If you do not already do so, please visit Our Lady of Loretto Carmelite Prayer Chapel and review the needs posted there over the last week. We have many parishioners, family members, and friends in need of healing prayers and the balm that comes from knowing that someone is concerned, loves them, and wishes to share the bounty of God's grace in prayer. I am among the number so much in need of prayers that my own ability to pray is impeded, so I request that all assist in shouldering this task. Thank you.
Pursuant to remarks of this morning, this scripture came to mind--and suddenly there seemed to be an enormous depth that opened up. Jesus pointedly comments that the path of salvation is narrow and the path of destruction wide. And yet, here is another paradoxical truth. That strait gate and narrow way are actually much wider and more encompassing than the path of destruction. The path of destruction is our own self-limiting, narrow, wills. The strait gate and narrow way are God's will. God's will is identical for each person in that it demands holiness, but it is unique because it demands holiness of the person. As each person differs, God's will for each is different. Thus God's will is a broad plain in comparison to the road of destruction. But because we experience only a small facet of that broad plain (God's will for us is for us as individuals and therefore a narrow and small way) what we observe as individuals is that the path of destruction seems enormous in comparison with the path of God's will. This is the true beauty of the depths of God's word. What is spoken seems so simple and straight-forward, but what it means has depths we will never in our lifetimes completely plumb.
Parsing the Counsels of St. John of the Cross II
Strive always to prefer, not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult; . . . Strive thus to desire to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and poverty, with respect to everything that is in the world, for Christ's sake.
It seems best to quote not just the counsel but the ultimate goal. Many of the counsels are perfectly obvious. One doesn't need to explain what the statement "Strive to prefer not that which is easiest but that which is most difficult." It's meaning is perfectly transparent; however, the reason for it may not be. This sounds like making things difficult for yourself for no particular reason--which is why I quoted the end of the counsels as well. The goal is detachment from self--detachment from the nexus of selfishness and self-centeredness that comprises most people.
The first step is detachment from our own preferences and complacency. If you look at the entire list of counsels (included in this post) you will see that everyone of them is a call to action. They require us to abandon passivity and make some sort of effort. This is odd, because most people seem to think that St. John of the Cross was about inaction--allowing things to flow over one and pass away. That is also true. This is a paradox that others can explain better than I, but I suppose it is best to say that even allowing things to flow over one is an active practice because one must sometimes push them off and speed them on their way.
Why all of this emphasis on action, activity, and comfortlessness? The answer is simple and we have all experienced it. In times of turmoil, upset, and emotional overflow, we find it far easier to turn to God for help and solace, to think about Him frequently, and even if we do not pray coherently, we offer up petitions and cries for help. During the "good times" we are far too inclined to forget that God has provided the good times. We pay lip service, and I'm sure many do thank God sincerely, but good times tend not to elicit the depth of response. Part of what St. John is doing in the counsels is recommending that we always be ready to stir the pot. Detachment is not a passive exercise--it takes great determination, strength of will, and an endless supply of strengthening grace. To be able to achieve it, we must flex muscles we rarely use. St. John tells us how. He tells us not to seek comfort, where we are inclined to rest on our laurels and allow things to move as they will, but always to seek out work and the harder way.
It is interesting, but St. John's way even makes sense psychologically. All of our experts tell us that when we are stressed or angry we should engage in some vigorous physical activity or exercise. No matter the reason, such activity tends to disengage us from thoughts about ourselves and direct us toward our activity. We move out of the center and toward other things. St. John's goal is to make sure that God is Who we are moving toward. Thus when he makes all this advice that sounds wearisome and dreadful, our reactions are those of people on the outside looking in. When I hear about the life of a Saint from a Saint, I don't hear endless complaints about toil and effort and endless fruitless labor. I hear statements like, "Something beautiful for God" or "Small things with great devotion" or any of a number of phrases that show us that detachment and work for the Lord is the greatest of pleasures--that only in service to Him are we truly refreshed and relieved of the cares of this world. This servitude makes us free, this service gives us true rest. In the world we must be both Martha and Mary, for though Mary has the better part, it is only the effort of Martha that make it possible. So, to rest in the better part we must work in our wills and in our world.
Holiness Is Not an Option
It is a requirement of all Christians, whatever their state of life. Our task is to find God's way of holiness for each one of us. Sometimes I think Jesus's statement, "My Father's house has many mansions," is a reference to that fact that holiness is the truest realization of self. Holiness is becoming a mirror for God, we all reflect exactly the same thing--the eternal, unchangable, omniscient face of Love Incarnate. But surrounding the glass that reflects the image is a frame--it is the frame that is individually crafted and worked on by our loving Father.
Think about it--you have Catherine of Siena, Rose of Lima, Thérèse of Lisieux, Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi, and so on. Each one is a model of holiness, but each one is unique. Thus, when one says something like, "I can't be like Thérèse" (as I sometimes hear at my Carmelite Meetings), my response is always, "Why would you want to be? God already has one of those." God gives us the Saints as examples, not as templates. Not one of us is constituted in exactly the same way as any one saint, and so our paths will be different. And in being different our paths will light the ways of people in the future.
We must be holy as we are--not as Thérèse or Francis Xavier is--but as we are. In holiness we have worked with God to polish the mirror in which all must see the image of God, and so have the proper light to see the glorious frame that is the individual Saint. Do not despair because you cannot do as others do. We are not called to that. We are called to do as God would have us do, and His grace strengthens us to that end.
One of the joys of stats is that one can see who visits from whence. And occasionally that leads to a very interesting link. I have no idea how one gets to my page from the one that follows--but if you've ever wanted to create your own 1 atmosphere plasmoid and destroy your microwave, kitchen, and perhaps entire house in the process--here's the link for you. This is actually quite cool, and the page writer provides a real-media file to view the results for those disinclined to experimenting themselves.
An Urgent Need for Prayers
The following comes to me regarding one of the Carmelite sisters in the Carmel at Port Tobacco (I think). Please pray for her today.
We beg prayers for Sister Anne, who is in danger of death. She was doing so well, coming to Mass almost every day, but became ill over the weekend, and missed Pentecost. The following day (yesterday), she was taken by ambulance to the Emergency Room at a larger hospital about 20 minutes from here, rather than the one here in town. She was found to have an obstruction in the small intestine. She must have an operation soon, or the bowel will burst. It would be a terrible and painful death. However, she is so weak and has so many problems that she may not survive an operation. We expect the operation to take place tomorrow, June 11.
In addition, please visit Our Lady of Loretto Carmelite Prayer Chapel and pray for the intentions posted there--all of them are urgent needs.
Ways of Holiness
In response to this post at Disputations Mr. O'Rama replied:
I found this very interesting. It is reasonable and persuasive. Yet should we not mark Christ's words that Martha had chosen the better way? Does not the religious life, with its constant prayer, its constant access to the sacraments, to trained spiritual directors, et all not make a difference? But God is not bound by those things. Certainly our experience screams that the religious life confers not so much advantage as we might romantically think - Thomas Merton paints a picture in his journals of his fellow monks as, well, not quite completed Christians. No surprise there.
This seems to imply that Martha's way is not available to those in Secular life, and yet. . . Martha and Mary both were not cloistered Monastics. Jesus was not speaking to a group of people who lived outside the stream of life. It seems to me that one way is not more holy than another--to seek the God's will in everything is the source of grace and holiness. If God does not call one to the cloister or monastery, one must be open to what God is calling one to. St. Catherine of Siena was very holy, and yet she was not cloistered, even though she belonged to an Order. Louis and Zelie Martin were very holy people by all accounts. St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton, and countless others demonstrated the holiness possible in everyday pursuits.
I think I'm disturbed by this kind of reflection, not because there isn't an element of truth to it--a call to the religious life is the highest kind of call--but because many people use these reflections or things similar to it to deny their own responsibility in the cultivation of holiness. I often hear from my confreres, "I can't do that because I'm not a religious. I can't follow this way or that way because I am not in a convent or monastery." And for some things, that is true. But being outside of a religious order or establishment is not an excuse for failing in holiness. After all, if we choose it, most of us have reasonably constant access to the sacraments, and all of us are called to pray constantly, to raise our daily work as an offering of prayer. Many of us don't take advantage of these things, but then, many in monasteries and religious life may not do so either--we cannot know.
I understand the sense of Mr. O'Rama's comment and agree that religious life is the higher calling. However, I disagree that it gives some leg-up on holiness. Holiness is the struggle with the assistance of God's grace to conquer the self and that same self is with you--in a convent or monastery, or in a married life. The struggle is on different terms in different vocations, but nevertheless we all "work out our salvation in fear and trembling."
Holiness is not only possible, but it is required of all God's people. We are all called to be saints, whether we are canonized or not--"Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." Perfection, I reiterate, is uniformity with God's will--living out a union with God. And we are told that this is possible in God's time and in God's way for all people. If our row seems harder to hoe, it is because we have never had to try to work the field elsewhere. There are profound troubles, problems, and obstacles to holiness wherever we live out our vocations.
Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing;
I'm starting with the second of the several counsels I posted yesterday. I'm starting with this because it is in many ways one of the easier ones to discuss both in terms of requirements and results.
Here St. John of the Cross advises us to cultivate an attitude of mind that allows us to make small mortifications of the flesh in order to discipline our wills not to seek out sensory delights. This is one of the most obvious because it is one in which most of us indulge ourselves. Let us start at the most basic level--when we are presented with choices, in food, for example, we are not to choose that which most pleases us and which delights the taste buds, but that which we would prefer not to eat. Now, first, reiterate the reasons for this choosing. Food that is well-prepared and that tastes good is NOT sinful, nor is it wrong to delight in such food. And if our host should place such food before us, we should in good fellowship and with a sense of Christian Harmony partake of it to some extent less than gluttony. However, when we are presented with a choice, it is better to choose the thing we less like to eat and to offer that choice to God as a small sacrifice, and to ourselves as a small advance on where we were. That is, by depriving ourselves of, say, Beef Wellington, and eating instead say lima beans and corn bread we perform a small mortification that actually helps others indirectly and that tries to rein in the rampaging horses that are appetite and desire.
What John seems to emphasize is that each choice can be made to discipline desire and to offer glory to God. The Buddhists call a similar approach to things "mindfulness." Father de Mello referred to it as Awareness. We need to be aware of our choices and to take control of them--not merely to be disciplined, but as a voluntary offering to the Lord who offered everything to us. We must gratefully accept all things from His hands, and to the extent possible, offer them back to Him. We do this in the small things. St Thérèse is often misunderstood when she speaks of "small things with great devotion and love," but this is exactly what she refers to. Every day we have innumerable choices, and each choice should be made in such a way as to direct our attention to God. Everything we eat, everything we do, even everything we choose to look at. It is an austere way and a way of much discipline and small sacrifice, and yet, I cannot but think that it is a way arrayed in costliest finery--more splendid than gold and jewels, more marvelous than the most beautiful orchids, because it is a way paved with the Blood of Christ Himself and with the Blood of all the Martyrs in Flesh or of the Spirit who followed Him. It is a "little way" of Martyrdom to the enticements of the world, that robes us in the richest raiment possible.
A Prayer of Carmelite Saints
from Drink of the Stream compiled by Penny Hickey, O.C.D.S.A Prayer of St. Thérèse
My God, "I choose all!" I don't want to be a saint by halves, I 'm not afraid to suffer for You, I fear only one thing: to keep my own will so take it, for "I choose all" that You will!
A Prayer of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity
O Lord, what does it matter, when I can retire within myself, enlightened by faith, whether I feel or don't feel, whether I am in light or darkness, enjoy or do not enjoy? I am struck by a kind of shame at making any distinction between such things and, despising myself utterly for such want of love, I turn at once to You, my divine Master, for deliverance. Help me to exalt You. . . above the sweetness and consolation which flow from You, because I have resolved to pass by all else in order to be united with You.
What strikes me here is the naturalness with which both of these Saints entered into St. John's dark night of the senses, without pause or seeming difficulty. Sometimes it strikes me as unfair that some have it so much easier than the rest of us. Through no fault of my own I was not born into a Catholic Family. My parents were the nominally religious semi-churchgoers who eventually stopped goind at all. I did not have a Louis and Zelie in my life to cultivate an interest and a yearning toward such things.
But why bemoan fate? The path is traced out for each of us. We are each born into a different situation and live out that situation. Our object is to live it out in accord with God's will to the extent that we can discern it. Sometimes our discernment is weak. At other times, it is a tower of strength. We pull with our poor strength to draw close to God, and He, in turn, sweeps us in with a mighty current. Sometimes our stroke is off, so that we end up resisting the current and tiring as we seek to get away from the torrent of His Love. But, if our hearts are in it, we will resume our rowing until we realize that even that weak effort seems to diminish His own swift waters. And so instead we retire to the rudder and steer the ship along the strongest lines of the current, heading my the most direct means into the Heart of God.
Not for the Faint of Heart
I have ventured into regions of the blogworld that while fascinating have caused me to blanch and retreat homeward quickly. I'm certain that a great many have read the debates of the neocons and the radtrads or whatever each calls the other. I find myself appalled and feel the necessity to retreat to prayer. Yes, I know there are divisions and disagreements, but somehow I find this particular rift with a sometimes-sense of triumphalism on one side or the other particularly sad and disturbing. I disagree with a great many Catholics on a very large number of issues, and yet, I feel no need to be right at the expense of others. It seems that such an attitude is not shared throughout the world of reasoned argumentation. I see and understand points on both sides, but the extremes of either side are unpleasant in the extreme and do not help their cause or the cause of Christ Himself who must be wounded over this division and this insistence upon difference. If a person chooses to attend a Tridentine Mass and thinks all manner of error about Vatican II, then so be it. Still, this person is a brother in the Lord and needs to be loved.
Now, to give credit, there are a great many who are capable of civil disagreement without ad hominem arguments and attacks. I had no idea things were quite so ugly out there. Perhaps because I am not of an argumentative nature (Okay Tom, stop laughing) when my views differ and they have not been requested by others, then I keep them to myself. (See St. Josemaria Escriva's Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility No. 5).
I don't know, it just saddens me greatly to see such unpleasantness within the Body of Christ. I am not naive enough to believe that everything goes forever smoothly, but the degree of rancor and unpleasantness suggests the resurrection of the Reformation. I mean after all folks, the Campos group in Brazil (Lefebvrists of some stripe) have been reunited with Rome--all things are possible through Christ who strengthens us.
St. John of the Cross--Counsels on Discipline and Love
At the end of the first book of The Ascent of Mount Carmel St. John of the Cross gives a magnificent set of directions for those who seek union with God. The whole point of the first book is that one must enter into the first Dark Night, called the active night of the senses. The active night is so called because it requires of the person some movement of will in order to accomplish entry. (In other words, it is not Quietist--waiting around for a stunning revelation to smack you upside the head.) It is the dark night of the sense because it aims first to purify the physical senses and data input, as it were. It deals with the sensual side of the human being, and the entry of sense information into the soul.
When talking about this with the Carmelite group on Saturday there was a collective gasp as they at last got the point--this is neither easy, nor pleasant, nor is it in accord to what we are taught by society and the world around us--and yet, it is utterly necessary as a first step forward. In sections 6-13, St. John gives some advice about how to enter into this first dark night. First, prior to any of this, one must have cultivated an active and fruitful prayer life in the ordinary mode--that is, Liturgy of the Hours, Mass, and other devotional and meditational prayers. So St. John of the Cross assumes a commitment to moving toward union for God, and he speaks of people who have all these prerequisites as "beginners" in prayer.
Next his practical advise follows in the translation by E. Allison Peers. I recommended this list as a daily examen for the members of the Carmelite community with the main question being--where did I do these things, where did I depart from this advice.
Ascent of Mount Carmel--Book I, Chapter 13, Section 6Strive always to prefer,
not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult;
Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing;
Not that which gives most pleasure, but rather that which gives least;
Not that which is restful, but that which is wearisome;
Not that which is consolation, but rather that which is disconsolateness;
Not that which is greatest, but that which is least;
Not that which is loftiest and most precious, but that which is lowest and most despised;
Not that which is a desire for anything, but that which is a desire for nothing;
Strive to go about seeking not the best of temporal things, but the worst.
Strive thus to desire to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and poverty, with respect to everything that is in the world, for Christ's sake.
Now, what St. John of the Cross says here is that one must cultivate the mindset that seeks these things. However, there are two things he DOES NOT say that are commonly attributed to him. He does not say that material things are bad and to be avoided, and he does not say that one should go out of one's way to avoid these things if they are sent. By that I mean that we are to accept all things in God's will, but as a matter of discipline, when we are given a choice, we should choose according to these guidelines to gradually separate us from our attachments to physical things and sensations. What John is doing here in giving practical instruction on the words of St. Paul, "I know how to be rich and I know how to be poor." We are to know how to be each without being attached to either. That is to say, when good things come our way, we are to accept them gratefully as gifts from God and be equally grateful when the opportunity comes to let them go. I illustrate it with a little "parable" from my experience here in Florida. One day I looked out my back window and a Sandhill Crane couple and baby were strutting around the back yard as though they owned the place. This was a richness sent from God. The proper attitude to it is not to shut my eyes and wish it away or pretend it does not exist, but to thank God from the bottom of my heart for this blessing and then not to seek to lengthen it by, say, making a cage and putting these noble and magnificent birds in it. I praise God and let the gift go as easily as it comes, relishing the moment, grateful for the grace, and open to the movements of God's will. It is Job's famous statement, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed by the Lord."
That is the attitude we are to cultivate, not to seek to lengthen the pleasure of the experience, not to try to "own" it, but to allow it to happen, accept it gratefully, and allow it to pass, accepting all from the hand of God equally. But with our modern mindset and with society's encouragement, we are a people who must own and contain. We cannot let things go.
One person in the group brought up an interesting point, she said, "But as a mother with two small children, I really want those periods of quiet and respite that allow me to regenerate and be a better mother later." I pointed out to her that her desire for quiet was likely to make her unquiet. The need for the time of regeneration would be likely to engender short-temperedness and other negative qualities, because we seek rather than accepting what comes. There would be nothing wrong with using quiet time that comes to us to regenerate, but it is in seeking it that we go wrong, because then it becomes a driving goal--when we do not achieve it we are diminished, tired, angry, frustrated, and less capable of being ourselves. I noted that the saints seemed to work tirelessly, dawn to dusk, without complaint, without request for rest, though they undoubtedly could do with some. And they did this because their hearts were always seeking what God desired. They did not desire for themselves anything other than what God would give them. Their longing was always to demonstrate in the fullness of their being their tremendous love of Christ.
So, St. John of the Cross is training us to be saints. The question is, are we willing to accept the training? Are we willing to assume the "yoke that is easy, the burden that is light?" If so, we can boldly start to practice these disciplines, seeking always not to indulge the senses, but to indulge so far as we are able to discern it God's will, and to separate ourselves from the deep attachments that keep us as spirits in bondage unable to rise to the heights the Father wishes to give us.
Initial Topic Announcement
Eric has announced his initial topic for discussion. Because no one seems to have comments working this morning (enetation or haloscan), I thought I'd post a couple of considerations I had over the weekend that might make for an interesting strain to trace first as a "complete" overview. If one were to do a setting that treats the same text through the different ages of music, it might be somewhat easier to observe through familiarity some of the differences that occur. It might be well to consider some very established poetic text and its treatment from plainchant/gregorian times to the present day. Particularly, something like the "Ave Maria" might lend itself well to such treatment. Heaven knows there are enough compositions based on the text--it would serve well to take us from the periods Erik characterizes as "pretonal" to "postonal." Another such text might be the "Stabat Mater." The advantage of these texts is that we are all familiar enough with the one that we can also examine how the composer treats the text in order to make of it the musical sense that he wishes to convey. For example in the Bach-Gounoud "Ave Maria" there is key repetition of text that is NOT repeated in the actual prayer. This repetition serves both a music/rhetorical purpose, and conveys something about the sense of the text that the composer wished us to have.
Moreover, the usual treatment of the "Ave Maria" is brief enough that it serves well. Finally, it would also allow Erik to make some comments regarding orchestration, conducting, and performance--other key factors that influence our enjoyment of the music, but which often go completely unremarked by most people. There are composers about whose music I am very concerned regarding the Conducter. Wagner is often horrid in the hands of a conductor not used to the weight of the music. Debussy, likewise has been mangled by those not sensitive to the delicacy of some of the structure ( I think here of an abysmal recording of "Prelude" under the baton of Herbert von Karajan, whose style I generally like in dealling with the German Composers). Anyway, it is just a suggestion that might serve well to give us a rapid overview to be followed by a more intense careful prowling through music and Art.