business: St. Theresa and the rest. I don't know what it is all about and the description of isolation and detachment, "the necessary night of the soul," disgusts me like Wagner's music or boiled mutton. Good for others: not for me. I am no more fitted to it than is an elephant for caviar, or a dog for irony"

This type of prayer isn't for everybody, and those who do reach it are not somehow praying better or uniting with God better than the average Catholic clutching his rosary beads.