Freeing the captive soul

We are born seeking freedom. As adults, we know it is requisite for peace of mind and fulfillment of dreams. Our very health depends on it.

Alfred Delp, SJ, himself a prisoner in a concentration camp during WWII, speaks of his own freedom. He writes, during thee long weeks of confinement I have learned by personal experience that a person is truly lost, is the victim of circumstances and oppression only when he is incapable of a great inner sense of depth and freedom. He goes on to say Anyone whose natural element is not an atmosphere of freedom, unassailable and unshakable whatever force may be put on it, is already lost; but such a person is not really a human being any more; he/she is merely an object, a number, a voting paper. Inner freedom can only be attained if we have discovered the means of widening our own horizons.

Monastics too live with a great deal of freedom, despite that fact that they reside within a restricted area, vow to live a limited form of life (no family, spouse, children) and relinquish a great deal of personal freedom. It comes from liberation of the heart and mind, a vision of the eternal, the shedding of ties that keep us bound to tempory concerns.

The Lenten Journey

Lent. A journey toward Easter. But often, in this journey, we feel bogged down by our humanity. And we gear our Lenten practices to finding the best way to overcome and subdue such humanity.

Julián Carrón views it differently. He writes how many times are we tempted to look at the concrete humanity in which we find ourselves—for example, the unease, the dissatisfaction, the sadness, the boredom—as an obstacle, a complication, an impediment to the realization of what we desire! We get angry with ourselves and with reality…

He goes on to say that we live in the illusion of going ahead by cutting away a piece of ourselves. Instead, we should realize that the very struggles we have in our human nature are there to show us that here, in this life, in this world, we do not have a lasting city. Unease, dissatisfaction, sadness, and boredom are not symptoms of an illness to treat with medicines; this happens more and more often in a society that mistakes disquiet of the heart for panic and anxiety. They are rather, signs of what the nature of the “I” is. The “I” that is created with a capacity for infinity.

What a wonderful thought! The struggles we endure are but the signature of God in our hearts, that we are made for something bigger. Carrón continues, The real obstacle on our journey is not our concrete humanity, but [our] disregard for it. Everything in us cries out [for] the need for something to fill the void.

Lent is an excellent time to take stock of this fact, and check our pursuits. We know that, where your heart is, there is your treasure also. (Mt 6:21)

Stones and Hearts

Artwork by Sr. Mary Grace Thul

Paul Claudel writes [Christ] did not come to give us a life that would serve only to enable us to die. He did not come on earth to prevent hunger and thirst...He came with his great leaven so that no stone might be incapable of becoming wheat or loaf.

Think of the stones Satan used to tempt Jesus in the desert. Satan placed them before Jesus with an invitation to change them into loaves of bread. Those stones symbolize our hearts, and Jesus did not come so that we might fed him. He came to transform us through the food of his body and blood. Even though those stones were meant for transformation, it would not come at the command of Jesus. He could have, but he would not. He waits on us to initiate the transformation by opening our hearts.

In the desert of the monastic life, we too are tempted to feed off the very things that are set before us, our rule or our observances, our silences or our fasts, our prayers or our vigils. They are not meant to feed us, but we are to feed them, with a burning spirit that comes from a heart open to deeper communication. It's the spirit that prompts the action, not the observance that calls for it, that gives sustenance to the soul.

Jean-Marie Howe writes to open our heart, to open a depth within ourselves: this is the aim of monastic life, and from this flows its fertility. The treasure hidden in the field of monastic life is depth: to arrive at such a depth of being that our whole life flows from the level of the heart, for it is there where God is, there where God gives to us and through us to the world.

He does more than give to us. When we cooperate in our own transformation, a unity occurs whereby we become like that which feeds us. It's the wonderful assimilation seen when a person takes nourishment, and it occurs on the spiritual plane as well.

Olivier Clement writes to seek the place of the heart. We live so much on the surface of ourselves. We live in our head and in our entrails, and all the vast spaces of the heart we have forgotten. I believe that we must rediscover them.

To be a stone is to be a hard thing. But if stones can be called forth into bread, then no human heart is beyond the spiritual grasp of unitive prayer with God.

Love under Trial

Gregory the Great could be called the Doctor of Desire, says Jean Leclerq. He says The importance given to desire confers on St. Gregory's doctrine an extremely dynamic quality. It is concerned with constant progress, for desire, as it becomes the more intense, is rewarded by a certain possession of God which increases it still more. The result of this desire is peace rediscovered in God, since desire is itself a possession in which fear and love are reconciled.

Fear and love reconciled. That thought deserves our attention and consideration. We've heard that love cast out fear. But Leclerq is telling us more...that one can fear, but through love, turn that fear into energy that seeks God all the more. Desire, such a passive act, can propell the soul to great things. Either way, fear and love live within us. Gregory shows us the way to make them more useful.

Quies in labore, fatigatio in requie

Kingdom of God

Meister Eckhart writes: Our Lord says: Know that the kingdom of God is close to you. Indeed, the kingdom of God is within us; God is closer to me than I am to myself; my being depends on God's being near me and present to me....I am the more blessed the more I realize this, and I am the less blessed the less I know this. I am not blessed because God is in me and is near me and because I possess him, but because I am aware of how close he is to me, and that I know God. The patriarch Jacob says: 'God is in this place, and I knew it not.' We should know God and be aware that God's kingdom is near to hand.

 God is within you...waiting for you to open the lines of communication. You need go no further than your own soul for comfort, light, grace and courage. If these are lacking, you may be seeking them in the wrong place.