Tag Archives: conversion

Autobiography

52 DESERT GIANT – LITTLE FLOWER – POOR WOMAN


WALKING FROM the Post Office back home yesterday afternoon, adjusting to new tri-focal glasses, I was wary of the ice on the sidewalk, increasingly irritated at the man approaching, riding his bicycle towards me. Irritated that someone would place my arthritic knees at risk by invading MY space with his bicycle.

 

As the man got closer I noticed he had the facial features common to a particular type of mental handicap and became more interiorly irritated, this time against myself for being such a sidewalk hog.

In the same instant the man past me, at a clip, while saying, with a great smile on his face: “Hello there! How are you? “

The other day in my mediation I was seeing myself as Zaccheus and rejoicing that Jesus called to me as He passed by — the moment that man called out his greeting I felt as if Jesus Himself was passing by and felt, of myself, like one of those proverbial cartoon characters who sits on a tree branch, merrily sawing away, until too late he discovers he has severed the limb, and thus himself, from the tree.

HE LIVED until he was over a hundred years old. He was born in Egypt of Christian parents but orphaned at an early age, with a younger sister to care for. One day in church his heart was broken open when he heard the words of the Gospel, spoken by Jesus to the rich young man. So moved, he immediately gave away all but what was needed to care for his sister. Yet sometime later, his heart further opened by the Gospel passage not to worry about tomorrow, he gave away what was left, saw to the care of his sister and went deep into the desert.

There he became the greatest of all spiritual warriors and the great Abba of monastic life.

He is ABBA ANTHONY and today is his feast.

Divine Wisdom was fused into his heart in the crucible of decades of solitary life in the desert, battling evil spirits, being emptied of his false-self by the Holy Spirit, who illumined Abba Anthony and, with fire, configured him to Christ, so that, as is recorded:

They said that a certain old man asked God to let him see the Fathers and he saw them all except Abba Anthony. So he asked his guide, ‘Where is Abba Anthony? ‘He told him in reply that in the place where God is, there Anthony would be.[cv-1]

Now THAT is what it means to be a friend of God!

So here, then, wisdom from the ‘desert great ‘, Abba Anthony:

…whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures…… ….This is the great work of a man: always to take the blame for his own sins before God and to expect temptation to his last breath. ….Whoever has not experienced temptation cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven….Without temptations no one can be saved. ….I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, ‘What can get through from such snares?’ Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Humility.’….Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we gain our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalize our brother, we have sinned against Christ. ….A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us. ‘…I no longer fear God, but I love Him. For love casts out fear. [cv-2]

The life of Abba Anthony was preserved from the oral tradition and written down by another giant of the faith, himself a saint, St. Athanasius. Thus by the time another young Egyptian man was struggling, the story of Abba Anthony would influence his conversion and he too would become a saint. That man was Augustine!

The first mention St. Augustine makes of Abba Anthony comes when he speaks of being introduced to the saint by a friend named Ponticianus. During his friend’s visit Augustine spoke about his meditations upon Sacred Scripture and notes:

…..a discussion arose in which he narrated the story of Anthony, an Egyptian monk. His name was famous among Your servants, but up to that very hour it had been unknown to us…..We in turn stood in amazement on hearing such wonderful works of Yours, deeds of such recent memory, done so close to our own times, and most fully testified to, in the true faith and in the Catholic Church. [cw-1]

Abba Anthony had died around 356 A.D., aged about 105. St. Augustine was born just two years before Abba Anthony’s death. St. Augustine was about thirty years old when he was baptized. Thus when Augustine speaks about ‘deeds of such recent memory, done so close to our own times ‘ he is marvelling not only at what Christ has accomplished in the life of Abba Anthony, but he is also revealing something vital about the mystery of the Communion of Saints, namely, while many have lived seemingly distant in time from our own era, others have lived close to our own. What is even more incredible is that many are alive in this moment in our very midst.

The Communion of Saints is part of the living treasury of the Church’s life, the storehouse of wondrous works of grace from which the Church brings forth models of hope and holiness for us, which are ever ancient and ever new.

When, in the powerful account of the pivotal moment of conversion grace where he, St. Augustine, hears the voice of a child, and is able to attune himself to this gift of the Spirit he remembers:

……I had heard how Anthony had been admonished by a reading from the Gospel at which he chanced to be present, as if the words read were addressed to him……and that by such a portent he was immediately converted to You. [cw-2]

Of course, in truth, such moments of grace are never something ‘chanced’ upon.

So-called ‘chance’ and ‘coincidence’ are terms only rightly applied to the dark ignorance of the tea leaf reading mentality.

With God all is opportunity of grace and graced opportunity.

Closer to our own time another saint emerged from that great tradition which has streamed across the millennia, developing into various forms of monastic-desert life, as well as various forms of religious orders of teachers, nurses, etc., and the modern new forms of consecrated community life in the Church today.

One of the more ancient, tracing itself back to Mount Carmel and Elijah, at least within pious memory if not hard fact, is the Carmelite order, from whose religious sisters in nineteenth century France came a woman known popularly as the Little Flower, whom Pope John Paul II made a Doctor of the Church, namely, St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

Her autobiography is a record itself of the marvels and wondrous deeds of the Lord close to our own day.

Called “The Story of a Soul “ it was a treasure of my youthful reading, a source of inspiration when I was a monk and moved me to open my heart to Abba Anthony and the wisdom of the desert.

On my journey of return to the faith, before I entered the seminary, it became a source of hope and courage and I renewed my devotion to this holy woman companion.

A few words of wisdom from her:

At the beginning of my spiritual life when I was thirteen or fourteen I used to ask myself what I would have to strive for later on because I believed it was quite impossible for me to understand perfection better. I learned very quickly since then that the more one advances, the more one sees the goal is still far off. And now I am simply resigned to see myself always imperfect and in this I find my joy. [cx-1]

How often in life has the distance of the goal been a source of discouragement, when in fact, as the saint notes, embraced humbly, humbly embracing our weak selves, the journey becomes joy!

How sweet is the way of LOVE…True, one can fall or commit infidelities, but, knowing HOW TO DRAW PROFIT FROM EVERYTHING, love quickly consumes everything that can be displeasing to Jesus; it leaves nothing but a humble and profound peace in the depths of the heart.[cx-2]

This is the most difficult truth about actual conversion for many souls to accept. Hence, as can be seen in certain evangelical/charismatic circles, emphasis is placed upon external manifestations of faith and love, such as sudden cures, falling faint ‘ in the spirit ‘ and more bizarre forms of shaking, laughing, as well as an increased emphasis on financial security, all attended by a type of xenophobia regarding those who are not of like ilk.

To achieve the fullness of illumination, divinization, sobornost with the Trinity, as exemplified in the lives of the Great Desert Father Abba Anthony and in the Great Doctor of the Church the Little Flower, means a lifetime of spiritual warfare. A lifetime which in the case of Abba Anthony lasted more than a century, in the case of the Little Flower, barely a quarter of one.

It is not the length of the journey, but the inward depth of the journey; it is not the quantity of the battles but the willingness to open wide the doors of our being to His transfiguring touch.

Too often, infected as we Christians are with the Zeitgeist egocentric selfishness pervading our culture, we deny the reality of configuration to Christ by the Holy Spirit as meaning cross and death precede tomb and resurrection. That contemporary Zeitgeist flays about in the quicksand error of love as what I experience from another, rather than soaring into the communion of joy which knows and lives love’s truth: love is gift of self to another first in imitation of God who is Love and first loves us, makes Himself First Gift!

In order to live one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your love, O my God! [cx-3]

It is her example of love why Pope John Paul II has urgently begged all bishops and priests to introduce the Little Flower to the youth of this era.

It should be clear too, now, why the elderly priest who took me in and fed and clothed me that stormy night so many decades ago, gave me, along with the Bible, a book of the Lives of the Saints.

It is in their lives that we see in concrete terms of human life the marvellous deeds of the Holy Spirit, brought to ultimate fruition in a manner which should encourage our wounded souls and hearts with the joyful acceptance in our own beings that nothing is impossible to God.

Once I was beginning to commune again with the Saints I was enabled to commune with the process of formation that awaited me in the seminary.

An even closer contemporary of this generation, whose importance in the deepening of Gospel life in the lives of ordinary Christians cannot be overly stressed, and herself a pioneer of the new forms of consecrated life in the Church, is the Servant of God Catherine Doherty.

Born in Czarist Russia, forged into adulthood as a nurse in the bloodletting of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, she was led by the Spirit into the desert of external poverty and service of the poor. Through those experiences she also was plunged into the purifying fire of internal poverty.

A modern Desert Mother she remains, after Our Blessed Mother, the most important woman in my life.

She herself is now in heaven, among that great company of the Communion of Saints where Abba Anthony and the Little Flower preceded her.

Often referring to herself as a poor woman, she was incredibly rich in her passionate love of Christ and all human beings, especially the anawim, those bent over by the burden of external or internal impoverishment.

From the mystery of Christ in the desert, through the life of Abba Anthony, the self-offering as victim of the Little Flower, to the treasury of practical spiritual wisdom from her own heart, poured out in service of the poor and filled with illumination from the Holy Spirit in her days spent in contemplation in her hermitage — always called by her according to its Russian name: Poustinia — comes a clear description of what the desert is all about, what conversion is about, and the central issue of freely choosing to open wide the doors of our being to the Most Holy Trinity, or not.

The teaching is stark, frank, admitting the exhaustion which is constitutive of spiritual warfare.

It contains both an echo of Abba Anthony’s admonishment that we shall endure temptations until our last breath and the passionate willingness of the Little Flower revealing the Little Way of complete self-offering as victim of love:

The more I behold this freedom of mine, poised between these two choices, the more tired I get. Everything suddenly becomes very clear, very simple, and that kind of simplicity is intensely tiring to us human beings. For the vision is clear. There is the burning desert, and there is the other side of the desert which appears so restful. I am somewhere in between. I must decide to either go to the right, into the will of the Father, or to the left, into my own will and the desert of satan. Yes, I am tired because the sight is so clear. I see confusion and demonic powers calling me to do my will contrary to the will of God.

Then, suddenly, all these thoughts leave my mind and I simply realize that God has given me the freedom of choice and a free will, and that He has sent His Son to show me how to do His will. That is what His Son came down to do — to do the will of the Father freely, without compulsion, at the request, as it were, of His Father. I was like that too, like Jesus. I had a free will, and I was not being compelled.

Now my mind begins to clear and my meditation becomes simple. Yes, I am the sister of Jesus Christ. Yes, I have come to do the will of my Father. Yes, that is what I am going to do. I have made the decision. I know that my fiat will have to be repeated again and again, but I am ready, with the grace of God, to do so. [cy]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Autobiography

41 A FIRST STEP OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE

41   A FIRST STEP OUTSIDE OF THE VILLAGE

 

RECENTLY IN L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, there has been, at least in the English edition which I receive each week, a continuing series on the pastoral challenge presented by the world-wide phenomena of an apparent increase in the incidence, and acceptance of, overt homosexuality.

 

The striking fact of this series is the solid pastoral compassion ( love ) and the equally solid orthodoxy (truth) setting before the eyes and hearts of all people Church teaching of revealed truth about the dignity of the human person and the holy mystery of human persons being endowed with pro-creative capability.

While in the early stages of the healing process, begun under the guidance of my spiritual father, I could not have articulated the following, I was becoming aware of the same facts: 

The homosexual condition is difficult, sometimes tragic, and not only because of the obstacles it can encounter in society and the injustices of which it can be victim, but also because of its narcissistic quality. This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at ‘self-recovery ‘ and in searching for the ‘better self ‘ or the ‘ missing self ‘ in another person. [cd-1]

This latter point about the attempts at self-recovery, seeking the missing self, would for years be a type of false-start distraction for me.

To be sure, during the same period, I would indeed embrace the call to chastity, return to the faith and sacramental life, and discern my true vocation and so forth.

But in a strange way, rather than seek Christ in and for Himself, there would be a degree of seeking to find in a relationship with Christ, in the life of grace, even in discernment of vocation, a type of self-recovery, of finding the missing-self, which would significantly interfere with what true conversion is ultimately about: I NO LONGER LIVE, CHRIST LIVES IN ME!

The homosexual approach is really one of identification and possession. According to Miller it is easier for two homosexuals to regard each other as narcissistic extensions of themselves than to be involved in mutual exchange. [cd-2]

This, especially in the early stages of conversion and healing, is extremely difficult to face, because the intricately crafted illusion of mutuality, of giving to the other in same-gender relationships, belies the self-centered and other devouring truth.

It means accepting that beneath the intricacies lies the chasm of sheer loneliness which is the stillborn child of the constitutive non-complementarities inevitable in homosexual so-called, in reality pseudo, unions.

Only Christ can fill the void — and it is, as in the actual beginning — the Spirit Himself who hovers over the void and re-creates, restores, Christ and His Life within us.

If not only those who struggle with homosexuality, but with any form of other involved sexual adventurism, of self-gratification, be humble, that is truthful, all such activity will then be confessed as the idol-worship narcissism search for the self from whom I have become split, beside whom I walk, in dark ignorance.

The common notion of the Greek myth about the god Narcissus is that he fell in love with himself — which is true to a point. The point being he fell in love with what appeared as his self-reflection when he gazed into the water. In fact what he saw was a distorted ( by the very nature of the refracting reality of water and light), and inverted ( the mirror principle ) image of himself, a false-self.

That is the tragedy of narcissism.

It is not even love directed towards the real self — rather it is a disordered love directed towards the false-self. Ultimate egoism!

Socarides says without hesitation that in a homosexual relationship each partner plays his role, ignoring the complementarity of a sexual union, as if the act were consummated in ‘splendid isolation ‘ from the other individual, simply as a stratagem for portraying a one-sided emotional conflict. Every homosexual encounter is primarily concerned with disarming the partner by means of seduction, prayer, power, prestige, effeminacy or masculinity, in order to derive satisfaction then from the loser. [cd-3]

This should be so obvious as to not need comment.

However it is bound to be vehemently denied because, if accepted, then the whole infrastructure of the so-called gay culture begins to unravel — the whole point of the ‘ bar-scene ‘, for example, is to go ‘ cruising’, that is to seek out a sexual conquest.

Hans Giese rightly stresses that the ‘foreground ‘of the homosexual syndrome comes from ‘clinging to the self ‘. The move towards the other is not completed, while the move towards one’s own sex is shorter, less costly, simpler; but, since one fears the risk of failure, to take this step involves a new risk, that of egotism. Bergler also maintains that the dominate note is always emotional detachment from the other and the focusing of interest on mere gratification. [cd-4]

 

Here we have a vital key to the extremely dangerous practice of suggesting an attempt at heterosexual marriage as some type of ‘ cure’, and, equally the danger of admitting persons to consecrated life who have not at least shown a free and peaceful acceptance of the gift of chastity — for that egotism will express itself in non-genital forms such as materialism, authoritarianism, gluttony, tv-addiction, alcoholism etc.

Since the root cause of homosexuality is a non-completeness of being, the ‘ cure ‘ is the restoration of, that is the completing of, the real person.

Hence true conversion, which may include therapy, a profound sacramental and prayer life, the vigilance of fasting, these are crucial.

No less crucial, especially for the soul struggling to hold on tight to the hand of Christ the Healer leading us out of the village of sexual disorder, of incompleteness as person, and very crucial for all pastors of souls, who are the bringers of the gender-blind, wounded, to Christ, is to embrace with humility the possibly very long, try and try again, aspects of the healing pilgrimage to the far outskirts of the village.

Kardiner notes that the majority of these experiences are due to casual encounters and are ‘ one-night stands ‘, i.e., the essential element is the value the experience has for the imagination and not the lasting human relationship. This easily leads to the desire of arousal for its own sake, to repetition and finally anonymity, the discovery of the other not being worth the effort….In short, for the homosexual there is the proximate danger of falling into such anonymous, repetitive and even more demanding sexual behaviour that it becomes a kind of addiction……[cd-5]

 

An incident from my own life illustrates this point.

Being a true addict I also became addicted to more incautious forms of anonymous encounters and found myself one evening in the clutches of a sadist with a knife at my throat.

I survived the ordeal, but it did not lessen my addiction.

With every grace of conversion and healing the soul is invited to trustingly join Christ in the desert where He Himself battled and defeated the tempter.

It is Christ who wages the greater battle in the spiritual warfare encountered by every soul. Seeking to actively participate with Christ, which is to co-operate with Christ’s healing action, each soul must willingly embrace the battle, and endure, by the gift of grace, grace of perseverance and trust.

Satan, who has long claimed the soul for his own, will, of course, seek to discourage, frighten, entice, cajole, and seduce the soul back from intimacy with He who is our Life, our Light, the Way and the Truth. Satan wants to drive the soul back into the dark ignorance.

Some words of encouragement and wisdom then from those early great spiritual warriors, the Fathers of the Desert:

A brother asked Abba Agathon about fornication. He answered, ‘Go, cast your weakness before God and you shall find rest.’ [ce-1]

Abba Theonas said, ‘When we turn our spirit from the contemplation of God, we become the slaves of carnal passions. ‘ [ce-2]

 

The following shows how priest-confessors must not only be compassionate but willingly take on, help carry the burden, of humble and contrite hearts — it is the mysterious and blessed vocation of being a co-struggler:

It was related of a brother who had committed a fault that when he went to Abba Lot, he was troubled and hesitated, going in and coming out, unable to sit down. Abba Lot said to him, ‘What is the matter, brother? ‘He said, ‘I have committed a great fault and I cannot acknowledge it to the fathers.’ The old man said to him, ‘Confess it to me, and I will carry it. ‘Then he said to him, ‘I have fallen into fornication and in order to do it, I have sacrificed to idols. ‘The old man said to him, ‘Have confidence; repentance is possible. Go, sit in your cave, eat only once in two days and I will carry half of your fault with you. ‘After three weeks, the old man had the certainty that God had accepted the brother’s repentance. Then the latter remained in submission to the old man until his death. [ce-3]

 

Another aspect of the above example is that once we have confessed our sin, received absolution, we must not only fulfill the penance given to us, as act of our co-operation with grace, but we must enter the struggle for purification, inner healing, release from inner-vows — a struggle which may be brief or of long duration — praise to His Holy Will in all such matters — and also we need to remain humble, docile, in true, trusting, acceptance of the directives from, obedience to the guidance of, a holy spiritual father.

The final example shows what to the overly sensitive modern, rationalistic mind may appear as pretty rough justice! In truth, it is our failure to comprehend the raw reality of spiritual warfare — the struggle to overcome our tendency to sin — that may cause some to miss the point of the example that follows. Here, truly, the heart needs to listen.

The point is basic — confession of sin, struggle to repent and open our beings to purification and healing by the Holy Spirit — the restorative power of the Holy Eucharist — communion of love — for the point of conversion is that we be restored to Christ so that: I NO LONGER LIVE, CHRIST LIVES IN ME.

The length of any struggle should never discourage us.

The victory is Christ’s.

Christ IS our co-struggler, for He struggled and overcame temptation, sin and death before, and for us.

Christ IS our salvation; our healing; our communion; our Way, Truth, Life.

Christ IS everything.

Our joy: to struggle.

He has come that His joy may be in us so that our joy may be complete.

Christ’s joy is that He has accomplished our salvation.

Abba Phocas also said, ‘When he came to Scetis, Abba James was strongly attacked by the demon of fornication. As the warfare pressed harder, he came to see me and told me about it, saying to me, “Tomorrow, I am going to such and such a cave but I entreat you for the Lord’s sake do not speak of it to anyone, not even my father. But count forty days and when they are fulfilled do me the kindness of coming and bringing me Holy Communion. If you find me dead, bury me, but if you find me still alive, give me Holy Communion.” Having heard this, when the forty days were fulfilled, I took Holy Communion and a whole loaf with a little wine and went to find him. As I was drawing near to the cave I smelt a very bad smell which came from its mouth. I said to myself, “The blessed one is at rest. “ When I got close to him, I found him half dead. When he saw me he moved his right hand a little, as much as he could, asking me for the Holy Communion with his hand. I said to him, “I have It. “ He wanted to open his mouth but it was fast shut. Not knowing what to do, I went out into the desert and found a piece of wood and with much difficulty, I opened his mouth a little. I poured in a little of the Body and the Precious Blood, as much as he could take of Them. Through this participation in the Holy Communion he drew strength. A little while after, soaking some crumbs of ordinary bread, I offered them to him and after a time, some more, as much as he could take. So, by the grace of God, he came back with me a day later and walked as far as his own cell, delivered, by the help of God, from the harmful passion of fornication.’ [ce-4]

 

Perhaps, you the reader are not in bondage to any sexual sin, to any kind of fornication.

Whatever the sin struggled with, whatever the addiction, whatever the doubt, whatever the depths of bitter-roots or the tenacity of inner-vows, Christ IS the only Way, the only Healing, the only Truth, and our only true Life.

In the Roman Liturgy, the central act of faith, the sacred celebration of the summit of sacramental, of faith life, is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Before the reception of Jesus Christ, in His Real Presence, in the reality of His Body and Blood in Holy Communion, priest and people proclaim out loud together a vital prayer — do we contemplate these words enough — do we utter them from the depths of our being as the opening wide of the doors of our being to Him?: LORD, I AM NOT WORTHY TO RECEIVE YOU, BUT ONLY SAY THE WORD AND I SHALL BE HEALED.

 

 

Autobiography

40 THE CONVERSION BEGINNING UNFOLDS

40   THE CONVERSION BEGINNING UNFOLDS

 

THIS MORNING I spent several hours in prayer and the celebration of Holy Mass.

A great joy permeated my being. Joy and gratitude for this extraordinary grace of these months in semi-solitude, to write, pray and paint.

 

What a lavishness of grace for my own being in this Jubilee Year.

What a Gospel ‘talent’ not to be wasted but rather, by fidelity to the duty of the moment as a priest-writer, to labour with words until the work is done.

Then: to let go of it, for the Lord to use, as He wills.

Even if that use means, once written, this work, through the discernment of my spiritual father, is never published.

So as I write in my heart echo lines from Psalmist seeking discernment, understanding, giving praise and crying longing. [Ps. 119: 169-176]

IT IS a great mystery that God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, does not force Himself upon us, does not, when we yearn for true conversion of heart, remove from us our freedom to resist His invitation to repent and return to Him. 

The extraordinary grace, the seed-sowing within the depths of my being of His word:’ come home My child’, poured into my being during that charismatic rally at the time of the death of Pope Paul VI on the feast of the Transfiguration.

To be accomplished, this transformation — for He so wills it — my free-will consent and co-operation with grace were/are required.

Only when I would truly open wide the doors of my being to Christ would any conversion take firm root, repentance begin to flower. Only when I would humble myself, by grace of course, and have recourse to sacramental confession, wherein my sins would be forgiven, might the healing process — Christ Himself, the Healer — become increasingly efficacious, as the Gospel reveals. [Mt. 9:1-8]

The trees are all in bud as I write once again.

Warm spring rains fall upon the small patch of grass outside my basement window. I can hear, but not see, little rivers of water washing across the parking lot, some ten feet higher up the slope from my window.

This is my basement cave!

In the old days a priest serving an institution, such as this home for the infirm, would have been granted a decent set of rooms — nowadays no one has much respect for themselves, let alone for others.

The priest is seen as a sort of unavoidable nuisance. Handy to have around when someone is dying, but otherwise best he remains hidden in his ‘cave’.

In my first few weeks here it was difficult to be down in here. Now it is a place for my heart, in the great hermitical tradition of all those who voluntarily have entered actual caves over the centuries to be alone with You.

I must not waste a moment of this precious space or time.

The news today announces Pope John Paul is off to visit Lebanon, a place soaked with fraternal blood through inter-religious civil war and hatred.

Why do we hate so much?

In mid-fall of the year of three Popes my new spiritual director contacted me by letter and phone.

Eventually I began to visit him, to open my heart, to attempt to listen and even to go to confession truthfully.

This was very difficult the first few times, for it meant admitting not only my sinfulness but my absolute need of God.

Fall unfolded into winter. I still found myself occasionally engaged in my habitual patterns.

However there was waging within me a true struggle against the satanic darkness and neurotic fears which had such a hold on my being, and, a real hunger to enter into the light.

Looking back I understand now part of the struggle was an inner expectation of spiritual magic. Namely, that it sufficed I wanted to be converted, healed, set-free from what had me in bondage — but converted, healed, set-free WITHOUT the divinely ordained ordinary process of progressive conversion, healing, release.

Only decades later would I appreciate what tremendous patience my impatience, and easily provoked discouragement, exacted from my spiritual director, whom I came to see more accurately as not only the friend of my soul but as my spiritual father, which is how I see him now.

My heart has come to see in the progressive process of conversion, healing, release — (keeping in mind, of course, that God sometimes does grant the miracle of an instantaneous conversion) — what appears to be the ordinary pilgrimage, wherein the Holy Spirit divinizes the soul, of which the Gospel account of healing found in Mark 8: 22-26 illuminates the mystery of progressive healing.

Here is what this Gospel passage says to my heart:

THERE is a place to which we must all come, — Christ Himself being the actual ‘place’ — being brought there by our brothers and sisters through their prayer for the conversion of sinners. That place is also the Church — participation in the sacramental life of the Church specifically.

THIS is the place per se of encounter with Christ, Saving Healer, who draws us to Himself because He loves the Father and loves us.

He is, in a sense, drawn to us through His own love for the Father and for us.

Our being drawn to Him is assisted through the plea on our behalf of our brothers and sisters at prayer, of Holy Mother the Church herself at prayer for the conversion of the world.

Critical is the prayerful intercession also of our Blessed Mother Mary, and of all the Saints and Blessed in heaven.

CONFESSION of our blindness is essential.

Perhaps, as would appear to be the case with the blind man in this Gospel passage, if not by spoken articulation, at least by the eloquent poverty of simply being in the place of encounter with Christ.

WE MUST be touched by Christ, therefore when He offers His hand to us to lead us into the depths of repentance, conversion, release, healing, we must accept — always we are endowed with free-will — His touch.

WE MUST willingly be led by Christ away from the place/places wherein we dwell in the dark ignorance of hell — for our blindness is not only interior but is exacerbated and facilitated by our dwelling in the places and companionship of accomplices.

SPITTLE is used here by Christ because He had not yet shed His blood — His Heart had not yet been torn open by the lance so the ‘ blood and water ‘ [ Jn.19:34] — the river of sanctifying grace, of sacramental life — was not yet pouring forth upon us.

It is sanctifying grace through the sacraments — especially of Baptism, Confession, Holy Eucharist — which the Holy Spirit uses as the forgiving, converting, releasing, healing touch of Christ.

ONCE touched the question posed is a query by Christ of the soul ascertaining the soul’s co-operative willing participation in the forgiveness-­converting-healing-releasing-sanctifying process which unfolds through the holy action touch of Christ Himself.

THE SOUL’S response is not merely affirmative but an accepting admission of struggle — the blindness is deeply bitter-rooted, the blind attitude deeply inner-vowed as a commitment to rebellion against the very Eternal Father who so loves us He has given us Jesus, who with the Father, so loves us the Holy Spirit is given to us to Purify and Sanctify every soul who believes in Him and willingly receives Baptism, gateway to all sacramental life.

THE SECOND touch — maybe for some of us more resistant, more deeply wounded, more profoundly addicted to our blindness, a third, fourth, innumerable touches  are required— in either case there will come what is the final touch of complete healing, total conversion, absolute release — the grace of communion of love, union with the Holy Trinity.

EVERYTHING  now is seen distinctly, that is, our true relationship with the Trinity, our brothers and sisters, self, — we see clearly everything about life, about the danger of temptation, the destructive folly of sin, the absolute need we have of Divine Mercy.

DO NOT EVEN GO INTO THE VILLAGE is the divinely uttered, tender yet imperative caution.

We MUST heed this urgent Divine admonition NOT to return to the place and accomplices of our dark ignorance.

Such a return would be a refusal, a rejection of the very grace just given, a turning away from the Divine Self-Giver, Giver of Light, Truth, Healing, and Salvation.

 

Autobiography

35 OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE CARES


IN THESE EARLY DAYS OF THE GREAT JUBILEE I am profoundly conscious that it is the Jubilee wherein grace is intensely Eucharistic.

Catching up on my reading over the recent feasts of the Christmas season my heart leapt with joy as my eyes fell upon these words of Pope John Paul II:

 

The Eucharist constitutes the culminating moment in which Jesus, in His Body given for us and in His Blood poured out for our salvation, reveals the mystery of His identity and indicates the sense of the vocation of every believer. In fact, the meaning of human life is totally contained in that Body and in that Blood, since from them life and salvation have come to us. In some ways, the very existence of the human person must be identified with them, so that this existence is fulfilled in so far as it can, in its turn, make of itself a gift for others. [bt]

I resume the telling of this story of Divine Mercy and Divine Persistence in the life of one soul, one sinner — but a Mercy and Persistence lavished upon every soul, every sinner — writing during this night of the Eighth Day, His Holy Resurrection.

When I arrived here in The Community yesterday, Easter Sunday, at noon, I was told my dear Father Confessor of so many years, and whom while I lived here I had the honour to serve and watch over while he was in the main infirmary, had just entered his final sanctifying agony.

For the next twelve hours I kept vigil, praying over him the ancient prayers for the dying, giving him the Apostolic Blessing, and, as I prepared to leave in the early hours of yesterday morning, I bent down and kissed his feet in honour, his hands in gratitude, his forehead in love.

Early in the morning, just before dawn, like Jesus who at that hour would arise and go off to a lonely place to pray, this holy priest, who had faithfully served in persona Christi for sixty-one years, showed himself faithful to the end, as he arose and took the hand of the Risen One and Our Lady and was taken up into heaven.

Today I write in late afternoon.

These past couple of days the men have dug through the frozen earth in the new cemetery by the iced shut river, so that the body of this holy priest might be placed in the earth beside the much younger priest we buried just a few weeks ago.

Brother priests, local people, Community members from far and wide, we all gathered for the sacred ritual of human grief and the sacred mysteries of the heavenly liturgy of hope.

Prayers, holy water, incense, tears — all were lavished with love.

Then, so quickly it seemed I was standing at the mouth of the grave, a shovel full of earth in my hands, my stole gently dancing on the wind as I spilled the earth down and upon his simple wooden casket and the business of burial was done.

I walked off by myself then across the snow covered field, among the birch and pine to the river’s edge.

How many spring, summer, fall days had I worked this area, cutting trees, hauling rocks, smoothing soil, to prepare this final resting place for my brothers and sisters, without truly appreciating in the depths of my being that it would be indeed, brothers and sisters, beloved ones who would be laid to rest here.

How often it is in life we do things without truly understanding what it is we do until there is a moment such as when I stood by the river, when the full impact of what we have done, what we are about, sears across our mind, imagination, heart.

It is a moment of sacred illumination when we come to understand, at least a bit, that true reality is more invisible than visible.

All is grace.

It is thousands of miles between that frozen river’s edges, that moment of profound grief and gratitude, perhaps somehow though not such a great distance in the heart, and Mexico!

All is grace.

So dear confessor, dear priest, dear brother, dear friend, dear Father, who came to know the secret depths of my utter need of Divine Mercy, and through the sacraments of your priestly ordination and dispensing of mercy in confession, you too of the poetic pen, who showed me, taught me, formed me to be a compassionate confessor myself, encouraged my writing, told me constantly to trust I am a child of the Father, who always spoke so trustingly of Our Blessed Mother — adieu: to God!

AN intense winter rain pours down this afternoon as I write these notes from so many years ago.

It is the same time of year as the Mexico blessing.

Almost thirty years since that mysterious encounter with Our Blessed Mother and as I re-read the notes and write them up in a readable form my entire being is struck once again by the immense lavishness of Divine Mercy!

In the center of every human heart, the depths of the soul, the garden enclosed where the Triune God and the real I, the true self, are alone in intimacy, God Himself is there, seeking always to invite, engage, the soul in a dialogue of such profound intimacy we discover there the essence of actual relationship: creature to Creator, child to Father, sinner to Redeemer, beloved to Lover.

It is here, in this sacred solitary aloneness where no other being, no catastrophe may enter, where the soul is most purely free to ascent or refuse Divine Intimacy, that the Holy Spirit Himself, the Sanctifier, the Purifier, may, if only the sinner will cry out for mercy, enact the holy activity of repentance and conversion, quickening the soul deadened by the crushing weight of sin, back to real life — the life of sanctifying grace, the life of participating in the life of the Blessed Trinity, a restoration of being child of the Father, disciple of Christ, responder to the action of the Holy Spirit.

Evangelicals have a notion of this in their concept of ‘being born again ‘, Roman Catholics experience this every time we avail ourselves of sacramental confession, every human being, not yet baptized, enters into this splendour the moment they open their being to the invitation to accept Christ as Saviour and fulfill the necessary steps for preparation for, and then receive Baptism.

No soul is, in a sense, immune to this Triune Divine urgency which is a continual action of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to awaken in each soul a response.

Every soul, because this same God has so generously endowed each of us with free will, is free to refuse to respond.

Horrifically such a refusal, if persisted in until death has overtaken us, results in the eternal damnation of the soul, for such persistence is a refusal of Divine Mercy and only those souls who have given their ascent to their need of mercy can receive mercy.

This is the essential experience of the God-given endowment of what is referred to as the conscience, which is NOT some self-generated moral compass but rather is the very voice of the Holy Spirit within us.

At its most basic it is the very Law of God inscribed upon our hearts at our creation.

Baptism and Confirmation enhance this actual grace of conscience into the sanctifying grace of dialogue with the Holy Spirit.

The essence of such dialogue is that we have a listening heart.

Thus, as a man created in the image and likeness of God, possessed of an immortal soul within which is the garden enclosed, the place of encounter and intimate converse, and further as a baptized and confirmed man, one who had frequently in his younger years been bathed anew in grace through sacramental confession, nourished and sustained by the Very Person of Christ Himself in Holy Communion, when I boarded the jet, making use of leftover funds from the insurance claims after the robbery, for the sojourn in Mexico with my companion, it was as one still being sought by my Father, still being sought by the Good Shepherd, still being called to by the Holy Spirit.

No salutary purpose would be served by detailing anything about that sojourn other than the key event.

God has so lavished Himself upon us at our creation, which is itself a true experience of ex nihilo, for while it is true that He has ordained a human mother and father must be the providers of the physical material, collaborators in the creation of a new human person, He Himself creates each soul, therefore each person, breathing His self into us. So we come to be. In this Divine Love-Lavishness He makes it so that no matter what surface agitations of mind, will, imagination there may be, deep within the garden enclosed is a calm clarity.

We are free to choose to open wide our being to the clarity, to open wide our being to what the Spirit speaks in the intimate dialogue in the garden enclosed, or not.

If we heed, we co-operate with grace.

If we do not heed, He will speak again and again, so long as we live on this earth.

The emphasis, in the truth that with God every moment is the moment of beginning again, must be on God!

He, as it were, begins anew in every moment of our existence, calling us into relationship with Himself.

It is the hallmark of Divine Mercy that He never ceases, as long as we live on this earth, to invite us into relationship with Him.

I cannot emphasize this too much because, as must be apparent already in this story of one sinner in need of mercy, my unheeding, my resistance, my fleeing from Him, my constant dissipating of my inheritance from my Father, seems never ending.

What, I pray, is more graphic, more obvious, most consistent, is the consistency of graced-moments of opportunity to begin again.

All from Him.

All from His love.

All from His lavishness of mercy!

Some twenty-years before this trip, one summer’s afternoon when the elderly man, later in this life to become himself a priest, who was my teacher and mentor as a writer, was showing me how to make an article tauter, he spoke to me of his own conversion experience and the importance in his life of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Indeed at the end he stated in a way which I never forgot, and which exploded anew in my heart as the jet came over those mountains and strenuously dipped towards the Mexico City airport, “ If you are ever in Mexico go to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and open your heart to her love! “

Now I was arriving in Mexico.

Now I was arriving in the city of her shrine.

Now I was remembering.

Now resisting, determined to have any and all experiences but that of going to her shrine.

Grace operates within even that which seems absolutely in opposition to grace.

There is perhaps no better example of this, though not necessarily as a clear answer to the question of why or how God could operate in such a manner, than the life of Job or that of Hosea the prophet.

In the former we see how God permits evil to befall his beloved Job, not as punishment per se, but so Job may exemplify absolute trust in, and surrender to, the loving will of the Father.

In the latter we see through Hosea, called by God not to abandon his adulterous wife, the exemplification of the Tremendous Lover Himself who will constantly grant a new beginning to each one of us IF we will allow Him to take us back, again and again and again, like the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the woman who washed His feet with her tears, like the prodigal son, like frightened servants at Cana, like Peter after his repeated denials. We must come to that moment of truth where we admit to Him our adultery, our arrogance, our running; our denial has so exhausted us, because we have finally tasted fully of His mercy and strive to “go and sin no more.” [cf. Jn.8:11]

Perhaps the hardest thing to admit, to accept, in this mystery of the life of grace, is that conversion does not mean He will prevent us from ever again experiencing sin or weakness or the damage done to ourselves by our sinning — hence, for example, an adulterous spouse may still find themselves divorced; an alcoholic may still die of liver ailment; someone else may suffer from aids, smokers from cancer; thieves and murders and others still be sent to jail; consecrated persons be evicted from their religious communities or the active exercise of their priestly ministry in public— and Pope John Paul II, famously recorded by television cameras forgiving the man who tried to kill him still did not walk the man out of his prison cell.

Sin has consequences and His Divine Mercy does not necessarily, nor I would suggest normally, spare us from the purifying opportunity of those consequences.

That is perhaps the hardest of lessons for Christians to learn and accept.

I have learned it intellectually in my life, that is, I know it to be true.

I have not yet accepted it emotionally and still have this attitude that God is not playing fair, a sort of ‘why I am being punished since I said I was sorry ‘childishness, which itself is the experience of the consequences of sins perpetrated against my being in childhood.

Thus once again I can only, in my MISERIA lay face to the ground and wait in trust upon the fullness of HIS MISERICORDIA!

Thus it was that upon our entering into the airport reception area we were met by two young men, clearly out to hustle tourists.

Thus it was that through them, due to the battle raging in my soul over to, or never, approach the shrine, we ended up with my asking to be driven past there in the dead of night when the place was safely shut-down.

Thus it was that my companion determined since the next day was Christmas day we should return there for Mass.

Thus it was that in spite of my fearful reluctance I ended up at her shrine.

NIGHT HAS fallen as I resume this writing.

It is, for this northerner, a seemingly strangely warm night for January, but apparently not, as I had assumed, typical for this southern city in winter. Nor in the north, as I saw on this evening’s news, where it is warm like late spring. The prognosticators suggest this is further proof of global warming.

My heart simply recalls these words of Pope John Paul:

When man disobeys God and refuses to submit to His rule, nature rebels against him and no longer recognizes him as its ‘master’, for he has tarnished the divine image in himself. The claim to ownership and use of created things remains still valid, but after sin its exercise becomes difficult and full of suffering.[bt1]

Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him. [bt2]

Everyone we human persons are in relation to: God, other, self — as well as everything created, the whole order of nature — all our relating is impacted in a determined way by our sinfulness to increased chaos, by our holiness to increased restoration of all persons and things to Christ.

If we are indeed in a period of unnatural global warming, it is because those of us with the dominate cultures of the industrialized world are greedy. Our sin of greed is the prime source of environmental chaos.

When we willingly, motivated by the highest degree of charity, simplify our standard of living, the natural environmental balance will be restored. A Christ-centric restoration alone will bring this about.

CLOSE TO noon the next day, which was Christmas Day, we traveled across the largest city, at least in population, on the face of the earth, to the shrine.

As we journeyed, by subway, bus, taxi, on foot, I observed the people and was struck by something in my heart I could not exactly define, save to say that even among the poorest, perhaps particularly among the poorest, I saw a radiance in their eyes my being could only yearn for.

Yet seemed to fear at the same time.

When we arrived in the plaza my friend said he would find out when Mass was.

I shuddered interiorly.

I urged him to climb the great stone stairs, go to Mass if he wished, I would wait for him right where I was.

He tried to get me to go with him, but knowing full well how utterly stubborn a person I am, he finally went ahead without me.

The plaza was filled with people, with families, many of whom smiled at me as I stood there at the base of the steps, some even calling out to me the traditional greeting for the feast.

I began to look all the way up the great staircase to the basilica itself, to notice the many pilgrims, some black clad old women alone, some men by themselves as well, dressed in their best, many poor people dressed in all they appeared to have, children, adults, large groups, small family groups, some people dressed in classic peasant garb, all of them ascending the stairs on their knees, praying the rosary.

Was it that I was becoming intrigued by what could be drawing them?

Was it a type of shamed unease as a result of standing there like some rock in a fast flowing stream of people, around whom they were forced to find a path?

All is grace.

Slowly, experiencing a persistent and ever more violent interior shudder, I climbed the great staircase.

The closer I got to the basilica entrance, the more I could hear a chorus of human voices, speaking, praying, and singing.

Outside the noon sun pounded heat and light upon me, each step became a twin effort against the exterior heat and the interior angst.

As I approached the portico my ears detected, from amongst all the other sounds and voices, the words of the central moment of Holy Mass, the consecration.

The urge to enter was immense.

The fear, of a more weighty immensity.

Now I was standing inside, at the very back, and as my eyes adjusted to the shift in light could make out high and way at the front the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I made to flee!

Only my extreme upper body appeared capable of movement.

I could tilt my head, raise my eyes, look towards the image.

All other movement was impossible.

Terror seized my whole being.

Yet it was not now a fearful terror so much as an experience of awe, of desire.

Suddenly from the very core of my being an awareness which urgently rose to a thought which gave way to a yes of my will:

‘MADRE — MOTHER! BRING ME BACK TO YOUR SON! ‘

Suddenly, with a gentle jerk, my body had movement again.

I was stunned.

I turned, fled down the stairs, bumping into a black dressed elderly woman who grabbed my wrist, looked deep into my being, and assured me Nuestra Madre had heard my cry. As Our Lady herself said to the holy Juan Diego: I am the Mother of all who love me, who cry to me, who have confidence in me.

This is, as St. John tells us in the Holy Gospel [ Jn. 19: 26,27]how Our Lady fulfills the mandate Jesus gave her from the Cross, indeed how we fulfill our part for the ‘home’, into which St. John and we are to welcome her, is the very depth of our being, heart, soul.