Friday: from the archives

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

(First posted October 7, 2009)

The Age Long Minute

The title of this post comes from a meditation by Amy Carmichael on Ps 107.29-30: He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.  Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.  I have to say that my first thought after reading Then they were glad because they had quiet, was: “This verse must mean a lot to parents of toddlers and teenagers!”  Amy’s reflection was other–and deeper–than mine.

jesus-walking-on-the-water“Then they were glad because they had quiet;” the words were music to me.  Then in reading the different stories of the Lord calming the sea, I found this: “He came to them . . . and meant to pass by them” [Mk 6.48].  The more literal the translation the more startling it is.  As I pondered the matter I saw that this “age-long minute” was part of the spiritual preparation of these men for a life that at that time was unimagined by them–a life of dauntless faith and witness in the absence of any manifestation of the power of the Lord; and it must be the same today.  Such minutes must be in our lives, unless our training is to be unlike that of ever saint and warrior who ever lived.  Our “minute” may seem endless–”How long wilt Thou forget me,” cried David out of the depths of his–but perhaps looking back we shall in such an experience a great and shining opportunity.  Words are spoken then that are spoken at no other time . . .  We have a chance to prove our glorious God, to prove that His joy is strength and that His peace passeth all understanding, and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge.And the “minute” always ends in one way, there is no other ending recorded anywhere: “But immediately he spoke to them, and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; have no fear” . . . and the wind ceased” [Mk 6.50].
“Then they were glad because they had quiet; and he brought them to their desired haven.”
(Edges of His Ways, pp. 143-44)

If you feel that you are in “an age-long minute”, have hope–He is coming to you and will bring you to your desired haven.

Our travel companion

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

We are not alone.  In the selection below, Pope Benedict encourages us to recognize that the Lord has given us Mary as our travel companion in life.  What a gift.  When we are needed to go to places that we are uncomfortable going to, when we are called to do things beyond our confidence, or even beyond our competence, remember she is with us, and where she is, so is her Son.

“Mary’s is an authentic missionary journey.  It is a journey that takes her far from home, drives her to the world, to places that are foreign to her daily customs, makes her reach, in a certain sense, the limits of what she could reach.  Herein lies, also for us, the secret of our life as men and women and as Christians.  As had already happened to Abraham, we are asked to come out of ourselves, of the places of our security, to go to others, to different places and realms.  It is the lord who asks this of us: ‘But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth’ (Acts 1.8).

“And it is always the Lord, who on this journey, places us next to Mary as travel companion and solicitous mother.  She gives us security, because she reminds us that her Son Jesus is always with us, according to what he promised: ‘I am with you always, to the close of the age’ (Mt 28.20).”

Our high calling

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Luke 6:28  Pray for those who abuse you.

In these days where we find ourselves unliked as Catholics for our stance on so many things, we would do well to heed Amy Carmichael’s advice regarding this Scripture passage–actually this is good advice regarding anyone we may find difficult:

Are there any who are making your burdens heavier than they need be?  Sometimes very small things can make our burdens feel heavier.  The temptation always is to resent this, and feel ruffled.

The Lord Jesus says to us, “Pray for those who compel you to carry burdens.”  Don’t talk about them to others, unless that talk will bear the scrutiny of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Don’t talk about them to yourself.  Look up to your Father for them.  Pray that their burden may be lightened.  (Perhaps they have some of which you know nothing.)  Pray, and as you pray, love will flow into your heart for them.

The Spirit helps us in our weakness

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

In his weekly audience last week, Pope Benedict spoke some very encouraging words to those of us who struggle in prayer:

In the Letter to the Romans [Paul] writes: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (8:26). And we know how true the Apostle’s saying is: “We do not know how to pray as we ought”. We want to pray, but God is far off, we do not have the words, the language, to speak with God, nor even the thought to do so. We can only open ourselves, place our time at God’s disposition, wait for Him to help us to enter into true dialogue. The Apostle says: this very lack of words, this absence of words, yet this desire to enter into contact with God, is prayer that the Holy Spirit not only understands, but brings and interprets before God. This very weakness of ours becomes — through the Holy Spirit — true prayer, true contact with God. The Holy Spirit is, as it were, the interpreter who makes us, and God, understand what it is we wish to say.

In prayer we experience — more than in other aspects of life — our weakness, our poverty, our being creatures, for we are placed before the omnipotence and transcendence of God. And the more we advance in listening and in dialogue with God, so that prayer becomes the daily breath of our souls, the more we also perceive the measure of our limitations, not only in the face of the concrete situations of everyday life, but also in our relationship with the Lord. The need to trust, to rely increasingly upon Him then grows in us; we come to understand that “we do not know … how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26).

And it is the Holy Spirit who helps our inability, who enlightens our minds and warms our hearts, guiding us as we turn to God. For St. Paul, prayer is above all the work of the Holy Spirit in our humanity, to take our weakness and to transform us from men bound to material realities into spiritual men. In the First Letter to the Corinthians he says: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths in spiritual terms” (2:12-13). By means of His abiding in our fragile humanity, the Holy Spirit changes us; He intercedes for us; He leads us toward the heights of God (cf. Romans 8:26).

You can read his whole address here.

Prayer to God the Holy Spirit (2)

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Come, perpetual joy.
Come, unwitherable wreath.
Come, O purple raiment of our Lord and God.
Come, girdle, clear as crystal and many-coloured with precious gems.
Come, inaccessible refuge.
Come, Thou whom my poor soul desireth and hath desired.
Come, lonely One, to the lonely one–for lonely I am, as Thou canst see.
Come, Thou who hast become my longing, for that Thou hast ordained,
that I must needs long for Thee whom no human breath has ever reached.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, joy, glory, and my incessant delight.

~Symeon the New Theologian

Prayer to God the Holy Spirit (1)

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Come, true light,
Come, eternal life,
Come, secret of hiddenness.
Come, delight that has no name.
Come, unutterableness.
Come, O presence, forever fleeing from human nature.
Come, everlasting jubilee.
Come, light without end.
Come, awaited by all who are in want.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, mighty one, forever creating, recreating, and renewing with a mere wave of Thy hand.
Come, Thou who remainest wholly invisible, for none ever to grasp or to caress.
Come, Thou who flowest in the river of hours,
yet immovably stayest above it,
who dwellest above all heavens,
yet bendest to us who are bowed down.

~Symeon the New Theologian

to be continued . . .

The sturdiness of God

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

From Fr. André Louf:

“The Hebrew word for faith (emûnah) derives from the stem emeth, faithfulness, one of God’s greatest attributes.  God is merciful and faithful (hesed we’ emeth, Gen 24.27).  We might as well say, tender and tough.  For emeth evokes the image of a rock on which we can lean or build.  God will not move; we can always count on him.  Our faith is a the act of leaning on the toughness or ‘sturdiness’ of God.  The liturgical word ‘Amen’ has the same stem.  To say ‘Amen’ is above all to believe; it is the act of affirming the sturdiness of God as it comes through to us from his Word or from the person of Jesus.  The Apocalypse of John says of Jesus that he is at once amen and pistos — faithful (Rev. 3.14).  He is faithful in two directions.  It is his privilege boundlessly and, as it were, recklessly to lean against his Father, because he as no other may count on his Father’s power and ‘sturdiness’.  Similarly in his relation to us he becomes the eminently sturdy and powerful one against whom we on our part may lean just as recklessly and boundlessly.”

Be reckless today!