I am still fooling about with utube. It is fun now that I have more nor less finished the work on the house, Anyway it was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I am going to try to do seven videos on these seven stage of prayer. I hope. Don't be too hard on me I am still learning.
Padraig, you did a wonderful job of highlighting the necessity of growing in the habit of daily prayer. In this day and age, a clear warning against daily activities that stifle our attempts (ex. smartphones) is necessary and so you did. Geralyn has regularized our daily Rosary by requesting our recitation to immediately follow upon our supper. My best time for silence and centered prayer follows upon Lauds in the morning. Each of us needs to determine such in order to habituate a regular prayer life to the point of constancy; not a mindless habit, but one where our longing for God can produce good fruit; a true encounter. Dryness will come, even the dark night, thus the refusal to give up.
Well I am glad to see at least one person, Terry watched the video. Lovely to see a husband and wife urging each other on in the way of holiness. We have so many husband and wife saints now. I thought at once of the parents of St Therese. They do not seem to have raised just one saint but a whole nest of them. They were both very busy business people. Zelie had her own lace making operation and Louis his watch shop and a large young family. Yet they first met at Mass since they were both daily mass goers. They both found the time, somehow. Wonderful things happen when we go to daily mass. Wonderful things happen when we say the daily rosary. We can all become saints. All we have to do is ask God to make us so. I love the way St Teresa talks about the devil and hell so directly and urgently. I have not heard such teaching since I was very young indeed.
Well. Padraig, the 3rd mansion resonates with me because much of my Catholic life is rooted in good habits that have endured. It's the type of situation that I have structured prayer times and growing love for neighbor, too; certainly far from perfection. I would not be surprised if I still come the 4th mansion. I will get a better feel for it all, soon.
Well, I was fairly accurate in my estimation. Any glimpse of the 4th mansion has probably occurred in time before the Blessed Sacrament. It is here more than any other, when the form of prayer intersects with a sense of simply being with Jesus in silence, with very little attempt to direct the course of thoughts or reach the end of a task (i.e. praying for the intentions of Leo XIV). More like a holy silence without loosing the sense of praying in a pew before the Blessed Sacrament, but not necessarily desiring to move on to the next whatever. A sort of waiting on the Lord. I'll leave it at that; to go beyond would be mere speculation and vain glory.
It is so hard not to wander into the territory of vain glory when trying to determine what spiritual mansion one is in! St. Teresa of Avila leaves me in awe. I hope to love God as much as I can and leave the state of my prayer and soul to Him. Maybe it's better to be surprised with the results in Heaven.
There is an English Carmelite Prioress who went under the pen name, 'Ruth Burroughs', who wrote a lot about all this. She tells the story that one time a group of nuns came to St Teresa to ask her a question. Why, they wondered had they not experienced what Teresa had described in her own prayer life? Ruth think that there is a kind of light on , light off spirituality. Someone like St Therese of Liseaux walked in darkness and could not see where she was. Someone like At Teresa of Avila walked in the light and so could see what was going down. But whether we can see where we are or not we are where we are. But anyway so much of all this is mystery. We talk of outer space as Mystery or the Deep Sea, but the deepest mystery of all is our own hearts.
Is it better to know or not to know? I would say it is best whatever God wants for you. But St Paul says we must work out our Salvation in Fear and Trembling. In other words only God knows the bottom line.
I think one mistake we all make about the Spiritual Life and this is a very natural thing is to suppose that everyone else's path must be like out own. We understand other peoples path in the light of out own. This is the most natural thing in the World because how else are we to understand or see? But people are so very,very different and the paths they walk can be so different too. Even so there are certain things we all have in common. Such as . We all suffer. We must all take up our Cross. We must all pray. We must all be Transformed into the image of Christ. But St Therese of Liseaux's comparison of souls as being like different flowers is so correct. One a rose, another a forget me not, another a lily. Since each flower is different ,each journey may be different. We see this in the nine choirs of angels. One third of them fell to hell in the Great Rebellion. We humans are called to take their places but each of us in a different choir, of the nine choirs. We are not all meant to go to exactly the same place in heaven. As Therese said we are all different flowers. So we all walk different roads. https://www.littleflower.org/prayers/pearls-of-wisdom/st-thereses-wisdom-garden-of-souls/ Jesus has been gracious enough to teach me a lesson about the mystery of the differences in souls, simply by holding up to my eyes, the book of nature. I understood how all the flowers God created are beautiful- how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away from the perfume of the violet or the simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wildflower. And so it is in the world of souls… Jesus’ garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to lilies and roses, but he created small ones as well… and theses must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God’s glances, when he looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing God’s will… in being what He would have us be.
There is a lovely story I heard one time. There was once a very famous preacher and Bishop in Belgium who was very like Blessed Fulton Sheen. He went round giving retreats and talks and people flocked to see him in their thousands. He converted whole armies of people and was a real light of his time. Anyway one time he visited a convent and all the sisters turned out to meet him. However that night he took a walk and found himself at the Convent Stables ,were they kept their horses and pigs. Here he found a very dirty, smelly nun who took care of things down there and who was not allowed to meet the Bishop because she was so dreadful looking (and smelling). But when they talked it turned out God had chosen and asked this nun to offer herself up for the Bishop and his mission so that they should be grace filled. So it turned out. The Bishop and his mission were a wild fire success doing the most wonderful things. But it was al because of that stinking dirty nun in the stables. We look at the face of things but God looks at the heart.
It's lovely writing and thinking about these things I have not thought of for so long. Like a time machine. One thing mystics like St Gertrude and Mectilde seen in visions was the souls in heaven and the clothes they wore in accordance with their inner spiritual state. In other words in the Light of God we will see ourselves and others as we really are. Unlike here on Earth when everything is hidden. We see a little of this at Mass when , for instance, the priest dresses in red for martyrs, white for virgins and so on.
One thing that is really incredible is the hidden life of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Here we have the three holiest people who ever lived, one of them even the Son God. Yet it is very clear from scripture that everyone thought them totally ordinary. Not one seemed to spot the truth. On the contrary when most people did spot the truth about Jesus the folks in his home town just point blank did not. I think maybe familiarity can breed a certain contempt. So for instance it might be easy for we Irish people to accept that someone in a foreign country like Italy is a saint, but find it far more difficult to accept and Irish person might be one. There is an interesting incident in the life of St Father Charles of Mount Argus. No one thought he was holy or that there was anything special about him. But one day he was asked to do a retreat way out in the country and to go there he had to go by train. But when he got off the train in a station in the middle of nowhere there was a whole crown of people to meet him . They wanted his prayers, his blessings for healing and so on. N one knows why this happened but it happened all of a sudden. One second no one paid any attention to him, the next it was as if someone had pressed a light switch ,a flood light on him. The Hand of God.
St Thereses' analogy of the flowers is a wonderful insight that has always brought me great comfort as one who has struggled so much with sin and failings in the faith journey. I am content to be God's tiniest flower fully formed and perfect to his eyes but only the Lord can make us holy, All Glory be to His Holy Name.
Do you think Padraig that towards the end of life when someone is dying that God in his gratuitous mercy can flood a soul with grace to raise the soul quickly like an elevator towards a higher level of sanctity especially if they offer their suffering in union with Christ's passion. Like a quick sprint towards the finishing line.
