Six Books for the Journey – Course 4 week 6

 

HENRI NOUWEN -  THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON

DLT 1994

 

Leaving home

“Leaving home is, then, much more than an historical event bound to time and place. It is a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that I am indeed carved in the palms of God’s hands and hidden in the shadows. Leaving home means ignoring the truth that God has “fashioned me in secret, moulded me in the depths of the earth and knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one.

Home is the center of my being where I can hear the voice that says “You are my Beloved, on you my favour rests” – the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam; the same voice that speaks to all children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light.” P.37

 

The voices of self-improvement and self-effort that lead to guilt and overwork and over effort, leading Nouwen into the far country

“As long as I remain in touch with the voice that calls me the Beloved, those questions and counsels are quite harmless. Parents, friends, and teachers, even those who speak to me through the media, are mostly very sincere in their concerns. Their warnings and advice are well intended. In fact, they can be limited human expressions of an unlimited divine love. But when I forget that voice of the first unconditional love, then these innocent suggestions can easily start dominating my life and pull me into the “distant country”. It is not very hard for me to know when this is happening. Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonisms, and rivalries are the obvious signs that I have left home. And that happens quite easily. When I pay careful attention to what goes on in my mind from moment to moment, I come to the disconcerting discovery that there are very few moments during my day when I am really free from these dark emotions, passions and feelings” p 41

 

“I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found. Why do I keep ignoring the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere? Why do I keep leaving home where I am called a child of God, the Beloved of my Father? I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God has given me – my health, my intellectual and emotional gifts – and keep using them to impress people, receive affirmation and praise, and compete for rewards, instead of developing them for the glory of God. Yes I often carry them off to a “distant country” and put them in the service of an exploiting world that does not know their true value. It’s almost as if I want to prove myself and to my world that I do not need God’s love, that I can make a life on my own, that I want to be fully independent. Beneath it all is the great rebellion, the radical “No” to the Father’s love, the unspoken curse: “I wish you were dead”. The prodigal son’s “No” reflects Adam’s original rebellion: his rejection of the God in whose love we are created and by whose love we are sustained. It is the rebellion that places me outside the garden, out of reach of the tree of life. It is the rebellion that makes me dissipate myself in a “distant country”.” P.43

 

“The sequence of events is quite predictable. The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world.” P 47

 

NOUWEN’S ROMANTIC OBSSESSION THAT NEARLY GOT THE BETTER OF HIM

“A few years ago,  I, myself, was very concretely confronted with a the choice: to return or not to return. A friendship that at first seemed promising and life-giving gradually pulled me farther and farther away from home until I finally found myself completely obsessed by it. In a spiritual sense, I found myself squandering all I had been given by my father to keep the friendship alive. I couldn’t pray any longer. I had lost interest in my work and found it increasingly hard to pay attention to other people’s concerns. As much as I realised how self-destructive my thoughts and actions were, I kept being drawn by my love-hungry heart to deceptive ways of gaining a sense of self-worth.

Then, when finally the friendship broke down completely, I had to choose between destroying myself or trusting that the love I was looking for did, in fact, exist…back home! A voice, weak as it seemed, whispered that no human being would ever be able to give me the love I craved, that no friendship, no intimate relationship, no community would ever be able to satisfy the deepest needs of my wayward heart. That soft but persistent voice spoke to me about my vocation, my early commitments, the many gifts I had received in my father’s house. That voice called me “son”.

The anguish of abandonment was so biting that it was hard, almost impossible, to believe that voice. But friends, seeing my despair, kept urging me to step over my anguish and to trust that there was someone waiting for me at home. Finally, I chose for containment instead of more dissipation and went to a place where I could be alone. There, in my solitude, I started to walk home slowly and hesitantly, hearing ever more clearly the voice that says “You are my Beloved, on you my favour rests”.

This painful, yet hopeful, experience brought me to the core of the spiritual struggle for the right choice. God says “I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you may live in the love of Yahweh your God, obeying his voice, holding fast to him” Indeed, it is a question of life or death. Do we accept the rejection of the world that imprisons us, or do we claim the freedom of the children of God? We must choose.” P 50

 

The choice of being God’s son is a matter of choice

 

“The choice for my own sonship, however, is not an easy one. The dark voices of my surrounding world try to persuade me that I am no good and that I can only become good by earning my goodness through “making it” up the ladder of success. These voices lead me quickly to forget the choice that calls me “my son, the Beloved”, reminding me of my being loved independently of any acclaim or accomplishment. These dark voices drown out that gentle, soft, light-giving voice that keeps calling me “my favourite one”; they drag me to the periphery of my existence and make me doubt that there is a loving God waiting for me at the very center of my being”. P 51

 

The difficulty of receiving forgiveness

“One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness. There is something in us humans that keeps us clinging to our sins and prevents us from letting God erase our past and offer us a completely new beginning. . Sometimes it even seems as though I want to prove to God that my darkness is too great t overcome. While God wants to restore me to the full dignity of sonship, I keep insisting that I will settle for being a hired servant. But do I truly want to be so totally forgiven that a completely new way of living becomes possible? Do I trust myself and such a radical reclamation? Do I want to break away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrender myself so absolutely to God’s love that a new person can emerge? Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing. As long as I want to do even a part of that myself, I end up with partial solutions, such as becoming a hired servant. As a hired servant, I can still keep my distance, still revolt, reject, strike, run away or complain about my pay. As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.” P 53

 

We must follow the steps of the Beatitudes

 

“Jesus goes up onto the mountain, gathers his disciples around him, and says “How blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for uprightness, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness. These words present a portrait of the child of God. It is a self-portrait of Jesus, the Beloved Son. It is also a portrait of me as I must be. The Beatitudes offer me the simplest route for the journey home, back into the house of my Father. And along the route I will discover the joys of the second childhood: comfort, mercy, and an ever clearer vision of God. And as I reach home and feel the embrace of my Father, I will realize that not only heaven will be mine to claim, but that the earth as well will become my inheritance, a place where I can live in freedom with obsessions and compulsions.” P 55

 

 

The Older Brother – maybe symbolic of many clergy?

“The parable that Rembrandt painted might well be called “The Parable of the Lost Sons”. Not only did the younger son, who left home to look for freedom and happiness in a distant country, get lost, but the one who stayed home also become a lost man. Exteriorly he did all the things a good son is supposed to do, but, interiorly, he wandered far away from his father. He did his duty, worked hard every day, and fulfilled all his obligations but became increasingly unhappy and unfree.

It is hard for me to concede that this bitter, resentful, angry man might be closer to me in a spiritual way than the lustful younger brother. Yet the more I think about the elder son, the more I recognise myself in him. As the eldest son in my own family, I know well what it feels like to have to be a model son.” P 69

 

“The elder son…did all the right things. He was obedient, dutiful, law-abiding, and hardworking. People respected him, admired him, praised him, and likely considered him a model son. Outwardly the elder son was faultless. But when confronted by his father’s joy at the return of his young brother, a dark power erupts in him and boils to the surface. Suddenly, there becomes glaringly visible a resentful, proud, unkind, selfish person, one that had remained deeply hidden, even though it had been growing stronger and more powerful over the years.

Looking deeply into myself and then around me at the lives of other people, I wonder which does more damage, lust or resentment? There is so much resentment amount the “just” and the “righteous”. There is so much judgement, condemnation and prejudice among the “saints”. Thereis so much frozen anger among the people who are so concerned about avoiding “sin”.

The lostness of the resentful “saints” is so hard to reach precisely because it is so closely wedded to the desire to be good and virtuous. I know, from my own life, how diligently I have tried to be good, acceptable, likeable, and a worthy example for others. There was always the conscious effort to avoid the pitfalls of sin and the constant fear of giving in to temptation. But with all of that there came a seriousness, a moralistic intensity – and even a touch of fanaticism – that made it increasingly difficult to feel at home in my Father’s house. I became less free, less spontaneous, less playful and others came to see me more and more as a somewhat “heavy” person.

When I listen carefully to the words with which the elder son attacks his father  - self-righteous, self-pitying, jealous words – I hear a deeper complaint. It is the complaint that comes from a heart that feels it never received what it was due. It is the complaint expressed in countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways, forming a bedrock of human resentment. It is the complaint that cries out; “I tried so hard, worked so long, did so much, and still I have not received what others get so easily. Why do people not thank me, not invite me, not play with me, not honour me, while they pay so much attention to the those who take life so easily and so casually?” p.72

“Returning home from a lustful escapade seems so much easier than returning home from a cold anger that has rooted itself in the deepest corners of my being. My resentment is not something that can be easily distinguished and dealt with rationally.

It is far more pernicious, something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue. Isnt it good to be obedient, dutiful, law-abiding, hardworking and self-sacrificing? And still it seems that my resentments and complaints are miraculously tied to such praiseworthy attitudes. This connection often makes me despair. At the very moment I want to speak or act out of my most generous self, I get caught in anger or resentment. And it seems that just as I want to be most selfless, I find myself obsessed about being loved. Just when I do my utmost to accomplish a task well, I find myself questioning why others do not give themselves as I do.  Just when I think I am capable of overcoming my temptations, I feel envy towards those who give in to theirs. It seems that wherever my virtuous self is, there also is the resentful complainer.

Here, I am faced with my own true poverty. I am totally unable to root out my resentments. They are so deeply anchored in the soil of my inner self that pulling them out seems like self-destruction. How to weed out these resentments without uprooting the virtues as well?” p. 76

“I can only be healed from above, from where God reaches down. What is impossible for me is possible for God. “With God, everything is possible.” P 76

 

Is there a way out?
“I don’t think there is – at least no on my wide. It often seems the more I try to disentangle myself from the darkness, the darker it becomes. I need light, but that light has to conquer my darkness, and that I cannot bring about myself. I cannot forgive myself. I cannot make myself feel loved. By myself I cannot leave the land of my anger. I cannot bring myself home nor can I create communion on my own. I can desire it, hope for it, wait for it, yes, pray for it. But my true freedom I cannot fabricate for myself. That must be given for me. I am lost. I must be found and brought home by the shepherd who goes out to me. The story of the prodigal son is the story of a God who goes searching for me and who doesn’t rest until he has found me. He urges and he pleads. He begs me to stop clinging to the powers of death and let myself be embraced by arms that will carry me to the place where I will find the life I most desire”. P 83

 

And the solution for Nouwen is as follows:

 

“There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude because God has appeared in my darkness, urged me to come home, and declared in a voice filled with affection “You are with me always, and all I have is yours”. Indeed, I can choose to dwell in the darkness in which I stand, point to those who are seemingly better off than I, lament about the many misfortunes that have plagued me in the past, and thereby wrap myself up in my resentment. But I don’t have to do this. There is the option to look into the eyes of the One who came out to search for me and see therein all that I am and all I have is pure gift calling for gratitude.

The choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort. But each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious. Because every gift I acknowledge reveals another and another until, finally, even the most normal, obvious, and seemingly mundane event or encounter proves to be filled with grace. There is an Estonian proverb which says: “Who does not thank for little will not thank for much”. Acts of gratitude make one grateful because, step by step, they reveal that all is grace.

Both trust and gratitude require the courage to take risks because distrust and resentment, in their need to keep their claim on me, keep warning me how dangerous it is to let go of my careful calculations and guarded predictions. At many points I have to make a leap of faith to let trust and gratitude have a chance: to write a gentle letter to someone who will not forgive me, make a call to someone who has rejected me, speak a word of healing to someone who cannot do the same.

The leap of faith always means loving without expecting to be loved in return, giving without wanting to receive, inviting without hoping to be invited, holding without asking to be held. And every time I make a little leap, I catch a glimpse of the One who runs out to me and invites me into his joy, the joy in which I can find not only myself but also my brothers and sisters. Thus the disciplines of trust and gratitude reveal the God who searches for me, burnning with desire to take away all my resentments and complaints and to let me sit at his side at the heavenly banquet.” P. 86

 

“Resentments and complaints, deep as they may seem, can vanish in the face of him in whom the full light of Sonship is visible” p 88

 

 

THE FATHER

 

“Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing on anyone but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless.

In Latin, to bless is benedicere, which means literally: saying good things. The Father wants to say, more with his touch than with his voice, good things of his children. He has no desire to punish them. They have already been punished excessively by their own inner or outer waywardness. The Father wants simply to let them know that the love they have searched for in such distorted ways has been, is and always will be there for them. The Father wants to say, more with his hands than with his mouth: “You are my Beloved, on you my favour rests”. He is the shepherd, “feeding his flock, gathering his lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast” p.96

“The father does not even give his son a chance to apologize. He pre-empts his son’s begging by spontaneous forgiveness and puts aside his pleas as completely irrelevant in the light of the joy at his return. But there is more. Not only does the father forgive without asking questions and joyfully welcoming his lost son home, but he cannot wait to give him new life, life in abundance. So strongly does God desire to give life to his returning son that he seems almost impatient. Nothing is good enough. The very best must be given to him. While the son is prepared to be treated as a hired servant, the father calls for the robe reserved for a distinguished guest; and although the son no longer feels worthy to be called son, the father gives him a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet to honour him as his beloved son and restore him as his heir.” p.111

 

THE ONGOING JOURNEY

“People who come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. They discover that there are people who heal each other’s wounds, forgive each other’s offences, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God’s glory.

Every moment of each day I have the chance to choose between cynicism and joy. Every thought I have can be cynical or joyful. Every word I speak can be cynical or joyful. Every action can be cynical or joyful. Increasingly I am aware of all these possible choices, and increasingly I discover that every choice for joy in turn reveals more joy and offers more reason to make life a true celebration in the house of the Father.

As the returned child of God, living in the Father’s house, God’s joy is mine to claim. There is seldom a minute in my life that I am not tempted by sadness, melancholy, cynicism, dark moods, sombre thoughts, morbid speculations and waves of depression. And often I allow them to cover up the joy of my Father’s house. But when I truly believe that I have already returned and that my Father has already dressed me with a cloak, ring and sandals, I can remove the mask of the sadness from my heart and dispel the lie it tells me about my true self and claim the truth with the inner freedom of the child of God.” P 118

Six Books for the Journey – Course 4 week 5

DEVOTIONAL CLASSICS – Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith – Hodder and Stoughton  published 1993  PART 2

 

THOMAS MERTON  (1915-1968)

 

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER

 

We need to be realistic about our prayers

“People who try to pray and meditate above their proper level, who are too eager to reach what they believe to be a “high degree of prayer”, get away from the truth and from reality. In observing themselves and trying to convince themselves of their advance, they become imprisoned in themselves. Then when they realize that grace has left them, they are caught in their emptiness and futility and remain helpless. Acedoa (sloth or apathy in spirit) follows the enthusiasm of pride and spiritual vanity. A long course in humility and compunction is the remedy!

We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.” P 89

 

JULIAN OF NORWICH    (1343-1413)

Revelations of Divine Love

 

“Just as our flesh is covered by clothing, and our blood is covered by our flesh, so are we, soul and body, covered and enclosed by the goodness of God. Yet, the clothing and the flesh will pass away, but the goodness of God will always remain and will remain closer to us than our own flesh.

God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular, that it clings to his goodness. For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking upon his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our soul. For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. It is only with the help of his grace that we are able to persevere in spiritual contemplation with endless wonder at his high, surpassing, immeasurable love which our Lord in his goodness has for us. Therefore we may ask from our Lover to have all of him that we desire. For it is our nature to long for him, and it is his nature to long for us. In this life we can never stop loving him.

I learned a great lesson of love in this blessed vision. For of all things, contemplating and loving the Creator made my soul seem less in its own sight and filed it full with reverent fear and true meekness and with much love for my fellow Christians” p 101

 

HENRI NOUWEN

 

From  “MAKING ALL THINGS NEW”

 

“The spiritual life is a gift. It is the gift of the Holy Sirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God’s love. But to say that being lifted up in the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean that we wait passively until the gift is offered to us.

Jesus tells us to set our hearts on the kingdom. Setting our hearts on something involves not only serious aspiration but also strong determination.  A spiritual life requires human effort. The forces that keep pulling us back into a worry-filled life are from easy to overcome.

“How hard it is” Jesus exclaims “…to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10.22). And to convince us of the need for hard work he says “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 16.24)

Here we touch the question of discipline in the spiritual life. A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The practice of a spiritual discipline makes us more sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God. The prophet Elijah did not encounter God in the mighty wind or in the earthquake or in the fire, but in the small voice (see 1 Kings 19.9-13). Through the practice of a spiritual discipline we become attentive to that small voice and willing to respond when we hear it” p 135

“A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear. When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire, which means “listening”. A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance.

A spiritual discipline therefore is the concentrated effort to create some inner and outer space in our lives, where this obedience can be practiced. Through a spiritual discipline we prevent the world from filling our lives to such an extent that there is no place left to listen. A spiritual discipline sets us free to pray or, to say it better, allows the Spirit of God to pray in us.” P 136

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOLITUDE

“Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. Solitude begins with a time and a place for God, and him alone. If we really believe not only that God exists but also that he is actively present in our lives – healing, teaching and guiding – we need to set aside a time and a space to give him our undivided attention.  Jesus says “Go to your private room, and, when you have shut your door, pray to the Father who is in that secret place” (Matthew 6.6)

 

“The discipline of solitude allows us gradually to come in touch with his hopeful presence of God in our lives, and allows us also to taste even now the beginnings of the joy and peace which belong to the new heaven and the new earth” p 139

 

FRANK LAUBACH (1884-1970)

Letters by a modern mystic – living in the presence of God

 

“We used to sing a song in the church in Benton which I liked, but which I never really practiced until now. It runs

“Moment by moment, I’m kept in his love;

Moment by moment, I’ve life from aove

Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine

Moment by moment, O Lord I am thine”

It is exactly that “moment by moment” every waking moment, surrender, responsiveness, obedience, sensitiveness, pliability, “lost in His love”, that I now have the mind-bent First to be like Jesus. Second, to respond to God as a  violon responds to the bow of the master. Open your soul and entertain the glory of God and after a while that glory will be reflected in the world about you and in the very clouds above your head.

I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in the little things is what astonishes  me. I seem to make sure of only one thing now, and every other thing “takes care of itself” or I prefer to say what is more true, God takes care of all the rest. My part is to live in this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to his will. To make this hour gloriously rich. This seems to be all I need to think about.”

HAVING A MIND THAT IS SET ON GOD

“It is a will act. I compel my mind to open straight out toward God. I wait and listen with determined sensitiveness. I fix my attention there, and sometimes it requires a long time early in the morning to attain that mental state. I determine not to get out of bed until that mindset, that concentration upon God, is settled. It also requires determination to keep it there. After a while, perhaps, it will become a habit, and a sense of effort will grow less. But why do I harp on this inner experience? Because I feel convinced that for me and for you who read there lie ahead undiscovered continents of spiritual living compared with which we are infants in arms.

But how “practical” is this for the average man? It seems now to me that yonder plowman could be like Calixto Sanidad, when he was a lonesome and mistreated plowboy, “with my eyes on the furrow, and my hands on the lines, but my thoughts on God”. The millions at looms and lathes could make the hours glorious. Some hour spent by some night watchman might be the most glorious ever lived on earth” p 176

 

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546)

 

“It follows that one who prays correctly never doubts that the prayer will be answered, even if the very thing for which one prays is not given. For we are to lay our need before God in prayer but not prescribe to God a measure, manner, time or place. …

When we pray we should keep in mind all of the shortcomings and excesses we feel, and pour them out freely to God, our faithful Father, who is ready to help. If you do not know or recognize your needs, or think you have none, then you are in the worst possible place. The greatest trouble we can ever know is thinking that we have no trouble for we have become hardhearted and insensible to what is inside of us.”

 

JEAN-NICHOLAS GROU  (1730-1803)

“We know in general that prayer is a religious act, but when it comes to praying we easily forget that it is a supernatural act which is therefore beyond our own strength and can only be performed by the inspiration and help of grace. As St Paul says “Not that we are competent to claim anything from ourselves, but our competence comes from God.” (2 Cor 3.5). As St Augustine says, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Knowing this is the essence of prayer. The posture of our body and the words we use have no significance in themselves and are only pleasing to God as they express the feelings of the heart. For it is the heart that prays, it is to the voice of the heart that God listens, and it is the heart that he answers. When we speak of the heart, we mean the most spiritual part of us. In the Scriptures, prayer is always ascribed to the heart, for it is the heart that God teaches and it is through the heart that he enlightens the mind.” P 205

 

 

 

 

GREGORY OF NYSSA (331-396)

From “The Life of Moses”

“This is pure perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because like slaves we servile fear punishment, nor to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some business-like arrangement. On the contrary, disregarding all those things for which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worth of honour and desire. This, as I have said, is the perfection of life.” P 229

 

 

RICHARD ROLLE (1290 – 1349)

 

“I cannot tell you how surprised I was the first time I felt my heart begin to warm. It was real warmth, too, not imaginary, and it felt as if it were actually on fire. I was astonished at the way the heat surged up and how this new sensation brought great and unexpected comfort. I had to keep feeling my breast to make sure there was no physical reason for it.

But once I realised that it came entirely from within, that this fire of love had no cause, material or sinful, but was the gift of my Maker, I was absolutely delighted, and wanted my love to be even greater. And this longing was all the more urgent because of the delightful effect and the interior sweetness which this spiritual flame fed into my soul. Before the infusion of this comfort, I had never thought that we exiles could possibly have known such warmth, so sweet was the devotion it kindled. It set my soul aglow as if a real fire was burning there.” P. 234

 

“But some things are opposed to charity: carnal, sordid things which beguile a mind at peace. And sometimes in this bitter exile physical need and strong human affection obtrude into this warmth, to disturb and quench this flame (which metaphorically I call “fire” because it burns and enlightens). They cannot take away what is irremovable, of course, because this is something which has taken hold of my heart.

Yet because of these things this cheering warmth is for a while absent. It will reappear in time though until it does, I am going to be spiritually frozen, and because I am missing what I have become accustomed to, will feel myself barren. It is then that I want to recapture that awareness of inner fire which my whole being, physical as well as spiritual, so much approves; with it, it knows itself to be secure.” P 234

 

 

 

A heart focussed on God

“Everyone of us who live in this life of ours knows that we cannot be filled with a love of eternity or anointed with the sweet oil of heaven unless we are truly converted to God. Before we can experience even a little of God’s love, we must be really turned to him, and in mind at least, be turned from every earthly thing. The turning indeed is a matter of duly ordered love, so that, first, we love what we ought to love and not what we ought not, and, second, our love kindles more towards the former than to the latter.

God is to be loved, of course, most of all : heavenly things too are much to be loved; but little love, or at least no more than is necessary, may be given to earthly things. This surely is the way we turn to Christ, to desire nothing but him. To turn away from those “good things” of the world, which pervert rather than protect those who love them, involves the withering of physical lust and the hatred of any wickedness of any sort. So you will find there are people who have no taste for earthly things and who deal with mundane matters no more than is absolutely necessary.”  P. 236

 

THOMAS A KEMPIS (1380-1471)

“Patience is necessary in this life because so much of life is fraught with adversity. No matter how hard we try, our lives will never be without strife and grief. Thus, we should not strive for a peace that is without temptation, of for a life that never feels adversity.  Peace is not found by escaping temptations, but by being tried by them. We will have discovered peace when we have been tried and come through the trial of temptation.

“But”, you may say, “what about those who find such pleasure and delight when they give in to temptations?” To be sure there is pleasure for them, but how long does it last? It is like smoke – it vanishes quickly. Soon even the memory of the joy is gone. They will never find rest, and they will live in bitterness and weariness and fear.

The very thing they think will bring them joy will bring them sorrow: that which they think will bring them pleasure will bring them only pain. Because of their blindness and numbness they may never see or feel how miserable they are. They may not even know that their soul is slowly dying.

But, if you want to have true delight, here is the way: have contempt for worldly things, and all lower delights, and rich consolation will, in turn, be given to you. In proportion as you withdraw yourself from the love of these things, so you will find consolations from God much more sweet and potent.

At first this will be difficult. Long-standing habits will resist, but they will be vanquished in time by a better habit – if you persevere! The flesh will cry out, but it will be restrained by the Spirit. The devil will try to stir you up and provoke you, but he will run away the moment you begin to pray. And above all, try to engage in useful work. In doing so, the devil is prevented from having access to you.

 

Sometimes it is good for us to have troubles and hardships, for they often call us back to our own hearts. Once there, we know ourselves to be strangers in this world, and we know that we may not believe in anything that it has to offer. Sometimes it is good that we put up with people speaking against us, and sometimes it is  good that we be thoughts of as bad and flawed even when we do good things and have good intentions. Such troubles are often aids to humility, and they protect us from pride. Indeed, we are sometimes better at seeking God when people have nothing but bad things to say about us and when they refuse to give us credit for the good things we have done! That being the case, we should so root ourselves in God that we do not need to look for comfort anywhere else.

Finally, I want to teach you the way of peace and true liberty. There are four things you must do. First, strive to do another’s will rather than your own. Second, choose always to have less than more. Third, seek the lower places in life, dying the need to be recognised and important. Fourth, always and in everything desire that the will of God may be completely fulfilled in you. The person who tries this will be treading the frontiers of peace and rest.”  P . 275

 

WILLIAM LAW (1686-1761)

“Now if we conclude that we must be pious in our prayers, we must also conclude that we must be pious in all the other aspects of our lives. For there is no reason why we should make God the rule and measure of our prayers, why we should look wholly unto him and pray according to his will, and yet not make him the rule and measure of all the other actions of our life. For any ways of life, any employment of our talents whether of our bodies, our time, or money that are not strictly according to the will of God, that are not done to his glory are simply absurdities, and our prayers fail because they are not according to the will of God. For there is no other reason why our prayers should be according to the will of God unless our lives may also be of the same nature. Our lives should be as holy and heavenly as our prayers. It is our strict duty to live by reason, to devote all of the action of our lives to God, to walk before him in wisdom and holiness and all heavenly conversation, and to do everything in his name and for his glory. If our prayers do not lead us to this, they are of no value no matter how wise or heavenly. No such prayers  would be absurdities. They would be like prayers for wings though we never intended to fly.

If we are going to pray for the Spirit of God we must make that Spirit the rule of all our actions. Just as it is our duty to look wholly unto God in our prayers, so it is our duty to live wholly unto God in our lives. But we cannot live wholly unto God unless we live unto him in all the ordinary actions of our life, unless he is the rule and measure of all our ways, just as we cannot pray wholly unto God unless our prayers look wholly unto him.

This is the reason that we see such ridicule in the lives of many people. Many people are strict when it comes to times and places of devotion, but when the service and the church is over, they live like those that seldom or never come there. In their way of life, their manner of spending their time and their money,  in their cares and fears, in their pleasure and indulgences, in their labours and diversions, they are like the rest of the world. This leads the world to make light of those who are devout because they see their devotion goes no further than their prayers. When their prayers are over, they stop living unto God until the next time they pray. In between they live with the same attitudes and desires as other people. This is the reason why they are scoffed at by worldly people, not because they are really devoted to God, but because they appear to have no other devotion than their occasional prayers.

It is very observable that there is not one command in all the gospel for public worship. One could say that it is the duty least insisted upon in Scripture. Frequent church attendance is never so much as mentioned in all the New Testament. But the command to have a faith which governs the ordinary actions of our lives is found in almost every verse of Scripture. Our blessed Saviour and his Apostles were very intent on giving us teachings that relate to daily life. They teach us: to renounce the world and be different in our attitudes and ways of life; to renounce all its goods, to fear none of its evils, to rejects its joys and have no value for its happiness; to live as pilgrims in spiritual watching, in  holy fear, and heavenly aspiring after another life; to take up our cross daily, to deny ourselves, to profess the blessedness of mourning, to seek the blessedness of poverty of sprit; to forsake the pride and vanity of riches, to take no thought for the morrow, to live in the profoundest state of humility, to rejoice in worldly sufferings; to reject the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life; to bear injuries, to forgive and bless our enemies and to love all people as God loves them; to give up our whole hearts and affections to God, and to strive to enter through the straight gate into a life of eternal glory.”  P .283

“If self-denial is a condition for salvation, all who desire to be saved must make self-denial a part of everyday life. If humility is a Christian duty, then the everyday life of a Christian must show forth humility. If we are called to care for the sick, the naked, and the imprisoned, these expressions of love must be a constant effort in our lives. If we are to love our enemies, our daily life must demonstrate that love. If we are called to be thankful, to be wise, to be holy, they must show forth in our lives. If we are to be new people in Christ, then we must show our newness to the world. If we are to follow Christ, it must be in the way we spend each day”. P 284

 

 

TERESA OF AVILA  (1515-1582)

FROM THE INTERIOR CASTLE

 

“God looks into our souls and perceives our desires. If our desires are good, we cannot fail. Nevertheless, the assaults of the devils that are made upon the soul are terrible. Again, this is why the soul suffers more at this stage than does the beginner. Whereas before the soul was somewhat deaf and blind and had no will to resist, now it has begun to hear and see and resist as one who is about to gain victory.

It is at this stage that the devils will attack the soul with the earthly pleasures of this world, like snakes who bite with deadly poison. They trick the soul into thinking that such pleasures will last an eternity; they remind the soul of the high esteem in which it is held in the world; they take place before it the many friends and relatives who will disagree with the manner of life you have now begun.

All this is the work of the venomous snakes of sin that bite us early in our journey. Life one who is bitten by a snake, our whole body swells up with the poison. Only the great mercy of God will preserve us. The soul will certainly suffer great trials at this time, especially if the devil sees that its character and habits are such that it is ready to make further progress; all the powers of hell will combine to drive it back again.

That is why it is very important for us to associate with others who are walking in the right way – not only those who are where we are in the journey, but also those who have gone further. Those who have drawn close to God have the ability to bring us closer to him, for in a sense they take us with them. Let us firmly resolve not to lose the battle we fight. For if the devil sees that we are willing to lose our life and our peace, and that nothing can entice us back to the first room, he will soon cease from troubling us But we must be resolute, for we fight with devils, and thus there is no better weapon than the Cross.” P .291

 

“If we go astray at the beginning and want the Lord to do our will and lead us as our desires dictate, how can we be building on a firm foundation? I must remind you that it is the Lord’s will that we should be tested and that even allows evil vipers to bite us. When we are afflicted with evil thoughts that we cannot cast out, or when we enter a spiritual desert that we cannot find our way  out of, God is teaching us how to be on our guard in the future and to see if we are really grieved at having offended him.

If then you sometimes fall, do not lose heart. Even more, do not cease striving to make progress from it, for even out of your fall God will bring some good….Sometimes God allows us to fall in order to reveal to us our own sinfulness and to show us what harm comes as a result of sin. Our sins can have the effect of leading us back to God and striving all the more.”

Six Books for the Journey – Course 4 week 4

DEVOTIONAL CLASSICS – Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith – Hodder and Stoughton  published 1993

 

 

CS Lewis  1900-1963  “Mere Christianity”

 

“The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We take as the starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that something else – call it “morality” or “decent behaviour” or “the good of society” – has claims on this self: claims which interefere with its own desires. What we mean by “being good” is giving in to those claims. Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out to be what we call “wrong”: well we must give them up. Other things turn out “wrong”; well, we must give them up. Other things turn out to be what we call “right”; well, we shall have to do them.

But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right but he does hope that there will been left over for him to live on. Because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point.

As long as we are thinking that way, one or the other of two results is likely to follow. Either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. For make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier.

In the end you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, “live for others” but always in a discontented, grumbling way – always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself. And you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself; my own will shall become yours.”

Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do. You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross” – in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”. He means both. And one can just see why both are true.” P 5

Jesus “never talked vague idealistic gas. When He said, “Be perfect”, He meant it, He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder – in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad!” p 7

 

 

Dallas Willard (1935-2013)

 

“The word “disciple” occurs 269 times in the New Testament. “Christian” is found only three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to the disciples…The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ.” P 13

“The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian – especially padded, textured, streamlined and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God.” P 13

 

“In place of Christ’s plan, historical drift has substituted “Make converts (to a particular faith and practice) and baptize them into church membership.” This causes two great omissions from the Great Commission to stand out. Most important, we start by omitting the making of disciples or enrolling people as Christ’s students, when we should let all else wait for that. We also omit the step of taking our converts through training that will bring them ever increasingly to do what Jesus directed”. P 14

 

The cost of non discipleship

“In 1937 Dietrich Bonhoeffergave the world his book The Cost of Discipleship. It was a masterful attack on “easy Christianity” or “cheap grace” but it did not set aside – perhaps it even enforced – the view of discipleship as a costly spiritual excess, and only for those especially driven or called to it. It was right to point out that one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder where he or she stands with God. But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus.

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10.10). The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul…The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfilment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane.” P 17

 

 

Jonathan Edwards (1703- 1758)

 

Religious Affections

“The nature of human beings is to be inactive unless influenced by some affection: love or hatred, desire, hope, fear etc. These affections are the “spring of action”, the things that set us moving in our lives, that move us to engage in activities. When we look at the world, we see that people are exceedingly busy. It is their affections that keep them busy.

If we were to take away their affections, the world would be motionless and dead; there would be no such thing as activity. It is the affection we call covetousness that moves a person to seek worldly profits; it is the affection we call ambition that moves a person a person to purse worldly glory; it is the affection we call lust that moves a person to pursue sensual delights. Just as worldly affections are the spring of worldly actions, so the religious affections are the spring of religious actions.

A person who has a knowledge of doctrine and theology only – without religious affection – has never engaged in true religion. Nothing is more apparent than this – our religion takes root within us only as deep as our affections attract it. There are thousands who hear the Word of God, who hear great and exceedingly important truths about themselves and their lives, and yet all they hear has no effect upon them, makes no change in the way they live.

The reason is this; they are not affected with what they hear. There are many who hear about the power, the holiness and the wisdom of God; about Christ and the great things that he has done for them and his gracious invitation to them; and yet remain exactly as they are in life and in practice.

I am bold in saying this, but I believe that no one is ever changed, either by doctrine, by hearing the Word, or by the preaching or teaching of another, unless the affections are moved by these things. No one ever seeks salvation, no one ever cries for wisdom, no one ever wrestles with God, no one ever kneels in prayer or flees from sin, with a heart that remains unaffected. In a word, there is never any great achievement by the things of religion without a heart deeply affected by those things.” P 24

 

Edwards concentrates on these feelings – hope, love, holy desire, religious sorrow, zeal etc.

Francis De Sales (1567-1622)

 

On the sweetness that comes through repentance and purgation

“The world sees devout people as they pray, fast, endure injuries, take care of the sick, give alms to the poor, keep vigils, restrain anger, control their passions, give up sensual pleasures, and perform other actions that are rigorous by themselves and by their very nature.

But the world does not see the heartfelt inward devotion that renders all such actions pleasant, sweet and easy. Look at the bees amid the banks of thyme. They find there a very bitter juice, but when they suck it out they change it into honey because they have the ability to do so.

O worldly people! It is true that devout souls encounter great bitterness in their works of mortification, but by performing them they change them into something more sweet and delicious. Because the martyrs were devout men and women, fire, flame, wheel and sword seemed to be flowers and perfume to them. If devotion can sweeten the most cruel torments and even death itself, what must it do for virtuous actions?

Sugar sweetens green fruit and in ripe fruit corrects whatever is crude and unwholesome. Now devotion is true spiritual sugar for it removes bitterness from discipline and anything harmful from our consolations. From the poor it takes away discontent, care from the rich, grief from the oppressed, pride from the exalted, melancholy from the solitary, and facturedness from those who live in society. It serves with equal benefit as fire in winter and dew in summer. It knows how to use prosperity and how to endure want. It makes both honour and contempt useful to us. It accepts pleasure and pain with a heart that is nearly always the same, and it fills us with a marvellous sweetness.”

 

On devout persons

“I ask you to regard attentively those who are on this ladder. They are either people with angelic hearts or angels in human bodies. They are not young although they seem to be so because they are so full of vigour and spiritual agility. They have wings to soar aloft in holy prayer and they also have feet to walk among people in a holy and loving way of life. Their faces are beautiful and joyour because they accept all things meekly and mildly. Their legs, arms and heads are uncovered because in their thoughts, affections and deed they have no purpose or motive but that of pleasing God. The rest of their body is clothed but only by a decent light robe because they use the world and worldly things but do so in a most pure and proper way, taking of them only what is necessary for their condition. Such are devout persons.” P 36

 

 

 

 John of the Cross  (1542- 1591)

“At a certain point in the spiritual journey God will draw a person from the beginning stage to a more advanced stage. At this stage the person will begin to engage in spiritual exercises and grow deeper in the spiritual life.

Such souls will  likely experience what is called “the dark night of the soul”. The “dark night” is when those persons lose all the pleasure they once experienced in their devotional life.  This happens because God wants to purify them and move them on to greater heights.

After a soul has been converted by God, that soul is nurtured and caressed by the Spirit. Like a loving mother, God cares for and comforts the infant soul by feeding it spiritual milk. Such souls will find great delight in this stage. They will begin praying with great urgency and perseverance; they will engage in all kinds of religious activities because of the joy they experience in them. But there will come a time when God will bed them to grow deeper. He will remove the previous consolations from the soul in order to teach it virtue and prevent it from developing vice.”

Some magnificent observations follow leading to

 

“The problem is this: when they have received no pleasure for their devotions, they think they have not accomplished anything. This is a grave error, and it judges God unfairly. For the truth is that the feelings we receive from our devotional life are the least of its benefits. The visible and unfelt grace of God is much greater, and is beyond our comprehension.  It may be said that through their efforts to obtain consolation such souls actually lose their spirituality. For true spirituality consists in perseverance, patience, and humility. The sin of spiritual gluttony will prompt them to read more books and say more prayers, but God, in his wisdom, will deny them any consolation because he knows that to feed this desire will create an inordinate appetite and breed innumerable evils.  The Lord heals such souls through the aridity of the dark night.” P.46

 

“Let it suffice to say, then, that God perceives the imperfections within us, and because of his love for us, urges us to grow up. His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness.

In doing so he is able to take away all these vices and creates virtues within us. Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength. No soul will ever grow deep in the spirit life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night.” P 47

 

 

 

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

 

“God is entitled to our love. Why? Because he gave himself for us despite the fact that we are so undeserving. What better could he have given? If we ask why God is entitled to our love  we should answer, “Because he first loved us”. God is clearly deserving of our love especially if we consider who he is that loves us, who we are that he loves us, and how much that he loves us.

And who is God? Is he not the one to whom every spirit bears witness: “Thou art my God.”  God has no need of our worldly possessions. True love is this; that it does not seek its own interests. And how much does he love us? He so loved the world that he gave his only Son; he laid down his life for us” p 52

 

Different degrees of love

1)        Love of self for self’s sake

2)        Love of God for self’s sake

3)        Love of God for God’s sake

4)        Love of self for God’s sake

1 and 2 are easy to explain

3 is as follows

 

“In the first degree of love we love ourselves for our own sake. In the second degree of love we love God for our own sake, chiefly because he has provided for us and rescued us. But if trials and tribulations continue to come upon us, every time God brings us through, even if our hearts were made of stone, we will begin to be softened because of the grace of the Rescuer. Thus we begin to love God not merely for our own sakes but for himself.

In order to arrive at this we must continually go to God with our needs and pray. In those prayers the grace of God is tasted, and by frequent tasting it is proved to us how sweet the Lord is. Thus it happens that once God’s sweetness has been tasted, it draws us to the pure love of God more than our needs compel us to love him. Thus we begin to say, “We now love God, not for our necessity, for we ourselves tasted and know how sweet the Lord is.

When we begin to feel this, it will not be hard to fulfil the second commandment : to love our neighbour. For those who truly love God in this way also love the things of God. Also, it becomes easier to become obedient to all the commands of God. We begin to love God’s commands and embrace them. We have obtained this degree when we can say “Give praise to the Lord for he is good, not because he is good to me, but because he is good.” Thus we truly love God for God’s sake and not our own. The third degree of love is the love by which God is now loved for his very self.” P.54

Fourth Degree of Love

“Blessed are we who experience the fourth degree of love wherein we love ourselves for God’s sake. Such experiences are rare and come only for a moment. In a manner of speaking we lose ourselves as though we did not exist, utterly unconscious of ourselves and emptied of ourselves. If for even a moment we experience this kind of love, we will then know the pain of having to return to this world and its obligations as we are recalled from the state of contemplation. In turning back to ourselves we will feel as if we are suffering as we return into the mortal state in which we are called to live.” P 54

 

To conclude

“What are the four degrees of love? First we love ourselves for our own sake; since we are unspiritual and of the flesh we cannot have an interest in anything that does not relate to ourselves. When we begin to see that we cannot subsist by ourselves, we begin to seek God for our own sakes. This is the second degree of love; we love God but only for our own interests. But if we begin to worship,and come to God again and again by meditating, by reading, by prayer, and by obedience, little by little God becomes known to us through experience. We enter into a sweet familiarity with God, and by tasting how sweet the Lord is we pass into the third degree of love so that now we love God, not for our own sake, but for himself. It should be noted that in this third degree we will stand still for a very long time.” P. 55

 

Finally – “Can we attain the Fourth degree of Love”

“I am not certain that the fourth degree of love in which we love ourselves only for the sake of God may be perfectly attained in this life. But, when it does happen, we will experience the joy of the Lord and be forgetful of ourselves in a wonderful way. We are, for those moments, one mind and one spirit with God. I am on the opinion that this is what the prophet meant when he said “I will enter into the power of the Lord: O Lord, I will be mindful of thy justice alone”. He felt, certainly, that when he entered into the spiritual powers of the Lord he would have laid aside self and his whole being would, in the spirit, be mindful of the justice of the Lord alone.” P.56

 

 

Francois Fenelon (1651-1715)

“How happy are those who give themselves to God! They are delivered from their passions, from the judgements of others, from their malice, from the tyranny of their sayings, from their cold and wretched mocking, from the misfortunes which the world distributes to wealth,  from the unfaithfulness and inconstancy of friends, from the wiles and snares of the enemy, from our own weakness, from the misery and brevity of life, from the horrors of a profane death, from the cruel, remorse attachment to wicked pleasures,  and in the end from the eternal condemnation of God.

We are delivered from this countless mass of evils, because placing our wills entirely in the hands of God, we want only what God wants, and thus we find consolation in faith, and consequently hope in the midst of all our sufferings.  What weakness it would be then to fear to give ourselves to God and to undertake too soon so desirable a state!” p. 64

“What folly to fear to be too entirely God’s!  It is to fear to be too happy. It is to fear to love God’s will in all things. It is to fear to have too much courage in the crosses which are inevitable, too much comfort in God’s love, and too much detachment from the passions which make us miserable.

So let us scorn earthly things, to be wholly God’s. I am not saying that we should leave them absolutely, because when we are already living an honest and regulated life, we only need to change our heart’s depth in loving, and we shall do nearly the same things which we were doing. For God does not reverse the conditions of his people, nor the responsibilities which he himself has given them, but we, to serve God, do what we were doing to serve and pleased the world and to satisfy ourselves.

There would be only this difference, that instead of being devoured by our pride, by our overbearing passions, and by the malicious criticism of the world, we shall act instead with liberty, courage and hope in God. Confidence will animate us. The expectation of the eternal good things which are drawing near, while those here below are escaping us, will support us in the midst of our suffering. The love of God, which will make us conscious of God’s love for us, will give us wings to fly on his way and to raise us above all our troubles. If we have a hard time believing this, experience will convince us. “Come, see and taste”, said David, “how sweet is the Lord”.

Jesus Christ said to all Christians without exception, “Let him who would be my disciple carry his cross, and follow me.” The broad way leads to perdition. We must follow the narrow way which few enter. We must be born again, renounce ourselves, hate ourselves, become a child, be poor in spirit, weep to be comforted, and not be of the world which is cursed because of its scandals.

Those who are wholly God’s are always happy.  They know by experience that the yoke of the Lord is “easy and light”, that we find “rest in our souls” and that he comforts those who are weary and overburdened, as he himself has said”

“But woe unto those weak and timid souls who are divided between God and the world!  They want and they do not want. They are torn by passion and remorse at the same time. They fear the judgements of God and those of others. They have a horror of evil and a shame of good. They have the pains of virtue without tasting its sweet consolations. O how wretched they are! Ah, if they had a little courage to despite the empty talk, the cold mockings, and the rash criticism of others, what peace they would have in the bosom of God!

How dangerous it is for our salvation, how unworthy of God and ourselves, how pernicious even for the peace of our hearts, to want always to stay where we are! Our whole life was only given us to advance us by great strides towards our heavenly country. The world escapes like a delusive shadow. Eternity already advances to receive us. Why do we delay to advance while the light of the Father of mercies shines for us? Let us hasten to reach the kingdom of God.” P 66

 

ST AUGUSTINE (354-430) 

CONFESSIONS

 

Talks about the stern experience of his conversion

“And you, O Lord, never ceased to watch over my secret heart. In your stern mercy you lashed me with the twin scourge of fear and shame in case I should give way once more and the worn and slender chain should not be broken but gain new strength and bind me all the faster.

In my heart I kept saying, “Let it be now, let it be now!” and merely by saying this I was on the point of making the resolution. I was on the point of making it, but I did not succeed. Yet I did not fall back into the old state. I stood on the brink of the resolution, waiting to take fresh breath. I tried again and came a little nearer to my goal, and then a little nearer still, so that I could almost reach out and grasp it.

But I did not reach it. I could not reach out to grasp it, because I held back from the step by which I should die to death and become alive to life. My lower instincts, which had taken hold of me, were stronger than the higher, which were untried. And the closer I came to the moment which was to mark the great change in me, the ore I shrunk from it in horror. But it did not drive me back or turn me from my purpose: it merely left me hanging in suspense.” P 75

 

“I probed the hidden depths of my soul and wrung its pitiful secrets from it, and when I mustered them all before the eyes of my heart, a great storm broke within me. Somehow I flung myself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to the tears which now streamed from my eyes. For I felt that I was still the captive of my sins and in misery I kept crying, “How long shall I go on saying, “Tomorrow, tomorrow”? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?”

I was asking myself these questions, weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow in my heart, when all at once I heard the singing of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or girl I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain, “Take it and read, take it and read.” At this I looked up thinking hard whether there was any kind of game in which children used to chant words like these, but I could not remember ever hearing them before.

I stemmed  my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall. So I hurried back to the place where I had put down the book containing Paul’s epistles. I seized it and opened it and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites.” (Romans 13.13,14)

I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. I marked the place with my finger and closed the book. You converted me to yourself, so that I no longer placed any hope in this world but stood firmly upon the rule of faith.” P 78