Contemplative Haven

On Friday, July 13, 2007 I began a 33-day preparation for consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  My consecration day was Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  What led up to it was a whirlwind of “coincidences” and promptings that could not be ignored.

A person who genuinely and sincerely consecrates himself/herself to Mary is promised particular graces, but the consecrated one also has requirements to fulfill and promises to keep.  One of those promises is to make Mary’s heart more known, and right now I am in retreat-mode, in order to better discern how I may do just that.  In “Bogoroditza”, Catherine Doherty wrote:

“There is no denying it, being consecrated to Mary gives me ideas; thousands of new ideas that come tumbling down into my mind, my soul, my heart, and fill them to overflowing until they spill all over the place…”  

I have not forgotten JohnT’s questions and comments from discussions of Mary in previous posts, but I haven’t yet decided how best to explore them, whether here or on a dedicated site. I’m leaning towards the latter, though.

So my retreat is continuing.  It’s all because I heard a Woman’s voice, and I have promises to keep. 

Direct to YouTube:  Mother Mary

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I fell asleep last night in conversation with Mary; conversation - well, mostly questions.  I awoke to no answers, until she led me here.

So, for a little while, I don’t know for how long, I will be away at my retreat centres:  here, here, and here - the Divine Architect thought of everything, including an interconnecting corridor.

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I’ve been reflecting on language recently, since posting last week about the language of Divine Love.  We strive to imitate Christ, Who was the Word, the Word made flesh.  We strive to live the gospel, the Word of God, and we know the Scriptures are alive.  If we are expressions of God’s love, are we not then His language?  As we try to discern His Will in our lives, are we not trying to understand His language?  The more we understand His language and act upon it, perhaps the more we become not only His hands and feet, but his living language.
“What am I?
I am myself a word spoken by God.
Can God speak a word that does not have any meaning?”

[The quote is from:  Contemplative Prayer (Thomas Merton) 
Originally published as The Climate of Monastic Prayer]

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…today is our 18th wedding anniversary!  I will let you know later whether he remembered or not.       

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In case anyone was scandalized or confused by the choice of love songs in the previous post, let’s take a brief look at the mystical language of love, a language I’m sure was very familiar to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque’s soul.

In, “Fire Within”, Father Thomas Dubay tells us that, “the divine invasion leading to the consummation of the summit is indeed a fusion of unimaginable light and unspeakable love.  Hence, John [St. John of the Cross] speaks of the frequent experience of an intimate spiritual embrace.  This divine clasp or hug…can be so wonderfully overwhelming, notes John along with other mystics, that the soul needs an infusion of special strength to endure it….He remarks, for example, that the praises and endearing expressions of love which frequently pass between the two are indescribable….It is in this spiritual marriage of the summit that ‘the soul kisses God’…”  

Even if the summit of love has not yet been reached, the soul’s longing and desiring for a complete love-union with God has always been expressed with the language of passion.  Fr. Dubay writes, “The saints know what it is like to be in love, a love immeasurably beyond what worldlings label as love.  The delight is intense because the love is intense.  Teresa [of Avila] is a woman so keenly in love with her Lord that she must proclaim:  My King, I beseech You, that all to whom I speak become mad from Your love….This soul would now want to see itself free - eating kills it; sleeping distresses it…nothing other than You can give it pleasure any longer…and I would desire to see no other persons than those who are sick with this sickness I now have.” 

Sufi poet, Rumi, knew this love language well.  We will hear much in this video that is also at the heart of our own Catholic mystical tradition - Divine Love expressed in passionate poetry - the love that St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and so many other saints have described:  the love that annihilates the ego, and brings the soul to Divine Union. 

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Dedicated to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

[Click twice to hear Tracy Chapman’s, “The Promise”. Or go Here directly at YouTube.]

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It is difficult when the outside is hard pressed by the trouble in the world to keep the inside serene, but it is only difficult when you think that you can make it serene. The serenity will be given you; that is the benediction and the reward for those who sought and knocked and found.

If you could for one hour be with your divine self – that is, your outer you and your inner you together in the presence of God – you would change the whole mood of our generation, so powerful is this light.

{Excerpts from:  Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood, Anonymous.  Edited by Mary Strong, 1948.}

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In honour of St. Teresa of Avila, I would like to dedicate this poem to all lay Carmelites (I am not one though, in case anyone was wondering), and especially to those who will be making their Temporary or Definitive Promises today or within the near future.  (Apologies for not having found a similar poem for the men-folk!)

The Teresian Contemplative
(by Robert Hugh Benson 1871-1914)

She moves in tumult; round her lies
The silence of the world of grace;
The twilight of our mysteries
Shines like high noonday on her face;
Our piteous guesses, dim with fears,
She touches, handles, sees, and hears.

In her all longings mix and meet;
Dumb souls through her are eloquent;
She feels the world beneath her feet
Thrill in a passionate intent;
Through her our tides of feeling roll
And find their God within her soul.

Her faith the awful Face of God
Brightens and blinds with utter light;
Her footsteps fall where late He trod;
She sinks in roaring voids of night;
Cries to her Lord in black despair,
And knows, yet knows not, He is there.

A willing sacrifice she takes
The burden of our fall within;
Holy she stands; while on her breaks
The lightning of the wrath of sin;
She drinks her Saviour’s cup of pain,
And, one with Jesus, thirsts again.

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Here is a beautiful song entitled Fragrant Burning, on the CD of the same name, by Derek Loux.  It can be found at Soaking.net. 

“All my triumphs I count but loss
All my failure I leave behind
I have one vision, Your rugged Cross
I have one mission, to come and die
And I will be a fragrant burning
I’ll wash Your feet with my tears
My love will be a poured-out offering to You, yeah
I have one banner, Your endless love
I have one passion, to see Your face
And I’ve one manor, Your Kingdom come
I’ve one obsession, to sit and gaze
And I will be a fragrant burning
I’ll wash Your feet with my tears
My love will be a poured-out offering to You
Fragrant burning for You
Nothing compares to You
Nothing compares to You
Nothing compares, nothing compares, compares to You
And I will be a fragrant burning
I’ll wash Your feet with my tears, yeah
My love will be a poured-out offering to You

Fragrant burning, for You, for You…“

[Thank you, Lord, for your mercy.  Thank you, St. Faustina, for a Novena intention answered.]

(Edited to add: Something was niggling at the back of my mind as I listened to this song over and over again, and now I remember what it was: the beautiful poem Kathryn Therese posted about a year ago at Exhaling, the last sonnet called “Diliculum”, from “Seven Sonnets Through the Dark”, in which she writes of being “Living thuribles before Love’s Altar”. You can read it HERE.)

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During the months of August and September, Drusilla of Heirs in Hope wrote some very interesting and informative posts (and responded to a wide variety of questions and comments) on the subject of there being two vocations in the Catholic Church:  marriage and consecration to Christ.  It was very timely for me, as I was in the midst of reading about the vocations of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Adrienne von Speyr’s, Handmaid of the Lord:

“Both states were lived by Mary…. The Lord led her into both states, and each time in a precise, definite form of communal life, foreseen and devised by him.” 

Mary and Joseph, writes von Speyr, “are betrothed as people who want to serve God and belong to each other.  These two intentions are not equivalent for them; the will to serve is the determining factor and forms the basis of their commitment to each other.  They consecrate their betrothal and their whole life to this service.”  Although their betrothal and marriage was infused with the supernatural from the very beginning, yet, says von Speyr, their years of marriage entailed, “mutual service in housekeeping, breadwinning and everything involved in the toilsome and harsh scraping out of a life.”   Joseph attained to God and holiness through Mary, yet it was he who was instrumental in initiating Mary “into the mystery of the natural community.”   This marriage, this common calling, writes von Speyr, was “nothing less than making possible the Incarnation of the Son of God and his development.” 

Although the Blessed Virgin had always been the model of contemplation, von Speyr tells us that it is at the foot of the Cross that she receives, “her new supernatural fruitfulness [in the form of] a new supernatural association with the apostle John.”  Here truly begins the Blessed Virgin’s second vocation, that of life as a religious.  Jesus gives Mary to John as his mother, and gives His mother to, “the priest, John, whom the Son already possesses as a saint, and Mary now submits to the priestly mission of the Apostle.”  She lives in John’s home as in a cloister, adjusts herself to the rules in place there, and “conforms to John’s office - the office bearing the special form of unity between authority and love.” 

“If the religious state thus receives the breath of life at the foot of the Cross, it is like a first-fruit of the Passion, even before the great and universal fruit of redemption and confession is plucked on Easter.  This first-fruit consists in this:  that Mary and John, at the foot of the Cross, share in the Son’s suffering and are thus initiated into a new form of community.” 

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