Holy Desire

Ah... my poor abandoned blog!  I last posted during my travels at World Youth Day ... and with good intentions of blogging the whole trip.  But my plans were soon dashed when wi-fi could not be found!  ...Anyhow, we begin ANEW again and again.  This is the gist of the spiritual life, isn't it?

Yesterday's second reading from the Office of Readings (Friday, 6th wk in Ordinary Time) was a precious jewel from St. Augustine.  In number 4 of his "Tractates on the First Letter of John" Augustine comments upon the Scripture verse: we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).  Augustine's passage merits being quoted in length... he tells us, "The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire."

"Suppose you are going to fill some holder or container, and you know you will be given a large amount.  Then you set about stretching your sack or wineskin or whatever it is.  Why?  Because you know the quantity you will have to put in it and your eyes tell you there is not enough room.  By stretching it, therefore, you increase the capacity of the sack, and this is how God deals with us.  Simply by making us wait he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of the soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us."

I am reminded of something Fr. Conrad DeMeester (a Belgian Discalced Carmelite friar and arguably the world's expert on the writings of St. Thérèse), wrote in his book, With Empty Hands, the magnificent, popular redaction of his doctoral thesis regarding Thérèse's teaching on "confidence."  He says simply: "Hope is love in the state of becoming."  What does this mean except that the merciful God readies us and transforms us within the "arena" of our life's particular circumstances?  If each moment of life would bring us closer to "seeing Him as He is," the Lord must test and "excite" our desire, purifying it of its false idols--those ends which are less than God by Whom and for Whom we've been created.

I recently shared with someone my realization that so much of my own disappointment and discontent in life comes from placing all my chips on things that CAN'T deliver. Hidden in that disappointment is an invitation to refocus my desires, to properly center my HOPE in God alone.  The theological virtue of hope readies our hearts for the love to which we are called.  And God loves us too much to let us wallow in lesser hopes.  In the fact of disappointment the evil one prompts us to despair, to lose ourselves in the misery of dashed hopes.  But the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, prompts us instead to "hope again" and to hope BEYOND our poor expectations ... to place our HOPES in God alone. Whoever loves God knows intimately the ache of "love in the state of becoming."  We are being readied to look upon the Face of the Beloved, our hearts are being hollowed out and hallowed for God's glory.

From glory to Glory

Unfortunately, I'm now posting this a week later, given the lack of wifi access during travels, so...

Aug 14 brought another extraordinary grace... Our pilgrimage group left Lourdes early in the morning and travelled by bus to Loyola and the family home of St. Ignatius, great Founder of the Society of Jesus. We arrived while dozens and dozens of other WYD pilgrims of different countries were arriving. I thought for sure we would be among the hundreds and hundreds preparing for an outdoor Mass in front of the Basilica.

Instead, we made our way to the upper room where St. Ignatius spent months recuperating from his near-mortal wounds taken during a battle in Pamplona, including a leg shattered by a cannonball. In this room while lying in bed he would read, finally reading as well a life of Christ and stories of the saints. From here he resolved inwardly to serve Christ and to seek His glory rather than his own. Fantasies of winning the love of a lady at court and renown for military exploits gave way to a dawning awareness of a love and beauty incomparably greater ... the majesty of a God who hid His glory for a time in order to draw all things to Himself (cf. John 12:32). A King who became a servant so as to truly establish His reign in the wayward hearts of His creatures.

Here then, in Ignatius' room, we celebrated the Mass... It was a blessing and a reminder of the true glory to which each of us is called ... that to Whom is given a name above all names. Jesus.

Lourdes: The gift of a "disarming" Mother

I went to the baths at Lourdes this afternoon and washed in the waters of Bernadette's spring. It was the third time I have done so in four visits to Lourdes. And each time it is powerfully emotional for me. Hundreds of human beings from all over the world standing in line to enter the baths, praying and singing in different languages, asking for graces and healing for themselves and for others.

What is so powerful? It is the raw vulnerability that is rendered present as one approaches a tender Mother clothed in God's mercy. A smiling Mother who says, "Come as you are and receive the mercy of my Son." She exhorts and even goads us to trust in the One who first became all-vulnerable for us in her womb, taking our fragile humanity to Himself. ...As we made our way on the line to the baths here at Lourdes, it is as though each inner doubt or fear was addressed and further elicited forth by an understanding Mother: "What are you thinking, dear child? What more? Fear nothing and hold nothing for yourself. My Son's crucified love will provide all you need."

In his Angelus address at Lourdes on September 14, 2008, Pope Benedict said: "Before Mary, by virtue of her very purity, man does not hesitate to reveal his weakness, to express his questions and his doubts, to formulate his most secret hopes and desires. The Virgin Mary's maternal love disarms all pride; it renders man capable of seeing himself as he really is, and it inspires in him the desire to be converted so as to give glory to God."

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death. Monstra Te esse Matrem! (Show Yourself to be Our Mother!)

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD

WHATEVER DID NOT
fit in with my plan
did fit within the plan of God.
I have an ever deeper and firmer belief that
nothing is merely an accident when seen in the light of God,
that my whole life down to the smallest details has been marked out for me
in the plan of Divine Providence and has
a completely coherent meaning
in God's all-seeing eyes.
And so I am beginning to rejoice in the light of glory
wherein this meaning will be unveiled to me.


Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
Discalced Carmelite Nun martyred at Auschwitz on August 9, 1942
Co-Patroness of Europe


Former member of the Order's Bavarian Province to which the monastery of Holy Hill, WI once belonged as a mission house until 1947.


Pray for us, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross ... and remember especially the brothers and sisters especially of your Province and her missions!

Ave Crux, Spes Unica!

Finding the Hidden God by being hidden

In the first stanza of his commentary on the Spiritual Canticle, St. John of the Cross tells the reader who seeks God, the Beloved, and who asks, "Where have you hidden, Beloved?"  So many people suffer inwardly because they interpret their lack of sensible feeling in prayer as an indicator of God's distance or else their failed "effort" at communion.  But John of the Cross declares: "we are telling you that you yourself are His dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place. There is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and hope is so close as to be within you, or better, that you cannot be without Him" (1.7). There's no need to look "outside" of one's soul or to "conjure" the Lord by stirring oneself like the pathetic prophets of Baal who beat themselves into a trance with stones. The Beloved is ALREADY present. However St. John says "there is but one difficulty: Even though he does abide within you, He is hidden." The means then to finding the Beloved who is "hidden" is for us to likewise make ourselves "hidden" by embracing fully the virtues of faith, hope and love. This is the "phenomenally unremarkable" but expedient and certain path to encounter the Beloved One.

If you want to find the Beloved in your hiding place, "Seek him in faith and love, without desiring to find satisfaction in anything, or delight, or desiring to understand anything other than what you ought to know. Faith and love are like the blind person's guides. They will lead you along a path unknown to you, to the place where God is hidden. Faith, the secret we mentioned, is comparable to the feet by which one journeys to God, and love is like one's guide" (1.11).

De profundis... I blog for you, O Lord

     ...Perhaps I should just try a "blog burst" (a series of brief posts) since it's been months since my last post.  If I had a dime for every occasion or event when I thought "I should blog that," I'd be ... well, wealthier than I am now (but there's no evidence to prove the good intentions).  The best blogs (and I do follow a few) offer something contemporaneous to the events they discuss--they're "current."  But given my very intermittent bloggings, I tend to take an inventory of the past few months and then make some comment on past happenings.


     Why am I so reticent to blog? (I ask myself.)  Well, I don't think it's laziness.  Personally, it's that I'm not naturally inclined to regularly publishing my thoughts or the happenings of my daily life.  Actually, when I discerned my entrance into Carmel, I was (and still am) drawn to a "hidden life." Those who know me and my 6'2" 240ish pound frame might chuckle to hear me say that (since I can't easily hide anywhere).  But it's true.  Our world is so awash in words and there are countless Twitterers and others who unreservedly disclose to the world their every thought.  Lots of digital noise.  Much of which is vapid.  I do feel like I have much more to listen to than to say.

Post-Resurrection Impressions

In April of 1571, St. Teresa of Jesus was living in Salamanca.  The day after Easter Sunday she was feeling very down and put to paper a reflection for her confessor at the time--Fr. Martín Gutiérrez, S.J., who was rector of the Jesuit house there.  She says: "All day yesterday I felt very lonely, for except when I received Communion I benefited little from the fact that it was Easter Sunday" (Spiritual Testimonies, 12).  Loneliness.  It is an affliction that touches us at the core and it is a suffering that we make great efforts to remedy time and time again.  There are times in our lives, no matter how we surround ourselves with others or lose ourselves in some task or another, when we simply pine for a rendezvous wherein we know ourselves to be known and loved intimately.  And with a love that is all-assuring and absolute.  To be embraced from within.


Teresa says that shortly thereafter: "One day after receiving Communion, it seemed most clear to me that our Lord sat beside me; and He began to console me with great favors, and He told me among other things: "See Me here, daughter, for it is I: give Me your hands." And it seemed He took them and placed them on His side and said: "Behold My wounds. You are not without Me. This short life is passing away" (ibid.).  ... Ah, this is the love we desire--the love of One who has been to the depths of hell, bearing aloft like a torch His unquenchable love, seeking any who are lost.  One who understands my longings.  Just as Jesus showed His wounds to His disciples, He shows them to Teresa in order to console her and to awaken her to His divine perspective.  Forever He bears His wounds in order to assure us that His love is stronger than death.  And He does not "leave us orphans" but rather "prepares a place" for us to finally be with Him (John 14:3,18).


Teresa's experience of loneliness serves as the pretext for her visit from the Risen Christ.  Perhaps it is there, in our painful longing for a definitive rendezvous, where Christ our God takes our hands and places them on His side.  Our ache is met by the touch of God.  Dark faith conceals and reveals the One for whom we long.  Behold My wounds. You are not without Me. This short life is passing away.


(Icon painted by Br. Claude Lane, OSB of Mt. Angel Abbey, OR)