Showing posts with label denial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label denial. Show all posts
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Internal Semiosis, Resonance, and the Interior Life
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange compared the interior life to the internal conversation that occurs in a man. If this interior life is natural, the conversation occurs simply with oneself, making oneself the ultimate referent of all experience: "As soon as a man ceases to be outwardly occupied, to talk with his fellow men, as soon as he is alone, even in the noisy streets of a great city, he begins to carry on a conversation with himself [....] If a man is fundamentally egotistical, his intimate conversation with himself is inspired by sensuality or pride." (Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans. M. Timothea Doyle, ch. 2, http://christianperfection.info/tta6.php).
At the moment that a man seeks the good in honesty, the nature of this conversation changes: "He converses with himself, for example, about what is necessary to live becomingly and to support his family. This at times preoccupies him greatly; he feels his weakness and the need of placing his confidence no longer in himself alone, but in God" (ibid.). Even in the state of grace, egoism confuses and mangles this interior conversation, pushing God out as much as possible despite the soul's clearer vision of its inadequacy and dependence on God. In fact, Garrigou-Lagrange suggests that this interior conversation cannot end and implicitly points to man's need for God as well as man's final fulfillment in God, who alone can finally satisfy this interior dialogue: "The soul must converse with someone other than itself. Why? Because it is not its own last end; because its end is the living God, and it cannot rest entirely except in Him" (ibid.).
Modern psychology at its best provides scientific precision to analytical explanations of the interior, psychological processes of the intellect and soul. Often, however, where psychology gets something correct, we find such points already explicated in the writings and experiences of the Saints, at least in nascent or unscientific form. St. Paul famously experienced the interior struggle between what he saw was good and what he hated as evil:
Perhaps a semiotic analysis of human psychology would provide some helpful insights for spiritual growth. We know from experience that when a man works on growing in self-knowledge and discernment, the unconscious aspects of his moral actions eventually come to light. We also know from the experience of the Saints that where sinful tendencies reside in these unconscious dimensions, grace and asceticism eventually purify and heal the psyche of these tendencies. Here is a simple refutation of the omnipotence of the unconscious. Transformation in Christ is where the Saint may say truly, "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).
This internal dialogue, often the source of many self-destructive tendencies, especially to despair in various forms, is nothing other than a process of "private semiosis," the internal activity of signs in the human mind as it processes its environment and itself in some unified way. Conversation is speech, and speech consists of signs; human language is nothing other than that form of sign use unique to humans: anthroposemiosis. This semiosis is private insofar as it occurs immanently in the mind, seen in its immediate, raw form only by the individual and God although it may be expressed in a mediated way to others—mediated because only we can experience the fullness of what we experience.
But sign activity, or semiosis, for humans occurs in multiple dimensions since the human alone of all animals can distinguish between signs as such and all other forms of reality, between subject and object, between actual and ideal. Much of the activity that informs our conscious semiosis is subconscious. For example, when we read a novel, we subconsciously take on the role of a reader who understands that we are entering into a fictional world. Did we make the conscious, private semiosic choice to take on this interpretive stance? No (although we could if we so chose). We switch between interpretive modes for all genres of text, and we do something similar when we enter different social settings and engage with different people. Even where there is the conscious awareness of making certain switches, for example, "I must not use vulgarity when I'm around grandma," we might tell ourselves privately, there are other aspects of this switch that we often are not aware of; for example, what is the prior condition that prompts us to tell ourselves that we ought not to use vulgarity around our elders? This prompting is a semiosic process that we might become aware of, just like we might become aware of our breathing at any moment if we so chose to pay attention and knew what to look for, but just like our breathing, these processes often remain on the subconscious level.
Perhaps we can see the distinction between conscious and subconscious precisely in terms of relation, a relation to intentional awareness or the lack thereof. Following a Lacanian line of thinking regarding the unconscious, the unconscious is precisely everything other than the conscious remaining in human experience, encompassing the aspects of the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic; this residue or overflow occurs because conscious processing of our experience always leaves something to be desired, something missing; language is often insufficient—we find ourselves at a loss for words as the saying goes. Hence analogously, just as God is precisely everything other than created, finite beings (and by extension, the concept of God is precisely a concept consisting of an amalgamation of relations by which we conceive that God is not this, nor that, nor that), so too our unconscious is everything other than consciously filtered experience through our private semiosis.
Hence the conscious, unconscious, and subconscious all converge simultaneously to create the presently processed experience of our environments. Deepening our self-knowledge allows us to identify these different strands and how they are functioning at any given moment. Perhaps this lack of self-knowledge or despair of possibly attaining to it in atheistic psychologies has led to the idea that the unconscious inescapably dominates all our behavior. There is truth to the experience that often we seem to lose control of ourselves, that our emotions seem to be out of our control, our thoughts run on endlessly, often laboriously (even St. Teresa of Avila complained about this on multiple occasions). Much of this lack of control for the average person certainly stems from a lack of self-knowledge and the tools to deal with and integrate the different dimensions of our experience. (We might also postulate that this lack of control may be the result of a sensitive temperament that is more attuned to the multiple effects of one's surrounding and/or the result of a sensitivity that comes from ascetic and mystical purification by which one is keenly aware of the different spirits affecting our behaviors, thoughts, etc.; maybe some combination of the above was the case with St. Teresa, whose almost constant contemplation bombarded her soul with new infusions of grace, overwhelming her and overflowing into the bodily dimension of her being, sometimes painfully.) With self-knowledge and discipline, these different dimension can be identified, organized, and trained even on the natural plane.
But first, we need to understand why the process of the constant bombardment of shifting emotions and internal dialogue occurs. To begin metaphysically, all being contains positive and negative dimensions, positive perfections and negative lacks due to its finite structure and the circumstances that may have vitiated its due development towards its final end. Being is simultaneously communicative and receptive, sharing its proper perfections around it and receiving the perfections of other beings, hopefully in ways complementary to its own teleological needs—e.g. rain is necessary for plant growth, but too much rain may drown the plant. Hence we may say there is complementary communication and non-complementary communication (where complementary is understood in relation to aiding a being's fulfillment of its final end).
Our relation to reality encompasses these perfections in an intentional form, and our semiosis communicates these intentional realities and perfections, which in turn constantly are those elements that bombard us. So much of this communication is occurring all the time that it seems impossible for any individual to process all of it, and we know from neuroscience just how much processing our brain does behind the scenes in order to maintain our practical functionality at any given moment. Within this bombardment is the opportunity for help or hurt. It is a common experience that we find ourselves in pain or ambient anxiety, and it seemingly arises from nowhere. Demonic influence and psychological disorder momentarily set aside for theoretical reasons in this analysis, it may very well be that a steady bombardment of non-complementary being has slowly accumulated within our souls, leading to affective experiences of pain, anxiety, etc. It may also be that this accumulation resonates in a certain way with already present stores of past accumulations of pain, going back even into early childhood or gestation. Psychology has been able to show just how influential these formative years are and how devastating they may be if a child is not given a properly nurturing upbringing.
The old children's rhyme about sticks, stones, and words never hurting us is simply a child's denial of a very painful reality, its attempt to gain control over what feels beyond its control, the overwhelming overflow of communicated being (or perhaps non-being in the sense of moral evil) leading to pain. The rhyme then seeks to contain the pain through the use of words, but this misses the point because the child clearly does not have the experience or psychological maturity or discernment in order to properly face such pain.
As different webs and spirals of semiosis accumulate in the soul by forming qualities in the manner of habits—and here I am being more speculative than before—perhaps it is precisely in this way that the soul informs the body in a secondary manner—the primary manner being that the soul provides the basic constitutive framework of this kind of living animal—, in the manner of how quality is respect to form as quantity is respect to matter. Habits, while being qualities in the soul, clearly have physical effects in the body; neural networks are formed in habits, for example. As the soul is informed by semiosic processes, so too the body responds accordingly. And perhaps the movement is reciprocal: as the body is affected by external forces beyond the soul's control, the soul is affected, or at least its full and proper expression through the body. Hence, physical and mental disabilities that impede the proper development and expression of normative human intellectual activity.
Regardless of how the above process works, the accumulations of semiotic webs within the soul, both conscious and unconscious, then lead to qualities that affect bodily development and render certain patterns of behavior easier, swifter, and accompanied by a certain spiritual and bodily delight. The quality of a soul informed by a habit and its subsequent informing of the body renders a person apt for the actualization of these habits, creating what we might call a "resonance."
Just as in acoustics, room resonance depends on the wall matter, sound, and location all interacting simultaneously to create a booming effect, or just as pitch resonances may create sympathetic vibrations when certain conditions are met, when certain semiosic processes converge in a human informed with this habitual quality, a resonance may occur, rendering the actualization of the habit immediate, facile, and delightful, perhaps even overwhelming in a certain sense.
Thus the pain of a person trapped in vice—the convergence of these semiosic processes is nothing other than what is called a temptation. At the moment of this convergence, the communication of intentional non-complementary being creates a certain resonance, striving to activate the soul, whose vicious quality renders it apt for reacting in this vicious way. Thus the psychological experience of the temptation may feel overwhelming.
Similarly, for a person formed in a virtuous habit, when the proper semiosic conditions converge, the virtue is activated, the morally good action executed with delight, sometimes with a deep relish at having accomplished the good, even simple goods.
And just as conditions may create resonance based on the qualitative predisposition of a soul formed in this habit, so too opposite conditions may resonate very poorly if at all in people with the opposite qualities respectively. Hence what used to be a temptation to a soul now is hardly a blip in its habitual, qualitative orientation towards the good; likewise, a stimulus to good may be experienced for a soul trapped in sin as painful, dissonant, and hardly moving. The semiosic communication is jarring with the quality of the soul; the being that is being communicated is not converging properly with the soul informed or disformed by these qualities. We see analogous clashes in the realm of physical organisms all the time, where external conditions and the subjective constitution of an organism or seed do not converge to lead to the flourishing of the organism.
But lest this process seem to be another form of omnipotence, shifting from the unconscious to these semiosic processes, it must be remembered that conscious semiosis in the human is the discursive reason, guiding and directing the will, creating the conditions for freedom. Clearly the freedom of a soul trapped in sin is encumbered but can never be totally destroyed without destroying discursive reason itself. Hence these semiosic processes are both the condition for freedom as well as the possibility for either its hindrance or development, just as water is a necessary condition for the growth of plant life, but too little, too much, or contaminated water will kill the plant. The will must still choose, and the will can direct the intentionality of these semiosic processes, guiding them in certain limited ways, depending on the various conditions, both external and internal. Qualities are supposed to aid the soul in the proper guidance of these processes, in the proper flourishing of the rational aspect of human nature.
Grace enters. We say that grace perfects nature. Grace is a communication in the divine life, a participation, or in other words, a relation. This is precisely semiosis on the divine level, entering through an analogous, accidental, created, physical mode into the soul. Without grace, the private semiosis of an individual would begin at conception and crash into oblivion at death. Grace thus creates a relation between the soul and God and creates an elevation of those dimensions that exist in the soul, giving them an orientation to the divine or at least the conditions that make possible the development of this orientation. Hence the accumulated semioses remain, but grace now offers and provides a "defrag" program for the soul. There is certainly an extent to which the soul may do this itself—the active purifications and ascetical stages of the spiritual life constitute this extent. But the end for which God has made man goes beyond man's natural, immanent capacities, and besides which, the wounds of sin that remain render the accumulation of harmful semioses sometimes overwhelming, something experienced sometimes as loss of total control, addiction.
The conversation, the private semiosis, may now turn to God. God's semiosis enters into the soul; the Trinity makes its dwelling in the heart. The Logos communicates the fullness of the divinity. The Holy Ghost consumes and transforms. The Father guides the soul lovingly, teaching, listening, aiding, assuring.
We also believe there is a Communion of Saints. Communion involves communication, reception, relation, a sharing, a participation. The semiosis of grace extends not only to the Deity but to those who are linked by grace to God.
These are the helps that the soul needs. Nevertheless, those resonances remain, the resonances of already formed habits. The struggle is arduous, but the soul is assured of divine assistance, a true omnipotence, the omnipotence of God and the shared, participated omnipotence of the Blessed Mother, who obtains for us all that we need. The theological virtues create wellsprings, new qualities in the soul, by which the old resonances may be combatted not only on the natural plane but also the supernatural.
Here it must be remarked one particular difficulty people have in allowing grace to establish a new, supernatural quality. Faith is the virtue by which we attain to God as revealed and revealing Truth. St. John of the Cross interestingly argues that living faith alone is the proximate and proportionate means of union with God. What does this mean semiotically? Simply that the semiosis of faith is experienced psychologically as pure emptiness, darkness, nothing except the will's constant clinging to God despite all other competing strands of semiosis in the psyche.
Here we can see why so many people get lost in secondary matters of faith and, although they intellectually adhere or profess to the matters of faith and their extensions to different aspects of the Church and Christian life, this faith doesn't seem to transform them as it ought. For example, focusing on issues, such as the pro-life movement, personal devotions, political topics, like women priests, sexual morality, marriage, or issues of liturgy, tradition, and doctrine—these are all secondary to faith. Faith primarily attains to God and secondarily applies to all else insofar as it stands in relation to God revealing. Hence faith is meant to unite us perfectly to God and not to these secondary matters. St. John of the Cross insists that a person who places importance on these secondary issues is, despite these issues being related to faith, hindering their union with God through faith. The following quotation focuses only on devotions and the Mass, for example:
To repeat: meditation is not a clinging to human semiosis, but an efficient tool to redirect human semiosis to free the soul of its accumulated vicious qualities so that these accumulations don't completely stifle and freeze the flowering of faith in the soul. Meditation should be leading us to become more and more humble and detached from our private conceptions and semiosis and becoming more and more attached to God, conversing with Him, remaining recollected in Him, not ourselves, going out of ourselves as St. John of the Cross would say, forgetting ourselves.
Someday, by God's grace, we shall attain to that state where our private semiosis is directed by the Holy Ghost perfectly, so that although we experience reality with our accumulated past and individuality, it is filtered and subsumed harmoniously and without resistance by the divine semiosis of Christ: "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).
At the moment that a man seeks the good in honesty, the nature of this conversation changes: "He converses with himself, for example, about what is necessary to live becomingly and to support his family. This at times preoccupies him greatly; he feels his weakness and the need of placing his confidence no longer in himself alone, but in God" (ibid.). Even in the state of grace, egoism confuses and mangles this interior conversation, pushing God out as much as possible despite the soul's clearer vision of its inadequacy and dependence on God. In fact, Garrigou-Lagrange suggests that this interior conversation cannot end and implicitly points to man's need for God as well as man's final fulfillment in God, who alone can finally satisfy this interior dialogue: "The soul must converse with someone other than itself. Why? Because it is not its own last end; because its end is the living God, and it cannot rest entirely except in Him" (ibid.).
Modern psychology at its best provides scientific precision to analytical explanations of the interior, psychological processes of the intellect and soul. Often, however, where psychology gets something correct, we find such points already explicated in the writings and experiences of the Saints, at least in nascent or unscientific form. St. Paul famously experienced the interior struggle between what he saw was good and what he hated as evil:
For that which I work, I understand not. For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I will not, I consent to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will, is present with me; but to accomplish that which is good, I find not. For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin. (Romans 7:15–25; DR trans.)And Psalm 19 says, "Who can understand sins? from my secret ones cleanse me, O Lord" (v. 12). These verses posit that there exists a dimension of the broken personality, caught up in sin, in conflict with the conscious striving towards virtue. There is a contrast in Paul between flesh and mind yet almost as if the flesh had a mind and will of its own. Modern psychology would distinguish these dimensions as the conscious, unconscious, and subconscious. The exact nature of these different aspects can lead to serious error in a philosophy of human nature, and it's clear that much of modern psychology has tended towards a mechanistic reductionism of the human psyche, where the unconscious takes on some kind of overwhelming force. Without going to these extremes, it seems reasonable that we often act out of a plurality of motives, some of which we do not discern until we reflect later on our actions with deeper insight. The increase of self-knowledge is not merely quantitative—I know more and more truths about my personality—but also qualitative—I know my personality more deeply than before, its patterns, tendencies, weaknesses, and also very importantly, its strengths, some of which due to my God-given temperament.
Perhaps a semiotic analysis of human psychology would provide some helpful insights for spiritual growth. We know from experience that when a man works on growing in self-knowledge and discernment, the unconscious aspects of his moral actions eventually come to light. We also know from the experience of the Saints that where sinful tendencies reside in these unconscious dimensions, grace and asceticism eventually purify and heal the psyche of these tendencies. Here is a simple refutation of the omnipotence of the unconscious. Transformation in Christ is where the Saint may say truly, "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).
This internal dialogue, often the source of many self-destructive tendencies, especially to despair in various forms, is nothing other than a process of "private semiosis," the internal activity of signs in the human mind as it processes its environment and itself in some unified way. Conversation is speech, and speech consists of signs; human language is nothing other than that form of sign use unique to humans: anthroposemiosis. This semiosis is private insofar as it occurs immanently in the mind, seen in its immediate, raw form only by the individual and God although it may be expressed in a mediated way to others—mediated because only we can experience the fullness of what we experience.
But sign activity, or semiosis, for humans occurs in multiple dimensions since the human alone of all animals can distinguish between signs as such and all other forms of reality, between subject and object, between actual and ideal. Much of the activity that informs our conscious semiosis is subconscious. For example, when we read a novel, we subconsciously take on the role of a reader who understands that we are entering into a fictional world. Did we make the conscious, private semiosic choice to take on this interpretive stance? No (although we could if we so chose). We switch between interpretive modes for all genres of text, and we do something similar when we enter different social settings and engage with different people. Even where there is the conscious awareness of making certain switches, for example, "I must not use vulgarity when I'm around grandma," we might tell ourselves privately, there are other aspects of this switch that we often are not aware of; for example, what is the prior condition that prompts us to tell ourselves that we ought not to use vulgarity around our elders? This prompting is a semiosic process that we might become aware of, just like we might become aware of our breathing at any moment if we so chose to pay attention and knew what to look for, but just like our breathing, these processes often remain on the subconscious level.
Perhaps we can see the distinction between conscious and subconscious precisely in terms of relation, a relation to intentional awareness or the lack thereof. Following a Lacanian line of thinking regarding the unconscious, the unconscious is precisely everything other than the conscious remaining in human experience, encompassing the aspects of the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic; this residue or overflow occurs because conscious processing of our experience always leaves something to be desired, something missing; language is often insufficient—we find ourselves at a loss for words as the saying goes. Hence analogously, just as God is precisely everything other than created, finite beings (and by extension, the concept of God is precisely a concept consisting of an amalgamation of relations by which we conceive that God is not this, nor that, nor that), so too our unconscious is everything other than consciously filtered experience through our private semiosis.
Hence the conscious, unconscious, and subconscious all converge simultaneously to create the presently processed experience of our environments. Deepening our self-knowledge allows us to identify these different strands and how they are functioning at any given moment. Perhaps this lack of self-knowledge or despair of possibly attaining to it in atheistic psychologies has led to the idea that the unconscious inescapably dominates all our behavior. There is truth to the experience that often we seem to lose control of ourselves, that our emotions seem to be out of our control, our thoughts run on endlessly, often laboriously (even St. Teresa of Avila complained about this on multiple occasions). Much of this lack of control for the average person certainly stems from a lack of self-knowledge and the tools to deal with and integrate the different dimensions of our experience. (We might also postulate that this lack of control may be the result of a sensitive temperament that is more attuned to the multiple effects of one's surrounding and/or the result of a sensitivity that comes from ascetic and mystical purification by which one is keenly aware of the different spirits affecting our behaviors, thoughts, etc.; maybe some combination of the above was the case with St. Teresa, whose almost constant contemplation bombarded her soul with new infusions of grace, overwhelming her and overflowing into the bodily dimension of her being, sometimes painfully.) With self-knowledge and discipline, these different dimension can be identified, organized, and trained even on the natural plane.
But first, we need to understand why the process of the constant bombardment of shifting emotions and internal dialogue occurs. To begin metaphysically, all being contains positive and negative dimensions, positive perfections and negative lacks due to its finite structure and the circumstances that may have vitiated its due development towards its final end. Being is simultaneously communicative and receptive, sharing its proper perfections around it and receiving the perfections of other beings, hopefully in ways complementary to its own teleological needs—e.g. rain is necessary for plant growth, but too much rain may drown the plant. Hence we may say there is complementary communication and non-complementary communication (where complementary is understood in relation to aiding a being's fulfillment of its final end).
Our relation to reality encompasses these perfections in an intentional form, and our semiosis communicates these intentional realities and perfections, which in turn constantly are those elements that bombard us. So much of this communication is occurring all the time that it seems impossible for any individual to process all of it, and we know from neuroscience just how much processing our brain does behind the scenes in order to maintain our practical functionality at any given moment. Within this bombardment is the opportunity for help or hurt. It is a common experience that we find ourselves in pain or ambient anxiety, and it seemingly arises from nowhere. Demonic influence and psychological disorder momentarily set aside for theoretical reasons in this analysis, it may very well be that a steady bombardment of non-complementary being has slowly accumulated within our souls, leading to affective experiences of pain, anxiety, etc. It may also be that this accumulation resonates in a certain way with already present stores of past accumulations of pain, going back even into early childhood or gestation. Psychology has been able to show just how influential these formative years are and how devastating they may be if a child is not given a properly nurturing upbringing.
The old children's rhyme about sticks, stones, and words never hurting us is simply a child's denial of a very painful reality, its attempt to gain control over what feels beyond its control, the overwhelming overflow of communicated being (or perhaps non-being in the sense of moral evil) leading to pain. The rhyme then seeks to contain the pain through the use of words, but this misses the point because the child clearly does not have the experience or psychological maturity or discernment in order to properly face such pain.
As different webs and spirals of semiosis accumulate in the soul by forming qualities in the manner of habits—and here I am being more speculative than before—perhaps it is precisely in this way that the soul informs the body in a secondary manner—the primary manner being that the soul provides the basic constitutive framework of this kind of living animal—, in the manner of how quality is respect to form as quantity is respect to matter. Habits, while being qualities in the soul, clearly have physical effects in the body; neural networks are formed in habits, for example. As the soul is informed by semiosic processes, so too the body responds accordingly. And perhaps the movement is reciprocal: as the body is affected by external forces beyond the soul's control, the soul is affected, or at least its full and proper expression through the body. Hence, physical and mental disabilities that impede the proper development and expression of normative human intellectual activity.
Regardless of how the above process works, the accumulations of semiotic webs within the soul, both conscious and unconscious, then lead to qualities that affect bodily development and render certain patterns of behavior easier, swifter, and accompanied by a certain spiritual and bodily delight. The quality of a soul informed by a habit and its subsequent informing of the body renders a person apt for the actualization of these habits, creating what we might call a "resonance."
Just as in acoustics, room resonance depends on the wall matter, sound, and location all interacting simultaneously to create a booming effect, or just as pitch resonances may create sympathetic vibrations when certain conditions are met, when certain semiosic processes converge in a human informed with this habitual quality, a resonance may occur, rendering the actualization of the habit immediate, facile, and delightful, perhaps even overwhelming in a certain sense.
Thus the pain of a person trapped in vice—the convergence of these semiosic processes is nothing other than what is called a temptation. At the moment of this convergence, the communication of intentional non-complementary being creates a certain resonance, striving to activate the soul, whose vicious quality renders it apt for reacting in this vicious way. Thus the psychological experience of the temptation may feel overwhelming.
Similarly, for a person formed in a virtuous habit, when the proper semiosic conditions converge, the virtue is activated, the morally good action executed with delight, sometimes with a deep relish at having accomplished the good, even simple goods.
And just as conditions may create resonance based on the qualitative predisposition of a soul formed in this habit, so too opposite conditions may resonate very poorly if at all in people with the opposite qualities respectively. Hence what used to be a temptation to a soul now is hardly a blip in its habitual, qualitative orientation towards the good; likewise, a stimulus to good may be experienced for a soul trapped in sin as painful, dissonant, and hardly moving. The semiosic communication is jarring with the quality of the soul; the being that is being communicated is not converging properly with the soul informed or disformed by these qualities. We see analogous clashes in the realm of physical organisms all the time, where external conditions and the subjective constitution of an organism or seed do not converge to lead to the flourishing of the organism.
But lest this process seem to be another form of omnipotence, shifting from the unconscious to these semiosic processes, it must be remembered that conscious semiosis in the human is the discursive reason, guiding and directing the will, creating the conditions for freedom. Clearly the freedom of a soul trapped in sin is encumbered but can never be totally destroyed without destroying discursive reason itself. Hence these semiosic processes are both the condition for freedom as well as the possibility for either its hindrance or development, just as water is a necessary condition for the growth of plant life, but too little, too much, or contaminated water will kill the plant. The will must still choose, and the will can direct the intentionality of these semiosic processes, guiding them in certain limited ways, depending on the various conditions, both external and internal. Qualities are supposed to aid the soul in the proper guidance of these processes, in the proper flourishing of the rational aspect of human nature.
Grace enters. We say that grace perfects nature. Grace is a communication in the divine life, a participation, or in other words, a relation. This is precisely semiosis on the divine level, entering through an analogous, accidental, created, physical mode into the soul. Without grace, the private semiosis of an individual would begin at conception and crash into oblivion at death. Grace thus creates a relation between the soul and God and creates an elevation of those dimensions that exist in the soul, giving them an orientation to the divine or at least the conditions that make possible the development of this orientation. Hence the accumulated semioses remain, but grace now offers and provides a "defrag" program for the soul. There is certainly an extent to which the soul may do this itself—the active purifications and ascetical stages of the spiritual life constitute this extent. But the end for which God has made man goes beyond man's natural, immanent capacities, and besides which, the wounds of sin that remain render the accumulation of harmful semioses sometimes overwhelming, something experienced sometimes as loss of total control, addiction.
The conversation, the private semiosis, may now turn to God. God's semiosis enters into the soul; the Trinity makes its dwelling in the heart. The Logos communicates the fullness of the divinity. The Holy Ghost consumes and transforms. The Father guides the soul lovingly, teaching, listening, aiding, assuring.
We also believe there is a Communion of Saints. Communion involves communication, reception, relation, a sharing, a participation. The semiosis of grace extends not only to the Deity but to those who are linked by grace to God.
These are the helps that the soul needs. Nevertheless, those resonances remain, the resonances of already formed habits. The struggle is arduous, but the soul is assured of divine assistance, a true omnipotence, the omnipotence of God and the shared, participated omnipotence of the Blessed Mother, who obtains for us all that we need. The theological virtues create wellsprings, new qualities in the soul, by which the old resonances may be combatted not only on the natural plane but also the supernatural.
Here it must be remarked one particular difficulty people have in allowing grace to establish a new, supernatural quality. Faith is the virtue by which we attain to God as revealed and revealing Truth. St. John of the Cross interestingly argues that living faith alone is the proximate and proportionate means of union with God. What does this mean semiotically? Simply that the semiosis of faith is experienced psychologically as pure emptiness, darkness, nothing except the will's constant clinging to God despite all other competing strands of semiosis in the psyche.
Here we can see why so many people get lost in secondary matters of faith and, although they intellectually adhere or profess to the matters of faith and their extensions to different aspects of the Church and Christian life, this faith doesn't seem to transform them as it ought. For example, focusing on issues, such as the pro-life movement, personal devotions, political topics, like women priests, sexual morality, marriage, or issues of liturgy, tradition, and doctrine—these are all secondary to faith. Faith primarily attains to God and secondarily applies to all else insofar as it stands in relation to God revealing. Hence faith is meant to unite us perfectly to God and not to these secondary matters. St. John of the Cross insists that a person who places importance on these secondary issues is, despite these issues being related to faith, hindering their union with God through faith. The following quotation focuses only on devotions and the Mass, for example:
These people attribute so much efficacy to methods of carrying out their devotions and prayers [....] They put more trust in these methods than they do in the living prayer [....] For example, they demand that the Mass be said with a certain number of candles, no more nor less; or that it be celebrated at a particular hour, no sooner nor later; or that it be said after a certain day, not before; [...] And regarding other ceremonies in vocal prayers and other devotions, one should not become attached to any ceremonies or modes of prayer other than those Christ taught us." (Ascent of Mount Carmel, 3.43.2, 44.4)St. John of the Cross says the way to the top of the mountain is: nada, the emptiness of pure faith, a total clinging to God in absolute darkness of intellectual and finite semioses. The divine semiosis of faith stands in absolute difference (but not indifference) to all human semioses, and to inject human semiosis into the divine semiosis of faith is to kill faith. Meditation, as St. John of the Cross teaches, is a heuristic process, temporary, by which the soul is actively weaning itself of previous vicious habits and working towards developing virtuous qualities. Think of St. Teresa of Avila's comparison of meditation to drawing water out of a well with a bucket. Meditation simply frees up the soul to a sufficient degree so that its accumulated semioses may not get in the way of the divine semiosis of faith because it often is the case that our accumulations stifle and mute faith without our even intending it to. Perhaps more precisely we should say our accumulations stifle and mute the expression and development of faith but not faith itself; otherwise, it would be impossible to remain in a state of grace unless we were already perfect! No, God, seeing our weakness, accepts the conscious intention of our will to adhere to the faith, and this is sufficient for faith to remain in the soul. Nevertheless, this state is only the beginning, and it's easy for the individual, so accustomed to created, finite semiosic processes, to confuse the divine semiosis of faith with these other finite processes, which extend to our conceptions of the Mass, of the Pope, of what the Church really should look like, and even what our spiritual life should look like. As long as we cling to human semiosis, we hinder faith.
To repeat: meditation is not a clinging to human semiosis, but an efficient tool to redirect human semiosis to free the soul of its accumulated vicious qualities so that these accumulations don't completely stifle and freeze the flowering of faith in the soul. Meditation should be leading us to become more and more humble and detached from our private conceptions and semiosis and becoming more and more attached to God, conversing with Him, remaining recollected in Him, not ourselves, going out of ourselves as St. John of the Cross would say, forgetting ourselves.
Someday, by God's grace, we shall attain to that state where our private semiosis is directed by the Holy Ghost perfectly, so that although we experience reality with our accumulated past and individuality, it is filtered and subsumed harmoniously and without resistance by the divine semiosis of Christ: "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Thomas Loundsbury Quotation on Resisting Growth
We must view with profound respect the infinite capacity of the human mind to resist the introduction of useful knowledge.
– Thomas R. Lounsbury (1838-1915)
– Thomas R. Lounsbury (1838-1915)
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Boredom and the Spiritual Life
To the worldly, the Christian life is a boring life. The reason is because the Christian is perfectly content with any state in life, any job, any task—so long as these are not sinful—because all things and activities have been sanctified by Christ. Thus even monotony and grey take on the splendor of Christ's Resurrection. All things reflect God's will and infinitely wise and loving design—therefore, why should the Christian be discontent? Of course, knowledge of God's providence doesn't mean that the Christian is immune to pain and loss; no, God's providence often makes use of these means to fill the Christian with deeper love and patience and heroic virtue.
But the worldly see none of this. Monotony and death have no meaning. Life has no meaning besides what I make of it, and that is all relatively boring.
The idea of setting aside trifles and entertainments to take up the task of daily prayer and worship, of growth in virtue, of self denial and love of neighbor, of refusing to indulge in those little vices—angry thoughts, fleeting fantasies, revenge, idle talk and gossip, lustful glances, attachment to material things like clothing and cars, etc.—the idea itself is perhaps a bit intimidating. It all builds up.
The worldly can't stand this task. It should be a very good measure in us of where we are by how reluctant we are to follow Christ's dictum: 1) deny yourself; 2) take up your Cross; and 3) follow Him.
Boredom, therefore, is nothing but a sign of a need for deeper conversion. It isn't a reason to despair; far from it. Rather boredom recognized for what it is should make us rejoice because with that recognition means that God is providing the grace for us to see our faults and the path that we must take to grow towards union with Him.
Yes, the Christian life is entering into that repetitious, monotonous pattern of daily prayer and work, silence and, when necessary, tempered leisure. We do this over and over again, searching over our faults, praying for strength, speaking and walking with God, taking time to be recollected rather than dissipating our energies on frivolities and "guilty pleasures." It's all very simple, very quiet, very plain.
Perhaps here, Christians suffer from a twofold danger when reading the lives of the Saints: 1) the extraordinary graces that the Saints personally received, such as visions, locutions, levitation, etc.; 2) the extraordinary events of their lives—the dramatic turns, the miracles, the strong personalities, the conflicts and stakes of history. (A third possible danger is that we believe the Saints were born holy since most hagiography completely neglects the actual process of conversion in many of the Saints; hence we don't really get to see "how" the Saints actually became Saints! A potential consequence is that we believe our process of conversion will be just as mysteriously simple and quick; this assumption can lead to despair, self-deception, or impatience.) We believe that because the Saints were involved in these great circumstances that therefore we too shall be involved in them. We expect our lives to be enthralling and romantic.
Here is the paradoxical turn: we become involved in the great and romantic things only after we have completely surrendered any desire for them. And only once we have become holy do we realize that the great and romantic thing is loving God above everything else, and the vast majority of Saints never had miracles, experienced extraordinary phenomena, or were involved in huge historical situations. These Saints actually didn't care for the "greatness" of the situation but only to love God, no matter what situation God placed them in. Most lived quiet, humble lives that shall be known only in the glory of heaven. Most of these Saints are completely unknown to us, perhaps as inconspicuous as a grave we pass by at the cemetery.
The only great thing is to give everything to God in complete humility and simplicity. It is a quiet thing to external eyes, but to the internal soul, there is nothing more exciting. Thus there is an inverse relation: as a person becomes more worldly, holy things become duller, but as a person becomes holier, worldly things lose their appeal.
But the worldly see none of this. Monotony and death have no meaning. Life has no meaning besides what I make of it, and that is all relatively boring.
The idea of setting aside trifles and entertainments to take up the task of daily prayer and worship, of growth in virtue, of self denial and love of neighbor, of refusing to indulge in those little vices—angry thoughts, fleeting fantasies, revenge, idle talk and gossip, lustful glances, attachment to material things like clothing and cars, etc.—the idea itself is perhaps a bit intimidating. It all builds up.
The worldly can't stand this task. It should be a very good measure in us of where we are by how reluctant we are to follow Christ's dictum: 1) deny yourself; 2) take up your Cross; and 3) follow Him.
Boredom, therefore, is nothing but a sign of a need for deeper conversion. It isn't a reason to despair; far from it. Rather boredom recognized for what it is should make us rejoice because with that recognition means that God is providing the grace for us to see our faults and the path that we must take to grow towards union with Him.
Yes, the Christian life is entering into that repetitious, monotonous pattern of daily prayer and work, silence and, when necessary, tempered leisure. We do this over and over again, searching over our faults, praying for strength, speaking and walking with God, taking time to be recollected rather than dissipating our energies on frivolities and "guilty pleasures." It's all very simple, very quiet, very plain.
Perhaps here, Christians suffer from a twofold danger when reading the lives of the Saints: 1) the extraordinary graces that the Saints personally received, such as visions, locutions, levitation, etc.; 2) the extraordinary events of their lives—the dramatic turns, the miracles, the strong personalities, the conflicts and stakes of history. (A third possible danger is that we believe the Saints were born holy since most hagiography completely neglects the actual process of conversion in many of the Saints; hence we don't really get to see "how" the Saints actually became Saints! A potential consequence is that we believe our process of conversion will be just as mysteriously simple and quick; this assumption can lead to despair, self-deception, or impatience.) We believe that because the Saints were involved in these great circumstances that therefore we too shall be involved in them. We expect our lives to be enthralling and romantic.
Here is the paradoxical turn: we become involved in the great and romantic things only after we have completely surrendered any desire for them. And only once we have become holy do we realize that the great and romantic thing is loving God above everything else, and the vast majority of Saints never had miracles, experienced extraordinary phenomena, or were involved in huge historical situations. These Saints actually didn't care for the "greatness" of the situation but only to love God, no matter what situation God placed them in. Most lived quiet, humble lives that shall be known only in the glory of heaven. Most of these Saints are completely unknown to us, perhaps as inconspicuous as a grave we pass by at the cemetery.
The only great thing is to give everything to God in complete humility and simplicity. It is a quiet thing to external eyes, but to the internal soul, there is nothing more exciting. Thus there is an inverse relation: as a person becomes more worldly, holy things become duller, but as a person becomes holier, worldly things lose their appeal.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Fr. Antonio Royo Marin's Commentary on the Hail Mary, pt. 9: "Pray for us sinners"
Pray for Us
Because you are holy and the Mother of God and are to be for us the Queen and Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope, pray for us who are exiled in this valley of tears. You are the powerful Virgin, the clement Virgin, the faithful Virgin, Mother of Christ, Mother of divine grace. Pray for us, O Refuge of sinners, Help of Christians, Queen of the Angels. Pray for us, for you are the universal Mediatrix of all graces, and unless we beg it of you, we can have neither a holy life nor a holy death. Pray for us that God may not punish us as we deserve—for not only have we sinned, but we can sin further and condemn our very selves; for we have to navigate through the stormy sea of life, surrounded by dangers, dangers at all ages, in all states, in all occupations; for we are tempted, dying, poor, persecuted, and afflicted. Pray for us who are captivated by the deceitful things of this world, by honors and pleasures, wealth, and youth.
Sinners
All men are sinners, and even the just man falls seven times a day as Scripture testifies. Often we do not realize this because the devil deceives us. There are many who believe that they are good, but they sin against chastity, against faith, against charity; they steal, breaking the seventh commandment, but they break it in such a way that they believe that what they are doing is lawful when it isn't.
How many sins we commit! Many venial sins, semi-deliberate, all throughout the day and in almost every single one of our works! Sins against God, by being lukewarm. Sins against our neighbor, by murmuring. Sins against our superiors, by sloppy, sluggish obedience. Sins against ourselves and those under our care, by neglecting the obligations of our state. "Pray for us, sinners," that is, we who seem to have the occupation of violating every commandment and sinning against every virtue, if not gravely, at least venially, and many times with deliberation.
We sin with our eyes, through immodest glances; with our ears, through vain conversations; with our palates, through indulging in delicacies; with our imaginations, through dangerous fantasies; with our minds, through bad thoughts; with our memories, through harmful remembrances; with our hearts, through disordered affections.
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Source: Fr. Antonio Royo Marín, La Virgen María, trans. by R. Grablin (Madrid, Spain: BAC, 1996), 457-458.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Fr. Victorino Osende on Detachment from All Things and Union with God
In order to assimilate and make the divine gifts his own, therefore, man must cooperate with the action of God; in other words, he must be faithful to grace and second its impulse in order to be capable of enjoying the divine life in its plenitude.
How does one accomplish this? By self-denial and detachment from all that is not of God. A great spiritual master (Tauler) has well said: Perfection does not consist in doing great things, but in allowing God to be great within us. That is, it consists in making room for God, in giving Him the greatest possible space in our heart. This is done precisely by fostering the action of grace without offering any resistance (for grace itself inclines and impels us to it), letting ourselves be led by this supernatural movement and cooperating with it as much as we can. [...] Nothing so enlarges the heart and increases its capacity to love as does suffering.
It is not enough that a heart be divested of all if that "all" is of little worth. It must be a total and complete despoliation of all the goods which we esteem highly and whose surrender will wound us in the innermost depths of our soul and tear at the very roots of our heart. That is why in the purification of souls God inspires profound and ardent affections and afterwards exacts their renunciation. Moreover, the more intensely and profoundly He wishes to purify a soul and the higher the degree of sanctity to which He wishes to elevate it, the more occasion does He give it for self-renunciation and suffering.
Thus, He first exacts the renunciation of the love of the base pleasures of this world, then the love of life and health, then the more elevated love of parents, relatives, friends, and perhaps even of country. Afterwards comes the renunciation of moral goods such as the love of renown and the desire to be respected and loved; then the spiritual values in their endless gradation. To this end God sends sicknesses, humiliations, temptations, desolations, fears, and, in short, the whole series of interior sufferings which St. John of the Cross calls the "dark night of the soul." He does this in order to give the soul a realization of the vanity of all temporal things and to inspire it to practice mortification and penance. However, it is not necessary that a soul undergo each of these sufferings in particular; all do not need the same purgation because all do not have to be purged of the same defects, vices, and attachments. But what is necessary for all, however innocent they may be, is the martyrdom of love. The Blessed Virgin herself, though pure and immaculate, had to suffer this martyrdom, and with a greater intensity than all the saints together.
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister of the Perpetual Rosary (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 72-73.
How does one accomplish this? By self-denial and detachment from all that is not of God. A great spiritual master (Tauler) has well said: Perfection does not consist in doing great things, but in allowing God to be great within us. That is, it consists in making room for God, in giving Him the greatest possible space in our heart. This is done precisely by fostering the action of grace without offering any resistance (for grace itself inclines and impels us to it), letting ourselves be led by this supernatural movement and cooperating with it as much as we can. [...] Nothing so enlarges the heart and increases its capacity to love as does suffering.
It is not enough that a heart be divested of all if that "all" is of little worth. It must be a total and complete despoliation of all the goods which we esteem highly and whose surrender will wound us in the innermost depths of our soul and tear at the very roots of our heart. That is why in the purification of souls God inspires profound and ardent affections and afterwards exacts their renunciation. Moreover, the more intensely and profoundly He wishes to purify a soul and the higher the degree of sanctity to which He wishes to elevate it, the more occasion does He give it for self-renunciation and suffering.
Thus, He first exacts the renunciation of the love of the base pleasures of this world, then the love of life and health, then the more elevated love of parents, relatives, friends, and perhaps even of country. Afterwards comes the renunciation of moral goods such as the love of renown and the desire to be respected and loved; then the spiritual values in their endless gradation. To this end God sends sicknesses, humiliations, temptations, desolations, fears, and, in short, the whole series of interior sufferings which St. John of the Cross calls the "dark night of the soul." He does this in order to give the soul a realization of the vanity of all temporal things and to inspire it to practice mortification and penance. However, it is not necessary that a soul undergo each of these sufferings in particular; all do not need the same purgation because all do not have to be purged of the same defects, vices, and attachments. But what is necessary for all, however innocent they may be, is the martyrdom of love. The Blessed Virgin herself, though pure and immaculate, had to suffer this martyrdom, and with a greater intensity than all the saints together.
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister of the Perpetual Rosary (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 72-73.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Dr. Taylor Marshall on Three Biblical Reasons for Fasting
1. Fasting as a Preparation for a Divine Event
In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, self-denial is a way of preparing spiritually for something spiritually important. Of course, in Lent we are spiritually preparing the the Easter celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Moses fasted for forty days in preparation for receiving the Ten Commandments (Ex 34:28). The prophet Daniel fasted for three weeks before receiving his vision (Dan 10:2-6). Elijah the prophet fasted forty days before God spoke to him (1 Kings 19:8). And we all know that Christ our Savior fasted for forty days in preparation for His temptation by the devil and for the beginning of His ministry (Mt 4:1-11, Lk 4:1-13).
2. Fasting as Penitence
[...] The fact is that we are sinners. Self-denial, then, has a twofold purpose. First, penance is a outward sign of an inward contrition. We outwardly express to God our inward sorrow for sin.
Secondly, penance or self-sacrifice is a remedy for future sin. If you teach yourself to say “no” to good things (meat, desserts, comforts, marital pleasure) then you strengthen your will to resist bad things (sin). For example, you’re not going to be able to rescue someone pinned under a car (a bad thing) if you don’t daily lift weights and build muscle (a good thing).
The concept of penance or self-sacrifice is all over the Bible. Jonah prophesied the destruction of pagan Nineveh, but the Ninevites fasted as a sign of repentance and God spared them (Jonah 3:3-9). The Jewish Day of Atonement was an annual day of obligation of fasting for all Hebrews (Numbers 29:7). In fact, whenever Israel sinned, they “humbled themselves,” wore sackcloth, put on ashes, and fasted in order to show God their sorrow for sin (cf. Judges 20:26, 1 Sam 7:6).
3. Fasting for Sorrow
In the Bible, sometimes fasting simply shows sorrow. When tragic things happen, we sometimes lose our appetite naturally. This human experience is also found in Scripture. King David fasted as a sign of grief when Abner was killed (2 Samuel3:35). There was also a seven-day fast at the death of Saul (1 Samuel 31:13). During Holy Week, and especially on Good Friday, we should be fasting for sorrow, because the “Bridegroom has been taken away from us” (cf. (Matthew 9:14-15; Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33-35).
So keep up your penance and reflect on Christ as the Crucified One in order to find strength. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us!
In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, self-denial is a way of preparing spiritually for something spiritually important. Of course, in Lent we are spiritually preparing the the Easter celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Moses fasted for forty days in preparation for receiving the Ten Commandments (Ex 34:28). The prophet Daniel fasted for three weeks before receiving his vision (Dan 10:2-6). Elijah the prophet fasted forty days before God spoke to him (1 Kings 19:8). And we all know that Christ our Savior fasted for forty days in preparation for His temptation by the devil and for the beginning of His ministry (Mt 4:1-11, Lk 4:1-13).
2. Fasting as Penitence
[...] The fact is that we are sinners. Self-denial, then, has a twofold purpose. First, penance is a outward sign of an inward contrition. We outwardly express to God our inward sorrow for sin.
Secondly, penance or self-sacrifice is a remedy for future sin. If you teach yourself to say “no” to good things (meat, desserts, comforts, marital pleasure) then you strengthen your will to resist bad things (sin). For example, you’re not going to be able to rescue someone pinned under a car (a bad thing) if you don’t daily lift weights and build muscle (a good thing).
The concept of penance or self-sacrifice is all over the Bible. Jonah prophesied the destruction of pagan Nineveh, but the Ninevites fasted as a sign of repentance and God spared them (Jonah 3:3-9). The Jewish Day of Atonement was an annual day of obligation of fasting for all Hebrews (Numbers 29:7). In fact, whenever Israel sinned, they “humbled themselves,” wore sackcloth, put on ashes, and fasted in order to show God their sorrow for sin (cf. Judges 20:26, 1 Sam 7:6).
3. Fasting for Sorrow
In the Bible, sometimes fasting simply shows sorrow. When tragic things happen, we sometimes lose our appetite naturally. This human experience is also found in Scripture. King David fasted as a sign of grief when Abner was killed (2 Samuel3:35). There was also a seven-day fast at the death of Saul (1 Samuel 31:13). During Holy Week, and especially on Good Friday, we should be fasting for sorrow, because the “Bridegroom has been taken away from us” (cf. (Matthew 9:14-15; Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33-35).
So keep up your penance and reflect on Christ as the Crucified One in order to find strength. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us!
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Source: Dr. Taylor Marshall, "Biblical Facts about Fasting to Inspire You for the Rest of Lent," Taylor Marshall, March 10, 2014, accessed March 12, 2014, http://taylormarshall.com/2014/03/3-biblical-facts-about-fasting-to.html.
Monday, February 24, 2014
How To Look At The World
How should we look at the world as Christians? A problem immediately presents itself: what is the “world”? St. John taught, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 Jn 2:15-16). St. James wrote, “Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (Jas 4:4). Finally, our Lord Himself declared, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24). Seems straightforward enough so far. But then we read this, from St. John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (Jn 3:16-17). And there are these words that the Church has long applied to Christ and His love for the world: “I was daily [the Father’s] delight ... rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men” (Prv 8:30-31).
St. Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on the Gospel of St. John gives us light:
We should know that “world” is taken in three ways in Scripture. Sometimes, from the point of view of its creation, as when the Evangelist says here, “through him the world was made” (v 10). Sometimes, from the point of view of its perfection, which it reaches through Christ, as in “God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). And sometimes it is taken from the point of view of its perversity, as in “The whole world lies under the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19). (Commentary on the Gospel of John, 1.5.128, trans. Weisheipl)
Sts. John and James warn us against loving the world “from the point of view of its perversity,” being titillated and seduced by its illusory qualities and false joys. The world’s fulfillment, “new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1), is viewing the world in terms of its final perfection in Christ as St. Paul described:
Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning with labor pains together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom 8:21-23)
The world as creation was prepared by the Father for His Son and His Son’s Bride, the Church, as the quotation from Proverbs above indicates. St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic, very beautifully described the world as “a palace for the bride” (“Romances,” stanza 4, trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez) divided into two rooms, one above (heaven) and one below (earth). Earth was “furnished / with infinite variety,” and those who occupied earth would live in the hope that “one day / [God] would exalt them, / and that he would lift them / up from their lowness / so that no one / could mock it any more.” Outside of Scripture, this poem contains perhaps one of the loveliest descriptions of the mystical transformation of creation into Christ’s kingdom at the end of time. Nevertheless, St. John warns us sternly of the tempting allure of created beauty. It truly is beautiful, and that’s why it can be dangerous.
We know from the creation accounts in Genesis that God created the world good, very good in fact. Yet there also exists the kingdom of this world, ruled by Satan as Christ told us (cf. Luke 4:5-7; John 12:31). Fr. Jordan Aumann, a great Thomistic theologian, notes, “Without denying that created things can be occasions of sin for those who use them evilly, the challenge to Christians today is to ‘have the Gospel spirit permeate and improve the temporal order’ (Apostolicam Actuositatem 2)” (On the Front Lines 167). It remains for me to discuss briefly how creation can be used for sin, as “weapons for wickedness” (Rom 6:13).
When he created man, God gave us the power to name things, and “whatever the man called each living creature was then its name” (Gen 2:19). This passage describes the closed system of language to which humans are bound, a box that can be used for manipulation or for honest self-communication. Regarding manipulation, Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, said, “There is no Other of the Other” (Écrits: A Selection, trans. Sheridan, 311), meaning that the social demands placed on us by others (the Other) and the values attributed to human constructs end with its own enunciation. That is, if we play out what society tells us is valuable by constantly asking it “why is that valuable? And why is that valuable?”—ultimately, the only thing society can respond with is: “Because I say it is.” Of course, this “I” of society is the “we” of the crowd that accepts its own word as gospel, that drops its own collective preferences as law, that secures its personal tastes by means of secular and civil fatwas. Why must you like these shoes, these TV shows, these songs, and hate (or at least find annoying) those brands, those artists, those actors? “Because we say so.” Why must you look this way, eat that way, spend your time this way, speak that way? “Because we say so,” and you want to fit in, don’t you?
The point of Genesis and Lacan’s insight is that human creation does not have absolute value but is like a game, a process of interaction constructed and maintained by unspoken rules; when the rules of social dynamics are broken, the game ends because any guarantee of contextual significance ends, a potential source of both humor and frustrating miscommunication. An example of this potential source of humorous but frustrating communication would be from a fictional skit where George W. Bush and Tony Blair are discussing their plans for invading Iraq, and Blair mentions as an aside that something President Bush said reminded him of the British rock band The Who. Bush questions, “Who?” To which Blair replies, “The Who.” Bush then asks again, “Yeah, who?” To which Blair answers, “It’s a band.” Bush: “Who is?” Blair: “The Who.” The pun (and any pun) played on the ambiguity of the word “who,” and the skit then toyed with the “rules” of communication in order to create humor. This toying with the rules of communication forms the core of wit.
But ultimately, self-created meaning is illusory. By illusory, I mean something that unconsciously disguises another, more important truth, whatever the truth is in a particular situation. Thus, for example, a “supermarket” is illusory insofar as it presents the image of immediately-purchasable abundance within a well-maintained façade. The customer, by looking at the store itself, will have no way of knowing the truth of global poverty and the extremely unfair distribution of goods in the world, perhaps even among the farmers who produced the food in the market. Yet a supermarket is necessary to survive. Or growing up in a upper-middle-class suburb all one’s life may give the impression that the rest of the world is relatively quiet, safe, and uniform, which it isn’t, but still suburbs are an apparent necessity for modern urban living. Thus, by saying that something is illusory in this psychological sense, I am not a priori ascribing a moral judgment to that thing (by condeming it as bad or praising it as good) but am simply pointing out its psychological function, a necessity due to human rationality and language. Any use of human constructs not in line with the values of creation (i.e. natural law) or redemption (revealed morality) is morally wrong. Thus, for example, social etiquette can either foster comfortable relations (the virtue of affability) or pridefully display one’s social superiority.
Modern cultural life rests on the projection of an illusory image—and with and through that image, a self-constructed identity. The postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard noted, “This is a society that is endlessly concerned to vindicate itself, perpetually seeking to justify its own existence. Everything has to be made public [….] The society’s ‘look’ is a self-publicizing one” (America 93). Interestingly, modernity’s self-projection fits well with St. John’s description of what’s in the world: lust of the eyes, of the flesh, pride of life.
So how is a Christian to react to the world, to look at it? St. John of Avila, following the Gospel teaching, said quite simply,
The Christian should see that, since the world dishonored the blessed Son of God [by crucifying Him...,] it makes no sense to esteem or believe it in anything. Since the world was deceived in not recognizing such a brilliant light and in not honoring the one who is the truest and most perfect honor, Christians should condemn what the world approves and prize and love what the world hates and despises. With great care they should flee from being prized by that world which despised their Lord. [...] Just as those who belong to the world do not have ears to listen to the truth and the teaching of God, but rather they despise it, so anyone who belongs to the company of Christ has no ears to listen to or believe the lies of the world. For at one time it flatters and at another time persecutes; at one time it promises and at another time threatens; at one time it terrifies and at another appears gentle. But in everything it deceives and intends to deceive. With such eyes we must look upon it.” (Audi, Filia, trans. Gormley, 1.3, 46)
How hard is this saying for modern day Christians! Just look at women, for example, who regardless of their religious beliefs, universally struggle with the problem of self-image, deeply ingrained by the beauty industry. The world tells women that they must look this way and not that way, and everything around us confirms the message, so we believe it to be true: we must look this way. A Christian woman must not only see through the whole lie of society but then consciously reject it, a task that seems absolutely unfathomable to most modern women.
The world says that abortion is part of proper medical care for independent women who are assumed and even expected to be sexually active outside of marriage. But even from the 1st century, Christians have explicitly condemned abortion as evil: “Do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant” (Didache). Regardless, what does it matter when the Christian identity itself has vanished?
The inner sense of hostility towards the fallen world that existed in early Christians—necessarily so because they were being either threatened to give up their faith or, if they refused, murdered by the Roman Empire—has disappeared since the world “became Christian.” Only in hindsight can we see that the world became Christian in name. We cannot change the course of “Christian” society by stepping in front of it now because it was a battle lost nearly 1700 years ago with the final nail on the head hammered by the year 744, when under the direction of the man who was to become Pope Leo III (r. 795-816), a forged document called the “Donation of Constantine” secured the Church’s political power over the Holy Roman Empire and planted the seed of the Church’s applied political theory for the next milennium, characterized from the beginning by fraud and manipulation (cf. John Deely, Medieval Philosophy Redefined, 38-41). Perhaps we see now the fruit of this seed, all guided providentially: the real division between the holy and the not-yet-holy, between those who accept Christ as their Lord and those who, although they still belong to Him, resist His rule as the theologian Coleman O’Neill put it in his 1968 essay “The Pilgrim Church.”
What can we do? We ourselves must be converted. We cannot tell others (the Other) what to do—that’s the Other’s function. We must follow the model of Christ, who “began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1), Who first did and then preached, teaching as a good father does his children: “Watch me and imitate.” We must start living a genuine Christian life and only then can we witness our faith to others. What is being witnessed but one’s life, and if that life is not Christ’s, then what can be witnessed other than one’s projected illusions?
Imagine today if all Christians followed the teachings even contained in the Didache, if all Christians were public models of: chastity; respect for the permanence and faithfulness due to marriage (i.e. not divorcing and remarrying like everyone else); respect for life; respect for their bodies through modesty, careful treatment, and good personal grooming; prayer; sober living—not partying, not smoking, using illegal drugs, or becoming intoxicated; true independence by their resistance and rejection of cultural lies, not concerning themselves with competition, glamor, lust, greed, entertainment. What if all Christians refused to buy into the lies of the beauty industry, the entertainment industry, the sports industry? What if all Christians refused to pay for or support in any way TV channels, stations, or programs that depicted anti-Christian behavior? What if all Christians refused to waste their lives playing video games to the destruction of their interior lives for the sole purpose of avoiding a boredom that they don’t really know how to alleviate anyway? What if all Christians refused to waste time chatting, texting, posting all the intimate and useless details of their lives through social networking? What if Christian money actually had any real power, even political power, rather than wallowing in the filth that everyone else indulges? In fact, abortion will not end so long as there is a single baptized woman anywhere in the world who aborts her own children.
No, it’s quite useless to expect anything else from the world. And it’s equally as useless to make demands of a world that simply doesn’t care how you feel or how you’re being mistreated and victimized. Yes, it preys on your pain, your anger. It whispers into your ear, urging you to become upset, to drive yourself insane at the injustice of it all, to protest, to rebel against authority, to “take control,” to be “independent,” “free-thinking,” “self-determined.” You will never get anywhere with that.
The Saints—the real Christians—were the ones who by the grace of God decided to stop playing the game of manipulations and lies, and that’s how they looked at the fallen world: a game of lies.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Fr. Victorino Osende on the Active and Contemplative Life
It is generally believed that the active life is inferior to the contemplative and that they are mutually incompatible. The first part of this statement is true if by active life we mean ascetical life, but it is not true if by that term we mean apostolic life. So St. Thomas states that the work of the active life which proceeds from the fullness of contemplation, such as teaching and preaching, is more excellent than simple contemplation (Cf. Summa th., IIa IIæ, q. 188, a. 6).
According [as active and contemplative refer to active and passive in the ascetical and mystical lives], the active life is undoubtedly inferior to the contemplative, even as the ascetical state is inferior to the mystical. However [as active and contemplative are considered as exercises proper to each life], it is necessary to make a distinction: the external works referred to are either a means for attaining perfection or they are the exercise of perfection already attained. If the works are a means to perfection, then those [works] of the contemplative life, generally speaking, are considered superior to those of the active life. If the works are those of perfection already attained, then those of the active life, at least the works of the apostolate, are preferred to those of the purely contemplative life.
This also clarifies the question of the apparent incompatibility of the two kinds of life. For if they are considered from their external aspects, inasmuch as the contemplative life is dedicated almost exclusively to meditation and prayer in retirement and solitude and the active life to preaching, teaching, and so forth, then undoubtedly they are incompatible. But such is not the case if one considers their intimate nature, for then the contemplative life is the best disposition for the fruitful exercise of the apostolic life. [...]
The perfect contemplative life is fundamentally the same as the passive state of the soul or the mystical life; therefore it is equivalent to the life of permanent union, the supernatural life, the plentitude of the interior life, habitual contemplation, the mystical, unitive, or contemplative state, and other similar expressions [....] It is the interior life developed to perfection. [...]
Mystical union is a mysterious and ineffable contemplation which does not bind the understanding or the other faculties of the soul and make it impossible for them to act, but on the contrary, it makes them all the more ready and alert. There is no ecstasy of the senses, but an ecstasy of the heart and spirit, an ecstasy of faith and love.
Thus do we see how the contemplative life is the best disposition for the active life. For a soul that enjoys this most intimate communication with God, encounters no obstacles whatsoever from the natural order; on the contrary, it operates even more perfectly and it possesses, so to speak, the plenitude of divine and human efficacy at one and the same time. This is why great apostles have always been great saints and all truly contemplative souls eventually become apostles. [...]
That is why the saints, particularly St. John of the Cross, advise the cultivation of the interior life in preference to exterior works; not that they condemn the latter, but because it is an error to give preference to their material efficacy rather than to the efficacy of the spirit, which is the soul of the apostolate.
This does not mean that one may not undertake any work of the apostolate unless he possesses the plenitude of the interior life [....] The division between the two states is not so definite and absolute that each one does not share some of the qualities of the other. But as a general rule, the efficacy of one's apostolate is in direct proportion to the degree of perfection of his interior life, and as long as his interior life has not attained the plenitude of perfection, neither will his apostolate.
It also follows that the principal exercises of the contemplative life, such as prayer, study, meditation, and other pious practices, are not opposed to the exercise of the apostolate, but are its basis, its support, and its very life. Therefore, the apostle should always give preference to the practices of the interior life as a means of increasing the efficacy of his apostolate. [...]
[When works are always performed with a most pure intention, with a magnanimous spirit, and with an ardent desire to fulfill the will of God, then] the apostolic life will not only not be opposed to the contemplative life, but it will be the best means of developing it and of giving it its greatest expansion. [...]
The principal beauty of the perfect life comes from within and from within also come its value and efficacy. Without this, all else would be like a body without a soul; it would be what St. Paul says the most heroic actions are when done without charity (Cf. 1 Cor. 13:1-3). On the other hand, the most humble and ordinary actions of a man who is filled with God have an influence and efficacy that are truly divine. His deportment and manner of life diffuse a supernatural aroma which profoundly affects souls and permeates them with the perfume of religious unction. His mere presence is sufficient to raise hearts to God.
This is why only that active life which proceeds from the contemplative life truly merits the name of an apostolic life, for only then does the latter possess all its efficacy. We also say that the contemplative life is the best disposition for the exercise of of the apostolate, not only because of the abundance of lights, gifts, and graces which are proper to that life and are so necessary for the salvation and sanctification of souls, but by reason of the dispositions which that life arouses in those who possess it and which are the most adequate for the apostolate.
The life of an apostle requires consummate selflessness and detachment from everything, a holy freedom of spirit, an unshakable faith and constancy, and a limitless charity. The apostle should be totally dead to self and seek only the glory of God, but only in the way that God desires. There is, therefore, no self-interest in his works and enterprises, nor does he manifest any personal preference for one work rather than another, but only for those which he knows God has especially confided to him. It matters not to him whether he is here or there or whether he is occupied in this or that ministry, as long as it is the one that God has marked out for him through obedience or by means of the circumstances in which He has placed him. Everything is a matter of holy indifference to him. The only thing to which he aspires is to accomplish well the mission which the Lord has confided to him and to do all the good possible within his sphere of action.
However, in order to preserve this disposition and spirit, he needs an unshakable faith and constancy. Better still, we should say that he needs a divine strength that will sustain him in the bitter trials and battles to which his faith and constancy are exposed. In order to know what these dangers are it is sufficient to recall that all the powers of the world and of hell strive against the work of the apostle, and as if that were not enough, his own human frailty wages war against him. What would happen if he were not sustained by divine power?
It is therefore necessary for him to be in intimate union with God in order to defy and triumph over all the powers of evil. [...]
In spite of [all his frailty and misery, the apostle] must endure the most cruel trials, the most frightful battles, and the most painful sacrifices. [... The apostle] must retain nothing of self: neither ambition, nor interests, nor preferences, nor his own personality, soul, or life. He who is to become all things to all men in order to save all (Cf. 1 Cor. 9:22) must sacrifice everything for the sake of the divine ideal. But who can arrive at such utter selflessness and detachment? Only he who is totally possessed by the Spirit of God; he who can say with St. Paul: "I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).
We see, therefore, that the contemplative life is the best disposition for the apostolic life and that the latter, in its turn, is the best means for the exercise and expansion of the contemplative life. They mutually complete one another, thereby bringing to its highest degree of perfection the accomplishment of the fundamental law of the Christian life: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength" (Deut. 6:5).
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 307-315.
According [as active and contemplative refer to active and passive in the ascetical and mystical lives], the active life is undoubtedly inferior to the contemplative, even as the ascetical state is inferior to the mystical. However [as active and contemplative are considered as exercises proper to each life], it is necessary to make a distinction: the external works referred to are either a means for attaining perfection or they are the exercise of perfection already attained. If the works are a means to perfection, then those [works] of the contemplative life, generally speaking, are considered superior to those of the active life. If the works are those of perfection already attained, then those of the active life, at least the works of the apostolate, are preferred to those of the purely contemplative life.
This also clarifies the question of the apparent incompatibility of the two kinds of life. For if they are considered from their external aspects, inasmuch as the contemplative life is dedicated almost exclusively to meditation and prayer in retirement and solitude and the active life to preaching, teaching, and so forth, then undoubtedly they are incompatible. But such is not the case if one considers their intimate nature, for then the contemplative life is the best disposition for the fruitful exercise of the apostolic life. [...]
The perfect contemplative life is fundamentally the same as the passive state of the soul or the mystical life; therefore it is equivalent to the life of permanent union, the supernatural life, the plentitude of the interior life, habitual contemplation, the mystical, unitive, or contemplative state, and other similar expressions [....] It is the interior life developed to perfection. [...]
Mystical union is a mysterious and ineffable contemplation which does not bind the understanding or the other faculties of the soul and make it impossible for them to act, but on the contrary, it makes them all the more ready and alert. There is no ecstasy of the senses, but an ecstasy of the heart and spirit, an ecstasy of faith and love.
Thus do we see how the contemplative life is the best disposition for the active life. For a soul that enjoys this most intimate communication with God, encounters no obstacles whatsoever from the natural order; on the contrary, it operates even more perfectly and it possesses, so to speak, the plenitude of divine and human efficacy at one and the same time. This is why great apostles have always been great saints and all truly contemplative souls eventually become apostles. [...]
That is why the saints, particularly St. John of the Cross, advise the cultivation of the interior life in preference to exterior works; not that they condemn the latter, but because it is an error to give preference to their material efficacy rather than to the efficacy of the spirit, which is the soul of the apostolate.
This does not mean that one may not undertake any work of the apostolate unless he possesses the plenitude of the interior life [....] The division between the two states is not so definite and absolute that each one does not share some of the qualities of the other. But as a general rule, the efficacy of one's apostolate is in direct proportion to the degree of perfection of his interior life, and as long as his interior life has not attained the plenitude of perfection, neither will his apostolate.
It also follows that the principal exercises of the contemplative life, such as prayer, study, meditation, and other pious practices, are not opposed to the exercise of the apostolate, but are its basis, its support, and its very life. Therefore, the apostle should always give preference to the practices of the interior life as a means of increasing the efficacy of his apostolate. [...]
[When works are always performed with a most pure intention, with a magnanimous spirit, and with an ardent desire to fulfill the will of God, then] the apostolic life will not only not be opposed to the contemplative life, but it will be the best means of developing it and of giving it its greatest expansion. [...]
The principal beauty of the perfect life comes from within and from within also come its value and efficacy. Without this, all else would be like a body without a soul; it would be what St. Paul says the most heroic actions are when done without charity (Cf. 1 Cor. 13:1-3). On the other hand, the most humble and ordinary actions of a man who is filled with God have an influence and efficacy that are truly divine. His deportment and manner of life diffuse a supernatural aroma which profoundly affects souls and permeates them with the perfume of religious unction. His mere presence is sufficient to raise hearts to God.
This is why only that active life which proceeds from the contemplative life truly merits the name of an apostolic life, for only then does the latter possess all its efficacy. We also say that the contemplative life is the best disposition for the exercise of of the apostolate, not only because of the abundance of lights, gifts, and graces which are proper to that life and are so necessary for the salvation and sanctification of souls, but by reason of the dispositions which that life arouses in those who possess it and which are the most adequate for the apostolate.
The life of an apostle requires consummate selflessness and detachment from everything, a holy freedom of spirit, an unshakable faith and constancy, and a limitless charity. The apostle should be totally dead to self and seek only the glory of God, but only in the way that God desires. There is, therefore, no self-interest in his works and enterprises, nor does he manifest any personal preference for one work rather than another, but only for those which he knows God has especially confided to him. It matters not to him whether he is here or there or whether he is occupied in this or that ministry, as long as it is the one that God has marked out for him through obedience or by means of the circumstances in which He has placed him. Everything is a matter of holy indifference to him. The only thing to which he aspires is to accomplish well the mission which the Lord has confided to him and to do all the good possible within his sphere of action.
However, in order to preserve this disposition and spirit, he needs an unshakable faith and constancy. Better still, we should say that he needs a divine strength that will sustain him in the bitter trials and battles to which his faith and constancy are exposed. In order to know what these dangers are it is sufficient to recall that all the powers of the world and of hell strive against the work of the apostle, and as if that were not enough, his own human frailty wages war against him. What would happen if he were not sustained by divine power?
It is therefore necessary for him to be in intimate union with God in order to defy and triumph over all the powers of evil. [...]
In spite of [all his frailty and misery, the apostle] must endure the most cruel trials, the most frightful battles, and the most painful sacrifices. [... The apostle] must retain nothing of self: neither ambition, nor interests, nor preferences, nor his own personality, soul, or life. He who is to become all things to all men in order to save all (Cf. 1 Cor. 9:22) must sacrifice everything for the sake of the divine ideal. But who can arrive at such utter selflessness and detachment? Only he who is totally possessed by the Spirit of God; he who can say with St. Paul: "I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).
We see, therefore, that the contemplative life is the best disposition for the apostolic life and that the latter, in its turn, is the best means for the exercise and expansion of the contemplative life. They mutually complete one another, thereby bringing to its highest degree of perfection the accomplishment of the fundamental law of the Christian life: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength" (Deut. 6:5).
---
Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 307-315.
Fr. Victorino Osende on the Conditions of Effective Apostolate
Tradere aliis contemplata, "To give to others the fruits of contemplation." [1]
According to this concept, the active life of the apostolate should be a spontaneous and natural fruit of the contemplative life or a prolongation of the same, whereby the contemplative life is completed and perfected. The contemplative life, in its turn, should be the fruit and normal term of the active life in its ascetical aspect. [...] [2]
The active life differs from the contemplative in that the first refers principally to man's exterior actions and the second to his interior actions. But exterior activity can be considered under two aspects: as directed to one's own salvation and sanctification or that of others. In the first case the active life blends with the ascetical life and precedes the contemplative; in the second, it follows the contemplative life as its proper and natural effect. [...]
Many believe that contemplation, especially in its most lofty degrees, is the final term and the most elevated goal of the supernatural life. That is not true, however, save in certain exceptional cases in which God disposes otherwise in accordance with His high and inscrutable designs. [...]
Normally, therefore, the contemplative life should end in the active life, expending itself in some form of the apostolate. [...] A soul in this state will always feel the impulse to do everything possible to further the glory of God and the salvation of his neighbor. [...]
It is reasonable that this should be so, for good is diffusive by its very nature and it is in the contemplative life that one attains, through union with God, the most perfect possession possible of the highest good. Wherefore, he who truly has attained to the contemplative life cannot help but feel this divine impulse to communicate it to others. [...] We find it in all the saints, especially in the great apostles and ministers of the gospel [....]
[St. Teresa of Avila writes,] "[Saints'] conception of glory is of being able in some way to help the Crucified, especially when they see how often people offend Him and how few there are who really care about His honor and are detached from everything else" (Interior Castle, seventh mansions, chap. 3). [...]
We see also the gross error of those who say that the contemplative and active lives are incompatible or that the contemplative life fosters slothfulness and that it is totally disinterested in the good of others. [E.g. Nietzsche's "saint" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra] [...]
Thus we see clearly how the active life of the apostolate follows the contemplative life and is an effect and natural consequence of the same. We see also that the ascetical phase of the active life precedes the contemplative. [...]
The ministry of the apostolate requires such great sacrifice and detachment, abnegation and patience, constancy and fortitude, that only a love stronger than death can bear it and exercise it with the greatest possible perfection and efficacy. To launch upon the apostolate without due preparation and without the necessary spiritual provisions and, above all, with but a smattering of the interior life, is to tempt God and to risk becoming apostles of Satan rather than of Christ. For we cannot give what we do not have, and when we give, we have to give of what we have. If we possess the spirit of God, we shall communicate that spirit to others, but if we have the spirit of the world, we cannot but communicate a worldly spirit to others. That is why the saints did not want their disciples to go forth to preach and teach others what they themselves had not learned and practiced in the ascetical and contemplative life. They wanted them to be apostles of truth; not of abstract truth which is acquired through pure speculation [i.e. study and mental reflection], but of the truth actually lived and made incarnate within their hearts. They wanted them to communicate the divine word which is life and spirit, a flaming dart which penetrates into the deepest recesses of the heart.
So also we should strive to communicate to others our hearts transformed in the love of Christ; we ought to give them Christ Himself enclosed within our heart and hidden, so to speak, beneath the guise of our burning love of charity. Such is the idea of the apostolate according to the saints, the apostolate in its most elevated and perfect expression.
This does not mean that there are no inferior grades of apostleship. We already know that practice makes perfect. [...]
Ah, there is nothing greater or more sublime than the battles for the faith and for souls! Neither is there anything more terrible than the fury with which the powers of hell guard the prey which they are about to lose. But in spite of all that, success is certain for those who never turn away from the supreme commander, Jesus Christ. [...] He may be sure that he will bear much fruit as long as he remains united to Christ, but without Him he will accomplish nothing (John 15:5).
This means that the apostle, more than anyone else, has great need of prayer and the interior life. These are the life and soul of every apostolate and without them he will bear no fruit, however much he may work or however brilliant his enterprises and apparent successes may be. [...] He must ever keep his heart and attention fixed on God, doing everything for God's honor and glory and for the good of souls and never descend from the supernatural and divine plane on which he is placed by reason of his mission. He must forget self and selfish interests and be constantly vigilant lest there enter into his works or intentions the slightest personal interest or self-love. In a word, he ought to sacrifice all: comfort, health, life, and reputation for the sublime ideal to which he is consecrated. These are the fundamental dispositions required for a successful exercise of the apostolate.
Further, in order to bear fruit among souls, the apostle must be filled of the spirit of God, and this he will attain only through an intensive life of prayer. [...] He ought never lose sight of God and should remain united to Him either by means of ordinary prayer or, as St. Francis de Sales says, by means of the prayer of works: doing everything for the love of God and with the intention of serving and glorifying Him. [...] If these works were performed with the interior spirit which should animate them, that fact alone would suffice to make us saints. [...]
Although at first we may not have the virtue and sanctity required for a perfect apostolate, if we perform our works in this spirit, we shall reach that state gradually. [...] We shall produce increasingly greater fruit. For it is certain that we shall produce more fruit as our interior spirit is greater and our union with God more intimate.
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Notes:
1. Motto of the Dominican Order, taken from the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, IIa IIæ, q. 188, a. 6.
2. NB: Fr. Osende distinguishes between two kinds of active life: that which goes before the contemplative life (i.e. the active life in its ascetical aspect) and that which follows after the contemplative life and flows from it (i.e. apostolic life).
The active life that precedes and prepares for the contemplative life is the ordinary struggle for holiness, the acquisition of virtues, the purification of the soul of all evils, etc., in preparation for mystical union.
The active life that follows the contemplative life flows from that life of union as Fr. Osende will explain. The process, in summary is as follows:
Ordinary, ascetical life acquiring holiness (active life; leads to contemplative life) -> stable and profound union with God (contemplative life) -> apostolate (active life; effect of contemplative life)
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 297-306.
According to this concept, the active life of the apostolate should be a spontaneous and natural fruit of the contemplative life or a prolongation of the same, whereby the contemplative life is completed and perfected. The contemplative life, in its turn, should be the fruit and normal term of the active life in its ascetical aspect. [...] [2]
The active life differs from the contemplative in that the first refers principally to man's exterior actions and the second to his interior actions. But exterior activity can be considered under two aspects: as directed to one's own salvation and sanctification or that of others. In the first case the active life blends with the ascetical life and precedes the contemplative; in the second, it follows the contemplative life as its proper and natural effect. [...]
Many believe that contemplation, especially in its most lofty degrees, is the final term and the most elevated goal of the supernatural life. That is not true, however, save in certain exceptional cases in which God disposes otherwise in accordance with His high and inscrutable designs. [...]
Normally, therefore, the contemplative life should end in the active life, expending itself in some form of the apostolate. [...] A soul in this state will always feel the impulse to do everything possible to further the glory of God and the salvation of his neighbor. [...]
It is reasonable that this should be so, for good is diffusive by its very nature and it is in the contemplative life that one attains, through union with God, the most perfect possession possible of the highest good. Wherefore, he who truly has attained to the contemplative life cannot help but feel this divine impulse to communicate it to others. [...] We find it in all the saints, especially in the great apostles and ministers of the gospel [....]
[St. Teresa of Avila writes,] "[Saints'] conception of glory is of being able in some way to help the Crucified, especially when they see how often people offend Him and how few there are who really care about His honor and are detached from everything else" (Interior Castle, seventh mansions, chap. 3). [...]
We see also the gross error of those who say that the contemplative and active lives are incompatible or that the contemplative life fosters slothfulness and that it is totally disinterested in the good of others. [E.g. Nietzsche's "saint" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra] [...]
Thus we see clearly how the active life of the apostolate follows the contemplative life and is an effect and natural consequence of the same. We see also that the ascetical phase of the active life precedes the contemplative. [...]
The ministry of the apostolate requires such great sacrifice and detachment, abnegation and patience, constancy and fortitude, that only a love stronger than death can bear it and exercise it with the greatest possible perfection and efficacy. To launch upon the apostolate without due preparation and without the necessary spiritual provisions and, above all, with but a smattering of the interior life, is to tempt God and to risk becoming apostles of Satan rather than of Christ. For we cannot give what we do not have, and when we give, we have to give of what we have. If we possess the spirit of God, we shall communicate that spirit to others, but if we have the spirit of the world, we cannot but communicate a worldly spirit to others. That is why the saints did not want their disciples to go forth to preach and teach others what they themselves had not learned and practiced in the ascetical and contemplative life. They wanted them to be apostles of truth; not of abstract truth which is acquired through pure speculation [i.e. study and mental reflection], but of the truth actually lived and made incarnate within their hearts. They wanted them to communicate the divine word which is life and spirit, a flaming dart which penetrates into the deepest recesses of the heart.
So also we should strive to communicate to others our hearts transformed in the love of Christ; we ought to give them Christ Himself enclosed within our heart and hidden, so to speak, beneath the guise of our burning love of charity. Such is the idea of the apostolate according to the saints, the apostolate in its most elevated and perfect expression.
This does not mean that there are no inferior grades of apostleship. We already know that practice makes perfect. [...]
Ah, there is nothing greater or more sublime than the battles for the faith and for souls! Neither is there anything more terrible than the fury with which the powers of hell guard the prey which they are about to lose. But in spite of all that, success is certain for those who never turn away from the supreme commander, Jesus Christ. [...] He may be sure that he will bear much fruit as long as he remains united to Christ, but without Him he will accomplish nothing (John 15:5).
This means that the apostle, more than anyone else, has great need of prayer and the interior life. These are the life and soul of every apostolate and without them he will bear no fruit, however much he may work or however brilliant his enterprises and apparent successes may be. [...] He must ever keep his heart and attention fixed on God, doing everything for God's honor and glory and for the good of souls and never descend from the supernatural and divine plane on which he is placed by reason of his mission. He must forget self and selfish interests and be constantly vigilant lest there enter into his works or intentions the slightest personal interest or self-love. In a word, he ought to sacrifice all: comfort, health, life, and reputation for the sublime ideal to which he is consecrated. These are the fundamental dispositions required for a successful exercise of the apostolate.
Further, in order to bear fruit among souls, the apostle must be filled of the spirit of God, and this he will attain only through an intensive life of prayer. [...] He ought never lose sight of God and should remain united to Him either by means of ordinary prayer or, as St. Francis de Sales says, by means of the prayer of works: doing everything for the love of God and with the intention of serving and glorifying Him. [...] If these works were performed with the interior spirit which should animate them, that fact alone would suffice to make us saints. [...]
Although at first we may not have the virtue and sanctity required for a perfect apostolate, if we perform our works in this spirit, we shall reach that state gradually. [...] We shall produce increasingly greater fruit. For it is certain that we shall produce more fruit as our interior spirit is greater and our union with God more intimate.
---
Notes:
1. Motto of the Dominican Order, taken from the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, IIa IIæ, q. 188, a. 6.
2. NB: Fr. Osende distinguishes between two kinds of active life: that which goes before the contemplative life (i.e. the active life in its ascetical aspect) and that which follows after the contemplative life and flows from it (i.e. apostolic life).
The active life that precedes and prepares for the contemplative life is the ordinary struggle for holiness, the acquisition of virtues, the purification of the soul of all evils, etc., in preparation for mystical union.
The active life that follows the contemplative life flows from that life of union as Fr. Osende will explain. The process, in summary is as follows:
Ordinary, ascetical life acquiring holiness (active life; leads to contemplative life) -> stable and profound union with God (contemplative life) -> apostolate (active life; effect of contemplative life)
---
Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 297-306.
Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene on the Apostolate, pt. 2
Apostolic prayer must be accompanied by sacrifice [....] Love should urge those who pray to "active sacrifice which does not allow them to rest calmly in prayer as long as pain and suffering have not all but reached the limits of endurance. Then, consumed by the ardor of charity and the vehemence of desire, they are no longer persons who pray but living prayers" (Pius XII, January 17, 1943). [...] The more prayer is nourished by sacrifice, the more efficacious it becomes; indeed, it attains its maximum efficacy when sacrifice is total.
Every contemplative soul should be "an altar worthy of the presence of His Majesty" (Ascent of Mt. Carmel, 1.5.7), an altar from which prayer rises, and on which the sacrifice is immolated. The apostolate of Jesus reached its climax and was consummated in the annihilation of death on the Cross. [...] Only when we have really sacrificed ourselves for souls, when we have willingly immolated ourselves with Jesus for their salvation, shall we be able to repeat with Him: "It is consummated." [...]
Many souls are lost because there is no one to pray and make sacrifices for them. [...]
There is no one who cannot contribute to the spiritual good of his neighbor by giving the example of a life which is integrally Christian: holding to the principles one has professed and faithfully fulfilling one's duties. [St. John Chrysostom says,] "There would be no pagans if Christians were real Christians, if they really kept the commandments. A good life sounds clearer and louder than a trumpet." A good life speaks for itself, it has an authority and exercises an attraction greatly superior to that of words. [...]
There is no difficulty in finding books and teachers who will present it in an attractive form, but there is much difficulty in finding persons whose lives give practical testimony to it. [...] The eternal Word became incarnate and through the concrete reality of His human life on earth, He manifested the infinite perfections of God and His tremendous love for us. Jesus, who possessed the divine perfections, could tell us: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt. 5:48). [...]
St. Gregory explains [...]: "Let the action [of good works] be public," he says, "while the intention remains hidden; thus we shall give our neighbor the example of a good work and, at the same time, by our intention which is directed only toward God, we shall please Him alone in secret." [...]
Every soul who lives an interior life, trying to please God alone, should also endeavor to be an apostle by his good example. His life of sincere piety, solid virtue, and union with God, should shine before men, inspiring them to pray, to be recollected, to seek after the things of heaven. [...]
The more deeply interior a soul is, the more brightly will its light shine upon other souls and bring them to God.
One who is just setting out in the spiritual life is not capable of attending to his own sanctification and the sanctification of others simultaneously; he should first have time to concentrate all his powers on his own spiritual formation. Furthermore, since the effectiveness of the apostolate corresponds to the degree of love and union with God which the apostle has attained, it is evident that a beginner will not be capable of exercising a very fruitful apostolate. Hence, if he engages in the active apostolate prematurely, he will dissipate his energy uselessly, with consequent harm to his own interior life and to the fruitfulness of his apostolate.
Jesus Himself spent thirty years in prayer and retirement although, being God, He had no need to do so. It was as if He wanted to show us that before we plunge into the work of the exterior apostolate, we must have reached a certain spiritual maturity by the exercise of the interior life. He treated the Apostles in a similar way: the three years they spent with Jesus were years of true formation for them. [...] Thus true Catholic tradition demands that, before apostles go out into the field of battle, they must prepare themselves by the practice of an intense interior life, which will make them qualified, fruitful instruments for the good of souls. [...]
Enthusiasm and good will are not enough. A vigorous interior life, maturity of thought and judgment, and a spirit of sacrifice and union with God are also necessary; if these are wanting, no good will be accomplished, and the spiritual life of the apostles themselves will be endangered. [...]
St. Teresa of [Avila] says, "A single one who is perfect will do more than many who are not" (Way of Perfection, 3). [...] The entire history of the Church is a practical demonstration of this principle: "St. Paul was only one, yet how many he attracted! . . . If all Christians were like St. Paul, how many worlds would be converted!" (St. John Chrysostom). The holy Curé of Ars [and St. Padre Pio] had very few human resources, yet he converted an immense number of souls by the power of his own holiness, love, and union with God. [...]
It is the saints who are the most efficient apostles. Must we then be saints before devoting ourselves to the apostolate? Theoretically, this is the ideal, but in practice, it is impossible. [...] We must therefore conclude that when the period allotted exclusively to preparation is over, we must combine our own personal efforts toward sanctity with the exercise of the active apostolate. In other words, apostles must sanctify themselves in the apostolate and by means of it. [...] Every apostle should be convinced that precisely in his own field of labor—and nowhere else—will he find all the graces necessary to sanctify himself, to attain intimate union with God. When a person gives himself to the apostolate, not by his own choice, nor because of a natural attraction for activity, but solely in answer to a call from God, he can be certain that, since God has willed him to engage in the apostolate, and as He also wills him to become a saint, that the apostolate will provide him with the means to become one. God cannot condemn to mediocrity one who, in order to do His will, and out of love for Him, is burdened with apostolic labors and responsibilities. [...] In the measure that an apostle is docile and faithful to grace, God will purify him, refine him, and sanctify him, precisely by means of his apostolic labors. [...]
It would be a fatal error to allow oneself to become so absorbed in work that time could no longer be found for concentration on God in intimate heart-to-heart conversation with Him. Not even from the standpoint of greater generosity should an apostle renounce his hours of prayer. [...]
He must make every effort to maintain an equilibrium, avoiding both extremes [of too much activity or too much time spent in leisure and prayer], and unifying his life by means of love. [...]
[Pope Pius XII in Primo Feliciter proposed four conditions for effective apostolic work]: purity of intention, union with God, self-abnegation, love for souls. [...]
An apostle whose heart is torn between opposing intentions will look in vain for peace in his work; he will always be disturbed and dissatisfied.
There can be a lack of right intention in a way that easily escapes one's notice; it may be so subtle that to a distracted soul, it passes wholly unobserved. [...] An atmosphere of recollection and prayer is necessary. In his moments of quiet at the feet of Our Lord, the apostle will discover that often, in the course of his daily occupations, he loses sight of the supernatural end which should animate his activity, and that in its place secondary ends appear, becoming the immediate motive of many of his decisions and acts. This means that his intention has not remained directed solely toward God and souls, but has often deviated under the influence of self-love. [...] He should not be discouraged by it; instead, he should humbly recognize his own misery and thank God who has revealed it to him in order that he may correct it. [...] His love is not strong enough yet to triumph completely over human passions. Therefore, the apostle should not give up the struggle against the manifestations of self-love, no matter how trivial. He must not yield to them under the pretext that they are natural tendencies, but must correct, mortify, repress, and cut them off without pity, and must always rectify his intentions. A long, thorough purification is necessary to overcome completely the dualism between God and "self," between love for souls and love of self. The apostle must ask Our Lord for the grace of this total purification and dispose himself to receive it, profiting by every occasion for detachment, renunciation, sacrifice, and humiliation, which apostolic activity offers in abundance to all who seriously dedicate themselves to it. If the apostle does this, he will find in his work an excellent means of spiritual progress, and instead of becoming entangled in the dangers which abound in external activity when self-love is not mortified, he will be purified by the very exercise of his apostolate. [...]
Without forgetfulness of self, it would be impossible to have rectitude of intention. [...]
Every apostle must renounce many things [...] tastes, habits, personal demands of culture, education, sensibility must be generously put aside, that the apostle may adapt himself to the mentality and to the demands of others; quiet, rest, relaxation, must yield their place to the service of souls. The apostle should not go about seeking interesting conversations, consoling friendships, pleasant occupations, satisfying results. Occasionally it may happen that he will meet these things on his way, but even then, he may not stop to enjoy them selfishly, but must use them as means for the apostolate. [...] The apostle is sent to "give" and not to "receive" [....]
Not only in moments of enthusiasm, on bright days [...] but also in moments of darkness, on gray days, when all seems to crumble under the impact of difficulties, when his tired body claims a little rest, when the work is heavy and energy declines and, with the onrush of internal and external struggles, it becomes very difficult to remain at his post. Yes, even in hours of abandonment and trial, the apostle must continue to give himself with equal constancy and generosity. If he does not do so cheerfully, that is, with a true spirit of sacrifice, it will be impossible for his conduct not to betray his ill humor, discontent, aversion, or impatience; and all this is very prejudicial to his work and the influence he could exercise. But where can the strength be found for this complete and continual gift of self? In the Holy Eucharist. [...] [We] can nevertheless follow [Christ's] example by putting himself at [others'] disposal to the point of allowing himself to be "eaten" by them, that is to say, by allowing himself to be consumed in their service. [...]
Humility is the indispensable foundation of the whole spiritual life; hence it is the basic condition of every apostolate and constitutes the principal part of the program of abnegation and forgetfulness of self which the apostolate requires. [...]
Oh! If we were truly convinced that, although God may will to make us of us, He alone possesses the power to make our action fruitful, He alone can produce fruits of eternal life, He alone can give grace to souls, and we are nothing but instruments! In fact, the smaller we make ourselves by acknowledging our poverty, the more qualified we become to be used as a means for the salvation of others. What glory can a brush claim if a skillful artist uses it to perfect a work of art? Can the marble used by Michelangelo to sculpture his Moses boast of any merit? "You have not chosen Me," Jesus said to His Apostles, "but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go and should bring forth fruit" (Jn. 15:16).
"Without Me you can do nothing." How many ambitions and points of honor, how much vain self-complacency, how many desires for applause and for advancement in recognition of our personal worth are broken, like waves on the rocks, by these words! Jesus does not tell us that "without Him we can do little," but, nothing, absolutely nothing, and if in appearance the works flourish, admirers increase, churches and halls are filled, in reality not the least atom of grace can descend into hearts if God does not intervene.
Poor apostle, at times so satisfied, so inflated by success! Despite your abilities, your talent, your brilliant style, your attractive conversation, your titles, your successes—in relation to the apostolate, you are smaller and more powerless than an ant before a very high mountain. Recognize your nothingness, take refuge in God, keep yourself closely united to Him, for only from Him will you draw the fruitfulness of your works. [...]
If our apostolic activity produces few fruits, is it because, relying too much on ourselves, we do not constantly strive to keep close to God by means of humility and prayer?
"Abide in Me," Jesus repeats to us. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me" (Jn. 15:4). It does not suffice for the apostle to be united to Jesus through the state of grace; he must remain united to Him, plunged in profound humility which makes him realize that he can do nothing, absolutely nothing, without continual help.
---
Source: Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, Divine Intimacy, trans. by Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Boston (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2005), 980-981, 983-985, 992-997, 999-1007, "326: Apostolic Immolation," "327: The Apostolate of Example," "330: The Formation of Apostles," "331: Sanctification in the Apostolate," "332: A Right Intention," "333: Self-Forgetfulness and Abnegation," "334: Humility in the Apostolate."
Every contemplative soul should be "an altar worthy of the presence of His Majesty" (Ascent of Mt. Carmel, 1.5.7), an altar from which prayer rises, and on which the sacrifice is immolated. The apostolate of Jesus reached its climax and was consummated in the annihilation of death on the Cross. [...] Only when we have really sacrificed ourselves for souls, when we have willingly immolated ourselves with Jesus for their salvation, shall we be able to repeat with Him: "It is consummated." [...]
Many souls are lost because there is no one to pray and make sacrifices for them. [...]
There is no one who cannot contribute to the spiritual good of his neighbor by giving the example of a life which is integrally Christian: holding to the principles one has professed and faithfully fulfilling one's duties. [St. John Chrysostom says,] "There would be no pagans if Christians were real Christians, if they really kept the commandments. A good life sounds clearer and louder than a trumpet." A good life speaks for itself, it has an authority and exercises an attraction greatly superior to that of words. [...]
There is no difficulty in finding books and teachers who will present it in an attractive form, but there is much difficulty in finding persons whose lives give practical testimony to it. [...] The eternal Word became incarnate and through the concrete reality of His human life on earth, He manifested the infinite perfections of God and His tremendous love for us. Jesus, who possessed the divine perfections, could tell us: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt. 5:48). [...]
St. Gregory explains [...]: "Let the action [of good works] be public," he says, "while the intention remains hidden; thus we shall give our neighbor the example of a good work and, at the same time, by our intention which is directed only toward God, we shall please Him alone in secret." [...]
Every soul who lives an interior life, trying to please God alone, should also endeavor to be an apostle by his good example. His life of sincere piety, solid virtue, and union with God, should shine before men, inspiring them to pray, to be recollected, to seek after the things of heaven. [...]
The more deeply interior a soul is, the more brightly will its light shine upon other souls and bring them to God.
One who is just setting out in the spiritual life is not capable of attending to his own sanctification and the sanctification of others simultaneously; he should first have time to concentrate all his powers on his own spiritual formation. Furthermore, since the effectiveness of the apostolate corresponds to the degree of love and union with God which the apostle has attained, it is evident that a beginner will not be capable of exercising a very fruitful apostolate. Hence, if he engages in the active apostolate prematurely, he will dissipate his energy uselessly, with consequent harm to his own interior life and to the fruitfulness of his apostolate.
Jesus Himself spent thirty years in prayer and retirement although, being God, He had no need to do so. It was as if He wanted to show us that before we plunge into the work of the exterior apostolate, we must have reached a certain spiritual maturity by the exercise of the interior life. He treated the Apostles in a similar way: the three years they spent with Jesus were years of true formation for them. [...] Thus true Catholic tradition demands that, before apostles go out into the field of battle, they must prepare themselves by the practice of an intense interior life, which will make them qualified, fruitful instruments for the good of souls. [...]
Enthusiasm and good will are not enough. A vigorous interior life, maturity of thought and judgment, and a spirit of sacrifice and union with God are also necessary; if these are wanting, no good will be accomplished, and the spiritual life of the apostles themselves will be endangered. [...]
St. Teresa of [Avila] says, "A single one who is perfect will do more than many who are not" (Way of Perfection, 3). [...] The entire history of the Church is a practical demonstration of this principle: "St. Paul was only one, yet how many he attracted! . . . If all Christians were like St. Paul, how many worlds would be converted!" (St. John Chrysostom). The holy Curé of Ars [and St. Padre Pio] had very few human resources, yet he converted an immense number of souls by the power of his own holiness, love, and union with God. [...]
It is the saints who are the most efficient apostles. Must we then be saints before devoting ourselves to the apostolate? Theoretically, this is the ideal, but in practice, it is impossible. [...] We must therefore conclude that when the period allotted exclusively to preparation is over, we must combine our own personal efforts toward sanctity with the exercise of the active apostolate. In other words, apostles must sanctify themselves in the apostolate and by means of it. [...] Every apostle should be convinced that precisely in his own field of labor—and nowhere else—will he find all the graces necessary to sanctify himself, to attain intimate union with God. When a person gives himself to the apostolate, not by his own choice, nor because of a natural attraction for activity, but solely in answer to a call from God, he can be certain that, since God has willed him to engage in the apostolate, and as He also wills him to become a saint, that the apostolate will provide him with the means to become one. God cannot condemn to mediocrity one who, in order to do His will, and out of love for Him, is burdened with apostolic labors and responsibilities. [...] In the measure that an apostle is docile and faithful to grace, God will purify him, refine him, and sanctify him, precisely by means of his apostolic labors. [...]
It would be a fatal error to allow oneself to become so absorbed in work that time could no longer be found for concentration on God in intimate heart-to-heart conversation with Him. Not even from the standpoint of greater generosity should an apostle renounce his hours of prayer. [...]
He must make every effort to maintain an equilibrium, avoiding both extremes [of too much activity or too much time spent in leisure and prayer], and unifying his life by means of love. [...]
[Pope Pius XII in Primo Feliciter proposed four conditions for effective apostolic work]: purity of intention, union with God, self-abnegation, love for souls. [...]
An apostle whose heart is torn between opposing intentions will look in vain for peace in his work; he will always be disturbed and dissatisfied.
There can be a lack of right intention in a way that easily escapes one's notice; it may be so subtle that to a distracted soul, it passes wholly unobserved. [...] An atmosphere of recollection and prayer is necessary. In his moments of quiet at the feet of Our Lord, the apostle will discover that often, in the course of his daily occupations, he loses sight of the supernatural end which should animate his activity, and that in its place secondary ends appear, becoming the immediate motive of many of his decisions and acts. This means that his intention has not remained directed solely toward God and souls, but has often deviated under the influence of self-love. [...] He should not be discouraged by it; instead, he should humbly recognize his own misery and thank God who has revealed it to him in order that he may correct it. [...] His love is not strong enough yet to triumph completely over human passions. Therefore, the apostle should not give up the struggle against the manifestations of self-love, no matter how trivial. He must not yield to them under the pretext that they are natural tendencies, but must correct, mortify, repress, and cut them off without pity, and must always rectify his intentions. A long, thorough purification is necessary to overcome completely the dualism between God and "self," between love for souls and love of self. The apostle must ask Our Lord for the grace of this total purification and dispose himself to receive it, profiting by every occasion for detachment, renunciation, sacrifice, and humiliation, which apostolic activity offers in abundance to all who seriously dedicate themselves to it. If the apostle does this, he will find in his work an excellent means of spiritual progress, and instead of becoming entangled in the dangers which abound in external activity when self-love is not mortified, he will be purified by the very exercise of his apostolate. [...]
Without forgetfulness of self, it would be impossible to have rectitude of intention. [...]
Every apostle must renounce many things [...] tastes, habits, personal demands of culture, education, sensibility must be generously put aside, that the apostle may adapt himself to the mentality and to the demands of others; quiet, rest, relaxation, must yield their place to the service of souls. The apostle should not go about seeking interesting conversations, consoling friendships, pleasant occupations, satisfying results. Occasionally it may happen that he will meet these things on his way, but even then, he may not stop to enjoy them selfishly, but must use them as means for the apostolate. [...] The apostle is sent to "give" and not to "receive" [....]
Not only in moments of enthusiasm, on bright days [...] but also in moments of darkness, on gray days, when all seems to crumble under the impact of difficulties, when his tired body claims a little rest, when the work is heavy and energy declines and, with the onrush of internal and external struggles, it becomes very difficult to remain at his post. Yes, even in hours of abandonment and trial, the apostle must continue to give himself with equal constancy and generosity. If he does not do so cheerfully, that is, with a true spirit of sacrifice, it will be impossible for his conduct not to betray his ill humor, discontent, aversion, or impatience; and all this is very prejudicial to his work and the influence he could exercise. But where can the strength be found for this complete and continual gift of self? In the Holy Eucharist. [...] [We] can nevertheless follow [Christ's] example by putting himself at [others'] disposal to the point of allowing himself to be "eaten" by them, that is to say, by allowing himself to be consumed in their service. [...]
Humility is the indispensable foundation of the whole spiritual life; hence it is the basic condition of every apostolate and constitutes the principal part of the program of abnegation and forgetfulness of self which the apostolate requires. [...]
Oh! If we were truly convinced that, although God may will to make us of us, He alone possesses the power to make our action fruitful, He alone can produce fruits of eternal life, He alone can give grace to souls, and we are nothing but instruments! In fact, the smaller we make ourselves by acknowledging our poverty, the more qualified we become to be used as a means for the salvation of others. What glory can a brush claim if a skillful artist uses it to perfect a work of art? Can the marble used by Michelangelo to sculpture his Moses boast of any merit? "You have not chosen Me," Jesus said to His Apostles, "but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go and should bring forth fruit" (Jn. 15:16).
"Without Me you can do nothing." How many ambitions and points of honor, how much vain self-complacency, how many desires for applause and for advancement in recognition of our personal worth are broken, like waves on the rocks, by these words! Jesus does not tell us that "without Him we can do little," but, nothing, absolutely nothing, and if in appearance the works flourish, admirers increase, churches and halls are filled, in reality not the least atom of grace can descend into hearts if God does not intervene.
Poor apostle, at times so satisfied, so inflated by success! Despite your abilities, your talent, your brilliant style, your attractive conversation, your titles, your successes—in relation to the apostolate, you are smaller and more powerless than an ant before a very high mountain. Recognize your nothingness, take refuge in God, keep yourself closely united to Him, for only from Him will you draw the fruitfulness of your works. [...]
If our apostolic activity produces few fruits, is it because, relying too much on ourselves, we do not constantly strive to keep close to God by means of humility and prayer?
"Abide in Me," Jesus repeats to us. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me" (Jn. 15:4). It does not suffice for the apostle to be united to Jesus through the state of grace; he must remain united to Him, plunged in profound humility which makes him realize that he can do nothing, absolutely nothing, without continual help.
---
Source: Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, Divine Intimacy, trans. by Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Boston (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2005), 980-981, 983-985, 992-997, 999-1007, "326: Apostolic Immolation," "327: The Apostolate of Example," "330: The Formation of Apostles," "331: Sanctification in the Apostolate," "332: A Right Intention," "333: Self-Forgetfulness and Abnegation," "334: Humility in the Apostolate."
Monday, February 3, 2014
Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene on the Apostolate, pt. 1
An apostle, working for God for the good of souls, must live an intimate spiritual union with Him, so as to enter as far as possible into His views and plans for the salvation of the world.
Only by penetrating to the depths of the mystery of God's love for mankind can the apostle cooperate in the actual diffusion of love and grace. He must keep in close contact with God by means of the theological virtues, and must try to grasp the profound inspirations of His love. [...]
An apostle should try to put his own heart into contact with the Heart of God, that it may be filled with God's love and share in His charity toward men. The apostle should, as it were, have the mind of God, the mind of Christ, that is, he should cultivate deep sentiments of love for the brethren, a pale reflection of the love of God for men. [...]
Unless our life is one of intimacy with God and His Son Jesus, we cannot be His collaborators, docile instruments in His hands; unless we have an intense interior life, we cannot have the mind of Christ and be associated with His love and His work for the salvation of souls.
By means of prayer and the struggle against sin, by self-renunciation, and the practice of the virtues, the interior life progressively rids the soul of all that is defective [....] The more a soul cultivates the interior life, the nearer it will come to God, and having become like Him by grace and love, will be able to live in intimacy with Him, enjoy His friendship, penetrate His mysteries and participate in them. Who, then, will be better able to understand the great mystery of the Redemption and contribute his share to it, than one who by means of a fervent interior life, lives in intimate friendship with God?
The first degree of friendship with God, which consists in the absence of serious [mortal] sin, does not suffice to fulfill the purposes of the apostolate. A deeper relationship is required, one which creates such uniformity of will, desire and affection that the apostle is enabled to act according to God's Heart; he is moved not by his own impulses, but by the impulse of grace, by God's will, and the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. [...]
Only if we are friends of God can we be apostles. [...]
The more a soul is united to God, the more it shares in the power of God Himself; and hence, its prayers, sacrifices, and works undertaken for the salvation of souls, are efficacious and attain their end. [...]
In a single moment [...] God infused charity into us without any cooperation on our part, but He does not preserve this gift, much less increase it, unless we remain united to Him by living an interior life. The purpose of the struggle against our passions, the practice of the virtues, recollection, prayer, the practice of the presence of God, and frequent reception of the Sacraments, is to foster union with God and the growth of charity. [...] The interior life is the soul of the apostolate. A deep interior life will generate intense love and intimate union with God, and, therefore, from it will spring a fruitful apostolate, a true sharing in Christ's work of saving souls; on the other hand, a mediocre interior life can produce only a feeble love and union with God; hence, the resultant apostolate cannot have an efficacious influence on souls. [...] If this interior flame be extinguished, then the apostolate will be emptied of its substance and reduced to mere external activity which may make a great noise, but will not bring forth any fruit. St. John of the Cross says, "It is the hammer vigorously and to accomplish little more than nothing, at times nothing at all; at times, indeed, it may even be to do harm" (Spiritual Canticle, 29.3). [...]
The interior life is the vital principle, the force, and the flame of the apostolate. [...] When a soul is fired with zeal for the apostolic life, its very desire to win other souls for God impels it to devote itself with greater generosity to prayer, mortification, and the practice of the virtues, with the intention of making itself more capable of a fruitful apostolate. [...] The apostolate in its turn is a very powerful mainspring urging the soul on to union with God, to perfection, to sanctity. [...]
The dogma of the Communion of Saints tells us precisely that the grace and holiness of one of Christ's members necessarily redounds to the advantage of all the other members. [...]
A cold spiritual life, indifferent to the good of souls, is necessarily dwarfed; it is nothing more than a mean, petty and selfish form of piety; it has lost its vital heat, the warmth of charity, and does not even deserve the name of life. On the contrary, where the fire of the apostolate burns brightly, one's interior life becomes more vigorous than ever and makes one capable of great generosity. [...] When we think that the salvation of other souls may depend on our generosity, our fidelity to grace, or our immolation, then we can refuse nothing to our Lord, and we find the strength to accept even what is most bitter and painful. [...]
God has made the granting of certain graces, necessary for our salvation and that of others, dependent upon our prayers. In other words, by the merits of Jesus, grace—God's infinite mercy—is ready to be poured out abundantly into men's souls, but it will not be poured out unless there is someone who raises supplicating hands to heaven, asking for it. If prayer does not ascend to the throne of the Most High, grace will not be granted. This explains the absolute necessity for apostolic prayer and its great efficacy. [...] There is no substitute for prayer, because prayer draws grace directly from its source, God. Our activity, our words and works can prepare the ground for grace, but if we do not pray, it will not come down to refresh souls. [...]
By their lives of continual prayer, adoration and unceasing praise to the Most High, these souls supply for the negligence and carelessness of many, and thus they re-establish in the world the balance between God's rights and man's duty, between action and contemplation. [...] In the Church they are "powerhouses" of supernatural energy, energy derived from and accumulated by prayer, and diffused by it to the utmost bounds of the earth. [...]
Unfortunately we often put more trust in our work, our diligence, our technique, than in our prayer; we have not enough faith in its efficacy, in the help which God will surely give those who invoke Him from their heart, and as a result, we consider wasted the time we give to prayer. This basic error springs from a lack of faith and humility; it is an error which explains the sterility of so many works. "Let those, then, who are great actives," admonishes St. John of the Cross," that think to girdle the world with their outward works and their preachings, take note here that they would bring far more profit to the Church, and be far more pleasing to God (apart form the good example they would give) if they spent even half of this time with God in prayer" (Spiritual Canticle, 29.3). [...]
---
Source: Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, Divine Intimacy, trans. by Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Boston (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2005), 962-963, 965-967, 971-973, 977-979, "320: One with the Mind of Christ," "321: The Soul of the Apostolate," "323: The Apostolic Ideal," "325: Apostolic Prayer."
Only by penetrating to the depths of the mystery of God's love for mankind can the apostle cooperate in the actual diffusion of love and grace. He must keep in close contact with God by means of the theological virtues, and must try to grasp the profound inspirations of His love. [...]
An apostle should try to put his own heart into contact with the Heart of God, that it may be filled with God's love and share in His charity toward men. The apostle should, as it were, have the mind of God, the mind of Christ, that is, he should cultivate deep sentiments of love for the brethren, a pale reflection of the love of God for men. [...]
Unless our life is one of intimacy with God and His Son Jesus, we cannot be His collaborators, docile instruments in His hands; unless we have an intense interior life, we cannot have the mind of Christ and be associated with His love and His work for the salvation of souls.
By means of prayer and the struggle against sin, by self-renunciation, and the practice of the virtues, the interior life progressively rids the soul of all that is defective [....] The more a soul cultivates the interior life, the nearer it will come to God, and having become like Him by grace and love, will be able to live in intimacy with Him, enjoy His friendship, penetrate His mysteries and participate in them. Who, then, will be better able to understand the great mystery of the Redemption and contribute his share to it, than one who by means of a fervent interior life, lives in intimate friendship with God?
The first degree of friendship with God, which consists in the absence of serious [mortal] sin, does not suffice to fulfill the purposes of the apostolate. A deeper relationship is required, one which creates such uniformity of will, desire and affection that the apostle is enabled to act according to God's Heart; he is moved not by his own impulses, but by the impulse of grace, by God's will, and the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. [...]
Only if we are friends of God can we be apostles. [...]
The more a soul is united to God, the more it shares in the power of God Himself; and hence, its prayers, sacrifices, and works undertaken for the salvation of souls, are efficacious and attain their end. [...]
In a single moment [...] God infused charity into us without any cooperation on our part, but He does not preserve this gift, much less increase it, unless we remain united to Him by living an interior life. The purpose of the struggle against our passions, the practice of the virtues, recollection, prayer, the practice of the presence of God, and frequent reception of the Sacraments, is to foster union with God and the growth of charity. [...] The interior life is the soul of the apostolate. A deep interior life will generate intense love and intimate union with God, and, therefore, from it will spring a fruitful apostolate, a true sharing in Christ's work of saving souls; on the other hand, a mediocre interior life can produce only a feeble love and union with God; hence, the resultant apostolate cannot have an efficacious influence on souls. [...] If this interior flame be extinguished, then the apostolate will be emptied of its substance and reduced to mere external activity which may make a great noise, but will not bring forth any fruit. St. John of the Cross says, "It is the hammer vigorously and to accomplish little more than nothing, at times nothing at all; at times, indeed, it may even be to do harm" (Spiritual Canticle, 29.3). [...]
The interior life is the vital principle, the force, and the flame of the apostolate. [...] When a soul is fired with zeal for the apostolic life, its very desire to win other souls for God impels it to devote itself with greater generosity to prayer, mortification, and the practice of the virtues, with the intention of making itself more capable of a fruitful apostolate. [...] The apostolate in its turn is a very powerful mainspring urging the soul on to union with God, to perfection, to sanctity. [...]
The dogma of the Communion of Saints tells us precisely that the grace and holiness of one of Christ's members necessarily redounds to the advantage of all the other members. [...]
A cold spiritual life, indifferent to the good of souls, is necessarily dwarfed; it is nothing more than a mean, petty and selfish form of piety; it has lost its vital heat, the warmth of charity, and does not even deserve the name of life. On the contrary, where the fire of the apostolate burns brightly, one's interior life becomes more vigorous than ever and makes one capable of great generosity. [...] When we think that the salvation of other souls may depend on our generosity, our fidelity to grace, or our immolation, then we can refuse nothing to our Lord, and we find the strength to accept even what is most bitter and painful. [...]
God has made the granting of certain graces, necessary for our salvation and that of others, dependent upon our prayers. In other words, by the merits of Jesus, grace—God's infinite mercy—is ready to be poured out abundantly into men's souls, but it will not be poured out unless there is someone who raises supplicating hands to heaven, asking for it. If prayer does not ascend to the throne of the Most High, grace will not be granted. This explains the absolute necessity for apostolic prayer and its great efficacy. [...] There is no substitute for prayer, because prayer draws grace directly from its source, God. Our activity, our words and works can prepare the ground for grace, but if we do not pray, it will not come down to refresh souls. [...]
By their lives of continual prayer, adoration and unceasing praise to the Most High, these souls supply for the negligence and carelessness of many, and thus they re-establish in the world the balance between God's rights and man's duty, between action and contemplation. [...] In the Church they are "powerhouses" of supernatural energy, energy derived from and accumulated by prayer, and diffused by it to the utmost bounds of the earth. [...]
Unfortunately we often put more trust in our work, our diligence, our technique, than in our prayer; we have not enough faith in its efficacy, in the help which God will surely give those who invoke Him from their heart, and as a result, we consider wasted the time we give to prayer. This basic error springs from a lack of faith and humility; it is an error which explains the sterility of so many works. "Let those, then, who are great actives," admonishes St. John of the Cross," that think to girdle the world with their outward works and their preachings, take note here that they would bring far more profit to the Church, and be far more pleasing to God (apart form the good example they would give) if they spent even half of this time with God in prayer" (Spiritual Canticle, 29.3). [...]
---
Source: Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, Divine Intimacy, trans. by Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Boston (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2005), 962-963, 965-967, 971-973, 977-979, "320: One with the Mind of Christ," "321: The Soul of the Apostolate," "323: The Apostolic Ideal," "325: Apostolic Prayer."
Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez on Preparing for the Apostolate
It is certain that to be in a state to labor profitably for the advancement of our neighbor, we ought first of all to have labored for our own; and it is this the apostle recommends to us in the first place as the foundation for all the rest, when he says, attend to thyself (1 Tim. 4:16). Each one ought first of all to attend to himself, and seriously apply himself to his particular advancement. For God, who is the author of grace as well as of nature, who reacheth from end to end mightily, and disposeth all things sweetly (Wisdom 8:1), keeps the same order in the works of grace as he does in those of nature, wherein (to speak philosophically) every like produces its like. Since then in natural things, we see that besides the general causes of their production, there ought to be also a near and immediate cause, and of the same species, to give to each being that particular form which it ought to have that there ought to be fire, for example, to produce another fire; and light, to produce another light; so in spiritual things, it is God's pleasure that to produce patience, charity, and humility, in a heart, the preacher or confessor, who is the immediate cause he makes use of, should be humble, patient, and charitable. Moreover, as in natural things, we see, for example, that a plant produces no seed for the multiplication of its own species, till it be grown great; so in things of grace, God will have us be great in virtue and spirituality, to bring forth spiritual children, and to be able to say with the apostle, by means of the gospel I have begotten you in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 4:15). [...]
St. Ephraim deplores this abuse [of rushing into the apostolate before developing personal holiness], and says it is a sentiment that springs not from the spirit of God, but from the spirit of presumption and pride. They would begin, says he, to teach before they know anything themselves. They would intrude themselves to give laws and rules to others, before they have learned the law or rules themselves; they would take upon them to give their opinion in everything, before they have, begun to spell; and before they are capable of receiving correction, they take upon them to correct others. St. Gregory, speaking of those who are guilty of this fault, treats this subject perfectly well; and to render things more sensible, he makes use of some familiar comparisons. Such persons as these, says he, ought to be admonished to consider, that little birds, who would fly before their wings are fully feathered, fall upon the ground, instead of flying in the air. Likewise when a wall is fresh and new made, if the roof is put upon it, it rather destroys than makes a building [...] (3p. Pastor. adm. 26).
The employments that regard the help of our neighbor require a great fund of virtue and mortification. If without this you engage herein, you will have more reason to fear than to hope; and you will rather imbibe the spirit and sentiments of the world, than the world will imbibe yours. The same St. Gregory therefore observes, that though Jesus Christ, the eternal wisdom of the Father, was infinitely wise from the first moment of his conception, yet he began not to teach others till he was thirty years of age, and till he had prepared himself for it, by his retreat in the desert, by forty days fast, and many other austerities. It is not that he stood in need, says this great saint, of any preparation; but he would teach us by his own example, how great preparation and perfection is required for so great a ministry. Also when he was twelve years of age, when he stayed in Jerusalem, and his parents went there to seek him, they found him in the temple in the midst of the doctors, disputing with them. And hence, continues this father, those that are still weak and infants in virtue, ought to learn not to meddle with teaching of others, nor intrude themselves before their time into so sublime a ministry; since Jesus Christ himself would, at the age of twelve years, be instructed by those whose master he himself was; and was contented to hear and to ask them questions, though it was he who inspired them with all the light and knowledge they had to answer him. It was also for this reason, says the same saint, that Jesus Christ having commanded his apostles to go and preach the gospel throughout the whole world; and having then the power to give them grace necessary for this end, yet he would not do it, nor permit them, in the weak and imperfect state they were, to go and preach his word, but commanded them, saying, go into the town, and remain there till ye shall be replenished with the virtue of the Holy Ghost. And this he did to let us see, that we ought to be very well grounded in humility, mortification, and all other virtues, in order that the employments which engage us to treat with our neighbor may be profitable for their salvation, without being prejudicial to our own.
St. Bernard upon this subject makes use of these words of the Canticles, our sister is little, and as yet has not any breasts (Cant. 8:8), and applying them to the state of the church before the descent of the Holy Ghost, he says: The church was then very little, and at that time had neither breasts nor milk to nourish its spiritual children; but when the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles, he replenished them with milk and with his gifts and graces. All were filled with the Holy Ghost, says the scripture, and they began to announce in different languages, the wonderful works of God (Acts 2:4), and to work conversions without number. If you would therefore produce fruit in souls, and raise spiritual children to God, you ought to have your breasts full of milk: one of them ought to be filled with the milk of all the virtues, and the other will the milk of pure and wholesome doctrine.
St. Jerome explaining these words, when the clouds shall be filled, they shall pour down rain upon the earth in abundance (Eccl. 11:3), says, that the preachers of the word of God are clouds; and that as the clouds water the earth when they are full of rain, so when preachers are full of the wholesome water of evangelical doctrine, they water the hearts of men. [...] When therefore these clouds shall be full of the celestial rain of grace, they may let the earth hear the words of my mouth, let my doctrine be poured down like rain, let my discourse fall like dew; let it be like rain upon the grass, and as drops of water upon the meadows (Deut. 32:1). It is then they will be able to render the earth fruitful. Then they will be able to soften and temper the dryness of men's hearts, and render them capable of producing the fruits of justice and salvation.
But if these clouds have no water, what will happen? Would you know? Behold what St. Jude in his canonical epistle says: They are clouds without water, which the winds drive every way (Jude 12). So that as the clouds which are not full of water, are easily carried by the wind from one side to the other, because of their great lightness; even so, if a preacher be not full of the spirit of humility and mortification, if he be not filled with all sorts of virtue, he will infallibly be carried from one side to the other with the wind of vainglory and self-love; and this quality of an evangelical preacher, this quality of the cloud, which is raised above the earth, will serve him for nothing else than to make him be the more easily turned, and tossed up and down by all sorts of winds. [...]
St. Bernard, writing upon these words of the Canticles, your name is like oil spread abroad (Cant. 1:2), treats this matter perfectly well. He says that the Holy Ghost works two things in us: the one, by which he first establishes us in virtue for our own advancement, he calls infusion; the other, by which he communicates to us his gifts and graces, for the profit and advantage of our neighbor, he calls effusion, or pouring forth; because it is a grace that is given us to bestow upon others. Now this infusion, he says, ought to precede the effusion. We ought first be well filled with virtue, before we can fill others therewith. And hereupon he makes a comparison, which explains his thoughts very well. He says, there is this difference between a channel, or pipe that serves to conduct the water from a fountain, and the basin that receives it; that the channel receives and renders the water at the same time without retaining anything of it; whereas, the basin first fills itself, and afterwards the superfluous water runs over; which it cannot do, without still keeping itself full. You will do very wisely then, says he, to become like the basin, and not like the channel (Serm. 78 supr. Cant.); and that you may not contemn this counsel, continues the saint, as coming from myself, know that it is not I, but the Holy Ghost that gives it: A fool uttereth all his mind; a wise man deferreth, and keeps it till afterwards (Prov. 29:11). [...]
[So many souls] wish to lead and help others, and know not at all how to help themselves. There is a great deal of folly and no charity at all in this, because there is no degree of charity above that which the wise man advises us to have for ourselves, when he says, take pity on your own soul, by rendering it pleasing to God (Eccl. 30:24). [...]
Let my soul, says the prophet, be filled with exquisite and delicious meat; and then, O Lord, my mouth shall sing hymns of joy and thanksgiving (Ps. 62:6). Our hearts therefore ought first be filled, that it may be from the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks [....]
St. Augustine, explaining these words of our Savior in the gospel, you are the light of the world (Mt. 5:14), says, that light contracts no uncleanness by passing through foul places (Tract. 4, supr. Joan.), but on the contrary, that it purifies them, and chases away their bad smell, without receiving any impression thereof in itself. It is in this manner that our light ought to make manifest the sins of the world, and penetrate their filth, without contracting any corruption from them.
It is thus that it ought to purify the hearts of sinners, and drive away the bad exhalations of vice. But to do this, we ought to have a great application to our spiritual exercises, to prayer, examens, spiritual reading, penance, and mortification. Above all, we must never neglect our prayer, which each of us is obliged daily to make for our spiritual progress. This is a thing of which we cannot take too much care; because the devil, who perceives that he cannot hinder us from laboring form the advancement of our neighbor, as we are particularly obliged thereunto [...], endeavors to make us apply ourselves so to it that we come at length to forget the care of our own, and to neglect the means necessary for it. [...] So that the greater affairs we have in that way, the more we ought to give ourselves to prayer, to obtain of God a blessing upon our ministry, and to make it succeed. It was thus the saints arranged matters. [...]
Jesus Christ himself has also given us an example of this practice, by withdrawing himself to mountains and retired places, and there passing whole nights in prayer. He employed the day in preaching [...], in healing [...], in casting out devils; and as the gospel says, he passed the whole night in prayer to God. He did this, as St. Ambrose very well takes notice, not because he stood in need of the help of prayer, but that he might hereby give us an example of what we ought to do. [...]
Albert the Great was wont to say that in divine sciences, a greater advancement was made by piety and prayer than by study. [...] It is also by this means that St. Thomas, who studied under him, became so learned and enlightened; and it was this that made him say, that for all he knew he was more indebted to prayer than to his own labor or studies. We read also of St. Bonaventure, that when he taught divinity at Paris, with a great deal of reputation, and when by his works he attracted to himself the esteem and admiration of all the world, St. Thomas [Aquinas], going one day to see him, begged of him to show him those books he made use of for his studies. Whereupon [St. Bonaventure showed St. Thomas] his oratory, upon which he had a crucifix. Behold, father, says he, all my books; and behold the chief books from which I derive all I teach and all I write; and it is by casting myself at the feet of this crucifix—it is by supplicating light in my doubts, it is by assisting at mass, that I have made greater progress in sciences, and that I have gained more true knowledge, than by the reading of any books whatsoever.
---
Source: Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, The Practice of Christian Perfection, vol. 3, tr. 1, ch. 4-5, pp. 9-15.
St. Ephraim deplores this abuse [of rushing into the apostolate before developing personal holiness], and says it is a sentiment that springs not from the spirit of God, but from the spirit of presumption and pride. They would begin, says he, to teach before they know anything themselves. They would intrude themselves to give laws and rules to others, before they have learned the law or rules themselves; they would take upon them to give their opinion in everything, before they have, begun to spell; and before they are capable of receiving correction, they take upon them to correct others. St. Gregory, speaking of those who are guilty of this fault, treats this subject perfectly well; and to render things more sensible, he makes use of some familiar comparisons. Such persons as these, says he, ought to be admonished to consider, that little birds, who would fly before their wings are fully feathered, fall upon the ground, instead of flying in the air. Likewise when a wall is fresh and new made, if the roof is put upon it, it rather destroys than makes a building [...] (3p. Pastor. adm. 26).
The employments that regard the help of our neighbor require a great fund of virtue and mortification. If without this you engage herein, you will have more reason to fear than to hope; and you will rather imbibe the spirit and sentiments of the world, than the world will imbibe yours. The same St. Gregory therefore observes, that though Jesus Christ, the eternal wisdom of the Father, was infinitely wise from the first moment of his conception, yet he began not to teach others till he was thirty years of age, and till he had prepared himself for it, by his retreat in the desert, by forty days fast, and many other austerities. It is not that he stood in need, says this great saint, of any preparation; but he would teach us by his own example, how great preparation and perfection is required for so great a ministry. Also when he was twelve years of age, when he stayed in Jerusalem, and his parents went there to seek him, they found him in the temple in the midst of the doctors, disputing with them. And hence, continues this father, those that are still weak and infants in virtue, ought to learn not to meddle with teaching of others, nor intrude themselves before their time into so sublime a ministry; since Jesus Christ himself would, at the age of twelve years, be instructed by those whose master he himself was; and was contented to hear and to ask them questions, though it was he who inspired them with all the light and knowledge they had to answer him. It was also for this reason, says the same saint, that Jesus Christ having commanded his apostles to go and preach the gospel throughout the whole world; and having then the power to give them grace necessary for this end, yet he would not do it, nor permit them, in the weak and imperfect state they were, to go and preach his word, but commanded them, saying, go into the town, and remain there till ye shall be replenished with the virtue of the Holy Ghost. And this he did to let us see, that we ought to be very well grounded in humility, mortification, and all other virtues, in order that the employments which engage us to treat with our neighbor may be profitable for their salvation, without being prejudicial to our own.
St. Bernard upon this subject makes use of these words of the Canticles, our sister is little, and as yet has not any breasts (Cant. 8:8), and applying them to the state of the church before the descent of the Holy Ghost, he says: The church was then very little, and at that time had neither breasts nor milk to nourish its spiritual children; but when the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles, he replenished them with milk and with his gifts and graces. All were filled with the Holy Ghost, says the scripture, and they began to announce in different languages, the wonderful works of God (Acts 2:4), and to work conversions without number. If you would therefore produce fruit in souls, and raise spiritual children to God, you ought to have your breasts full of milk: one of them ought to be filled with the milk of all the virtues, and the other will the milk of pure and wholesome doctrine.
St. Jerome explaining these words, when the clouds shall be filled, they shall pour down rain upon the earth in abundance (Eccl. 11:3), says, that the preachers of the word of God are clouds; and that as the clouds water the earth when they are full of rain, so when preachers are full of the wholesome water of evangelical doctrine, they water the hearts of men. [...] When therefore these clouds shall be full of the celestial rain of grace, they may let the earth hear the words of my mouth, let my doctrine be poured down like rain, let my discourse fall like dew; let it be like rain upon the grass, and as drops of water upon the meadows (Deut. 32:1). It is then they will be able to render the earth fruitful. Then they will be able to soften and temper the dryness of men's hearts, and render them capable of producing the fruits of justice and salvation.
But if these clouds have no water, what will happen? Would you know? Behold what St. Jude in his canonical epistle says: They are clouds without water, which the winds drive every way (Jude 12). So that as the clouds which are not full of water, are easily carried by the wind from one side to the other, because of their great lightness; even so, if a preacher be not full of the spirit of humility and mortification, if he be not filled with all sorts of virtue, he will infallibly be carried from one side to the other with the wind of vainglory and self-love; and this quality of an evangelical preacher, this quality of the cloud, which is raised above the earth, will serve him for nothing else than to make him be the more easily turned, and tossed up and down by all sorts of winds. [...]
St. Bernard, writing upon these words of the Canticles, your name is like oil spread abroad (Cant. 1:2), treats this matter perfectly well. He says that the Holy Ghost works two things in us: the one, by which he first establishes us in virtue for our own advancement, he calls infusion; the other, by which he communicates to us his gifts and graces, for the profit and advantage of our neighbor, he calls effusion, or pouring forth; because it is a grace that is given us to bestow upon others. Now this infusion, he says, ought to precede the effusion. We ought first be well filled with virtue, before we can fill others therewith. And hereupon he makes a comparison, which explains his thoughts very well. He says, there is this difference between a channel, or pipe that serves to conduct the water from a fountain, and the basin that receives it; that the channel receives and renders the water at the same time without retaining anything of it; whereas, the basin first fills itself, and afterwards the superfluous water runs over; which it cannot do, without still keeping itself full. You will do very wisely then, says he, to become like the basin, and not like the channel (Serm. 78 supr. Cant.); and that you may not contemn this counsel, continues the saint, as coming from myself, know that it is not I, but the Holy Ghost that gives it: A fool uttereth all his mind; a wise man deferreth, and keeps it till afterwards (Prov. 29:11). [...]
[So many souls] wish to lead and help others, and know not at all how to help themselves. There is a great deal of folly and no charity at all in this, because there is no degree of charity above that which the wise man advises us to have for ourselves, when he says, take pity on your own soul, by rendering it pleasing to God (Eccl. 30:24). [...]
Let my soul, says the prophet, be filled with exquisite and delicious meat; and then, O Lord, my mouth shall sing hymns of joy and thanksgiving (Ps. 62:6). Our hearts therefore ought first be filled, that it may be from the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks [....]
St. Augustine, explaining these words of our Savior in the gospel, you are the light of the world (Mt. 5:14), says, that light contracts no uncleanness by passing through foul places (Tract. 4, supr. Joan.), but on the contrary, that it purifies them, and chases away their bad smell, without receiving any impression thereof in itself. It is in this manner that our light ought to make manifest the sins of the world, and penetrate their filth, without contracting any corruption from them.
It is thus that it ought to purify the hearts of sinners, and drive away the bad exhalations of vice. But to do this, we ought to have a great application to our spiritual exercises, to prayer, examens, spiritual reading, penance, and mortification. Above all, we must never neglect our prayer, which each of us is obliged daily to make for our spiritual progress. This is a thing of which we cannot take too much care; because the devil, who perceives that he cannot hinder us from laboring form the advancement of our neighbor, as we are particularly obliged thereunto [...], endeavors to make us apply ourselves so to it that we come at length to forget the care of our own, and to neglect the means necessary for it. [...] So that the greater affairs we have in that way, the more we ought to give ourselves to prayer, to obtain of God a blessing upon our ministry, and to make it succeed. It was thus the saints arranged matters. [...]
Jesus Christ himself has also given us an example of this practice, by withdrawing himself to mountains and retired places, and there passing whole nights in prayer. He employed the day in preaching [...], in healing [...], in casting out devils; and as the gospel says, he passed the whole night in prayer to God. He did this, as St. Ambrose very well takes notice, not because he stood in need of the help of prayer, but that he might hereby give us an example of what we ought to do. [...]
Albert the Great was wont to say that in divine sciences, a greater advancement was made by piety and prayer than by study. [...] It is also by this means that St. Thomas, who studied under him, became so learned and enlightened; and it was this that made him say, that for all he knew he was more indebted to prayer than to his own labor or studies. We read also of St. Bonaventure, that when he taught divinity at Paris, with a great deal of reputation, and when by his works he attracted to himself the esteem and admiration of all the world, St. Thomas [Aquinas], going one day to see him, begged of him to show him those books he made use of for his studies. Whereupon [St. Bonaventure showed St. Thomas] his oratory, upon which he had a crucifix. Behold, father, says he, all my books; and behold the chief books from which I derive all I teach and all I write; and it is by casting myself at the feet of this crucifix—it is by supplicating light in my doubts, it is by assisting at mass, that I have made greater progress in sciences, and that I have gained more true knowledge, than by the reading of any books whatsoever.
---
Source: Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, The Practice of Christian Perfection, vol. 3, tr. 1, ch. 4-5, pp. 9-15.
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