The divinization of our passivity

"the passive parts of our lives are immeasurably wider and deeper than the active."

Part of emptiness, part of poverty, is passivity. Passivity that says yes and loves in each moment God brings me to.  Poverty that 'goes where I do not want to go' like Peter, with love. Poverty of Christ chained in the garden and led to his trial.

Poverty is not doing more, it's abandoning. It's being and doing His Will as he reveals it- not as I plan it according to my liking. The only thing I have control over is how much love I live His will with.  In the moment, which is his will, love.

The sacrament of the present moment is the divinization of us in our passivity.  It is the Kingdom come.

What better guarantee of the presence of God than a life lived in love according to His will, not my own?

How long will I fight this like Jonah, like Martha, like Peter, before my FIAT is natural and constant.

Passivity... passion... our suffering... our accepting of experience undergoing the life He gives instead of forging my own... our letting God work, divinizes us by letting him live in me.

Be an apostle of his will, his love, not my own. and be at peace. he in I and my joy complete.

There is still so much selfishness in my love, in my desire to live love. In the wrestling of His will and my will disguised as His.  How patient he is with me. How he loves me.

Lord, make me remember.... in every experience, in every day...

At every moment He tells me the same thing, "I love you, love me." -Cum Clamore Valido

HOSPITALLAND AND THE DIVINIZATION OF ONE’S PASSIVITIES

by Fr. Robert BarronMay 26, 201513 Comments

Last week I spent six days at a place only about a ten-minute drive from my home, but I had, nevertheless, entered a country as “foreign” to my experience as Botswana or Katmandu. You see, I had taken up residence in Hospitalland. I will spare you all of the gory details, but I was brought in for an emergency appendectomy and then had to undergo a second surgery, due to complications. As a priest, of course, I had visited Hospitalland many times, but I had never actually lived in it for an extended period. Hospitalland has its own completely unique rhythms, customs, language, and semiotic systems. Adjusting to it, consequently, is as complex an undertaking as adjusting to Vienna, Paris, or Tokyo.

For example, the normal rhythm of day and night is interrupted and overturned in Hospitalland. You are only vaguely aware of the movement of the sun across the sky, and people come barging into your room as regularly at two in the morning as two in the afternoon. I found myself frequently asking visitors not only the time of day, but also whether it was morning or evening. Relatedly, the usual distinctions between public and private simply evanesce in Hospitalland. As my mother told me many years ago, upon returning from a long visit to that country, "When you enter the hospital, you place your modesty in a little bag and leave it by the door. Then you pick it up when you go home.” Nurses, nursing aides, medical students, doctors, surgeons, tech assistants—all of them have license to look over any part of your anatomy, pretty much whenever they want. At first, I was appalled by this, but after a few days, I more or less acquiesced: “Anyone else out there that would like to take a look?” Hospitalland has its own very distinctive language, largely conditioned by numbers: blood pressure rates, temperature, hemoglobin counts, etc. It was actually a little bit funny how quickly I began to banter with the nurses and doctors in this arcane jargon. 

But for me the characteristic of Hospitalland is passivity. When you pass through the doors of the hospital, you simply hand your life over to other people. They transport you, clean you, test you, make you wait for results (an excruciating form of psychological torture, by the way), tell you what you have to undergo next, poke you, prod you, take blood out of you, and cut into you. And when you are at your wits' end, frustrated beyond words, so eager to get home that you can taste it, you have to wait for them to give you permission to leave. You place your modesty in a little bag by the door when you enter the hospital, and you put your autonomy in that same container. 

And this is of more than merely psychological interest. It has, indeed, far-reaching spiritual implications. As I lay on my back in Hospitalland, a phrase kept coming unbidden into my mind: “the divinization of one’s passivities.” This is a line from one of the great spiritual works of the twentieth century, The Divine Milieu by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In that seminal text, Teilhard famously distinguished between the divinization of one’s activities and the divinization of one’s passivities. The former is a noble spiritual move, consisting in the handing over of one’s achievements and accomplishments to the purposes of God. A convinced Jesuit, Teilhard desired to devote all that he did (and he did a lot) ad majorem Dei gloriam (to the greater glory of God).  But this attitude, Teilhard felt, came nowhere near the spiritual power of divinizing one’s passivities. By this he meant the handing over of one’s suffering to God, the surrendering to the Lord of those things that are done to us, those things over which we have no control. We become sick; a loved one dies suddenly; we lose a job; a much-desired position goes to someone else; we are unfairly criticized; we find ourselves, unexpectedly, in the valley of the shadow of death. These experiences lead some people to despair, but the spiritually alert person should see them as a particularly powerful way to come to union with God. A Christian would readily speak here of participating in the cross of Christ. Indeed how strange that the central icon of the Christian faith is not of some great achievement or activity, but rather of something rather horrible being done to a person. The point is that suffering, offered to God, allows the Lord to work his purpose out with unsurpassed power. 

In some ways, Teilhard’s distinction is an echo of St. John of the Cross’s distinction between the “active” and “passive” nights of the soul. For the great Spanish master, the dark night has nothing to do with psychological depression, but rather with a pruning away of attachments that keep one from complete union with God. This pruning can take a conscious and intentional form (the active night) or it can be something endured. In a word, we can rid ourselves of attachments—or God can do it for us. The latter, St. John thinks, is far more powerful and cleansing than the former. 

I do believe that my stay in the foreign country of Hospitalland had a good deal to do with the divinization of my passivities and with the passive night of the soul. I certainly wouldn’t actively seek to go back to that land, but perhaps God might send me there again. May I have the grace to accept it as a gift.

“Stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Jesus promises the sending of the Holy Spirit: “Stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.” This staying and waiting is to give them a full sense of human impotence, the permanent condition of human beings until God bestows something of his own Being on us. The image of being “clothed with power” is eloquent. It hearkens back to Genesis and the human sense of nakedness and shame because of sin, and it evokes God’s clothing of Adam and Eve with leather garments out of compassion, in order to conceal his creatures’ shame for the time being. But this promised clothing now is different, since it implies an imparting of God’s own power and life. Nor is this just any kind of concealing, but rather, paradoxically, a very radical revealing. After the Father has raised Jesus from the dead and created a new Adam in Christ, that re-creation through grace is extended step by step to all believers, so that whatever has happened to Christ is now going to happen to us.

Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, The Way of the Disciple

Taizé - Veni Sancte Spiritus

Veni Sancte Spiritus

Come Holy Spirit,
from heaven shine forth
with your glorius light.

Veni Sacte Spiritus

Toi, le parfait consolateur,
merveilleuse fraîcheur.
Dans notre âme, Tu fais habiter la paix.
Dans la peine, Tu es le repos,
dans l'épreuve, la force,
dans la tristesse, la consolation.

Veni Sancte Spiritus

 Ven, dulce huésped del alma,
descanso de nuestro esfuerzo,
tregua en el duro trabajo,
brisa en las horas de fuego,
gozo que enjuga las lágrimas
y reconforta en los duelos.

Veni Sancte Spiritus

You are our only comforter,
peace of the soul.
In the heat you shade us,
in our labour you refresh us
and in trouble you are our strength.

Absence and Presence

Sometimes God's absence is his Presence...
In it he carves out in me a deeper desire, 
and a deeper capacity to receive him and be filled by him, 
to belong more to him, and him to me.

Jesus, my God,
The gifts are beautiful. The bouquets of love, smiles, friendships, family, joys... fragrant, bright, exquisite... The love letters you send me in the sunshine, the trees, the poetry around me...

But it's not enough.  With all gratitude but with an unfulfilled and aching heart I beg, give me yourself.  Your beautiful gifts make me want to share them with you.... in you... and some how increse the pain of your absence.  I want to share a life with you, share a heart with you.  I want you, Lord....

Give me perfectly Yourself,

Send me no more

A messenger

Who cannot tell me what I wish.

In the emptiness is presence. In the desire is the fulfillment. The nothing is where he gives all.

It seems to me...

On the cross he said "I thirst".  In his thirst was the fullness of love.  Emptiness is presence in the way that air fills the lungs.  Were it not there, it would be filled by something else... Were love not present, the desire would be quenched by something less.  Love desired, burns a deeper desire. my thirst is joined by Thirst. Unquecnhed, but unquenched fulfilled.

Christ was empty. He thirsted for love and to love. The will of the Father is what he thirsted for, and what consumed him. In his thirst is the consummation.

Emptiness pulls all else out of my weak heart like searing  heat consumes all hidden moisture, all hidden comfort. In my thirsting, he puts love where he finds no love.  He burns away what prevents thirst to the bone and burns into me a thirst that is only quenched as it is unquenchable.

That is the mystery & fecundity of emptiness. Of thirst. The living water thirsts on the cross, he fills and quenches.  To be one with him is to be filled and quenched, to fill and quench... and to thirst.

The hunger of the Bread of Life, the thirst of the Living Water, the dying of life himself.  There is nothing that remains on our journey in Him but Love.


He asked so much of Mary Magdelene... her shame, her thirst, her alabaster jars, her fidelity, her night, her emptiness.  And he loved her. As he loved her, she thirsted more until she was at the point of dying in the morning at the tomb... Dying of a love she couldn't cling to.  To go on to hold all things loosely, but always give love. Give love while all else falls from your hands, give love from an empty dark heart.  In the desert allow the spring of living water, the Thirst of God, to flow and to quench even as you die of dryness. Noli me tangere.... but love.

Love from the darkness, from and in His darkness, in the darkness of a world lost where his heart is present.  He is with Him in his passion, his night, Show them he is there by a faith that dares joy. Suffering with them... thirsting to love.  Be faithful to the one who thirsts in your emptiness, to the burning heart that loves in darkness. The light meant to illuminate the night.  Salt and light are love.  Be present in your mundane, in your darkness, in suffering with those who suffer... but with love.

As you piercingly cry out to him,
as you seek Him out, the Provider of happiness,
the Giver of joy, the Riches that last and subsist forever,
while He tests your will,
see to it that you do not grow discouraged, my soul, that you do not turn back,
that you do not say: "How long will he remain so incomprehensible to me?"
that you do not say: "Why, when he has just appeared, does he again hide himself?
How long yet will He heap troubles upon me instead of mercy?"
That you do not say: "How can I undergo until the end such crosses?"
But do not shrink back, O my soul, in seeking the Master,
but as a soul which has once and for all given itself over to its own death,
do not grope to seek your own ease,
do not seek out glory,
nor the pleasure of the body,
nor the affections of the neighbors. Do not look at all to the right nor to the left, 
but, as you have begun, so even run more ardently!
Make haste always to apprehend, to seize the Master!
As often as He should disappear, even 10,000 times, likewise 10,000 times He will appear to you and thus He who cannot be grasped
will be grasped by you.
10,000 times, or rather as long as you still breathe,
seek with greater ardor to run towards him!
For He will not forsake you, He will not forget you.
Little by little, nay, He will even show Himself more and more.
And the more frequently, my soul, the Master will be present to you,
and after having perfectly purified you by the radiance of His light,
He Himself, the Creator of the world, will be with you.
He Himself will be with you, the Creator of the world.
And you will have real riches such as the world does not possess,
but such as Heaven and those who are inscribed there possess.
If such will be yours, tell me, what more do you desire?
SAINT SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN 

A Voice Praying in the Desert

There has been a lot said about "the desert of love"

Love seeks the desert because the desert is where man is handed over to God, stripped bare of his country, his friends, his fields, his home. In the desert, a person neither possesses what he loves, nor is he possessed by those who love him; he is totally submitted to God in an immense and intimate encounter.

That is why in every age the Holy Spirit has compelled all lovers to seek the desert.

We, missionaries without a boat, are seized by the same love and led by the same Spirit into new deserts.

From a sand dune, dressed in white, the missionary overlooks an expanse of lands filled with unbaptized peoples. From the top of a long subway staircase, dressed in an ordinary suit or raincoat, we overlook, on each step, during this busy rush-hour time, an expanse of heads, of bustling tling heads, waiting for the door to open. Caps, berets, hats, and hair of every color. Hundreds of heads - hundreds of souls. And there we stand, above.

And above us, and everywhere, is God.

God is everywhere - and how many souls even take notice?

In a moment, when the subway doors open, we'll climb aboard. We'll see faces, foreheads, eyes, and mouths. Mouths of lonely people, in their natural state: some greedy, some impure, some malicious; some mouths that hunger, some filled with every earthly sustenance, but few - very few - that bear the form of the Gospel.

Once we arrive at our station, we will surface into the dark, breathe the night air, and go down the street that leads home.

In the fog, the rain, or the moonlight, we will pass by other people. We will overhear them talking about their purchases, about butter, about money, about promotions, about fear, about quarrels - but hardly ever about the one we love.

To the right, to the left, stand darkened houses with tiny cracks of light, announcing that there are people alive in all this blackness.

We can well imagine what they are doing. They are constructing their fragile joys, bearing their long suffering, doing some good, doing much that is sinful.

We cannot help wonder how little light there would be if a light shined only for each person in prayer.

Yes, we have our deserts - and love leads us into them.

The same Spirit that leads our white-robed brothers and sisters into their deserts, also leads our beating heart down the turbulent stairways, into the subways, and up again to the darkened streets.

We do not envy our religious brothers and sisters.

In this crowd, heart against heart, crushed between so many bodies, on the seat we share with these three strangers, in the darkened street, our heart beats like a fist closed upon a bird.

The Holy Spirit, the whole Holy Spirit in our tiny heart, a love great as God is beating within us, like a moiling sea struggling to break out, to spread out, to penetrate into all these closed-up creatures, into all these impermeable souls.

To be able to pace every street, to sit in every metro, climb up every staircase, carry the Lord God to all places: we are certain to find a soul here or there that has preserved her human fragility before the grace of God, a soul that has forgotten to armor herself in gold or concrete.

And we can pray, pray just as they pray in all the other deserts, pray for all these people so close to us, so close to God.

A desert of people. We can plunge into the crowd as if plunging into the white desert sands.

A crowded desert, a desert of love.

The nakedness of real love.

And we do not miss the countryside, or the friend who would understand stand what we have on our hearts,or the quiet hour in the corner of a church, or the favorite book left at home.

The desert is where we become love's prey.

Won't this love that dwells in us, that explodes in us, also transform us?

Lord, Lord, let the thick skin that covers me not be a hindrance to you. Pass through it. My eyes, my hands, my mouth are yours.

This sad lady in front of me: here is my mouth for you to smile at her.

This child so pale he's almost gray: here are my eyes for you to gaze at him.

This man so tired, so weary: here is my body so that you may give him my seat, here is my voice so that you may say softly to him, "Please sit down."

This smug young man, so dull, so hard: here is my heart, that you may love him, more strongly than he has ever been loved before.

Missions to the desert, unfailing missions, sure missions, missions in which we sow God in the midst of the world, certain that, somewhere, he will take root, for: "There where love is lacking, put love, and you will reap love."

by Servant of God, Madeleine Delbrel. We, the Ordinary People of the Streets (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought) (Kindle Locations 818-824). Kindle Edition.

Recognize and embrace the bridegroom who is with you always... 

Learn to see him in every moment, present,

Whether....

Christ in Mary's womb,

Christ the child

Christ lost in Jerusalem

Christ at Cana,

Christ calling the apostles

Christ the Healer

Christ the Teacher

Christ the friend

Christ the servant

Christ the king

Christ crowned with thorns

Christ scourged

Christ in prison

Christ alone

Christ in agony

Christ carrying the cross

Christ walking on water

Christ broken and given,

Christ risen

Christ ascended

...

Christ of Tabor or

Christ Crucified.

Noli me tangere...

Noli me tangere...
Because you cling to me from fear when I want to embrace you in love.
Because you hold on to me externally, the only way you have yet known me, but I will enfold you from the inside from the depth of your soul.
Because I want you to know my love in new and eternal ways and you hold onto what is passing
Because I will hold you forever and you must let go to know my faithfulness.
Because I have you carved in my hand
Because I love you with an everlasting love
Because you hold onto what you can understand and I AM more.
Because we will be one together with the Father.
Because to know my mercy, you must know your weakness and let go of your security
Because the grip of trusting me with empty hands is stronger than grasping me in ways that you can feel and hold.

Prayer

You speak my name Lord,
You see me, You know me,
You pull back the veil to let me see you.
I am naked and unashamed, covered by Mercy.

Gazing into your eyes as you gaze in to me,
rejoicing in your beauty
together.
You are the garden we walk in
You fill me and surround me
I breathe your breath,
Your heart beat is mine
All I can do is love you.

You are the ocean of joy and
I am rain falling into you, absorbed into you
into your joy
your love.

You are
Ineffable beauty
Unending depth
Limitless sky
Undying flame
Beautiful mercy

I am
your tabernacle
your chalice
your garden
your rest
yours

"To be mine, lose yourself in me."

I begin to see that in faith he is near. 

That is his presence. Faith that believes in darkness is Christ giving me himself. 

Hope that trusts in unknowing, not longing for the past not fearing the future,  is Christ giving me himself. 

Love in darkness is what makes it a night of warmth, of encounter. Love in darkness is Christ's gift of self, his truly sharing my life in His, in Union.

What has seemed so empty has never been empty, as Christ's own heart believes, hopes and loves in mine. Why can I not see him? Because he is sharing one life with me, because at these moments, it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me. The union is not the union of being beside someone but of being one with them.

He hollows and carves with desire and longing and emptiness so he can fill with himself.

Glorious wounds
Resurrected wounds, 
Beautiful wounds,
Triumphant wounds.

Vulnerable wounds,
Pleading wounds,
Screaming wounds,
Silent wounds,
Wounds that will never close.

Welcoming wounds,
Wounds that hold your love,
Wounds that lavish your love.

Forgiving wounds,
Healing wounds, 
Everlasting wounds,
my name carved in your hand.

Holy wounds touching my wounds,
Sacred wounds embracing my wounds,
Wounds exchanging blood, exchanging self, becoming one.


"By rising with his glorious wounds, when Christ pleads for us with the Father, he may always show the manner of death he endured for us" - Venerable Bede

Is the tabernacle happier to have her prisoner locked inside her, or to have her door open, her emptiness vulnerable and exposed to the world while her Lord is being given to all?
All the world becoming the tabernacle itself while she waits alone empty for Him alone. A reserved space that no other creation can fill.
His deserted space, his place of rest.
Does it matter to her how she feels her solitude when her beloved is being glorified and his kingdom grows, even when it as the cost of her fulfillment?

You took me by the hand, robed me and adorned me.
Led me deeper
Led me into darkness
Into emptiness
Into nothing
And begged me to take the final agonizing steps
Into you

Deep, deep
Inside me,
I in you, you in me.

Not seeing you beside me
I thought I had lost you.
But your hand was guiding me.
You did not let go.
I was not beside you, but
Inside you.

There are sunsets in the desert
There are sunrises in the desert
There is the texture of the sand in my hands,
beneath my feet.
There is the heat of the Sun
The chill of the night
The touch of the wind.
And there are the stars.
So many stars.

Come my dove

Come my dove, he says,
Hiding in the cleft of the Rock,
Come out of your head and into your heart.

When you cannot find me
Go into your heart.
Go deeper.
I AM there.
I gave you handfuls of flowers to give to me
And I weave them in your hair to adorn you

Come my dove, I reply
Overshadow me and fill me with yourself.
Let me fly with you.
'Draw me and we will run to you.'

In the dark
Lost

Wandering
Impatient

Exhausted.
I  blindly turn to you
and grasp for a map.

As if to say
Lord, we've wandered too long
Let's go this way.
Let's go here.

And without seeing,
Somehow I know you smile
Your unfelt hand in mine
And silently say
Let's stay in the dark
together.

I AM
here with you.
And the stars are beautiful.
Where else could you rather be?

My alabaster jars

My God if you were here…

My heart, a tomb

would be a tabernacle.

If you were here

I would be alive.

Why do you wait Lord?

Knowing I die and fight not to be my own savior,

resurrecting myself in my own image.

I am Weary, you are rest

I am Hungering and thirsting, you are my fill

I am Begging, you promise to give

But you wait.

You hear my cry, my pain,

My God…?

Why have you abandoned me?

And you leave me alone

A tomb

Made only to be a tabernacle.

The stone closed for while you wait,

And I am scared of the stench inside from the decay, death and emptiness.

Are you moved?

Do you weep for me?

Will you, Lord, roll away the stone?

How long must my heart be a tomb, empty of life?

 A hollow vessel

‘This precious chalice’

Unable to give because it is empty.

A chalice tomb.

They taunt me, scream and mock me,

He has left you. You aren’t enough.

It was a dream, in your imagination.

You will never see the face of God, he has turned away. He left you.

Lord,

Where are you?

Do you hear me cry?

Do you hear me call you?

Have you forgotten me?

Abandoned me?

Seen my weakness and turned away?

Lord your mercy cannot. You promised me.

To know in faith that you are the resurrection and the life is not enough.

I need you to resurrect me, make me a living chalice, a tabernacle, a vessel, a bride.

Where are you?

Seeing you on Tabor, hearing you on Sinai

Makes my emptiness ache more

Having seen your beauty

something in me is darkly dying.

My eyes are blind and my mind doesn’t understand the cognitive dissonance between

You are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you

And day upon day of darkness in the tomb.

When will you call my name?

Even when I feel utterly lost and fragmented, in darkness, you are with me and we are one. You are faithful. Living together, as one. You so humble, hidden, silent. Strong. Still present and touching, transforming, loving.

The emptiness becomes intimacy. The emptiness of the desert that tore at me day and night has become the silence of your heart, present day and night. The silence that never leaves me. The solitary place where we are alone and we are one. The night I live hidden with you. The beautiful night.

You transform my reality. You transform me and all in me, and all that you give me transforms into higher love. All is gift. This is how all things work for good. All become love, all become you. You are all. You are my all.

You dont take away, you transform. All joy, all suffering, all work, all misery... you transform into gift and love. All I have you make into love's token. All is treasure from you. There is nothing that escapes your hands. Nothing passes away, but all is transformed.

You make all things new, my Love. All things.

“It is true that not even Christ is seen, but he exists; he is risen, he is alive, he is close to us, more truly than the most enamored husband is close to his wife. Here is the crucial point: to think of Christ not as a person of the past, but as the risen and living Lord, with whom I can speak, whom I can even kiss if I so wish, certain that my kiss does not end on the paper or on the wood of a crucifix, but on a face and on the lips of living flesh—even though spiritualized—happy to receive my kiss.” (Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, 1st Lenten Sermon for 2011)

I will lead the blind on their journey; by paths unknown I will guide them Isaiah 42:16

You take me by the hand.
Where are you leading me, Lord?

The journey is long and I feel I have walked alone a thousand miles,
yet now in the predawn light I see that I have never departed
from inside your heart.
Even in the darkness.

You take me by the hand and lead me
To the mountains....in your Heart
To the valleys....in your Heart
To the flight of the sparrow....in your Heart
To the desert....in your Heart
To the night....in your Heart
To the sunrise....in your Heart
To the Ocean....in your Heart
To others....in your Heart
To your cross....in your Heart
To my cross....in your Heart
To the crosses of those around me....in your Heart

With each step you lead me deeper into you
With each step I am more yours
With each step you surrender yourself to me
With each step the air grows more fragrant with your breath
With each step the silence grows more clearly into the sound of your Voice
With each step my heart changes to the rhythm of your own heart

THE BRIDEGROOM

Light-winged birds, Lions, fawns, bounding does, Mountains, valleys, strands, Waters, winds, heat, And the terrors that keep watch by night;

                                                         XXI

By the soft lyres And the siren strains, I adjure you, Let your fury cease, And touch not the wall, That the bride may sleep in greater security.

All these passions and faculties are comprehended under the expressions employed in the first stanza, the operations of which, full of trouble, the Bridegroom subdues by that great sweetness, joy, and courage which the bride enjoys in the spiritual surrender of Himself to her which God makes at this time; under the influence of which, because God transforms the soul effectually in Himself, all the faculties, desires, and movements of the soul lose their natural imperfection and become divine

Who is God the Father?

“Be Reconciled with God” Fr Raniero Cantalamessa Dec 6, 2014


I would now like to bring to light how this gift of peace, received ontologically and by right in Baptism, must change little by little, in fact as well and psychologically, our relation with God. Paul’s heartbroken appeal: “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20) is addressed to baptized Christians who have lived as a community for a long time. Therefore, he is not referring to the first reconciliation or, evidently, to that which we call “the Sacrament of Reconciliation.” In this existential sense, it is addressed also to each one of us and we try to understand in what it consists.

One of the causes, perhaps the principal one, of modern man’s alienation from religion and from the faith is the distorted image that he has of God. This is also the cause of a spent Christianity, without thrust and without joy, lived more as a duty than as a gift. I think of how the grandiose image of God the Father was in the Sistine Chapel when I saw it for the first time many years ago, all covered by a dark patina, and how it is now, after the restoration, with the lively colors and clear contours with which it issued from Michelangelo’s brush. A more urgent restoration of the image of God the Father must happen in men’s hearts, including in us, believers.

What is, in fact, the “pre-defined” image of God  (in computer language, which operates, namely, as default) in the human collective unconscious? To discover it, it suffices to ask oneself this question and to ask it also to others: “What ideas, what words, what realities arise spontaneously in you, before every reflection, when you say: Our Father, who art in heaven … thy will be done”? While saying this one interiorly bows generally his head in resignation, as if preparing for the worst. Unconsciously, the will of God is connected with all that is displeasing, painful to what, in one way or another, can be seen as mutilating of freedom and of individual development. It is as if God was the enemy of all celebration, joy and pleasure.

Another revealing question -- what does the invocation Kyrie eleison, “Lord have mercy,” suggest in us, which punctuates Christian prayer and in some liturgies accompanies the Mass from the beginning to the end? It has ended up by becoming only the request for forgiveness of the creature, who always sees God about to punish him. The word mercy has become very debased from being used often in a negative sense, as something mean and despicable: “have pity,” a “pitiful” spectacle. According to the Bible, Kyrie eleison should be translated: “Lord, have your tenderness descend upon us.” Suffice it to read in Jeremiah how God speaks to his people: “my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy (eleos) on him” (Jeremiah 31:20). When the sick, the lepers and the blind cry out to Jesus, as in Matthew 9:27: “Lord, have mercy (eleison) on me!” they do not intend to say: “forgive me,” but “show your compassion on me.”

In general, God is seen as Supreme Being, the Almighty, the Lord of time and of history, that is, as an entity that imposes on the individual from outside -- no particular of human life escapes him. The transgression of his Law introduces inexorably a disorder that exacts reparation. The latter, not ever being able to be considered as adequate, the anguish of death and of the divine judgment arises.
I confess that I virtually get shivers when reading the words that the great Bossuet addresses to Jesus on the cross, in one of his Good Friday sermons: ”You throw yourself, O Jesus, in the arms of the Father and you feel rejected, you feel that it is in fact he who persecutes you, who strikes you, he who abandons you, he in fact who crushes you under the enormous and unbearable weight of his revenge … The anger of an irritated God: Jesus prays and the angry Father does not listen to him; it is the justice of a vengeful God for the outrages received; Jesus suffers and the Father is not placated!”   If an orator spoke thus of the loftiness of Bossuet, we can imagine to what popular preachers of the time abandoned themselves. We can understand, therefore, how that certain “pre-defined” image of God was formed in man’s heart.

God’s mercy has certainly never been ignored! However, entrusted to it only was the duty to moderate the inalienable rigors of justice. In fact, in practice, the love and forgiveness that God generously gives were made dependent on the love and forgiveness that is given to others: if you forgive him who bears the offense, God in turn will be able to forgive you. There has emerged with God a relation of bargaining. Is it not said that one must accumulate merits to gain Paradise? And does one not attribute great importance to efforts to do things, to the Masses to have celebrated, to the candles to light, the novenas to make?

All this, having enabled so many people in the past to demonstrate their love for God, cannot be thrown away; it must be respected. God makes his flowers -- and his saints-- bloom in every climate. One cannot deny, however, that the risk exists of falling into a utilitarian religion, of the “do ut des.” At the base of everything is the presupposition that the relation with God depends on man. “None shall appear before me empty-handed” (Exodus 23:15; 34:20), but this is the God of the Law, not yet the God of grace. In the kingdom of grace, in fact, man must appear before God “empty-handed”; the only thing he must have “in his hands’ on appearing before him, is his Son Jesus.

Let us now see how the Holy Spirit changes this situation, when we open ourselves to it. He teaches us to look at God with new eyes: as the God of the Law, certainly, but yet first as the God of love and of grace, the “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6). It make us discover him as an ally and a friend, as “he who did not spare for himself his own Son but gave him up for us all” (this is how Romans 8:32 should be understood!); in sum, as a most tender Father. In a word, the Holy Spirit communicates to us the feeling that Jesus had of his Father.

The filial sentiment now blossoms which is translated spontaneously in the cry: Abba, Father! As one who says: “I did not know you, or I knew you only from hearsay. Now I know you, I know who you are; I know that you truly love me, that you are favourable to me.” The son has taken the place of the slave, love that of fear. It is thus that one is truly reconciled with God, also on the subjective and existential plane.

We leave for our daily work with a question in our mind: What idea of God the Father is in my heart: that of the world or that of Jesus?

Advent whipers in my heart
He is coming
The breeze blows hope into my soul
and a smile to my lips
He is coming

What began to be too much to hope for under the heat of the Sun
has now become certain
He is coming

The promised land is coming
in the Promised One
And, when I smile audaciously in my solitude to tell him I know,
He no longer hides his joy but gives me a moment's glance to say
He is coming.

The love that could not contain itself in Himself
Cannot hide forever
As each moment is a torture to him and to the one He loves
He is coming.

He waits in the womb, but it is I who must grow in silence, under Mary's heart,
and be made ready by the Father who knits me together in my Mother.
While I wait for Him, it is truly he who waits for me.
and He is coming.

In advent something changes. The agony and waiting and pain and silent emptiness in my interior life are suddenly embraced in advent by the whole church
The lonely waiting becomes the hopeful expectation of the arrival of the Son
Unending heat and cold and pain and desire resonate not only in my heart but in the whole world.
Come, Lord Jesus!
I join my silent prayer to that of the Church, that of Mary.
And as the child grows in her womb I understand the tender silence that cannot be rushed into birth, and my heart grows calm and patient, trusting that he will come. He has not left me forever.

And the world speaks of him to me in new ways.
The breeze is the voice of the Spirit, the dying leaf that lands on my heart the sign of new life to come
The sunset a kiss from him


the scorching heat of the desert
dims
and a gentle breeze blows fresh hope in the falling leaves
A hope reborn of death, of resurrection, of birth
of simplicity
of silence
of love
 the hopeful expectation of
Advent
Longing for the promised land becomes longing for the promised one
Desire for his gaze becomes desire for his birth
The mother's hand that has been gently holding mine as we walk, places my hand, still in hers,
on her womb.

I tasted your love

I breathed your breath
I smiled in the sun
I knew your joy
I silently looked in your eyes
I traced your face with my hands
I rested in arms of love

You bring me,

My good, my love, my King,

From being before you, beholding your beautiful love, enjoying your gaze
To being darkly, painfully...

Closer.

Taken by the hand to the darkness of the Garden, the intimacy of the cross

My view is no longer of you, who are within me, beside me,

But of what you see.

Dying to gaze into your eyes, I find myself gazing with your eyes.

You love from the cross and bring me to you to love with you,
With your love on your cross

Loving without sensing
Lungs burning with nothing to inhale
Gasping attempting to speak.
In the dark struggling to hold a smile.
Fumbling to give joy unfelt
Speaking of Beauty I cannot hold or behold
Alone, cold, empty reaching out to grasp- to embrace.
Dying to self.

Finding
A purer love.
A holy love.
I craved your touch, your love, your gaze
You whisper softly that you have given me all of them,
but there is more.
They not for me to delight in, but to be one with you in.
They are not my treasure, you are.
You in me and I in you. Together

A heart in a heart beating together.
Your breath in my lungs
Your Word in my voice
Your smile on my face
Your touch in my hands
Your gaze through my eyes.
All for a world who needs you.

A deeper closeness
Unbreakable, unending

Heaven for Me!
by St. Thérèse of Lisieux
(written June 7th, 1896)

To bear the exile of this valley of tears
I need the glance of my Divine Savior.
This glance full of love has revealed its charms to me.
It has made sense of the happiness of Heaven.
My Jesus smiles at me when I sigh to Him.
Then I no longer feel my trial of faith.
My God’s glance, His ravishing smile,
That is Heaven for me!

Heaven for me is to be able to draw down on souls
On the Church my mother and on all my sisters
Jesus’ graces and His Divine Flames
That can enkindle and rejoice hearts.
I can obtain everything when mysteriously
I speak heart to Heart with my Divine King.
That sweet prayer so near the Sanctuary,
That is Heaven for me!

Heaven for me is hidden in a little Host
Where Jesus, my Spouse, is veiled for love.
I go to that Divine Furnace to draw out life,
And there my Sweet Savior listens to me night and day.
“Oh! What a happy moment when in Your tenderness
You come, my Beloved, to transform me into Yourself.
That union of love, that ineffable intoxication,
That is Heaven for me!

Heaven for me is feeling within myself the resemblance
Of the God who created me with His Powerful Breath.
Heaven for me is remaining always in His Presence,
Calling Him my Father and being His child.
In His Divine arms, I don’t fear the storm.
Total abandonment is my only law.
Sleeping on His Heart, right next to His face,
That is Heaven for me!

I’ve found my Heaven in the Blessed Trinity
That dwells in my heart, my prisoner of love.
There, contemplating my God, I fearlessly tell Him
That I want to serve Him and love Him forever.
Heaven for me is smiling at this God Whom I adore
When He wants to hide to try my faith.
To suffer while waiting for Him to look at me again
That is Heaven for me!

The Presence of God

- St Frances de Sales

To remain in the presence of God and to place oneself in the presence of God are two different things. To place our­selves in his presence, we must withdraw our souls from all other objects and make ourselves attentive to his presence.

After we have placed ourselves in his presence, we can keep ourselves there by the action of our will or intellect: by either looking upon God, or looking upon something else for the love of him, or not looking at anything but instead speaking to him, or neither looking at him nor speaking to him but simply remaining where he has placed us, like a statue in its niche. And when, to this simple act of remaining there is joined some sentiment that we be­long to God and that he is our all, then we ought to give earnest thanks for his goodness.

If a statue in a niche in the middle of a room were able to speak, and we were to ask it, “Why are you there?,” it would reply, “Because my master the sculptor placed me here.”

“But why do you not move?”

“Because he wishes me to remain immobile.”

“But what use do you serve there? What does it profit you to remain there in this way?”

“It is not to serve myself that I exist, but to serve and to obey the will of my master.”

“But him you cannot see.”

“No,” says the statue, “but he sees me and takes plea­sure that I am where he has placed me.”

“But would you not like to be able to move so that you could be nearer to him?”

“No, not unless he so commands me.”

“Is there then nothing at all that you desire?”

“No, for I am where my master has placed me, and his good pleasure is the sole delight of my being.”

How good a prayer this is, and how good it is to keep oneself in the presence of God in this way, by holding fast to his will and his good pleasure! Mary Magdalene was a statue in her niche when, without speaking a word or mov­ing, and perhaps without even looking at him, she “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching” (Luke 10:39). When he spoke, she listened. When he stopped speaking, she stopped listening, and yet she remained there.

A little child resting on his mother’s bosom while the two of them sleep is truly in his good and most desirable place, even though she says not a word to him, nor he to her.

How happy we are when we want to love our Lord! Let us then love him, and let us not stop to reckon how little we do for his love, provided that we know that we will never wish to do anything except for his love.

Can we not even say that we remain in the presence of God while we sleep? For we sleep in his sight, at his pleasure, and by his will, and he places us upon our beds like statues in their niches, and when we awaken, we find that he is there, near to us, that he has not budged and neither have we. We are in his presence; it is only our eyes that are shut.

Beauty in the desert

Embracing the silence
Embracing the emptiness
Embracing the lack of embrace...

Who are you looking for?
You are the unknown God... the Word in silence, the presence in absence... Christ of the resurrection to Mary Magdelene....




With gratitude, and love.

1 Kings 19:11-13

Then the Lord said: Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, and the Lord will pass by.  There was a strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord--but the Lord was not in the wind; after the wind and earthquake--but the Lord was not in the earthquake; after the earthquake fire--but the Lord was not in the fire; after the fire, a light silent sound.
                When he heard this Elijah hid his face and stood at the entrance of the cave.