Create a Clean Heart in me, O God Ps. 51

 Design by Sr. Mary Grace Thul, OP

The Rwanda survivor Immaculée Ilibagiza writes in her book, Left to Tell:

I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren’t ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He’ll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we’re ready, He will plant our feet on the path that’s best for us…but it’s up to us to do the walking.

She learned this as she hid for three months in a tiny bathroom crowded with 7 other women. While Tutsi all over Rwandan were brutally slaughtered, including her father, mother and two brothers, Immaculée learned how easy it was to become angry. As her anger grew to monstrous proportions, she realized that before she could effectively pray to God for light and grace, she needed to forgive those who had cruelly hurt her and all she loved. For weeks she struggled to forgive in her heart while death and destruction triumphed all around her. She realized she could not forgive on her own…and so turned to God for help. Her memoir journals her struggle and her victory.

All the desert Abbas and Ammas tell us that the journal toward seeking God is a journey toward purifying your heart. If you harbor resentment or hatred, your heart will never achieve that goal. We all experience injustice to varying degrees, and our anger may be well founded. It can be against people we barely know, or it can be against a sibling or a parent. But until we let it go, anger will keep us from obtaining purity of heart. Anger and lack of forgiveness doesn’t hurt the offender…it hurts us. It acts like a barricade, holding in our hearts all resentment and frustrations so that God's graces find no room. Forgiveness is foreign to our nature; we cannot accomplish it without his help.

Life is sometimes hard, and the way unclear. When I pray for guidance and still cannot see, it may be that my heart and eyes are closed by resentment. Such barricades cannot be opened except through that divine act whereby I leave the injury behind me and walk on toward the Face of God.

Compunction

Jean Leclercq writes about monastic spirituality, and makes the following notes on compunction: the word compunction is a medical term, designating attacks of acute pain, of physical illness. He goes on to note how the word has evolved in the spiritual sense, and the various ways it is used to express how the soul feels compunction, pain of the spirit, a suffering resulting simultaneously from…the existence of sin and our own tendency toward it… These are the usual thoughts on compunction.

But then Leclercq gives the description used by Gregory the Great: Compunction is an act of God in us, an act by which God awakens us, a shock, a blow, a “sting,” a sort of burn. This type of compunction comes through an awareness of God, one we love, then we lose, and then we pine to regain.

Honesty of Deed

In the Fathers of the Desert, a story is told about Abba Paphnutius. He knew his end was near, so he entreated the Lord to show him who was most like Him upon earth. God showed Abba Paphnutius a street musician who had been a thief, a wealthy Alexandrine merchant, and a mayor of a busy village. Abba Paphnutius did not take these revelations lightly. On his deathbed, he is quoted saying to those kneeling around him: No one in this world should be despised, be he a thief, an actor, a farmer, merchant or husband: for in every condition of human life there are souls that please God and have their hidden deeds wherein He takes delight: whence it is plain that it is not so much profession or habit that is pleasing to God as the sincerity and affection of the soul and honesty of deed.

Sincerity and affection of the soul – that is what desert spirituality is all about. Leaving all to live in the desert meant becoming radical for love. And who is loved, but God Himself. All the penances, prayers, and fastings had one purpose…to bring the heart to a purity that performed honestly. To concentrate on the desert practices without consideration of their spirit is to negate their value. As Basil Pennington says, the value of this literature is not to know it or to know about it but to know it was lived. I would go further, and say, the true value of this literature lies in discovering how we too can live this same desert spirituality…in our own times, in our own form of life. It isn’t about finding that deserted place so much as it is about realizing that God is personal to us. To Whom does He speak if not to us? (Thornton & Varenne)

Honesty of Deed. Make it a mantra. Carve it upon your wall, your book, your heart. Honesty of Deed. This is one of those practices you can take out of the desert without losing that desert flavor.

Verbum Caro Factum Est

Funny how much time it takes to do a myriad of little tasks. And because the jobs are small, the time you spend accomplishing them do not bring the satisfaction that larger accomplishments bring. Yet, such small actions can actually contain very important acts…especially when the task done is done so in response to a personal request, a promise given, a word spoken. To keep one’s WORD is to accomplish much. Honoring one’s word means that you are true and honest, that when you say something, you mean it. It is in stark contrast to the many words batted around, some with promises, some offered sincerely, but often so forgotten one doesn’t even hear an "I'm sorry I forgot!”

In an age when words tend to be cheap, (with innumerable media forms and devices constantly streaming them to us), authenticity can be blurred. Words becomes obliterated by the rush of this fast paced world. Yet, words are a reflection of your character. It shows people the depth of your spirituality, tells them you are trustworthy, shows them your respect them enough to mean what you say. In effect, words easily spoken but not kept signal our lack of depth. As we live superficially, so do we communicate. We live in a culture where your worth is identical to what you do. If who you are changes to meet expectations, then you are little more than a puppet.

Striking that the Word made Flesh is all about the word, I AM. Striking too that in that Word, we find light and truth.

Mystical Thirst of the Soul

When I read the Gospel account about Jesus' baptism in the River Jordan, I am troubled, and wonder what greater meaning can it have? Jesus would not go through the action of being "cleansed" when he had no sin. Nor do I believe that he who is Truth perform a "fake" baptism for the sake of giving an example to us. There has to be a greater truth underlying the act.

Clement, speaking of the effect of baptism, says that those who sought freedom from the restraints of christianity often became reductionists, like Marx, Feuerbac, Nietche and Freud. Partly, he says, this came about because Christianity became, in part, degenerated into a type of moralism. And morality itself had degenerated into infantile, repression by the super-ego, a castrating anxiety about purity, or its sublimation into a kind of angelism bordering on dissociation, almost to the point of schizophrenia, between the orderly ideal and the intractable real life.

How then to we find the true freedom that is both in sync with Jesus and yet offers authentic liberty to the human soul? By walking down into the River Jordan and rejecting all acts that bind us to ourselves. And where does this act of confession take us? Into the mystical life of a Christian. And how does this affect our daily lives? It becomes that inner drive that will not let us be content with life as it is, that tells us that there is more to life than we are experiencing. It is the thrist to know more, to love deeper, to see more clearly.

And that thirst can only be quenced by the source of water...He who took the River Jordan when he decended into it, and now allows it to flow into our souls, freely, not just cleansing, but filling our need for more....always more...light, grace, knowledge, understanding.

The Burden of Fear

There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. (Jn 4:18) John Tauler, OP, writes Be sure that if you do lack this sign, namely, confidence in love’s final rescue of your distressed soul – then all other signs together are deceitful. How do we deal with these words? After all, most, if not all of us, know fear.

I ponder the power of fear – and the emotions it stems from – insecurities, inability to accept oneself – lack of courage – trust – foresight. And then I delve into Olivier Clément’s book “On Being Human” and read Then we discover the basic truth about ourselves, that we are loved, and it is because we are loved that we exist. Here is the cure of our fear. Love is what allows us to trust and have courage and not to fear.

And yet this does not seem a satisfactory answer. It seems, as I read the Gospels, that just the fact that I come to Jesus results in fearful events: The Magi were told to go back to their homeland by another route, because of fear of Herod; Mary and Joseph were told to take the Child in the night and flee into Egypt, because Herod meant them harm. In our own lives, we know that giving ourselves over to Jesus does not result in greater joy so much as in greater challenges. Often spiritual writers conclude this is because Jesus requires suffering of us in order for us to be His disciples. But I don’t agree. I think giving our lives over to Jesus means – stripping off what is false, what is pretense, what is only a shell. What we find or experience is not something new – it is something that has always been there – something hidden come to light -- something we could not or would not see.

In his letter to the Order, Father Carlos, OP, writes: study opened Dominic’s eyes to what many others had not seen or did not want to see. Our first real glimpse of ourselves is quite frightening – and we will suffer shock until we come to accept our own reality. Our goal is to realize that God has already loved us while knowing all these things.