Category: love of others

Overcoming the world

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

The verse for the Canticle of Zechariah in Morning Prayer this morning is: “The world will persecute you, but have courage, I have overcome the world, alleluia.”  I began to think: “How are we to overcome the world?  How did Christ overcome the world?”  The answer that sprang immediately to my mind–and which I trust came from the Holy Spirit–was “By love.”  He, and we, conquere by love. So often, I think, other plans and ideas for overcoming the world spring to our minds, but we must carefully test from where they come, for if they are not underpinned and motivated by love, their source is probably not God.  Perhaps they come from ourselves or from our Enemy.  A story comes to mind from a book I am currently reading, Evidence Not Seen, A Woman’s Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II.  It is the autobiography of Darlene Deibler Rose, a young American bride, who with her husband went as missionaries to Dutch New Guinea shortly before WWII.  She and her husband were interred in separate Japanese concentration camps.  She suffered under horrific conditions and oppressors.  Her husband died.  Yet her faith remained strong despite her suffering.  The story that came to mind has to do with her relationship with the Japanese commander of her camp who would beat the women savagely for any infraction.  Many days she had to struggle internally to obey Jesus’ command to love our enemies. One day she was called into his office.  She boldly asked if she could have permission to talk with him, which he granted.  She began to witness to him of Christ’s place in her life, ending with: “He died for you, Mr. Yamaji, and He puts love in our hearts–even for those who are our enemies.  That’s why I don’t hate you, Mr. Yamaji.  Maybe God brought me to this place and this time to tell you He loves you.”  She continues in her book, “With tears running down his cheeks, he rose hastily and went into his bedroom, closing the door.  I could hear him blowing his nose and knew he was still crying.”

This all brought to mind an excerpt from a letter written by Caryll Houselander, a contemporary of Darlene, at the beginning of World War II.  She, too, was dealing with the suffering of many.  She wrote:

When the first days of this agony [WWII] are over, it is going to lead on from suffering to suffering in every way, fear, loss, death–one can’t bear to think of it.  Our work is to keep alive, a deep constant awareness of the living love of God, to be, as never before contemplatives of Christ in ourselves and in one another. To keep His passion before us and to keep our faith in His love, never allowing the despair and pessimism which must sweep many hearts.

True beauty

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

. . . last September Our Lord told me that He wished that I would look at Him much more in people, that He would like to be loved and reverenced more in people and “discovered” and recognized even in very unlikely people.  He would like people to be told and shown “their glory”–which of course is Himself.  (Caryll Houselander quoted in That Divine Eccentric by Maisie Ward)

That quote of Caryll’s came to mind this morning when we sang this line from a song during morning prayer: “You have illumined our spirit and Your eternal light is reflected everywhere so that in that light man might discover true beauty and all become luminous.”  (St. Gregory Nazianzen)  How else can we see the true beauty in each other except by His illumining our spirits?  There are many gifts that the Holy Spirit gives, but I believe this is the greatest: to love and reverence each other (“even very unlikely people”) for their worth in Christ, to see “true beauty” in each other.  And some times–maybe most of the time–that means seeing that “true beauty” in ourselves. Come, Holy Spirit, and enkindle the hearts of Your faithful . . .

“Is the doorbell ringing?”

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If you have clicked on the “What I’m Reading” tab, you know that one of the books I’m currently reading is We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, the writings of Madeleine Delbrêl, a French woman who lived from 1904-1964.  Similar to Dorothy Day, she converted from atheism to Catholicism which “led her to a life of social work in the atheistic, Communist-dominated city of Ivry-sur-Seine, France.”  Many of her insights are applicable to us who live in a secular-dominated world.  Here’s some of what I read this morning:

We, the ordinary people of the streets, are certain we can love God as much as he might desire to be loved by us.
We don’t regard love as something extraordinary but as something that consumes.  We believe that doing little things for God is as much a way of loving him as doing great deeds.  Besides, we’re not very well informed about the greatness of our acts.  There are nevertheless two things we know for sure: first, whatever we do can’t help but be small; and second, whatever God does is great.
And so we go about our activities with a sense of great peace.
. . . .
Each tiny act is an extraordinary event, in which heaven is given to us, in which we are able to give heaven to others.
It makes no difference what we do, whether we take in hand a broom or a pen.  Whether we speak or keep silent.  Whether we are sewing or holding a meeting, caring for a sick person or tapping away at a typewriter.
Whatever it is, it’s just the outer shell of an amazing inner reality: the soul’s encounter, renewed at each moment, in which, at each moment, the soul grows in grace and becomes ever more beautiful for her God.
Is the doorbell ringing?  Quick, open the door!  It’s God coming to love us.  Is someone asking us to do something?  Here you are!  . . . it’s God coming to love us.  Is it time to sit down for lunch?  Let’s go–it’s God coming to love us!

Let’s let him.

The Difficult Love (5)

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So, as I said yesterday, for many of us, the most difficult love is to love ourselves, to love ourselves as Christ loves us. to let ourselves be loved by Christ.  It is the easiest thing to do, but it is the hardest thing to do.  It is the easiest because God always loves us no matter what, always, always.  It is the hardest thing for us to do because we simply don’t believe it and always find excuses to not make ourselves vulnerable to Him.  We think we need to prove ourselves, we’re afraid of being hurt and disappointed, we just don’t believe it.  Some of the best things in life–in fact, the best thing–are free.

So, what to do?  Just simply turn towards that Love.  I know, easier said than done.  He is always turned toward you and will never turn away.  My prayer is that today, right at this moment, you can do this simple–but seeming difficult–thing.

Lastly, there is the difficulty of remembering that, in this necessarily interior language of self and heart, the first and last words are the God who loves us, ‘a Divine Love who is always seeking the human heart.’ It is easy to evade this, to transfer focus too quickly to what we think we must do next, to those obligations  to others to which we never seem to measure up.  And this is competing against a standard which surreptitiously we are in fact setting for ourselves.  There may not be a malicious vanity here, but there is a vanity all the same.  isn’t one of the big barriers to prayer our inhibition about accepting the love Jesus has for each one of us as we are?  (Mark Allen, quoted in Ruth Burrows, Letters on Prayer, p. 21)

The Difficult Love (4)

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I want to propose to you that for many of you the “difficult love” is not so much loving those God has placed in your life (although they may indeed be difficult to love), but the “difficult love” is loving yourself.   Christ’s new commandment is that we love others as He has loved us.  If we don’t have that part straight–knowing His love for us–it is very, very difficult to love others.  (Not that we can use that for an excuse for not loving others.  It just makes it much more difficult.)

Deacon Steve and I were praying with a friend recently who experiences a tremendous amount of self-hatred.  While we were praying, he shared this image that was coming to mind.  He saw my friend in the midst of a crowd of people on a road.  There was a person lying by the side of the road, and everyone was walking by her.  (Sound familiar?)  My friend went over to the person who was in such distress and pain and gently turned her over–only to discover that the person was herself.  Her immediate response was to run away, but she overcame herself and picked “herself” up and cared for her with gentleness and mercy.”

I will leave you with that story to think upon.

More on this tomorrow.

The Difficult Love (3)

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(Continuing on from the last couple of days . . . )

And, as we know, the Lord calls us to not just put up with the people around us, those who are difficult to love, but to love them as He loves them.  “To love one whom others despise is to demonstrate God’s love for that person, for one who is more precious than the whole world.  It is perhaps to save that person from self-hatred.” (Clément, p. 283)

The spiritual person hides the faults of others, as God protects the world, as Christ washes our sins in his blood, as the Mother of God stretches the veil of her tears over the human race. “It was said of Abba Macarius the Great that he became, according to the writings, a god on earth, because in the way God protects the world, so Abba Macarius would hide the faults he saw as though he had not seen them, and the faults he heard about as though he had not heard of them.” (ibid., p. 284)

Isaac of Nineveh said: “Spread your cloak over anyone who falls into sin and shield him.  And if you cannot take his fault on yourself and accept punishment in his place, do not destroy his character.”

More on all this tomorrow, but think on this today: this is how Christ loves you.

The Difficult Love (2)

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What really stopped me in my tracks while reading this chapter (see yesterday’s post) was this that he wrote:

For the person who has begun to tread the spiritual path, nothing is more important than the Gospel command: ‘Do not judge.’ Greed and vanity are passions that belong to those who are novices on the way or who have only just begun to advance along it.  But for the more advanced, the breakdown always comes from judgment pronounced on others. . . . according to spiritual teachers, the whole of virtue is comprised in the refusal to despise. (p. 281)

I guess, in reading this, I felt it was kind of a back-handed compliment.  I struggle with judgmental thinking so much.  Somehow that means I’m further along on the spiritual path?

Then he goes on to quote from John Climacus and a desert father:

John Climacus: : “The failures of beginners result almost always from greed. In those who are making progress the failures come also from too high an opinion of themselves.  In those nearing perfection they come solely from judging their neighbor.”

Abba Theodore of Pherme said, “There is no other virtue than that of not despising anyone.”

And back to Clement: “To justify ourselves by condemning others is our permanent tendency, in private as in public life.”

So is there hope for us who struggle with this?  Of course, but more on all of this tomorrow.

The Difficult Love (1)

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So this morning I have been thinking about a chapter in the book, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (Fr. Olivier Clement), entitled “The Difficult Love” which I read a few years ago.  I ended up re-reading it a few times, and I would like to blog about it for a couple of days (at least).   The first sentence in the chapter gave me pause: “Spiritual progress has no other test in the end, nor any better expression, than our ability to love.”  And so went the rest of the chapter.  Interestingly enough, the chapter is situated in a section entitled: “Approaches to Contemplation.”  It is also the last chapter in the book, which says something in itself.  Clement laces the chapter with quotes from many and various ancient writers.  Here is a sampling:

Pseudo Macarius: “Those who have been judged worthy to become children of God and to be born from on high of the Holy Spirit. . .not infrequently weep and distress themselves for the whole human race; they pray for the ‘whole Adam’ with tears, inflamed as they are with spiritual love for all humanity.  At times also their spirit is kindled with such joy and such love that, if it were possible, they would take every human being into their heart without distinguishing between good and bad.  Sometimes too in humility of spirit they so humble themselves before every human being that they consider themselves to be the last and least important of all.  After which the Spirit makes them live afresh in ineffable joy.”

St. Isaac of Syria: “This shall be for you a luminous sign of the serenity of your soul: when, on examining yourself, you find yourself full of compassion for all humanity, and your heart is afflicted with pity for them, burning as though with fire, without making distinction between one person and another.”

Okay.  So far so good, but more on this tomorrow.  (If you don’t want to wait, I did give a talk on this in 2005 which is available here with a handout.)