A Couple of Joys

It's been almost a month since the move to town, and I find myself just thanking God for some of the joys of the new situation. Here are a couple of them:

After lunch and supper we friars do the dishes. Maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's something plain and wholesome and honest that wasn't part of our life during my two years at the Collegio. Most days it has fallen to me to do the drying at the end of the pots and pans line. I enjoy the conversation or pray if there isn't any. I often think of St. Teresa: Mirad que entre los pucheros y las ollas anda Dios. "See that God walks among the pots and pans."

Another joy is that now that we are in town, I'm able to take some Masses outside of the house. This week I'm going to the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto. It's good to have to preach at daily Mass, even if it's with my very few words of Italian. It's also a nice walk to the sisters--through the Villa Borghese park and around the zoo, where I hear some of the animals getting up in the morning. It's also good to pray and be with women, even if Mother General gave me a translation project to do!

One other note about the sisters: Since I would be going all week, I left my alb at the convent. Sister Sacristan, perhaps regarding my paper-clip zipper pull as undignified or inadequate, replaced it with a loop of cord.

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.

St. Teresa On How To Live In Community

As I end my little vacation today, here's the last little section of Teresa's The Way of Perfection--my blessed vacation reading--that I wanted to post. In the last chapter there is some plain and wonderful advice for living in community in a way that serves and is integrated with prayer and holiness, as well as an honest account of some of the very basic temptations that try to rob of us of the blessedness of common life.

Another source of harm is this: we may judge others unfavourably, though they may be holier than ourselves, because they do not walk as we do... You think such people are imperfect; and if they are good and yet at the same time of a lively disposition, you think them dissolute....It is very wrong to think that everyone who does not follow in your own timorous footsteps has something the matter with her... 

Try, then, sisters, to be as pleasant as you can, without offending God, and to get on as well as you can with those you have to deal with, so that they may like talking to you and want to follow your way of life and conversation, and not be frightened and put off by virtue. This is very important for nuns: the holier they are, the more sociable they should be with their sisters. Although you may be very sorry if all your sisters’ conversation is not just as you would like it to be, never keep aloof from them if you wish to help them and to have their love. We must try hard to be pleasant, and to humour the people we deal with and make them like us, especially our sisters. 

So try, my daughters, to bear in mind that God does not pay great attention to all the trifling matters which occupy you, and do not allow these things to make your spirit quail and your courage fade, for if you do that you may lose many blessings. As I have said, let your intention be upright and your will determined not to offend God. But do not let your soul dwell in seclusion, or, instead of acquiring holiness, you will develop many imperfections, which the devil will implant in you in other ways, in which case, as I have said, you will not do the good that you might, either to yourselves or to others.

(Text from Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

St. Teresa On Community Drama

As I've mentioned, one of the joys of this little vacation, already almost at its end, has been the slow re-reading of St. Teresa's The Way of Perfection. Towards the end of the book, in chapter 36 on the petition of the Our Father, dimitte nobis debita nostra, Teresa has this wonderful section about one of the ways the devil tricks us religious into bringing the world into the cloister, as it were, stirring up the 'drama' which is such a persistent and enervating distraction in religious life:

God help us, how absurd it is for religious to connect their honour with things so trifling that they amaze me! You know nothing about this, sisters, but I will tell you about it so that you may be wary. You see, sisters, the devil has not forgotten us. He has invented honours of his own for religious houses and has made laws by which we go up and down in rank, as people do in the world. Learned men have to observe this with regard to their studies (a matter of which I know nothing): anyone, for example, who has got as far as reading theology must not descend and read philosophy— that is their kind of honour, according to which you must always be going up and never going down... 

The thing is enough to make one laugh—or, it would be more proper to say, to make one weep. After all, the Order does not command us not to be humble: it commands us to do everything in due form. And in matters which concern my own esteem I ought not to be so formal as to insist that this detail of our Rule shall be kept as strictly as the rest, which we may in fact be observing very imperfectly. We must not put all our effort into observing just this one detail: let my interests be looked after by others—I will forget about myself altogether. The fact is, although we shall never rise as far as Heaven in this way, we are attracted by the thought of rising higher, and we dislike climbing down. O, Lord, Lord, art Thou our Example and our Master? Yes, indeed. And wherein did Thy honour consist, O Lord, Who hast honoured us? Didst Thou perchance lose it when Thou wert humbled even to death? No, Lord, rather didst Thou gain it for all. 

For the love of God, sisters! We have lost our way; we have taken the wrong path from the very beginning. God grant that no soul be lost through its attention to these wretched niceties about honour, when it has no idea wherein honour consists. We shall get to the point of thinking that we have done something wonderful because we have forgiven a person for some trifling thing, which was neither a slight nor an insult nor anything else. Then we shall ask the Lord to forgive us as people who have done something important, just because we have forgiven someone. Grant us, my God, to understand how little we understand ourselves and how empty our hands are when we come to Thee that Thou, of Thy mercy, mayest forgive us.

(Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

St. Teresa on Prayer and Mental Distress

As I wrote yesterday, I've been reading St. Teresa's Way of Perfection. There are so many wonderful little passages. I share this one which I think could be a comfort and encouragement to anyone trying to pray through emotional distress, upset, anxiety, depression, etc.:

There are occasions when one cannot help doing this [i.e. suffer distraction]: times of ill-health (especially in persons who suffer from melancholia); or times when our heads are tired, and, however hard we try, we cannot concentrate; or times when, for their own good, God allows His servants for days on end to go through great storms. And, although they are distressed and strive to calm themselves, they are unable to do so and incapable of attending to what they are saying, however hard they try, nor can they fix their understanding on anything: they seem to be in a frenzy, so distraught are they. 

The very suffering of anyone in this state will show her that she is not to blame, and she must not worry, for that only makes matters worse, nor must she weary herself by trying to put sense into something—namely, her mind—which for the moment is without any. She should pray as best she can: indeed, she need not pray at all, but may try to rest her spirit as though she were ill and busy herself with some other virtuous action. These directions are meant for persons who keep careful guard over themselves and know that they must not speak to God and to the world at the same time. What we can do ourselves is to try to be alone—and God grant that this may suffice, as I say, to make us realize in Whose presence we are and how the Lord answers our petitions. Do you suppose that, because we cannot hear Him, He is silent? 

(from chapter 24. Text from Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

cosa tan ruin

The other day I went to the library of this friary where I have been staying to look for something light to read (and light to carry) for when I take the subway. For this purpose I was delighted to find the Cistercian Studies edition of Jean Leclercq's Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian Spirit, which I think I may have read before but I can't remember. In any case it's a lovely little book. But I also took it to be a work of Providence that I came across an old paperback edition of St. Teresa of Ávila's The Way of Perfection, which I am now going through for the first time in years.

I thought the find perhaps providential because I have been seeking Teresa's example and intercession from time to time lately. Why?

St. Peter of Alcántara

Today is the feast of St. Peter of Alcántara, a great reforming friar of the sixteenth century. In your 1962 Missale Romanum you will find his feast day on October 19. He seems to have gone out of the general Roman calendar at the time of the reform, but remains in proper Franciscan calendars. I presume that his feast day was moved to today--at least in the United States, I don't know about other places--because of the concurrence with the North American martyrs.

In the Office of Readings for today, we have some of a curious and challenging letter from Peter to St. Teresa of Avila. He warns the "Mother Prioress" about seeking advice on matters of the spiritual life and the evangelical counsels from those who have no competence in living them:

I was not a little surprised, Mother Prioress, that you submitted a matter of such importance to learned men who no competence in the matter. Now when there is a question about lawsuits or cases of conscience it will indeed be praiseworthy to get advice from lawyers and theologians and follow their opinion. But when there is a question about the life of perfection reason particularly suggests that those persons to be consulted who profess the life of perfection; that lawyers and theologians cannot have better advice or opinion on this matter, a study and scrutiny of their works shows very clearly.

We should note that this means that who are religious must accept and embrace the particular expertise and competence we are supposed to have. By our religious profession we have made our Christianity public, and are obligated to pursue holiness in a particular and public way. People who seek from us knowledge and counsel on their own prayer lives and interior struggles for holiness ought to be confident that we have something to offer. Of course this also goes, in similar senses, for priests and indeed anyone who has accepted public ministry in the Church and thereby made their baptism a public property. In this regard it is also important to always be continuing our own reading and reflection in the spiritual tradition. In my own time as a parish confessor, I would occasionally have a penitent whom I suspected of being advanced far beyond me in the spiritual life. To such persons I could only speak to with great tentativeness from things I've read in books.