We can't do it for ourselves

Friday, April 28, 2017

I haven’t posted since Tuesday because I’ve been a bit under the weather. On Tuesday I wrote about the gifted religious experiences that many of us have, moments when it seems as if the veil between heaven and earth is rent, times when we are overwhelmed and overjoyed by beauty, by the experience of love, or by a strong sense of the presence of God or of the risen Christ.

I also mentioned that after receiving gifts, life tends to go on as usual, while the experience we have had remain pleasant memories but don’t necessarily cause any significant changes in our lives. How can this be? For an answer, I turn to Saint Augustine of Hippo, who writes about such things in his Commentary of Psalm 41.

He reminds us that God is so far beyond us that in order to attain to God, we have to reach beyond the usual horizons of our souls. “If my soul were to remain within itself it would not see anything but itself and, within itself, it would not see its God. . . . It is there, in fact, above my soul, that the dwelling of my God is. That is where he dwells, from there he sees me, from there he created me . . . from there he raises me up and calls me, from there he guides me and steers me into harbor.”

But we cannot remain beyond ourselves for too long because, as Augustine puts it: “Our body that is doomed to corruption weighs our souls down and our spirit is troubled by many thoughts. . . . Since we are weighed down by our heaviness we soon fall back into our habitual ways. We let ourselves be dragged back to our usual way of living. And just as when we drew near to God we found joy, so when we fall back to earth we have reason to groan.” Read Psalm 41 (42 in modern numbering) to see an expression of this groaning:

Why are you cast down, O my soul and why are you disquieted within me. Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

The psalm supplies a remedy for this sad state of affairs: it is hope. We are given to experience times of great sweetness, but then we are cast back down upon ourselves and we are threatened and tempted by our own inordinate desires. Saint Augustine expresses the remedy eloquently:

While awaiting heaven find your God here below in hope. . . . why hope? Because I shall witness to him. What witness will you give? That he is my God, the health of my countenance. My health cannot come to me from myself. I will proclaim it, I will bear witness to it: My God is the health of my countenance.”

And there is an important lesson to be learned here: Our health cannot come to us from ourselves. It must come from outside us, and above us, and through the merciful ministrations of a God who loves us more than we can sometimes love ourselves. Let this be a guide to your ongoing prayer.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend!

Mystical Moments

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Yesterday, as we celebrated Mass on the Feast of Saint Anselm, I was overwhelmed for a time with a incredible beauty of our liturgy, and the colors, and the sights, and the smells and the words of consecration, and for a brief instant I felt like I was witnessing the great liturgy of the kingdom to come. It didn’t last for two long, but now, whenever I think back on it, I can see a picture of it in my mind that is as clear as it was the moment it happened.

Every once in a while, God gives us a particular gift: a period of time or even a brief moment when it seems like the veil between heaven and earth is rent, and we are filled with a sense of joy and beauty that has us feeling more connected to God than ever before. I believe that experiences of this kind are especially rich during the season of Easter when our attention is focused on the reality of the fact that the Christ is alive and is present with us. Perhaps you have had such an experience, or even more than one. Perhaps it hasn’t happened to you yet, but your time will come. But will you be ready to accept the moment of the Lord’s visitation?

It takes practice to make ourselves ready to receive such a gift. I don’t propose to be an expert on the spiritual life (which is why I entitle my reflections as “spirituality for beginners,” since I always feel like I am one myself), but if I take a look at my own experience and at the work of God’s grace within me, I can report to you a couple of things that I have begun practicing lately. And please don’t think I have mastered these practices, for, as I said, I am only a beginner.

·         Catching judgmental or negative thoughts about others and then reaching deep down inside my self to a level of my soul where there exists nothing but charity and compassion.

·         Actively practicing a certain way of seeing: looking at every single object in my universe as a sign of the creativity and love of God, excluding nothing. Even the bottle of Tylenol on my desk; even my computer mouse; even my unmade bed; and an old Christmas card (from 1984) hanging in my room with one word on it: “Rejoice!”

·         Smiling more, trying to make a smile be my default mouth position.

·         Rejoicing at the beauty I see around me as if I were seeing it for the first time, and not taking it for granted as I so often do.

·         Reading prose and poetry that speaks of love, even human love, in a way that reminds me that God is Love, so all love is God. (I recommend two books to you that I have found inspiring: The Enlightened Heart and The Enlightened Mind, ed. Stephen Mitchell, published by Harper Perennial). And at the moment I am particularly inspired by the Sufi poet Rumi.

Alas, these sublime moments don’t last forever. All too soon, we return to our habitual way of being and thinking. There is a reason for this and St. Augustine explains it beautifully. This will be the subject of tomorrow’s reflection.

In the meantime, stay open, be more aware than ever of the presence of the risen Lord in your life, and practice seeing beauty tucked away in little corners that you have been ignoring lately. You’ll be glad you did!

God bless you!

Gems from Saint Anselm

Monday, April 24, 2017

In the monastery we celebrate the feast of Saint Anselm today. One of the things I like about this feast is that the antiphons we use for the Divine Office are particularly beautiful. Many of them come directly from St. Anselm’s writings, and each is suitable food for meditation. I offer you the best of the lot:

“My Lord and my God who made me and late remade me, my soul longs for you.”

“From what generous love, from what loving generosity God’s compassion flows out to us.”

“Trust in God, for I am confident that the Lord will answer all your needs.”

“My God, I pray that I may so know and love you that I may rejoice in your forever.”

“O Christian soul, restored from the weight of death and redeemed by the blood of Christ from bondage, take heed and remember you are risen.”

“Enter into your soul’s inner chamber, and seek God with all your heart.”

“Hope of my heart, strength of my soul, help of my weakness! By your powerful kindness, O Lord, complete what in my weakness I attempt.”

God bless you!

I saw Him!

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Tuesday in the Octave of Easter

I saw the risen Christ this morning.

I was sitting in the monastery refectory at 5:45 am, having my usual cup of coffee before Morning Prayer. I looked around the room and saw the risen Christ shining through the building, because if Christ were not risen, none of what I was seeing would exist. And when I went into the church and sat in my choir stall, again I realized that none of what I saw or was experiencing would exist if Christ had not been risen from the dead.

We began Morning Prayer by reciting the psalms. Ok, the psalms would still exist because they pre-date the birth of Jesus, but the settings in which we pray the psalms, and the interpretations we give to the psalms (since so many of them speak of the risen Christ if you know what to look for), and the music, and the prayers, and my relationships with my confrères, and the massive Paschal Candle lit and shining brightly and the flowers, especially the lilies which always look like trumpets to me, and, of course, the very Abbey Church itself, would not exist if Christ had not been risen from the dead.

And I thought about my life, and what my life was like before the risen Christ had led me to faith and eventually to the monastery, and I shudder to think of what my life would have been like if none of that had ever happened, and how lost I would be, and how empty my life would be, and how impossible it would be for me to have access to God the Father and how there would be no chance for me to enter heaven because I would still be in my sins since I could never pray the Jesus Prayer because He would have no power in my life. I remember the wonderful passage from Ephesians---no, wait! I couldn’t, because the letter to the Ephesians would never have been written, if Christ had not been risen from the dead.

And so He is all around me, and He has saturated my life, and still does because daily He works in me and keeps me going.

Look around yourself. Note that this reflection would not exist if Christ were not risen from the dead, and you would never have heard of me. Look at all the objects around you in your home and perhaps in your pockets that would simply not have been there. And think, like I have, of what your life would be like if Christ were not risen from the dead and there were no Church, no faith, no baptism, no Eucharist, no Savior. And give thanks, for the Lord has been risen! Amen. Alleluia!

God bless you!

Good Friday: It doesn't make sense; It does make sense

Friday, April 14, 2017

Good Friday

On the cross Jesus bears the weight of all the evil there is in the world, all the misery, the deceit, the hatred, the agony, the physical, mental and psychological pain, the betrayal, the denial, the ridicule, the humiliation, the crushing disappointment and even the sense of abandonment and total helplessness. He does it for you and He does it for me. He does it because we have hurt people and he does it because life has hurt us as well. On the cross He gives us a place to hang our own pain and misery and everything else I mentioned up above. On the cross He bears our own sin as well.

Time spent meditating on the suffering and death of Our Lord is time invested in our ultimate salvation. Time spent mediating on the suffering and death of Our Lord is time spent learning to make sense of what happens in this life, and the message is this: it doesn’t make sense.

So much in our lives doesn’t make sense. So many things have happened which we are powerless to explain or to wrap our minds around. I believe that this experience of senseless hopelessness is part of the agony that Christ bore on the cross which culminates in His cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

But there is a second message that the cross offers us, and it is a message that contradicts the first: it does make sense. During your darkest moments, gaze on the cross in meditation or in silence, and this message will eventually come to your mind and calm your senseless agony.

And so, we have to say this about the cross: it does make sense, and it doesn’t make sense. And we have to rest in the contradiction. That’s what he called it, Simeon the prophet who held the infant Jesus and spoke to His mother. He will be a “sign of contradiction” to the world. (Luke 2:34).

Look at your own life. There is a lot of good in you. And there is also evil in which you have been complicit. And how many times has something happened to you which has made you want to cry out: “This isn’t fair!” or even “This doesn’t make sense!” Your life therefore is itself a contradiction, and your contradiction can find its home in the contradiction of the cross.

Saint Benedict doesn’t specifically mention “contradiction” but in essence he addresses it in the fourth step of humility: “under difficult, unfavorable, or even unjust conditions, [the monk’s] heart quietly embraces suffering without weakening or seeking escape.” (RB 7:35-36)

When Christ bids us to “carry your cross,” He is telling us to accept the contradictions which we find in our lives and then to look to the cross, where Contradiction finds its fullest expression. And, united with the cross, we bear the pain, always remembering that the Cross is not the end of the story. It is merely one terrible yet necessary stop along the way. Resurrection is almost upon us. And then all contradictions dissolve into endless joy.

God bless you! Have a wonderful weekend. Happy Easter to you!

The Greatest Gift

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Holy Thursday

This is the day when we commemorate the institution of the Eucharist in a special way and on this day I offer the following reflection:

I have often written how all the religions and cultures of the world have their special Wisdom Teachers, and that, to a great extent, all these wisdom teachers say basically the same things but in different languages and with different symbols. This common spiritual teaching is called Perennial Wisdom.

Nonetheless, among all the wisdom teachers of the world, there is only One who has claimed to be God: Jesus Christ, the son of God, who proclaimed himself to be the great I AM. The Jewish religious leaders of the day were completely scandalized by this audacious claim and convicted him of blasphemy and demanded that He be put to death, this man who claimed to be God.

AND THEN HE PROVED IT by being raised from the dead, and these events will play themselves out in our liturgies over the next few days, culminating in the great celebration of Easter: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

BUT THAT WASN’T ENOUGH. Before he was betrayed and delivered into the hands of those who would kill him, Jesus left us what many consider to be the greatest gift of all: He left us the Eucharist. And once again, this gift makes Christianity to be unique among all the world’s religions. We worship a person who is both human and divine and who left us with an everlasting gift that makes it possible for Him to be physically present with us every single day; not only that, but WE CONSUME him as often as we receive communion at our liturgies.

In honor of the gift of the Eucharist, I offer you this sublime passage by Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 334-397):

He is the bread of life. Whoever eats life cannot die . . . Go to him and take your fill, for he is the bread of life. Go to him and drink, for he is the spring. God to him and be enlightened, for he is the light. Go to him and become free, for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom . . . ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35).  Ambrose of Milan, Commentary on Psalm 118. (In Clément, p. 108)

God bless you this day and always!

He got to you first!

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

All of our spiritual aspirations, desires and hopes are implanted in us by God and are the result of the Spirit’s activity in our own souls before we were awakened to the reality of our life in God. All is God. All is the activity of the Trinity working in us, of the God “in whom we have our being.”

The monastic father John Cassian reminds us that it is God’s intention that we be united to him and is expressed in Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” in John 17:

So we shall arrive at the goal of which we spoke and which the Lord desires for us in this prayer of his: ‘that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.’ (John 17:22-23). ‘Father I desire that they also whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am’ (John 17:24). in Clément, p. 211

I happened to come upon a Sufi account which helps make this relationship with God clear and precise:

At the beginning I was mistaken in four respects. I sought to remember god, to know Him to love Him, and to seek Him. when I had come to the end, I saw that He had remembered me before I remembered Him, that His knowledge of me had preceded my knowledge of Him, His love toward me had existed before my love to Him, and He had sought me before I sought Him.

I’ve said it before and I repeat it now: In whatever way you may be reaching out to God, especially during these days of Holy Week, know that God is already reaching out to you in greater measure and has planted your yearning for him within you. This is what He wants for you. Let the readings and prayers of Holy Week drive that message home for you this year.

Holy Week Thoughts

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Tuesday of Holy Week

Thoughts about the Cross and the Death of Jesus:

1) Jesus is both human and divine. This Son of God, in his humanity, suffered what all human beings suffer. This means that God is not remote from suffering, but rather that God has participated in all the suffering in the world through Jesus. In Jesus, God knows our suffering experientially.

2) Consider this profound reflection by Olivier Clément:

United with us in being and in love, Christ took on himself all the hatred, rebellion, derision, despair—‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ – all the murders, all the suicides, all the tortures, all the agonies of all humanity throughout all time and all space. In all these Christ bled, suffered, cried out in anguish and desolation. But, as he suffered in a human way, so he was trustful in a human way: ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit’. At that moment death is swallowed up in life, the abyss of hatred is lost in the bottomless depths of love.[1]

3) Therefore, all that you experience in your life is taken in by Jesus. During your times of suffering, of trial, of anguish, sadness or despair, look on the Cross. You will find healing there.

4) As man, Christ died. He tasted death just as each of us will someday taste death. Christ is united with us in death. In Christ, God experiences human death.

5) God raised Christ from death. And mankind, in union with Christ’s death will also be raised from death by the same power that raised Him from the dead. Remember the passage from Ephesians quoted the other day: “[I pray . . . that you may know . . .] what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand.” Eph 1:19-20  emphasis mine.

That’s all for now. Think on these things.

God bless you this week and always.

---

[1] Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, p. 44

Soul of Christ, Sanctify me

Monday, April 10, 2017

For the Offertory on Passion (Palm) Sunday, my schola sang a new piece of music based on an ancient prayer, and the monks have asked me to use it every year from now on. The music is called “Soul of Christ, Sanctify Me” by Philip W. J. Stopford and it is published by MorningStar Music Publishers. If you go to their website you can hear it there.

The prayer is known as the “Anima Christi” and in case you don’t know it or can’t remember it, I will put it here. It makes an excellent source of meditation during Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum. Here it is:

Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

                “Today you shall be with me in Paradise.”

Blood of Christ, refresh me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

                “Today you shall be with me in Paradise.”

O good Jesus, hear me; within your wounds, hide me.

Let me never be separated from you; from the darkness defend me.

                “Today you shall be with me in Paradise.”

In the hour of my death, call me, and bid me come to you,

that with your saints I may praise you forever and forever.

God bless you!

Brief Prayer

Friday, April 07, 2017

“Come, my friends, and listen to my instruction. This comes to you from someone who cares about you very much and who wants you to make it to heaven. I want to tell you a few things about prayer; things I have learned, things I have experienced, things I have studied and thoughts that I have had during prayerful moments of my life. First of all, and foremost, if you read something that touches your heart or inspires you, then don’t read on. Pause to reflect on what you have read and allow it to take its place within your heart or you soul. Good prayer does not require a multiplicity of words, as Our Savior has taught us. Reflect on the message you have received and if it prompts you to speak a few words from your heart, then by all means do so, for the ancient writers tell us that a brief moment of prayer that comes from the heart is more pleasing to God than a prattling on of words which are disconnected from your heart and come only from your mind.

Take a breath. Don’t evaluate it or judge it and don’t force it to be something it is not. Allow it to be. Some sages advise us to massage the heart with your breath, noticing it as it enters your body and as it leaves. If distractions, thoughts or feelings arise, massage them as well and then let them depart from you as you exhale. It is helpful, we are told, to repeat a brief word or phrase in union with your breath in order to give your mind something to do while you focus on your breathing. “Jesus,” “God,” “love,” “mercy,” “help!!!” are all good words to use. Stop if you want and repeat one of those words as you breath, or us any other word or phrase that already resides in your heart.

A single word can provide you with the tiniest of prayers which you can pray throughout the day as you go about activities of your life. A breath, a word, a second or two and you re-establish a connection between you and the One you love the most and who loves you with more love than what you send Him. It will always be that way: what you give him comes back to you seventy-fold (as He has told us).

Remember that when you are alone with your Beloved in prayer, you can be anything you need to be; you can be a child, you can be needy, you can be angry and torn by passions, you can have a broken heart or you may be riding waves of ecstatic joy. Don’t censor yourself; allow yourself to be who you are, to be the one that no one else will see except for the Beloved to Whom you are praying.

Saint Benedict advises us to keep our private prayer brief, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I have found that extending the time of the prayer increases the amount of distractions that arise and that become discouraging to me.

God is in everything, so use anything for your prayer: music, art, a beloved text, the words of sacred Scripture, a return to a well-worn book. Likewise, use gestures, song, positions of the body, and let those things speak directly to God. But let no one tell you how you should or shouldn’t pray, even myself. And be tolerant of those whose pray is very different than yours, even if it seem silly or annoying to you: do not judge, for prayer quickly flees one who judges; there are many roads to God and He seeks out those whom He invites. In all things, seek after what touches your heart more than what merely interests your mind.

You may feel unworthy, or inadequate, or too obsessed with troublesome concerns. Let your breath massage those feelings and know that they are common to all of us at times.

I offer you these words today, although I continually feel that my prayer is insufficient, that I do not pray enough. I need to pray Kyrie eleison or Lord, mercy more than anything else and possibly more than anyone else.  As always take whatever may resonate with you and put the rest aside.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend.

There will always be more

Thursday, April 06, 2017

No matter how far we may travel along the spiritual path, no matter whether we have just begun or whether we have been journeying for years and years, there is always more. And this will be true for all eternity because God is the God who was, who is and who will be.

No matter how much we may have learned about love, there will always be more to learn.

No matter how great our experience of love has become, it is still only the beginning, and as time goes on, if we keep searching, our experience of love will become deeper, more precious, more agonizingly beautiful, for God is Love and God is eternal. And so is our journey. Eternal.

Olivier Clément speaks of “the way into a living eternity where progress in love never comes to an end.”[1]

Some who suffer from greed might be discouraged by this for they desire to know (and possess) everything. Some who are perfectionists might be frustrated because no matter how hard they work or how hard they seek, their progress will also still be imperfect. Note the words of Diadochus of Photike (5^th Century):

For what we regard as perfection is still imperfect in the presence of the richness of God, this God who with all the eagerness of his love longs to be our teacher.[2]

 But if we can ask God to purify us of our greed, our impatience, our perfectionism, and of anything else which prevents us from taking delight in the journey, then we will be free to savor what God is doing in us at every stage of our development.

But the veil of sadness is taken away from it when it is taught that to go forward continually in its search, and never cease raising its sights, constitutes the true enjoyment of what it desires. Each time its desire is fulfilled the desire for higher realities is engendered.  Gregory of Nyssa (c.330-395)[3]

I remember when I was at a very early stage of my own spiritual journey, how inspired I was by a short text from the Letter to the Ephesians. As the years have gone on, my appreciation for its wisdom has continually increased, and I am sure that the increase will never cease. Here it is:

. . . the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe . .  . (Eph 1:17-19)

God bless you!

---

[1] Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, p. 191.

[2] Gnostic Chapters, 85. In Clément, p. 191.

[3] Sermons on the Song of Songs, in ibid.

Room for the Word?

Wednesday, April 05, 2017

Jesus speaks to the unbelievers: “You are trying to kill me because my word finds no room among you.” (John 8:37)

God forbid this be true in our own lives, but yet . . .

Many people have constructed a world built around them (as center) that is highly structured and well defended even though its existence is nothing more than an illusion. In fact it is so well defended that no word other than what already exists can manage to get in, to find room, to take its place. Until we do the difficult and sometimes painful work of spiritual growth that bit by bit shatters the illusions that we have built around us, we are no better off than those Pharisees who were plotting to death of Jesus even while He was speaking to them.

You’ve had these experiences with others, perhaps, especially with recalcitrant children or with people from “the other” political party or with estranged spouses or other relatives, and it is a tiresome, exhausting and thankless and often fruitless struggle to “get a word in edgewise.”

Imagine then, based on your own experience, the agonized frustration that Jesus was suffering as he tried to address the religious leaders of His day. Imagine, if you dare, that God may experience the same frustration with you or with me at times, despite the fact that His love is not based on our merits and will, eventually overcome the barriers we erect to “protect” ourselves from it.

It is up to each of us to take a painfully honest look at the barriers we have constructed and to ask, in prayer, for the Lord to help us dissolve them with a good dose of reality. Only then can grace get to us. The Scholastic philosophers taught that the power of grace is dependent on an individual’s capacity to receive it. This is why, by the way, that we can suddenly discover in a passage of Scripture meanings and applications to our own lives that we had never noticed before. When we read those lines at other times, we weren’t ready to hear them the way we can hear them now. We had to get to this point until the Word could indeed “find room among us.”

What are you ready for now?

God bless you!

IN the world, not OF the world

Tuesday, April 04, 2017

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the Pharisees,

“You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above.

You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world.” (John 8:23)

Jesus refers to what is above and what is below, and perhaps this is the geography we have in mind when we “raise our hearts in prayer.” What matters the most when it comes to our spirituality are personal questions for consideration: What do you or I consider to be “above” and what do you or I consider what is “below?” What does it mean to you or me to hear Jesus say that He does not belong to this world? Where do we belong? And what is meant by “world,” considering the fact that it is something that Jesus says He doesn’t belong to?

By engaging these questions, we engage ourselves with John’s mystical Gospel, and if we turn to the ancient mystical writers and teachers, we might find something that helps us answer those very basic and very vital questions. Interestingly enough, I find the most helpful writings have to do with prayer itself.

Evagrius of Pontus (346-399):

When your intellect, in an ardent love for God, sets itself gradually to transcend, so to speak, created things and rejects all thinking . . . at the same time filling itself with gratitude and joy, then you may consider yourself approaching the borders of prayer. (On Prayer)

In your prayer time, rid yourself of everything that harasses you . . . be an ignorant and simple and at the same time a pensive child . . . Banish tricks and devices and behave like a child just weaned from its mother. (Parenticus)

These excerpts describe what seems like meditation, but the greatest of all monastic teachers, John Cassian (c.350-435) recommends that this type of prayer be brief. Let’s look at what he has to say:

We have to take particular care to follow the Gospel precept that bids us go into our inner room and shut the door to pray to our Father. . . . We are praying with our door shut when, without opening our mouth, we call on the One who takes no account of words but considers the heart. . . . We are praying in secret when we speak to God with the heart alone and with concentration of the soul, and make known our state of mind to him alone, in such a way that even the enemy powers themselves cannot guess their nature. Such is the reason for the deep silence that it behooves us to keep in prayer.

. . . Thus our prayers should be frequent but short, for fear that if they are prolonged the enemy might have an opportunity to insinuate distraction into them. (Conferences 9:35-36)

The question often arises, “Well then how do I let God know what is in my heart if I don’t speak to Him about it? or What about prayer of intercession?” These things are always good in themselves, but they do direct our attention to what “lies below.” It could also be argued that God knows what is in the heart and if our prayer is directly heart to heart, then God knows whom or what we want to pray about.

As always, take what makes sense, and leave the rest behind.

God bless you!

Love is One: a prose poem

Monday, April 03, 2017

Have you tasted love, even for a brief instant?

If you have, then you have tasted God

for God is Love.

What was that love? a feeling? an emotion? a hunger? a thirst?

or all of the above?

And where did it come from?

From yourself, you say? But nay,

it was put there

by the Object of your love,

by the Beloved.

What you experience is Him experiencing you.

You reflect His feeling, His emotion, His hunger, His thirst for you.

Rumi explains it:

I used to think that love

And beloved are different.

I know they are the same.

And before him, Pseudo Macarius (c.400)

rejoices in the wonder of it all:

The soul is linked with the Lord, and the Lord, full of compassion and love, unites himself to it and it dwells in his grace. Then the soul and the Lord are one spiritually, they form one life, one heart. (46^th homily)

Offer that love you once tasted

to the Beloved,

and it is all One.

You, the Love, the Beloved,

a taste of the Divine Trinity, of the Father loving the Son with the love which is Spirit.

Too much to grasp?

then leave it aside.

Let not thinking obscure the praying.

Rather, shoot darts of your love into God

and Himself wraps it back around you.

Rest there briefly

and discover new priorities

in a world so distracting

that few anymore can rest in the Love

with which He reaches out to you.

God bless you!