Contemplative Haven

I’ve been reading a book entitled, “Born Contemplative“, written by Sister Madeleine Simon in 1993. It talks of how to introduce children to Christian meditation, following the teachings of Benedictine monk Dom John Main, in order to support and sustain their “inborn sense of wonder“. Sister Simon, in her book, “demonstrates that it is never too early to learn the way of contemplative prayer, because children are able in their simplicity to catch and hold God by love.” She quotes Pope John Paul II, from his discourse to participants of the National Congress of the Italian Association of Catholic Teachers in 1984. She tells us the Pope stated that the attitude of “attention” is the first that should be developed in children, and he continued:

“This requires that you help your students not to suffocate but rather to nourish their innate amazement in the face of creation and to reflect on it in order to grasp its perfection. To educate to this attitude, it is indispensible that the child be led to a real and profound interior silence which is the first requisite for listening.”

The desire to foster the contemplative gifts of children is something which is also at the core of The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which originated in Rome in 1954. A Catholic childrens’ religious education program, it was inspired by the Montessori principles of education, and quickly spread throughout the world. You can find out more about it here, at The National Association of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd .

In Canada, on the website of the Archdiocese of Toronto, where the program was established more than twenty-five years ago, we are told that The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, “highlights essential aspects of the Christian message that nurture the child’s need to love and be loved and the child’s capacity to enjoy God’s presence in her/his life. It is rooted in the Bible, the liturgy of the Church, and the educational principles of Maria Montessori.” The Archdiocese of Toronto website goes on to say:

“… young children live their relationship with God in enchanted wonder and profound joy which gives peace, in the satisfaction – it could be said – of a deep and vital need. In our view, the “vital need” is for relationship, which the Bible expresses as “covenant”. It is the joy of the children’s encounter with God that has given birth to the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd which, always and everywhere, is nourished by the same joy. It has also been observed that children of the same developmental stage respond to certain themes of the Christian Message in the same way, though belonging to different cultural backgrounds.”

Over the decades, The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd has been adapted by numerous Christian denominations – Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist, to name a few – most recently being adapted for Protestant Evangelicals, by [long, contemplative drumroll here] fellow-blogger TrueVyne. When TrueVyne left a comment on my blog back in April 06 to the effect that she would have some things to “share” of a contemplative nature by the fall, I had no idea what she was working so busily on. In October, TrueVyne attended a wonderful conference which you can read about Here, and she has opened a website dedicated to this work at her beautiful new site named The Shepherd’s Call.

The sharing of The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is probably the finest, and most successful, example of practising Christian unity that I have ever come across. Fostering, nurturing, supporting and sustaining the contemplative gifts of our children, in Christian unity. Now that is something I can understand.

Children in Prayer

Forget me not, friend and fellow-blogger (at Beyond the Horizon II), has re-posted, at my request, her very moving poem, All I Can Give. Forget me not has acknowledged that her heart-gripping imagery and cries to the Lord stem from years of childhood abuse. Her original posting of this poem, back in July on her old blog, was also intended to introduce us to Mary’s Hope, an organization dedicated to offering spiritual healing and recovery for childhood abuse of any kind.

Forget me not relates how her poem was based on a reflection by the French poet Marie Noel, entitled, “The Rag Collector“. Profoundly moved by forget me not’s poem, and never having heard of Marie Noel before, I searched for her poetry online. I was not able to find any in English to which I could link, but here is a site with some of her poetry in French: Marie Noel

As I read through her poetry, one line stayed with me for days from her poem entitled, ‘Prière du poète’ (The Poet’s Prayer): “Donne-moi du bonheur, s’il faut que je le chante“, she says to the Lord. “Donne-moi du bonheur, s’il faut que je le chante” – “Give me happiness if I must sing of it.”

I began to realize how blessed we are by all those who sing anyway, of the grief and of the pain, even though they may believe the Lord would prefer them to sing of joy, or they would naturally prefer that themselves. Are not the Psalms abundant with songs of both kinds? Each one of us has a unique song; some are written and sung while in the depths of despair, while enduring the anguish of a dark night. Others are written and sung during the process of healing. Still others go beyond the process of healing, to the glory of the Lord, for there are many whom He has called to triumph over man’s evil and show others the way. I think of these words of Jean-Pierre de Caussade, in Abandonment to Divine Providence:

“Souls who walk in light sing the hymns of light; those who walk in the shadows chant the hymns of darkness. Each must be allowed to sing through to the end the words and melody which God has given him. Nothing must be changed in what he has composed.”

Forget me not, by the grace of God and through her own sweet soul and hard work, has triumphed over man’s evil. She herself is like a song that the Lord is singing, and she desires to help many, not only through her online writing but perhaps in other venues.

As a description for her blog, forget me not uses a quote from Etty Hillesum: “One would wish to be a balm for so many wounds.” There is no doubt in my mind that forget me not is, and will be, exactly that. I don’t think she would mind if I shared a little something she told me, since forget me not has already spoken of her experiences online; it is something she revealed to me recently, before she knew the exact subject-matter of my reflection on Marie Noel. She said, “My Soul Magnifies the Lord is the song I sing deep inside as I ponder God’s goodness to me.”

I thank God for forget me not’s powerful healing. May she continue to sing all the days of her life.

As we went through Interior Castle, one of my biggest regrets was that so much had to remain unsaid. Before moving along to other topics, and then some contemplative reflections for Advent, I would just like to add something in reference to my last post.

Our service, whether before or after the Spiritual Marriage, can be humble, can be hidden. We are not all called to some of the more visible ways of serving our neighbour, such as building orphanages, working in hospices, or helping with inner-city ministries. Let us thank God for the ones who are, and let us listen for what God may be asking us to do in our state in life.

Our service may be to give our children a loving, nurturing environment, and help them come to know the Lord. It may be intercessory prayer. It may be to remain focused on contemplative prayer, whether in the world or in a cloister, because contemplative prayer itself aids our brothers and sisters. Our service may be to build houses for Habitat for Humanity, or it may be to remain on our knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Our service may be to write, to console, to lead, to follow, to teach, to listen, to heal.

Let us listen for the call of the Lord, for the whispers of the Holy Spirit, as we remember what St. Teresa taught:

“…the Lord does not look so much at the magnitude of anything we do as at the love with which we do it.”

Lord, What Wilt Thou Have Me To Do?

As with the stages of prayer throughout each of the Mansions, the benefit of attaining the Spiritual Marriage can only be seen by the effects and the fruits.

St. Teresa outlines eight main effects of the Spiritual Marriage: self-forgetfulness; a great desire to suffer, but only if it is God’s will; interior joy when persecuted along with a love for enemies; a great desire to live in order to serve Him; no desire for favours and consolations and no more raptures, transports or flights of the spirit; a marked detachment; no aridities or interior trials; and caution, through humility, concerning the possibility of slipping back into sin. St. Teresa wishes to make it clear that all of these effects are not necessarily present in the soul at all times, and for this reason she refers to them as being “habitually present”.

But why does the Lord give the soul so many favours and consolations along the journey, finally bringing it into the Transforming Union, the Spiritual Marriage? Is it simply to give a soul the glory and joy of being One with the Lord? No, says St. Teresa. She wants no one to believe that, “He does it simply to give these souls pleasure.” She tells us that she is certain that it is to strengthen the soul, so that one is able to imitate Christ’s sufferings: “For His Majesty can do nothing greater for us than grant us a life which is an imitation of that lived by His Beloved Son.” In the Transforming Union the soul is, “made one with the Strong”, and shall “gain strength through the most sovereign union of spirit with Spirit.”

St. Teresa refutes the notion that souls who have reached the heights of contemplation spend the rest of their lives simply enjoying the Lord for their own peace and personal fulfillment. She writes, “…the only repose that these souls enjoy is of an interior kind; of outward repose they get less and less, and they have no wish to get more.”

Why are they getting less and less outward repose? Here is perhaps the startling answer, the reason why the soul has undergone this steady stream of strengthening in contemplative prayer: not for our enjoyment, says St. Teresa, “but for the sake of acquiring this strength which fits us for service.”

St. Teresa tells us, “…if the Lord makes His special abode in the soul…its whole thought will be concentrated upon finding ways to please Him and upon showing Him how it loves Him. This, my daughters, is the aim of prayer: this is the purpose of the Spiritual Marriage, of which are born good works and good works alone.”

But has not the soul surpassed this requirement now, of performing service, since it has reached the heights of contemplation? Have we not been taught to imitate Mary rather than Martha – Mary, who is said to have chosen the better part?

Yes, says St. Teresa, we are to imitate Mary, but that is not the whole of it, for “…Martha and Mary must work together when they offer the Lord lodging, and must have Him ever with them, and they must not entertain Him badly and give Him nothing to eat. And how can Mary give Him anything, seated as she is at His feet, unless her sister helps her? His food consists in our bringing Him souls, in every possible way, so that they may be saved and may praise Him for ever.”

Martha’s service, although well intended, was not performed in full union with the Lord. Mary’s contemplation, her union with the Lord, had not yet born fruit. It is only after the Spiritual Marriage that both Martha and Mary will be brought to perfection. It is only after the Transforming Union that one’s personal contemplative Mary will bear fruit, a spiritualized Martha-like service. The better part will be elevated to the best.

Is it any wonder that the Catholic church believes there is a universal call to contemplation, for the result of the Transforming Union is nothing less than the fulfillment of the Great Commandment, perfect contemplation resulting in perfect service: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. The Lord brings the soul to the heights of contemplation for one purpose only, to make the soul One with the Lord, so that it can imitate Christ by pouring itself out for others.

St. Teresa asks how we know when people truly become spiritual. This is her answer:

“It is when they become the slaves of God and are branded with His sign, which is the sign of the Cross, in token that they have given Him their freedom. Then He can sell them as slaves to the whole world, as He Himself was sold.”

“the soul (I mean the spirit of this soul) is made one with God, Who, being likewise a Spirit…has been pleased to unite Himself with His creature in such a way that they have become like two who cannot be separated from one another: even so He will not separate Himself from her.”

Although there had been a type of union earlier on, in the spiritual betrothal, at that time the divine companionship was intermittent, and when not in union (insofar as the soul could understand), the two parties could, “be separated and remain a thing by itself.” Not so after the Spiritual Marriage, where the soul, “remains all the time in that centre with its God.” God and the soul have become as one, and can be no more separated, says St. Teresa, than one could separate rain from a river into which it has fallen, or a stream that has entered the sea, or light that has entered a room from two different windows.

St. Teresa is reminded of St. Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians Ch. VI:17: “He who is joined to God becomes one spirit with Him.” She thinks perhaps he is referring to, “this sovereign Marriage, which presupposes the entrance of His Majesty into the soul by union.” It is at this point, St. Teresa tells us, that the little butterfly which has been flitting from Mansion to Mansion throughout this journey, finally dies, “and with the greatest joy, because Christ is now its life.”

St. Teresa speaks of the soul at this point as being, “in a state of pure spirituality, so that it might be joined with Uncreated Spirit in this celestial union.”

She reiterates the Martha/Mary analogy, explaining that the Spiritual Marriage does not mean that the faculties, senses and passions will always be in a state of peace, but only the soul itself. Conflicts, trials and weariness will undoubtedly continue, but will not disturb the peace of the soul.

St. Teresa realizes how difficult this is to understand – the fact that the soul can be in complete peace after the Spiritual Marriage no matter what chaos may be going on all around it – and admits that “this ‘centre’ of our soul, or ‘spirit’, is something so difficult to describe…”. Yet she is adamant, to the point where this ever-humble, always cautious woman is capable of saying: “Think what you will; what I have said is the truth.”

Here, in the Seventh Mansions, says St. Teresa, is where God grants the bride’s request of, “Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth!”, the first line of “The Song of Songs”. Here is part of that beautiful song/poem, from the verse called, “Love’s Union” :

I belong to my lover
and for me he yearns.
Come, my lover, let us go forth
to the fields
and spend the night among
the villages.
Let us go early to the vineyards,
and see
if the vines are in bloom,
If the buds have opened
if the pomegranates have
blossomed;
There will I give you my love.

(Eva Cassidy, singer and artist, died in 1996 of melanoma, at the age of 33)

In the final chapter of the Sixth Mansions, St. Teresa gives an account of the state of the soul just prior to its being brought into the last of the Mansions.

The soul has generally received many favours by this time, usually over a number of years, although St. Teresa tells us that because God has no limitations, “He can raise a soul to the highest point here mentioned in a single moment.”

The favours bestowed on the soul cause more pain than joy at this point. The soul, continually learning more about God’s greatness, experiences longing, love and desire for Him to such a degree and with such intensity, that the unfulfillment of complete union is almost unbearable.

St. Teresa again describes the smouldering fire within the soul – how the soul is interiorly burning. It is hypersensitive to its inability to totally enjoy the Lord, and all it takes is a “mere fleeting thought” or a remark overheard about “death’s long tarrying” for the soul to feel as if it has been struck a blow, or wounded by an arrow of fire (as discussed in an earlier post). The wound is deep, but, “not, I think, in any region where physical pain can be felt, but in the soul’s most intimate depths.” St. Teresa describes how the senses and faculties are enraptured when this occurs, except in whatever way allows the soul to experience this pain and distress, a distress of the soul so powerful that one will cry aloud.

This suffering of the soul, says St. Teresa, “resembles that of souls in purgatory”. It involves “great peril of death”, leaving “the limbs quite disjointed, and, for as long as it continues, the pulse is as feeble as though the soul were about to render itself up to God.”

Although the soul may have spent nearly a lifetime in abandonment to God, that is not now the case. All the soul knows now is that, “she is absent from her Good”, and the only question becomes, “why should she wish to live?” The soul finds itself in a “strange solitude”, with no companions on earth, desiring only His companionship in heaven. One feels suspended, “unable either to come down and rest anywhere on earth or to ascend into Heaven.” The soul experiences an intolerable, unquenchable thirst.

What is really happening here, just prior to entering the Seventh Mansions? We must remember that what will occur in the Seventh Mansions, the Spiritual Marriage, is the highest possible spiritual state attainable while in the body. For a soul who has attained to this spiritual level, a purification similar to that which occurs in Purgatory must take place. St. Teresa tells us, “It is well that great things should cost a great deal, especially if the soul can be purified by suffering and enabled to enter the seventh Mansion, just as those who are to enter Heaven are cleansed in purgatory. If this is possible, its suffering is no more than a drop of water in the sea.”

This type of distress of the soul comes and goes, and as St. Teresa recounts, can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to three or four hours. There is no way of, “dispelling the distress until the Lord Himself dispels it for her. This He does, as a general rule, by granting her a deep rapture or some kind of vision, in which the true Comforter comforts and strengthens her so that she can wish to live for as long as He wills.”

At this point, souls have reached the heights of suffering but not the heights of joy, for they are about to be brought into the Seventh Mansions, where, “He repays them for everything at once.”

Arms of Love

In Chapter 10 of the Sixth Mansions, St. Teresa speaks of two very important points.

The first is that God will sometimes, in an intellectual vision, communicate secret things to the soul which it, “seems to see within God Himself.” It is revealed to the soul, “how all things are seen in God, and how within Himself He contains them all.”

St. Teresa goes directly to the heart of the matter, to the deepest ramifications of this truth, the horror of sin. For if all things are contained within God, then, she says, this is, “showing us clearly how wrongly we are acting when we offend God, since it is within God Himself – because we dwell within Him.”

Although God cannot sin, although He can be in the midst of sin yet be untouched by it, all of the sins we commit are committed within Him. Since all things are contained in God, it is impossible to go away from Him while we are committing sin. St. Teresa tells us that if we really, truly understood this reality of sinning within God, “I do not think we could possibly be so presumptuous.” It is certainly a horrific thing upon which to meditate, and would do much to spur us on in trying to practise virtuous lives, if we dwell on St. Teresa’s words: “these abominations and dishonourable actions and evil deeds which we sinners commit are done within the palace itself – that is, within God.”

The second point is that God will sometimes very suddenly, “reveal a truth that is in Himself and that makes any truth to be found in the creatures seem like thick darkness.” Here St. Teresa is speaking of the Lord revealing one, or more, of His Divine Attributes. We see this also, for example, in the Diary of St. Faustina, where she tells us that one time, during Advent, her “spirit rushed toward God with all its might. During that time, the Lord gave me much light to know His attributes.” Sr. Faustina, at that time, was given knowledge of God in four of His Divine Attributes: Holiness, Justice, Love and Mercy.

St. Teresa, in the Sixth Mansions, goes on to tell us that not only will God reveal truths that are in Himself, but that, “He will also manifest very clearly that He alone is truth and cannot lie.”

St. Teresa recounts, “I remember that story about Pilate, who asked Our Lord so many questions, and at the time of His Passion said to Him: ‘What is truth?’ And then I reflect how little we understand of this Sovereign Truth here on earth.”