I have more than I prayed for

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The poem I chose for this Sunday could more accurately be termed “poetic prose.”  It’s a piece by Catherine Doherty, and I’m not sure of its source.  Her perspective on God’s work in our souls during dark times gives great food for thought.  It is obvious, at least to me, that the place at which she arrives is absolutely a work of grace–but one which God can do for each of us.  It is one of the great paradoxes of the spiritual life, one which Luci Shaw addressed in her poem, “Of Consolation” which starts: “It is down/makes/up seem/taller . . .” 

   I prayed to God for songs and laughter.  He gave me tears instead.  I prayed for life in valleys green, full of harvest rich.  He led me through deserts arid and heights where snow alone could feel at home.

   I prayed for sun, lots of dancing, and sparkling rivers to sail upon.  He gave me night, quite dark, starless, and thirst to guide me through its waste.

   But now I know that I was foolish, for I have more than I prayed for.

   I have the Son for bridegroom.  The music of his voice is a valley green, and river sparkling on which I sail.  My soul is dancing, dancing with endless joy in the dark night he shares with me.

An unknown Puritan many years before had written something similar in a poem entitled, “The Valley of Vision”, which includes this line: “Let me learn by paradox/that the way down/is the way up . . .”  The poem ends:

Lord, in the daytime stars can
     be seen from deepest wells,
          and the deeper the wells
               the brighter thy stars shine;
Let me find thy light in my darkness,
               thy life in my death,
               thy joy in my sorrow,
               thy grace in my sin,
               thy riches in my poverty,
               thy glory in my valley.

May you find His light in your darkness. . .

The defects of Jesus

Jesus has a terrible memory. . .

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I know that sounds heretical, but I’m just quoting a cardinal, Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan to be exact.  If you have never heard of him, go here to find out more about his astounding life.  He wrote about the “defects of Jesus” in his book, Testimony of Hope, which is a compilation of the spiritual exercises he gave to John Paul II and the papal household in the year 2o00.  The first “defect” he mentions is “Jesus has a terrible memory.

     On the cross, during his agony, Jesus heard the voice of the thief crucified on his right, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23.42).  If I had been Jesus, I would have told him, “I certainly will not forget you, but your crimes have to be expiated with at least twenty years of purgatory.”  Instead, Jesus tells him, ” Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43).  He forgets all the man’s sins.
     He does exactly the same thing with the sinful woman who has anointed his feet with perfume.  Jesus does not ask her anything about her scandalous past.  He simply says “her many sins have been forgiven because she loved much” (cf. Lk 7.47).
     . . . Jesus does not have a memory like mine.  He not only pardons, and pardons every person, he even forgets that he has pardoned.  (Testimony of Hope,  pp. 14-15)

A God who cannot see clearly

“You have a Father in heaven who can no longer tell you from His Son!” (Paul Claudel)

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Some beautiful passages from Paul Claudel about the love of God for us.  (Take time to meditate on them and drink them in.)

You have a Father in heaven who can no longer tell you from His Son!  (Seigneur apprenez-nous a prier, 72) 

Take courage, then, presumptuous soul, in the thought that you have to do with a God whose mercy prevents him from seeing clearly.  The Bible teems with blind patriarchs, and doubtless it was the news of his father’s dimmed vision that hastened the return of the prodigal son.  For we know too well that when we rush into his arms, his eyes will be good for nothing but weeping. . .  It is not by sight that the Father knows his son, but by touch. ‘The Lord looks on the heart’ (1 Sam 16.7).  It is of the heart alone that he demands the secret of our love.  He inhales us that he may know our scent.  (Presence et Prophetie, 41)

Trusting His mercy

Humility is the gateway to the mercy of God.

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Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Pondering today how hard we try so often to live lives without sin, but usually because we just don’t want to humble ourselves before others and especially before God. We don’t want to take the risk.  We don’t want to admit that we are imperfect human beings.  But humility is the gateway, the door to His mercy. We don’t really trust His love and mercy.  We should be running to Him with our faults, our sins, asking Him to “punish us with a kiss.”

Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon.  (St. Augustine)

[Let] the greatest sinners [place] their trust in My mercy.  They have the right before others to trust in My bottomless mercy.  My daughter, write about My mercy toward tormented souls.  Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me.  To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask.  I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if He makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy.  Write: before I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy.  He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My Justice . . . .   (St. Faustina, Diary 1146)

I start again

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Periodically I feel a need to post something I posted back in June, a quote from St. Andrew of Crete: “Every day I start again.”  What a great grace from God that He gives us a new day every 24 hours.  He gives us a new start every time we go to Confession.  A song I sing frequently is:  “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness” (Lam 3.22)  Today I start again.  And I feel I should add–the starting again isn’t so much what we do, or what we strive for . . . the starting again should be starting again to abandon ourselves to the mercies of God that never come to an end, starting again to surrender our lives to His love and mercy for us, starting again to lower our hands that would push Him away because we’ve failed once again.  Today I start again to let Him love me.

Another little prayer

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Continuing on from yesterday:

Ps 119.173: Let Your hand help me.

This little prayer has often been mine.  These short Bible prayers are just what we want in days when we are tired or hard-pressed, so I pass this one on for those who need it.  You will find it enough.  It is like the touch on the electric light switch–just a touch, and the power comes flowing from the power-house–the power that turns to light.   (Amy Carmichael, Edges of His Ways, p. 149)

Little prayers

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This is one of those mornings: Oh Lord, what am I going to post today?  The CTK Women’s Weekend was very good–I love being with all those women–but, being the introvert that I am, it takes a toll on me, and so I’m tired today.  Soooo I’m going to pull Amy Carmichael out of my bag, so to speak.  This piece is a great one on “Little prayers”:

Sometimes we are very much disappointed with ourselves because we cannot pray proper prayers, only little ones that hardly seem to be prayers at all.  I have been finding much comfort in the little prayers of the Gospels.   They could not be more little.
     There was Peter’s, “Lord save me” [Mt 14.30], and the poor mother’s [Mt 15.25], “Lord, help me”; and sometimes even less, no prayer at all but only the briefest telling of the trouble, “My servant lies at home sick” [Mt 8.6]; and less than that, a thought, and a touch. “She said within herself if I may but touch . . . ” [Mt 9.21].
     Again we hear of just  feeling. “They were troubled” [Mt 14.26], and a cry, “They cried out in fear”–that was all, but it was enough. 
     Often in the throng of the day’s work and warfare, there will not be time for more than a very little prayer–a thought, a touch, a feeling, a cry–but it is enough; so tender, so near, is the love of our Lord.  (Amy Carmichael, Edges of His Ways, p. 149)

Praying out of the anguish of your heart

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A number of months ago, my spiritual director gave me this piece of advice (as I was going through a particularly challenging season of prayer): “Pray out of the anguish of your heart.”  It was one of the most helpful things–among many others–he has ever said to me, and it came to mind this morning as I was meditating on Psalm 69, which begins:

Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
    where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
    and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying;
    my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
    with waiting for my God.
More in number than the hairs of my head
    are those who hate me without cause;
mighty are those who would destroy me,
    those who attack me with lies.
O God, thou knowest my folly;
    the wrongs I have done are not hidden from thee.

This is a man praying out of the anguish of his heart.  David is being entirely honest with God about how he experiences life.  He laments: he expresses his grief, his sorrow, his pain. Michael Card, in his book, A Sacred Sorrow, writes about the importance of lamenting in the Bible–and in our own lives.  “From the beginning, David was no stranger to pain.  And in the end, it was the process of lamenting his pain that led him to unheard of intimacy with God.” (p. 63)  Lamenting before God–truly coming before Him and pouring out our anguish–can open the door to a deeper and much more intimate relationship with Him.  Derek Kidner’s comments on these first verses of the psalms also shed light on the fruit of doing so:

This distracted beginning demonstrates the value of putting one’s plight into words before God, for David’s account of his crisis clarifies and grows more reflective as he prays.  The desperate metaphors of inner turmoil and floundering (vv 1-2) give way to more objective (though still agitated) descriptions of his state and situation (vv. 3-4), and finally to a searching of his conscience (v. 5).  Prayer is already doing its work.  (Psalms 1-72, An Introduction and Commentary, pp. 245-6).

So, don’t be afraid to pray out of the anguish of your own heart–as long as it is done in sincerity–and before God.  Let the prayer of lament do its work in your soul.

“He is looking for us”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A meditation from August of last year that I dog-eared in my Magnificat relates to today’s Gospel:

JesusSheepAnother picture that our Lord loves to use is that of the shepherd who goes out to look for the sheep that is lost.  So long as we imagine that it is we who look for God, then we must often lose heart.  But it is the other way about: he is looking for us.  And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him.  And he knows that and has taken it into account.  He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape from him, we run straight into his arms.
     So we do not have to erect a false piety for ourselves, to give us hope of salvation.  Our hope is in his determination to save us.  And he will not give in!
     This should free us from that crippling anxiety which prevents any real growth, giving us room to do whatever we can do, to accept the small but genuine responsibilities that we do have.  Our part is not to shoulder the whole burden of salvation, the initiative and the program are not in our hands: our part is to consent, to learn how to love him in return whose love came to us so freely while we were quite uninterested in him.        (Simon Tugwell, O.P.)

(For a beautiful card of the Good Shepherd, see the one designed by Jeanne Stephenson at her website.)

A time of stripping

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

I feel like I’m in a time of stripping.  (Ever feel that way? 🙂  And I don’t like it.  (Ever feel that way?)  I don’t like feeling weak and unrighteous and incapable and . . . you fill in the blank.  I don’t like not feeling on top of it or in control.  But–what should I expect if I am re-reading God Alone Suffices, the book I kept feeling drawn to pick up again and re-read?  How do I expect to learn that God alone suffices unless I know how much I don’t suffice?  (You think you’ve learned that lesson . . . and then you find out there’s, oh, so much more to learn . . .)  This is not an easy book to read–because God seems to always provide the lab part while reading it. 🙂  Reading Biela’s books are not for the faint of heart–or maybe they are for the faint of heart because those are the poor of spirit . . .  He’s not really writing anything new–he just does not sugarcoat the truth.  The good news, though, is that God only strips in order to bring us into a deeper knowledge of His love.  To be blunt, it’s pretty hard for a husband to be intimate with his wife while she still has her clothes on.  And it’s just as hard for us to know the much more intimate love of God while we’re clinging to other things so tightly.  So it’s a great grace for Him to allow us to be stripped.

By knocking with His light, Jesus tells us: Let us, you and I, look at you, whom I love, together.  Jesus desires that upon seeing the darkness of your soul, you experience His love.  (S.C. Biela, Open Wide the Doors to Christ, p. 56)