Gaudete et exsultate: The Examination of Conscience

May the Lord set the Church free from these new forms of gnosticism and pelagianism that weigh her down and block her progress along the path to holiness! These aberrations take various shapes, according to the temperament and character of each person. So I encourage everyone to reflect and discern before God whether they may be present in their lives. (62)

In obedience to the Holy Father, I have tried to make this examination of conscience that he encourages. And I admit that I feel rather stuck at least with regard to how I guess it is supposed to apply to me.

(Just as a caveat I want to say that in my opinion the terms pelagianism and gnosticism are used rather loosely in the document. But that would be another post.)

Of the dangers presented under "new pelagians," the one that I suppose would apply to me is "a punctilious concern for the Church’s liturgy." (57)

On Judging Others (and God)

"Such is the lowliness of our condition in this life; for we think others are like ourselves and we judge others according to what we ourselves are, since our judgment arises from within us and not outside us. Thus the thief thinks others also steal; and the lustful think others are lustful too; and the malicious think others also bear malice, their judgment stemming from their own malice; and the good think well of others, for their judgment flows from the goodness of their own thoughts; and to those who are careless and asleep, it seems that others are too.

"Hence it is that when we are careless and asleep in God's presence, it seems to us it is God who is asleep and neglectful of us, as is seen in psalm 43 were David calls to him: Arise, Lord, why do you sleep? Arise (Ps. 44:23). He attributed to God what is characteristic of humans, for since they are the ones who are fallen and asleep, he tells God to arise and awaken; although he who watches over Israel never sleeps (Ps. 121:4)."

(John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, 4,8)

Back From Retreat Ramble

I'm back in Rome after the week in Assisi. The 'spiritual exercises' were good, just not what I would call a retreat. It's a nice time to be with the brothers, to hang out, to have some time away from work and the usual routine. And of course it's always a privilege to be able to visit Assisi, to pray at the tomb of Francis and before the relics of St. Clare.

Ramble On My Slow Posting

This blog has really slowed down. Some of it I attribute to my use of Twitter, which, as I have shown, is eminently suited to Franciscan preaching. Not that most of what I do on Twitter is preaching, but the tweets I might consider preaching always end up as the ones that get the most retweets and favorites. But some of the slowing of the blog has also certainly come from changes in my life.

I started blogging during the Easter season of 2006, just when I was edging toward a series of intense transitions: from a temporarily professed religious to a perpetually professed one, from a layman to a cleric, from a friar in formation to one in his first assignment, and finally from a deacon to a priest. 

Y el ventalle de cedros aire daba

I was quite struck by the homily of the friar whose turn it was to be principal celebrant at Mass today. I guess it was the Holy Spirit's way of taking me down a bit after last night's vanity of re-linking on Twitter my own Trinity Sunday homily from three years ago, in which I make fun of Trinity Sunday homilies as an opening device before stumbling around in my own doctrinal brambles.

John of the Cross

One of the blessed coincidences of my current disposition is living under the same roof as the Capuchin Central Library. I had to go to what we in the States would call an 'orientation' to get a key, but it was worth it. Yesterday I was grateful to find that they had an ICS Collected Works of John of the Cross. I borrowed it, I hope with the correct procedure. You fill out the duplicate form with the location of the book (in this case 125 G 41), the names of the book and the author or editor, and your own name and room number. You put the top leaf (white) in the place where the book was, and the bottom leaf (rose) in the golden box by the door to the library. When the nice librarian first explained all this about special keys and depositing the rose note in the golden box, I thought I was in some kind of fairy tale.

Anyway, back to John of the Cross. I'm so grateful to him. His writing just sets me back on track when I need it. For a long time I couldn't read him. When I was first a Catholic I tried to read all kinds of spiritual books. I thought I wanted to read John of the Cross because he was supposed to be deep. But a lot of that was a vainglorious lust to obtain 'forms of prayer' that I imagined to be more 'advanced' or something. And so, in his mercy, the Holy Spirit prevented me from reading the mystical doctor. I would try, but I just couldn't. Then one day, I could. I guess I was ready or at the right moment. It was in Marathon, Wisconsin. It was towards the end of novitiate, and we were on retreat in preparation for our temporary religious profession. I had found an edition of The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I think in one of those sturdy old Doubleday Image paperbacks. What a blessed resource those must have been at a certain moment in English-speaking Catholic experience! I picked it up and read it, slowly, deliberately, and with great interest. All of a sudden I could read John's doctrine, and see myself and my own struggles in what he described.

Perhaps what I find most helpful in St. John, what is most useful for me to recall for myself over and over, is what you might call his 'fundamental theology' of prayer and the spiritual life. There's this abiding sense in his writings that prayer and the spiritual life are basically about something God is up to with the individual soul. It is God who wills to put us into some trial or other so that our faith and trust might become more simple and pure, that our wills might let go and become more identified with his. Based on this, the daily, unglamorous work of prayer arrives in three parts.

First and most fundamentally, consent. It is God who wills, who desires to draw us to himself and who--towards this end--wills to place us in trials for our purgation. And so our work, if it can even be called such, for it is more an undoing than a doing, becomes a letting go and a consenting.

Second, the spiritual life is a work of discernment in the sense of seeking an understanding. John says over and over that one of our basic hindrances is that we don't understand ourselves or the action of God in us. And perhaps worse, as he also says many times, those who are supposed to be guides and directors on the spiritual path often enough don't understand these things either. Diagnosis of our spiritual condition, a good sense of its graces and opportunities, sicknesses and temptations, is not an easy or automatic thing, either in our examination of our own conscience or in the interpretation of a director. This can be a terrifying caution and a source of awful doubt and confusion, but it is also itself a school of abandonment to Providence.

Third, the spiritual life becomes a life of clearing things away. Since it is God's work in us, our job is only to clear away those things that hinder his will in us, that slow us down in letting ourselves be drawn into our identification with him. John expresses this most simply in his advice on how to enter into the first of his 'nights', the active night of sense in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, 1, 13, 4:

Cualquier gusto que se le ofreciere a los sentidos, como no sea puramente para honra y gloria de Dios, renúncielo y quédese vacío de él por amor de Jesucristo.

"Renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God. Do this out of love for Jesus Christ" (trans. ICS)

Only the empty soul is ready to be filled by God, only the naked heart free enough to run to him.

Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher. (Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Terre des Hommes)

"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." (trans. Lewis Galantière)

My Blog Now Being All Stilled

I think that this blog has grown a little boring. I just don't have as much to say as I used to. Back when I was a new priest and working in the parish I was full of opinions and often full of spiritual reflections. Now, after the false start as a doctoral student and being summoned to serve at our general curia in Rome, there just isn't that much. Or at least there aren't the same sort of rants and reflections that made this blog what it was when it was going strong.

And what of it? Perhaps my current situation, i.e. the adjustment to living in Rome and the work of learning the language with all of the associated interior and exterior stresses are just taking up the capacity of my soul. Or perhaps, as I have come to suspect, I am being drawn into a new sort of what John of the Cross calls the 'passive nights.'

I was thinking about this the other day when a little of 1 Corinthians 13 was the reading for Sext. Knowledge--gnosis--will go away. Then there is only love. This then is the asceticism for someone who enjoys having something deep--or at least clever--to say. To love God and to embrace the Cross of Jesus Christ without the deal having been made with the flesh and its vanity that it will receive a thoughtful blog post in return for its suffering.

Cualquier gusto que se le ofreciere a los sentidos, como no sea puramente para honra y gloria de Dios, renúncielo y quédese vacío de él por amor de Jesucristo. (Ascent of Mt. Carmel, 1,13,4)

"Renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God. Do this out of love for Jesus Christ" (trans. ICS)

To me that's the active night. As John says, the passive nights are more awful and terrifying. But they are the work of God in his jealousy for souls. And from that little knowledge can come much trust. So thanks also for your prayers.

We adore you, most holy Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all your churches throughout the world, and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

Delight, Normality, Reconfiguration, Humility

So as of this afternoon I've been here in Assisi for a week. Tomorrow it will be two weeks since I left the states. I'm starting to miss certain things: the brothers at home, CVS, the American concept of what constitutes laundry facilities.

Nevertheless, it's a delightful life I've been given for a few months in Assisi. The classes are interesting, and I have enjoyed the beginnings of my progress in Italian. Even so, after a week of school I have been grateful for the quiet of the weekend. Today I got up and prayed Morning Prayer with just a few of the friars--many were out at Masses and other Sunday work--and then, since it was just the two of us, the visiting American priest and I offered Mass in English with the help of his Magnificat. After that I took the short walk down to the Basilica of St. Francis and went down to the tomb. There I prayed my Office of Readings and then just sat with the saint for a while. I stayed until it started to get crowded, around the middle of the morning.

I don't deserve such a delightful life! Of all the Franciscans in the world--apart from the friars who live in the Sacro Convento--in these days I am probably sleeping closest to the tomb of Francis. As I think of this at night, I'm reminded of one my favorite stories I once heard about John of the Cross: how when he was superior, the only privilege he would accept for himself was the cell closest to the Blessed Sacrament.

But here's the thing, in a funny way I don't feel much. Sure, the place and its pilgrims confront me many times a day with the mystery of my own Franciscanism and all the twists and turns of my journey that first brought me to this place nineteen years ago and have deposited me here again now. But a consciousness of grace, of God's presence, of what he might be doing or inviting me to in my heart, of the sweetness of which Francis always speaks, these I don't have.

It reminds me of a workshop we went to in preparation for our summer in Honduras. The presenter advised us that it was normal to feel very disoriented going into a new culture and language environment. She recommended that we imagine that we had tattoos on our arms that said, 'normal.' When we felt out of joint physically, emotionally, or spiritually, seeing the word would remind us that these experiences were normal. This sort of thing is all very easy to name on the practical level; things that are taken for granted at home may be very hard to figure out in a foreign place. For example, this past week I wanted to buy a padded envelope so I could send some religious articles to the one of the friars at home. In the states I know the sort of place that has that sort of thing, and so this is an easy task. Here, I had no idea even what sort of place to look for. The same sort of pattern goes for social customs and everything else.

I think that prayer and the conversation of the soul with God are no different. As created persons we exist as a mysterious--often very blessed but also sometimes uneasy--marriage of flesh and spirit, of personal history and eternal destiny. And I think to myself that it's normal and to be expected that I don't feel much of God, just as I don't always know how life works in an Italian friary. Even in the midst of all this blessedness, the pathways of prayer in my praying heart and the consciousness of the Mystery we clumsily call 'God' have been upset and await the pain and joy of being reconfigured to the incarnate Word as he suffers and teaches and reconciles in the particular journey that is me.

On the one hand, as I get older on the way, it becomes easier to trust God when I'm in the midst of a 'night' of his apparent absence. Many times his grace has brought me through such moments in order to bring deeper faith and understanding to birth. I even think of how largely unaware of his grace working on me I was during the twenty and a half years I lived on this earth before my baptism. On the other hand, the subtlety of God's grace is a function of his sublime humility. And as one goes deeper into the humility of the heart of God, the more subtle the graces become, sweeter for sure, but also harder to perceive.

holy father Francis, pray for us.

Rayos de Oscuridad

The conversion of St. Paul, as it comes to us in the version of Acts 9 in the first reading for Mass today, had me thinking about conversion. The play of light and darkness, of seeing and blindness, it really resonates with me.

The light and the voice aren't overwhelming for Saul in the midst of the experience; he is able to converse with the Lord. But afterwards he finds himself blinded. He must be helped to get where the Lord had told him to go, he has to pray and be prayed over, and only then do the scales fall from his eyes, leaving him free for the mission of Jesus Christ.

I think that this process is going on all the time in the spiritual life. Many times we see the light and hear the voice. At the same time, however, we are always being struck blind by the brightness that has found us. In our own prayer and in the prayer of others for us, ever deeper and harder scalings fall from our eyes. Indeed, the new vision that comes from such scales falling is often itself the occasion for a new blinding by the Light.

It is one of the ways the communion of saints operates in this life; we are always Paul who needs to be led by the hand and prayed over, and we are always Ananais who prays over others that they may see to embrace the mission to which God calls them. Each of us is praying Ananias for each of us who is blinded Paul.

The Dark Night of the Meatloaf

From the friary kitchen:

Friar 1: "This looks good!"

Friar 2: "It fell apart a little."

Friar 1: "Still looks good!"

Friar 2: "I didn't put enough breadcrumbs, so when I took it out of the form, it fell apart."

Friar 1: "I had the same problem with my spirituality."

Friar 2: "Not enough breadcrumbs?"

Friar 1: "When it came out of the form, it fell apart."

Nox Clara

Judas goes off to betray Jesus. 'And it was night,' adds St. John.

But as soon as the evangelist makes this note, Jesus announces his imminent glorification, and the glorification of God in him. Nunc clarificatus est Filius hominis et Deus clarificatus est in eo.

Night becomes glory. Judas's handing over of Jesus to the Cross leads to Jesus' handing over the Spirit from the Cross, as shall hear in John's Passion on Friday.

That's the sacred tradition by which the Blessed Trinity foils the senseless stupidity of sin and death. The Father hands over the Son. The Son is handed over by the betrayer. But the betrayal is turned into the handing on of the Spirit to us.

So let us go into the night. Let us receive in prayer the rayos de oscuridad that, as John of the Cross teaches us, are actually the Light.

Renounce and Remain Empty

One of my great teachers, John of the Cross, has been with me in a special way this Lent. From the Subida de Monte Carmelo:


Cualquier gusto que se le ofreciere a los sentidos, como no sea puramente para honra y gloria de Dios, renúncielo y quédese vacío de él por amor de Jesucristo. (1,13,4)

"Renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God. Do this out of love for Jesus Christ" (trans. ICS)

Emptiness is not an option; our ontological poverty as created beings and our temporal and cognitive limitation make us experience ourselves as lacking. We find ourselves as beings who long for something solid and eternal, but without much reliable or solid in ourselves nor with much time left. Emptiness is our condition, but what sort of emptiness we want to be is our freedom. We can have the searing and grasping boredom that is the emptiness of sin, or the blessed emptiness that makes our souls like unto the no-thing that is God. We are either the rotten and inverted pride that is the emptiness of despair, or the dark and blessed emptiness of the Holy of Holies at the heart of God's Temple.

The glorification and glory of God is my happiness. Each time I try to enjoy any created thing apart from this glory, I allow myself to be tricked into choosing my own misery and non-being.

"Everything you love for its own sake, outside of God alone, blinds your intellect and destroys your judgment of moral values. It vitiates your choices so that you cannot clearly distinguish good from evil and you do not truly know God's will." (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 203)

Humanity exists in the image and likeness of God that God himself might be incarnate in it, perfectly sharing the glorious, infinite, and perfect delight that is his own being. In and because of Jesus Christ, my deepest and most real identity is the glory of God. "The glory of God is man fully alive," said St. Irenaeus, famously. For the converse we go to St. Paul: 'Life' means Christ.

Jesus of Nazareth, as a human life, is the Word of God conceived by the Holy Spirit. The fruit of this mystery of the incarnation and the passing of Jesus through the alienation, suffering, and death we insist upon for ourselves with our violence and sin is this: we realize ourselves in the Love that makes us beloved sons and daughters in the Beloved of the Lover who is the Father of all.

But this deepest identity for which we were created still suffers frustration. Because of the lingering effects of original sin, my thoughts are confused and my affections disordered. That's why I try to enjoy created things for their own sake, apart from the glory of God. Each time I do, I reinforce the misery which is the law of sin and death that festers in my mortal nature. To "renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God," as John teaches, is the beginning of recovering my real self, the particular humanity created by God to be a unique and unrepeatable expression of his glory.

Sustento del Alma

Many times in the first few years of my Christianity I tried to read John of the Cross but failed. Then, one day, as novice Capuchin friar on retreat in lovely Marathon, Wisconsin, I picked up The Ascent of Mount Carmel and read it freely. The moment had come for me to meet one of my great teachers. A few years later, having learned a little Spanish and finding myself as a student at the former Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I went over to Shoenhof's and spent a large portion of my monthly 'day off' money on his Obras Completas.

It is often said in the spiritual life that God sends us guides and teachers at the moments when we need them. I have found this to be the case in my own life, and I believe it is one of the graces of the communion of saints. It's not limited to the Church on earth, however. We are also given saints to read at the right moments. That's why John of the Cross didn't work for me until I was ready. My first desires to read him were vainglorious; I thought I would read him because he was supposed to be deep and I wanted to be deep as well. When I had stumbled along long enough trying to live a life of prayer such that I could understand what John was talking about, then I was given the grace of being able to read him.

In this spirit we should be attentive if we have an inspiration to take up a devotion to a certain saint or to read his writings. God can also speak to us through others who suggest to us what we might read or with whom we might pray. The communion of saints is a way to talk about larger economies of grace working through friends of God across time and space, and it is a communion that is on our side in our desire for prayer and sanctity.

"Por ninguna ocupación dejar la oración mental, que es sustento del alma." ~Juan de la Cruz, Grados de Perfección, 5.

Religious Life, the Cross, and Humility

Sometimes in religious life we get the dangerous idea that community life is supposed to be a devout and supportive 'home base' from which we become energized to go out and embrace the Cross and work for the Kingdom of God. In fact, this is not exactly the case. Religious life itself is supposed to be an embrace of the Cross. If you want there to be some kind of 'Miller Time' at the end of a long day of carrying the Cross and living the life of a disciple, you're still in the world.

At least in male religious life, I think we sometimes exacerbate this trouble by selling a false dilemma between the secular priesthood and religious life. 'Why be a lonely and overworked diocesan priest when you can enjoy the support and care of brothers living in community?' Too quickly this becomes an invitation to think that religious life will meet my emotional needs and desire for intimacy. It might in some places and during some times, but I will also find myself feeling very lonely sooner or later.

Religious life itself is supposed to be an invitation to embrace the Cross. The great saints of the common religious life knew this well. As Francis put it in the Letter to a Minister:

"You should accept as a grace all those things which deter you from loving the Lord God and whoever has become an impediment to you, whether they are brothers or others, even if they lay hands on you."

That's the depths of evangelical minority. To thank God even for those around us who seem to make it hard for us to love God and live the religious life we think we want. Why? Because at the heart of it we love ourselves more than we love God, and the flesh is always inviting us to love prayerfulness and the idea of ourselves as devout and observant more than we love Him. But we came to religious life not to seek conviviality or peace, or emotional intimacy or safety, or even prayerfulness or the natural joys of devotion, but to seek Jesus Christ and him crucified.

John of the Cross was also quite astute on this point. As he writes in his Cautelas:

"you should engrave this truth on your heart: you have come to the monastery for no other reason than to be worked on and tried in virtue; you are like a stone that must be chiseled and fashioned before being set in the building. Thus you should understand that those who are in the monastery are craftsmen placed there by God to mortify you by working on you and chiseling at you."

But note also that this is an invitation to humility, when we realize that God has perhaps made us annoying and challenging to those around us for the sake of their salvation. When we keep this in mind, we can notice how much others forgive us and wash our feet on a daily basis.

This final observation is one of the most reliable roads to a blessed humility.

The Caves of Francis and Edith Stein

'The cave' is an iconic part of the accounts of St. Francis's conversion that have come down to us.

Moreover, flooded with a new spirit, Francis frequently entered a certain cave, while his companion entered outside, completely ignorant of what Francis was doing inside. There, in secret, Francis prayed with tears to his heavenly Father that, as his guide on his way, he might show him his will more clearly. Thus praying at great length, he harshly afflicted himself, and until he knew by divine inspiration how he should begin, the distraction of his changing feelings would allow him no rest. There alternated within him happiness for the sweet taste of the spirit, the gravest sorrow for sins of the past, not a little fear of the future, and a fervent desire for what he had begun. (The Life of St. Francis by Julian of Speyer, chapter I)

But the caves into which we go to allow ourselves to be found by God are also the empty darknesses of ourselves. By reducing our attachments to created things and our appetites for them, we begin to empty ourselves that we might be filled anew by God. This is what John of the Cross calls the active Night of Sense.

As Edith Stein points out, following John, this makes caves out of our interior faculties:

The first cave is the intellect, its emptiness is a thirst for God and it longs for divine wisdom. The second cave is the will, which hungers for God and clamors for the perfection of love. The third cave is the memory. It is consumed with the desire for the possession of God. (The Science of the Cross, 207)

The incarnation has made the human person the locus of saving sacrifice. The humanity of Christ is the New Temple. As members of his body by our baptism into his death and resurrection and our communion with him in the Eucharist, our individual personhoods also become that Temple. But we must also remember that when the Temple was rebuilt after the Captivity the Holy of Holies remained empty. The Ark of the Covenant was gone. The space was filled only with God's own silent and invisible Presence.

If we are to be Temple wherein the Presence of God abides and perfect Sacrifice finds a home, we too must empty ourselves and then enter into the emptiness in prayer. It is there that we will find the sweetness of the Spirit and the burning desire for our vocation.

Devotion to the Saints

Each year on the feast of St. John Vianney I think of the permanent deacon who instructed me as a catechumen and then baptized me nineteen years ago this month.

The deacon thought of himself a simple man, and had found in John Vianney another cleric who had persevered through difficulty in his theological studies. Over the years I've realized that this was an important thing for me to see; it was my first real-life experience of personal devotion of a saint.

There are all sorts of devotions to saints, all of them blessed.

Sometimes we find in a saint or spiritual writer a resonance with our own experience of Christianity; we see some similarity in the graces and struggles and find someone in whom we can see ourselves. For me I think of Augustine, Benedict Joseph Labré, Thomas Merton, and Edith Stein.

Sometimes the saint seems to have something that we desire, or who seems like an intercessor consonant with what we seek. For me I think of Joseph, Monica, Thomas, and Bonaventure.

Sometimes a devotion arises from something like a combination of these two sorts of dynamics; the life and holiness of the saint not only speaks to something in our own experience, but of taking it to a depth or a place that we still want to go. For me I think of Francis.

Sometimes we can become devoted to a saint because his or her doctrine helps us understand the operation of grace in our own prayer and desire for Christianity. For me I think of Cassian and John of the Cross.

I suppose there are many more ways that we come to receive the gift of devotion to different saints. In all of it we give thanks to Christ, because it is his death and resurrection that has established us in a communion that transcends time and death.

Read

I was touched by this anonymous comment: I had gone to Reconciliation and had been feeling somewhat disconsolate afterwards. I wished I had a spiritual director.

The spiritual life isn't easy. Prayer, as is said, is an 'uninteresting wilderness.'

A spiritual director is a good thing, but only a help. Not everyone who thinks he needs a spiritual director really does, and not every who tries to engage in directing souls is competent to do so.

In the early years of my baptism I was often preoccupied with a certain interior struggle that was made much worse by my inability to really understand it or articulate it well. A significant part of my journals from those years is taken up with my struggle to find an understanding of this trouble. I remember trying to explain it in confession without much success. One time a priest just admitted that he didn't know what I was trying to explain. It was very frustrating because I felt like my spiritual progress was being impeded by something, but I couldn't quite describe what it was; I couldn't name the demon, as it were. I was also scandalized to find that priests were little help; I had presumed (in my innocence) that one of the ordinary works of priests was the diagnosis of spiritual maladies and prescription of appropriate remedies.

I began to arrive at some resolution in this issue when I read John Cassian. I realized that I was struggling with a subtle form of kenodoxia or vainglory. Cassian taught me how to recognize and name the particular thoughts and interior movements that were at the root of the affliction.

This is why I say that in the pursuit of a spiritual life, the best thing that someone can do is read. Through the ages, the life of prayer and the call to holiness have been lived by all kinds of different people with all sort of personalities, gifts, and faults. The Holy Spirit arranged for many of them to write about their experiences and what they had learned, so that their wisdom might be available to us.

For any individual soul, personality, and temperament, there is some spiritual writer out there who will speak to you from the communion of saints. Pay attention to cues you receive in prayer or through spiritual friends, and God will lead you to someone with whom you resonate. Find the spiritual writers who speak to your particular condition, and you will find that your own spiritual life begins to enter into the communion of saints. The saints will give you language and conceptual frameworks to understand your own experience, and you will also find your own sense of your journey comes to be informed by those who have gone before you. This is what I mean by the communion of saints in this regard. For example, my sense of my own prayer has ben strongly patterned by John of the Cross and John Cassian. My understanding of the narrative of my own conversion has received much from Augustine, Francis, and Thomas Merton.

To anyone who would live a spiritual life, make such friends. It is for you that God made them write.

John of the Cross on Religious Life

Sometimes I think we religious make an error in the pastoral care of vocations by trying to sell our life as one of mutual care and support. Not that life in religious community isn't supposed to be these things; the common life is, of course, meant to be one of mutual charity and care. But sometimes I think we try to sell it in such a way that candidates get the idea that community life will satisfy all of their emotional needs and longing for intimacy. For us male religious sometimes this theme gets set up in a false distinction between religious life and the diocesan priesthood, e.g. why go the seminary and be lonely when you can enter religious life and have brothers?

Imagining, perhaps not entirely consciously, that religious life would fulfill his emotional needs, and then finding the experience frustrating in this regard, troubles and boundary problems for a brother in ministry are the next pitfall that comes along.

Such distortions and false dichotomies are therefore very dangerous, and I have always been grateful to St. John of the Cross for giving us a salutary corrective. Consider, for example, some bits from his Counsels to a Religious:

To practice the second counsel, which concerns mortification, and profit by it, you should engrave this truth on your heart. And it is that you have not come to the monastery for any other reason than to be worked and tried in virtue; you are like the stone that must be chiseled and fashioned before being set in the building.

Thus you should understand that those who are in the monastery are craftsmen placed there by God to mortify you by working and chiseling at you. Some will chisel with words, telling you what you would rather not hear; others by deed, doing against you what you would rather not endure; others by temperament, being in their person and in their actions a bother and annoyance; and others by their thoughts, neither esteeming nor feeling love for you.

Trials will never be lacking in religious life, nor does God want them to be.

The translation is from the ICS edition of John's collected works. He is very much worth reading in his own Spanish if you are able. Some can be found online, and his Obras Completas is published by the Editorial de Espiritualidad in Madrid. I found a copy at Schoenhof's up in Cambridge.

Edith Stein

All of a sudden it feels like the end of the semester. Next week is the last of classes. All of my term work is in draft. It's rather uneven, and I'm not even sure how good some of it is, but it all represents a kind of groping and clumsy start at finding some direction in the obedience of this doctorate.

So as time opens up, I can get back to other things I either set aside because of the course work or left for later. But it also means I can find some time for personal reading. Various evidence suggests to me that it might be time for me to read Edith Stein. Does anybody who is better acquainted with her work have any advice? Because of the John of the Cross connection I'm curious about the Kreuzeswissenschaft/Science of the Cross, but I don't know if this is the right place to start.

Thanks in advance!

Rayos de Oscuridad

So described John of the Cross his experience of God in prayer, as "rays of darkness." It's an image that has always spoken to me, and one that I think of in these days without electricity. Until power is restored to the whole of the friary, posting will be slow. In your charity, let's offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the patience of the senior friars, for whom the loss of the elevator and heat is difficult.