Catholicism, holiness and spirituality

Loving

Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself – Jesus

May it please the Beloved that we never fail to love each other, because if we do we are lost – St Teresa of Avila

Love shows itself better through deeds than by words – St Ignatius of Loyola

Love one another, or you perish – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

If there were love of neighbor there would be no terrorism, no repression, no selfishness, none of such cruel inequalities in society, no abductions, no crimes – Archbishop Oscar Romero

Love decides everything – Pedro Arrupe, SJ

So much is written about love… probably because it is so much easier to write about it than to actually do it. I’m not discounting the words that are written about love; but it’s a bit disheartening to see how prevalent the lack of love is in so many places these days.

Let’s build a wall to keep them out of our yard, our subdivision, our seaside resort, our country so that we don’t have to deal with their needs. Let’s spend billions on war while the most vulnerable in our neighborhood, our cities and in our rural areas go without basic healthcare because it’s too expensive for them to pay for it. Let’s divide the world into them and us so we don’t have to deal with them. Let’s ignore how much we contribute to polluting the world so that we can keep the cost of consumer goods low. Let’s spend billions on researching and producing vanity drugs instead of finding cures for simple ailments that affect millions of people each year, people who can’t afford to pay for their cure. Let’s get caught up in our work and entertainment so that we don’t have time to be good parents, devoted spouses, and compassionate friends.

Let’s get caught up in satisfying ourselves instead of loving God and loving those around us. It’s so much easier, and it feels good… for a while, anyway.

The Seventh Dwelling

I finally made it to the climax of the Interior Castle – the Seventh Dwelling. St Teresa again uses a lot of analogies to describe what this dwelling is like, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that of two candles. One candle is the soul and the other is God, and they merge into one candle, one flame. The union is so complete and perfect that the two candles become one. And the candles can also be separated back out into two distinct entities. Where there was always a separation between the soul and God in previous dwellings, here it is gone.

And now she addresses the purpose of prayer, the reason behind this union of soul and God:

The Beloved is dwelling in this soul in a unique way. She should relinquish all thought of resting and let go of any craving for personal honor or recognition. If the soul is so deeply with God, then she should not think so much about herself. She will be exclusively concerned with finding ways to please him and showing how much she loves him. This, my friends, is the purpose of prayer. This is the reason for the spiritual marriage. Good works are born from this. Good works.

Finding ways to please God and showing him how much we love him – the purpose of prayer. I like that. And she takes it a bit further:

Reflect deeply on this. I cannot overemphasize its importance. Fix your eyes on the crucified and everything else will seem insignificant. Since Christ demonstrated his love by doing such amazing things and suffering so radically for us, how can your mere words be enough to please the Beloved? Do you know what it means to be truly spiritual? It means to become a slave to God. We are branded with the sign of the cross. It is the token we have given him our freedom. Now he can offer us as servants to the whole world, as he offers himself. This does us no harm. In fact, he is granting us a great boon.

Until we surrender to this divine slavery, we cannot expect to make much progress. The foundation of the whole building is humility. If you are not truly humble, the Beloved will not build very high, for your own sake. Otherwise it will all come tumbling to the ground.

And so friends, if you want to lay a decent foundation, strive to be the least among you. Offer yourself as a slave to God and try to find ways to serve and soothe your companions. This will be of even more value to you than to them; the stones that support you will be firmly laid and your castle will not fall.

Those are great words, insightful and wise, simple and challenging. We could all do well to live by them.

Emulating God

I am making slow progress through Interior Castle, but came across this and thought it was a good quote to share:

When, friends, will we ever begin to emulate this great God of ours? Let's not deceive ourselves into thinking that it is some major accomplishment when we suffer a little persecution. Instead, let's eagerly endure everything that comes to us. Let's love the ones who offend us. Has our great God ever stopped loving us? Not for one second! And we have certainly offended him plenty of times. He has very good reason for wanting us all to forgive anyone who hurts us.

And this one too:

I was once wondering why our Beloved is so fond of the virtue of humility. Without it ever having occurred to me before, this thought suddenly came to me: It's because God is supreme truth. To be humble is to walk in truth.

Courage for Raptures – The Sixth Dwelling

A few more chapters into the Sixth Dwelling, St Teresa addresses spiritual raptures and the courage needed to submit ourselves to God’s will. She continues a metaphor of God as King, and the soul as his bride:

You will laugh and call it ridiculous when I speak of courage. After all, what woman, no matter how modest, wouldn’t have the courage to marry the king? This may not be the case with earthly royalty, but I tell you, more bravery than you might think is required to unite with the king of heaven. Our nature is timid and weak in contrast with something so great. I’m sure that union would be impossible unless God himself gave us the strength to meet him, no matter how clearly we saw the benefits of becoming one with him.

It takes a lot of courage – for the person and the soul – to submit to God to the point of letting him take control whenever and wherever he wants. But she would say the payoff is that the soul learns so much, gets added courage and becomes one with God during these raptures. Sounds like a fair deal, once one finds the courage for it.

And she takes some time to describe various types of rapture – moments where God intentionally unites with your soul. It’s an experience she says can not be described with words, it is not a human experience after all. But it’s like a spark inside the soul that God momentarily fans into a flame, or a flight of the spirit where he shows the soul the treasures of heaven. Or it’s like when you see something that is very beautiful, with a lot of detail, and all you can do later is talk about it in general terms. You know it, but at a level so deep that it can barely be described in words.

She uses an example of when Moses saw God in the burning bush. He didn’t know how to describe every detail he saw – he could only hold on to the details that God wanted him to transmit. Moses must have ‘learned such wondrous things among the thorns of the bush that they gave him the courage that he needed to do what he did for the people of Israel.’ So God gives us gifts in these raptures, but they are like secret gifts.

One of the effects of these raptures is that when we see how great God really is, and how he willingly gives himself to us, we become more charitable towards others. After all, if this great God comes to me and gives himself to me, then I can not help but treat others with similar charity. St Teresa then lists three distinct benefits of these raptures of the soul.

The first is knowledge of the greatness of God. The more we see of this greatness, the more deeply conscious we become. The second is humility through self-knowledge. How can something like the soul, so limited by comparison to the Creator of such magnificence, dare to dishonor him? In this state, she can scarcely raise her eyes to him! The third is a loss of appetite for worldly things. Her only interest in the things of the world lies in their capacity to be used in the service of such a great God.

Spiritual raptures and union with God… it all sounds so mystical and un-modern! After reading a few hundred pages of Interior Castle, it also seems so possible.

Spiritual Voices - The Sixth Dwelling

St Teresa’s writings on the sixth dwelling address instructions on discerning spiritual voices, a blessing she describes as:

… a kind of auditory vision. There are different kinds of spiritual voices. Some seem to come from outside the soul, others from her innermost depths. Some filter down from her own highest part and others are so exterior that the soul seems to hear them with her own ears, as if a physical voice had spoken them. Sometimes a spiritual voice can be nothing more than a figment of a feeble imagination or an artifact of mental imbalance.

These spiritual voices can come from God, from the spirit of evil or from our own imaginations. In earlier stages of prayer she counsels people to just ignore (detach from) these spiritual voices because they have not yet developed a level of discernment to validate them. But now, she counsels us on how to determine which spiritual voices are from God:

The first and truest sign is the power and authority they bear. The second sign that a spiritual voice comes from God is the great quietude left in the soul. The third sign is that the words do not fade from memory for a very long time; some stay forever.

There’s more detail in these descriptions – just follow this link (go to chapter 3), though it is to a different translation than what I am reading. I think the point of her time spent on spiritual voices is that it is a way that the soul becomes closer to God, eventually people who develop a closeness to God will indeed hear them, and we need to understand what they are so that we can discern them when they come along.

Waiting for Mercy

In speaking of how some spiritual advisors do more harm than good, and on the trials and confusion we sometimes encounter trying to follow God but not being sure if we are doing the right things, St Teresa of Avila writes:

Ultimately, there is no remedy to this tempest but to wait on the mercy of God. At the most unexpected time, with a single word or a random circumstance, he will so swiftly calm the storm that it will seem as if there had never been a single cloud in the sky of the soul. She will be flooded with the sunshine of solace. Like someone who has escaped a treacherous battle and emerged victorious, the soul comes out praising the Lord, since she knows he is the one who fought for victory. In fact, she notices that all the weapons she would have used to defend herself are in the hands of her foes. She becomes brutally aware of her insignificance and realizes how little we would be able to do help ourselves if the Beloved ever decided to abandon us.

Wounded With Love – The Sixth Dwelling

I took a short break from The Interior Castle – just too much going on the past month or so and not enough time to settle down and absorb the good stuff in this book.

As I’m working through the chapters of the sixth dwelling, I’m struck by St Teresa’s descriptions of deeply intense love between the soul and God, and how that results in intense pain. She says that she doesn’t really have words to describe what the sixth dwelling is like, but it seems like she can describe what happens to the soul there – intense love and pain that results from that love.

She uses a model of the love between spouses – the soul and God – and in the sixth dwelling how that love grows so intense that it is painful. It’s not described as a physical pain, but a spiritual pain, and a good one at that. God is preparing his spouse (the soul) for marriage – and the soul knows this. But in an effort to increase the soul’s love for him, God keeps his distance. Sounds like a kind of spiritual foreplay to me.

Love so intense that it is painful… I can see the connection but can’t say that I’ve had that experience. We’ve been married for 17 years, and I can say I’ve felt pain of various sorts, but the pain is always connected to something other than love. Pain from separation, mistrust, indifference and so on, but not pain from love.

The Fifth Dwelling

I suppose it is fitting that as we get closer to God, our ability to describe that experience with language is strained.

“Oh, friends! How could I ever describe the riches, the treasures and delights to be found inside the fifth dwelling? There is no way of knowing how to talk about such things, and so I almost think it would be better to remain silent. The mind cannot grasp them. Metaphors are useless since no earthly image is subtle or sublime enough for this purpose.”

And then St Teresa goes on for three chapters trying to communicate the nature of this ‘Prayer of Union.’ This was a tougher one for me – I’m more of a thinking/judging type (INTJ for you Meyers-Briggs folks), and having been very busy lately it took me a while to get into the meat of this dwelling. And while I think I’m starting to understand this, I’m not there spiritually:

“But reflect on this, friends: if you wish to enjoy his blessings, hold nothing back. Whether you have a little or a lot, he wants it all. In proportion to what you have given, he will grant you greater or lesser favors. This is the test for proving whether we have attained the Prayer of Union.”

Hold nothing back – that’s a tall order, but good guidance. I understand that, but I have not done that. She goes on to say that during this Prayer of Union the soul transcends both sense and reason. She (the soul) has died to this world so that she can live fully with God. Our minds desperately want to know what is going on, but not having the capacity for understanding this, the mind remains stunned.

“There is so much we will see as long as we do not desire to see more than our limitations allow and we accept that we may not be ready to receive such a great Beloved and that we acknowledge that we are incapable of comprehending his wonders.”

Sometimes when I read about theological questions around the nature of God I just laugh to myself. How can we – finite humans that we are – really comprehend a Divine Being that transcends humanity!? I think St Teresa hits this on the mark – we cannot know God with our minds, but we can know God with our being, our soul. And though our mind will try to understand this and make sense of it, that seems to be a futile exercise.

(more to come on the Fifth Dwelling later as I get more time)

Love each other

I have been very busy lately, and making slow progress through the fifth dwelling of the Interior Castle. This morning I read a passage there that I really like, so I'll share it:

Sometimes I observe people so diligently trying to orchestrate whatever state of prayer they are in that they become peevish about it. They don't dare to move or let their minds be stirred for fear of jeopardizing the slightest degree of devotion or delight. It makes me realize how little they understand the path to union. They think the whole thing is about rapture.

But no, friends, no! What the Beloved wants from us is action. What he wants is that if one of your friends is sick, you take care of her. Don't worry about interrupting your devotional practice. Have compassion. If she is in pain, you feel it too. If necessary, you fast so she can eat. This is not a matter of indulging an individual; you do it because you know it is your Beloved's desire. This is true union with his will. What he wants is for you to be much happier hearing someone else praised than you would be to receive a compliment yourself. If you have humility, this is easy. It is a great thing to be glad when your friend's virtues are celebrated, and when you see a fault in another it is good to be as sorry as if it were your own and to make an effort to conceal it.

May it please the Beloved that we never fail to love each other, because if we do we are lost. If we succeed in loving each other, I tell you we will attain union with him. Never cease striving for this.

St Teresa of Avila seems to be so practical about things, and that is refreshing. Following her thought, we don't strive for perfection but instead focus on serving God and each other. Not that prayer isn't important - it surely is important. But it seems that we are more likely to find that path to union with God by loving each other, not through perfect and constant prayer.

The Prayer of Recollection

The final chapter on the fourth dwelling of St Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle is about the Prayer of Recollection:

“This is a supernatural recollection. It’s not about sitting in the dark or closing your eyes or being subject to any external things. The eyes close of their own accord and the soul simply desires solitude. It seems that without any intervention a temple is being built through this supernatural recollection where the soul can go to pray. The senses and other external things begin to lose their hold, and the soul starts to recover what she has lost.”

She emphasizes that to enter the Prayer of Recollection we have to stop trying to think, and to just wait for God to bring us in. She uses an image of a beggar begging a king, and after the request the beggar simply waits, with head bowed, for the king’s answer. Waiting with patience, listening for an answer. We can’t achieve the Prayer of Recollection, but God can grant it to us. She touches on the aqueducts / springs image from the previous chapter – the Prayer of Recollection is when the flow of the spring increases, and God enlarges the soul to receive it.

She also spends some time explaining why she believes it is best not to try to curb or control our thoughts during prayer. I think it all has to do with encouraging detachment, which is a higher goal than mind / thought control. She lists a few points to support her position:

“The first reason is that, in this work of the spirit, it is the one who thinks less and has the desire to do less that accomplishes more…. By trying not to think, we hopelessly stimulate the imagination.”

“The second reason is that all these inner activities are gentle and serene. To do anything painful would do more harm than good. What I mean by painful is anything that we try to coerce ourselves into doing.”

“The third reason is that the harder you try not to think of anything, the more aroused your mind will become and you will think even more.”

“The fourth is that what is most essential is that we remember God and forget ourselves, and that we honor him and relinquish our own pleasure and comfort. But how can we forget outselves when we are being obsessively careful not to stir our minds or desires?”

All of this reminds me of what has been written by Thomas Keating – to proceed in contemplative prayer there has to be an ‘unloading of the subconscious.’ He calls this Divine Psychotherapy – an apt description (!)

St Teresa also warns of some false signs of the Prayer of Recollection. Some people, she says, may stay enraptured in a trance for hours, their health deteriorates, and they withdraw from the community. These are not results of the Prayer of Recollection, but of a spirit of evil that is leading them away from God. She reminds us that in the true presence of God there may be inner and outer langour, but there will be no languishing in the soul. This true presence of God does not wear us down or create any particular bodily sensations.