Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading, Wisdom 11:22-12:2
The opening verse of this Reading describes the unfathomable immensity of Almighty God. Compared to Him, the unknown vastness of the universe is like a grain or drop of morning dew. This verse actually doesn't do Him justice but there are no words in any language, nor is there any reachable level of human thought to properly define the boundlessness of our Creator. Since we are incapable of visiting this level of spirituality, the rest of the Reading is all the more incredible - but true. He loves all things, spares all things; He is a lover of all souls, and therefore rebukes and warns us of our sins. Why would this incomprehensible Being Whose power is indescribable care one iota about us? Why does He want to share in our joys and feel our pains? Why does He listen to our prayers? Why does He desire an intimate, deep, personal relationship with each and every one of us? These are questions that even the most gifted theologians and philosophers cannot finitely answer; but then again we are reflecting on the infinite Most High. The proof of the pudding, though, is when He made His uncontainable Self containable in the womb of a Virgin; when He walked among us, taught us, healed us of our infirmities, suffered and died for us; rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and opened the eternal gates in order to fulfil His longing and our longing to spend eternity together. And for as long as we remain in this valley of tears, He gives us a taste of heaven by leaving us a memorial of His Love - His precious Body and Blood. If we were capable of comprehending all of this, our hearts would explode.

Second Reading, 2 Thessalonians 1:11-2:2
Saint Paul's words here give you the sense that this prayer of his extends far beyond the Thessalonians. Can you hear him in heaven praying for us using these very same words? There's a story about Saint Francis of Assisi in which he asked one his brother Friars to accompany him into town to preach. When they arrived in town, they quietly walked all through the town and then Saint Francis said to his brother Friar, ‘We're finished, let's go back’. His brother Friar said to him, ‘I thought you said we were going to preach’. And Saint Francis replied, ‘We just did’. Faith in action speaks louder than shouting from the highest mountaintops and manifests itself in many ways. How do others perceive us? Even without mentioning our Lord, do we conduct ourselves in such a way that others would be able to deduce that we are Christians? The joy that flows from a strong faith reveals itself naturally because of God's grace and could leave the most indifferent of souls asking themselves, ‘What do they have that I don't have’? Faith is not a part time job to earn extra credit in heaven. True faith envelops us and dictates our way of life and is not easily alarmed or shaken.

Gospel, Luke 19:1-10
As devout Christians we are well-represented by Zacchaeus. He was a little man. In the grand scheme of things, how often do we consider ourselves to be insignificant? Part of this may be credited to some level of humility but there's always that inner self-demoralizing voice that asks, ‘How is it possible that I matter to God’? The answer is simple but not necessarily understandable: We are sinners which bewilderingly qualifies us as recipients of Christ's love. It is in our inner house that He dwells so that He may stay with us always. Through prayer and silence we may visit that inner house to be with our Lord where that self-demoralizing voice is overpowered by the Voice that says: ‘Salvation has come to this house’. As qualifiers of salvation, we are indeed descendants of Abraham. While Jesus may never require us to literally give up half of our possessions, He does ask for detachment from them. ‘The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost’. For Christians this is a most comforting verse because the word ‘was’ is past tense. In salvation history there was a time when we were among the lost, but through Baptism and by surrendering our lives to Christ's care and accepting His gift of salvation we can now joyfully look ahead without ever having to look back. But the push forward should be an ongoing process of spiritual growth.

Simon and Jude

Today on this Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, the Carthusians at Matins listened to an excerpt from the ‘Commonitory’ of Saint Vincent of Lérins. It is believed to have been written somewhere around the year 434. While the author identifies himself as ‘Peregrinus’, it was Gennadius of Marseilles who credits it to Vincent of Lérins. This Treatise is sometimes referred to as a ‘Remembrancer’, because Vincent’s goal was to provide himself with a principle to identify what is Catholic truth and what is error. Thus, he wrote this Treatise as a handy reference in which he could keep the truth ever fresh on his mind. Scripture, for example has many interpretations. Vincent of Lérins supports the idea that the proper interpretation(s) of Sacred Scripture must be supported by the ancient traditions and the universality of the Church – the deposit of faith, ‘the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth’ (1 Timothy 3:15), handed down to us by the apostles, like Simon and Jude, the pillars of faith. All other interpretations contrary, according to this Treatise, are to be rejected. Here is that excerpt:

It is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation. In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity and consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we do not depart from those interpretations which were held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if we embrace the definitions and doctrines of almost all the bishops and doctors.

The true and genuine Catholic is one who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ. He esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith above every thing, above the authority of man, above his regard, above his genius, above his eloquence, above his philosophy. Disregarding all these things, he continues steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe only that which the Church has always and universally believed. Whatsoever new and unheard of doctrine he shall find to have been furtively introduced by someone or another, contrary to that of all the saints, this, he will understand, does not pertain to religion, but is permitted as a trial, being instructed especially by the words of the blessed Apostle Paul, who writes thus in his First Epistle to the Corinthians: ‘There must also be divisions, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you’ (1 Corinthians 11:19). This is the reason why God doesn’t immediately eradicate errors, that it may be apparent of each individual, how tenacious and faithful and steadfast he is in his love of the Catholic faith.

But some one will say, shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's Church? Certainly -- all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on the condition that it be real progress, not an alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself; by alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same interpretation. The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same.

There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant's limbs are small, a young man's large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if something new appears, these were already present in the embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress; this is the established and most beautiful order of growth, that the mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would perish or become monstrous, or at least weakened. It behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress. It needs to be consolidated by years, develop over time, and refine by age.

Our Fathers in the past planted in the Church the good seed of faith. It would be most unfair and unseemly if we, their descendants, instead of the authentic truth of grain, should reap the counterfeit error of weeds. On the contrary, from doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, the wheat of dogma, so that when in the process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, this is cause for joy. There may be changes in shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same. God forbid that those rose-beds of Catholic interpretation should be converted into thorns and thistles.

Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God's Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties. For if once this license of impious fraud be admitted, I dread to say in how great danger religion will be of being utterly destroyed and annihilated. For if any one part of Catholic truth be given up, another, and another, and another will thenceforward be given up as a matter of course, and the several individual portions having been rejected, what will follow in the end but the rejection of the whole?

If what is new begins to be mingled with what is old, the profane with the sacred, this disorder will spread universally, till at last the Church will have nothing remaining intact, nothing unchanged, nothing sound, nothing unblemished. Where formerly there was a sanctuary of chaste and undefiled truth, thenceforward there will be a brothel of impious and shameful errors. May God's mercy avert this wickedness from the minds of His servants; be it rather the frenzy of the ungodly. The Church of Christ, the careful and watchful guardian of the doctrines deposited in her charge, never changes anything in them, never diminishes, never adds, does not cut off what is necessary, does not add what is superfluous, does not lose her own, and does not appropriate what is another's.

Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practiced negligently should thenceforward be practised with double solicitude? This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of divisions, has accomplished by the decrees of her Councils -- this, and nothing else -- she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those ancient days only by tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few words, and often, for the better understanding, designating an old article of the faith by the characteristic of a new name.

Unity and Distinction

The Spirit of Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, murmurs only one word: Father. The soul feels a slight breath pass through it, the breath of the divine life that the Father communicates eternally to the Son. At this breath, the soul feels turned round, powerfully drawn and carried up to Him Who is giving Himself to it. The Spirit raises up the soul, takes it out of itself, breaths into it light and energies of which it is not aware. It wants to resemble, to take to itself and be united with that Spirit, Who is the Spirit of God. It recalls the words of the Son of God in the Gospels: ‘Be perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Saint Matthew 5:48). Or the word of God recorded in Leviticus: ‘Be holy because I am holy’ (Leviticus 11:44). It understands that this reflection of the divine Beauty in it seems to make the Father grow greater, and gives Him joy and glory. It asks and wants that joy and glory for Him Who imparts to it His life and the glorious light of His love.

It asks it for itself and for others, for the greatest number possible -- for all men. It cannot understand why all men are not carried away and transformed by this desire. It calls them, invites them, it sings: ‘All you works of the Lord, bless the Lord, praise and exalt Him above all for ever. Earth exult, break out into cries of joyfulness; angels of heaven, virtues of earth, stars of the firmament, zephyrs of the air, showers and dews, ice and snow, mountains and hills, waters and the sea, birds of the air and fish from the waters which animate them with their rapid motions; children of men and the people of God, priests and devout servants of the Most High-praise Him and bless Him, sing that He is great above all these things, unite in that praise so that it fills heaven and the earth, time and eternity, for ever’ (cf. Daniel 3:52 ff.).

Before this picture of the whole of creation praising and blessing, the Spirit shows the indifference and incomprehension of men -- souls that revolt and give voice to hatred instead of love. We see divine Love despised and above all misunderstood. Under the very Eyes of the Father, crowds unnumbered are in danger of being hurled into the abyss, insensible to His Voice, to all the evidence of His love, to their own true interests. There are others who pass long years before this spectacle, which for them becomes living. It enters into their very soul and crushes and shatters them. Jesus allows them to share, from afar, very afar, the hours of His agony in the Garden of Olives and His supreme abandonment on Calvary. At the sight of these things which crushes and overwhelms them, they perceive what a Heart infinitely tender and delicate -- much more so than that of any mother, spouse or friend of all time -- has had to suffer in these hours. There are others whom the feeling of justice invades, fills and raises up. They ask, they demand and indeed insist on the punishment of so many crimes. ‘My God’, they say, ‘Your Eyes are purity itself; they cannot bear the sight of iniquity. How can You put up with those who do evil, and keep silent when the wicked persecute the just’ (cf. Revelation 6:10).

Again, there are some who no longer seem to see anything or to wish for anything. They enter into a deep silence. For them God is like a distant and hidden place of retreat. These souls remain there with Him; they savor Him as one savors a ripe fruit. They listen to the beauty of His Voice, and His words fill them with delights of which nothing can give any idea here below. An immense peace fills them, wraps them round, cradles them like a mother cradles her child. They seem to have crossed for an instant the threshold of the abode where one loves and is loved in the light and the truth, and they understand that to remain there is the true life. In this life, such a repose is short, such satisfaction rare. We must resume our journey and our effort; we must be resigned to continue our pilgrimage to our true home, like children loved but still in exile.

These varying forms of prayer are all part of a deep unity. The same divine Breath inspires them, the same Love directs them, the same Word speaks to them, the same Father utters this Word in the depths of their heart. Unity and distinction -- divine characteristics marking all life like all being. It is the same God still giving Himself to souls, with the same love and in the various attitudes that He assumes in their regard when they pray.

This diversity of attitude is very strange, at least at first sight. Is it not opposed to love? Do we see the same kind of thing in the relations between a mother and her child, which is the nearest comparison we can get in the realm of human tenderness? Maternal affection and all human affections are comparisons, but only comparisons. They give us some idea of the reality, but they do not reproduce it wholly. Further, we are guilty and sick souls. An erring child is still loved, but it has to be made to realize its fault, and if it is for its good it must be punished. A sick child is surrounded by the most delicate attentions, but if a painful operation is necessary, the parents do not hesitate to agree to it. When we love, we want the good of the one we love, and all that can procure it. The various attitudes of God towards our prayers have no other explanation.

~ Dom Augustin Guillerand ~

Desire the Truth

Below is a work of the ‘Meditations of Guigo, Prior of the Charterhouse’ which as the Introduction states, that within these meditations ‘are to be found more than glimpses of the beauty of the human soul in its highest hopes and achievements’. Guigo de Castro or as he was known in his native French, Guiges du Chastel, became a monk of La Grande Chartreuse in 1107 and only three years later was elected Prior. This is the same Guigo who as the Introduction points out wrote the ‘Consuetudines’ which ‘have always remained the basis of all Carthusian legislation since their composition in 1127 or 1128. In fact, it may be said that to Guigo the Carthusian Order in great measure owes its fame, if not its very existence’. Interestingly, the intended audience of Guigo’s reflections was his own soul. Many of us are familiar with ‘lectio divina’ or prayerful reading; in the case of Guigo, however, one might call this prayerful writing – writing to one’s own soul which is inhabited by the Most Holy Trinity. Let us begin:

Truth ought to be displayed as something beautiful. Judge not if someone shuns it, but be compassionate. And you, why do you, since you desire to arrive at the truth, spurn it when you are upbraided for your vices?

See how much truth suffers. To the drunken it says, ‘you are drunk’, to the voluptuous, to the gossip, it speaks in like vein. And it is the truth. Yet, straightway, they are in a rage, and the truth in its preacher they persecute – they kill (cf. Saint Matthew 23:34). But see how a lie is honoured. It says to human dregs who are the slaves to all the vices: ‘Ye good masters’. They are assuaged, they are gay, and the lie itself in the one who speaks thus, they worship.

Truth without beauty and comeliness (cf. Isaiah 53:2), and nailed to the Cross (cf. Colossians 2:14), must be adored.

Demand your wages from him according to whose will you employ yourself. Therefore, you should live so as to owe nothing to yourself, because you are able to give nothing back to yourself. For ‘let not the wages of him that has been hired by you remain with you till morning’, says the Lord (cf. Leviticus 19:13; Tobit 4:15). Therefore, the Lord will take vengeance of you for yourself (cf. Acts 7:24).

He who does everything according to his own will, let him demand all retribution from himself. When he cannot wrest it from himself, let him call up against himself the just Judge, God (cf. Psalm 7:11). If, then, you loved yourself, never would that service – that is, of yourself – of whose reward you would despair, be sweet to you.

Why do you lay more claim to yourself than to any random man or field, since you have created nothing more in yourself than in them? By what right do you claim for yourself any one of those things which you have not created any more than yourself?

See how much easier is the way to life through unpleasant things than through pleasant. It is easier to check lust and the other concupiscences where nothing beautiful or flattering has come in.

You ought to be united to your flesh not by delight in and love of it, that is, by sin, but only by feeding it. From as many loves for things which you would have lost or would have caused your loss has the Lord, the Truth, freed you (cf. Saint John 8:3; 14:6), from so many fearful and sad sorrows has He loosed you.

See what the good must be whose traces are themselves traces, I mean temporal things. They are sought after with so many great laborious and bloody risks by so many rational and irrational beings.

Destitution itself or temporal adversity in the role of torturer forces us to desire the good things which are unlike them. But because we are grown accustomed only to temporal things and know nothing else, we crave things not much different from those we suffer; and from even their angry moods, that is, adversity, we seek either a momentary surcease by the control of a kind of compromise, or to undergo things not much different from these.

O, man who have your sorrow, do you wish to ease it?

I do.

For time or for eternity?

For eternity.

Desire, then, eternal easement, that is the Truth, God. For that is why He struck you, that you might desire Him, not herbs, not bandages.

Return to the Lord with a Recollected and Quiet Mind

I wish that you should be continually with Me, and by being with Me enjoy all perfect felicity. But why do I not fulfil this? You may by My grace increase daily in goodness and at every moment be made richer in merit. Seeing that this is so, how foolish do you think them to be, and how much to be lamented, who spend the most precious time of grace that I have allotted to them, not only not to My honour and their own profit, but to the heavier aggravating of their damnation by a wicked life? Oh, if only you knew how much you might increase in the virtues of your soul, and in merit, by My grace every hour. For then you would undoubtedly take care with more diligence that the smallest moment should not pass you vainly, nor yet slip away without reaching some benefit for your soul. With the rising of the sun every day, there should arise a new joy in your mind, that I had granted you the commodity of that day, and by it so much longer space to honour and serve Me. Think, therefore, and say to yourself at every hour: Our Lord Who loves me has given to me this hour, this moment, and has prolonged the course of my life, that I should begin even now to turn to Him, and endeavour myself to please Him.

Above all things carry this opinion, that the present moment in which you live, is the first time you begin to do well, and contemn all that you have done before as worthless. Whatever the occasion, whatever business, whatever idle time, or any other thing that either may or shall happen to you, use them so as to employ them to My glory, and convert them to some benefit for your own soul. For I have stirred you up and excited you to depart from all vanities, by shutting the gates of the senses against them, and to return to Me with a recollected and quiet mind.

It remains now that I add to this, as it were, a rule to teach you how to live godly, which I have heard from you, by the inspiration of My grace, desire often at My Hands. For there remains yet bashfulness in you, which I well like, and which makes you ashamed in the opening of your infirmities, faults, errors, and negligence. But seeing that you desire to return to My grace, there is nothing that I likewise do more affect or desire. For what other joy have I in being among you, than to receive every sinner into My favour? How much more then do I desire, or rather long, to bring you home to Me, when you go astray, among the briers and thorns of worldly vanities; I am so desirous to recall you, as I will prescribe you a plain path, wherein you shall be sure to follow My Steps, and never wander again out of your way. Come, therefore, unto Me, and by your return procure Me a new joy, such as I delight in most, and desire ever to possess.

~ Alloquia Iesu Christi ad Animam Fidelem, by Lanspergius ~

The more a soul humbles itself in prayer, the more God lifts it up

Today is the feast of Saint Teresa of Avila. From the Divine Office, at Matins, the Carthusians listened to this great Saint in her own words. Here’s what the monks heard.

In the beginning, when I attained to some degree of supernatural prayer -- I speak of the prayer of quiet -- I laboured to remove from myself every thought of bodily objects; but I did not dare to lift up my soul, for that I saw would be presumption in me, who was always so wicked. I thought, however, that I had a sense of the presence of God: this was true, and I contrived to be in a state of recollection before Him. This method of prayer is full of sweetness, if God helps us in it, and the joy of it is great. And so, because I was conscious of the profit and delight which this way furnished me, no one could have brought me back to the contemplation of the Humanity of Christ; for that seemed to me to be a real hindrance to prayer. O Lord of my soul, and my Good! Jesus Christ crucified! I never think of this opinion, which I then held, without pain; I believe it was an act of high treason, though done in ignorance.

The first consideration is this: there is a little absence of humility -- so secret and so hidden, that we do not observe it. Who is there so proud and wretched as I, that, even after labouring all his life in penances and prayers and persecutions, can possibly imagine himself not to be exceedingly rich, most abundantly rewarded, when our Lord permits him to stand with Saint John at the foot of the Cross? I know not into whose head it could have entered to be not satisfied with this, unless it be mine, which has gone wrong in every way where it should have gone right onwards. Then, if our constitution -- or perhaps sickness -- will not permit us always to think of His Passion, because it is so painful, who is to hinder us from thinking of Him risen from the grave, seeing that we have Him so near us in the Blessed Sacrament, where He is glorified?

No trial befalls me that is not easy to bear, when I think of You standing before those who judged You. With so good a Friend and Captain ever present, Himself the first to suffer, everything can be borne. He helps, He strengthens, He never fails, He is the true Friend. I see clearly, and since then have always seen, that if we are to please God, and if He is to give us His great graces, everything must pass through the Hands of His most Sacred Humanity, in Whom His Majesty said that He is well pleased. I know this by repeated experience: our Lord has told it me. I have seen clearly that this is the door by which we are to enter, if we would have His supreme Majesty reveal to us His great secrets. So, then, I would have you seek no other way, even if you have arrived at the highest contemplation. This way is safe.

Our Lord is He by Whom all good things come to us; He will teach you. Consider His life; that is the best example. What more could we want than so good a Friend at our side, Who will not forsake us when we are in trouble and distress, as they do who belong to this world! Blessed is he who truly loves Him, and who always has Him near him! Let us consider the glorious Saint Paul, who seems as if Jesus was never absent from his lips, as if he had Him deep down in his heart. After I had heard this of some great Saints given to contemplation, I considered the matter carefully; and I see that they walked in no other way. Saint Francis with the stigmata proves it, Saint Antony of Padua with the Infant Jesus; Saint Bernard rejoiced in the Humanity of Christ; so did Saint Catherine of Siena, and many others, who knew better than I do. This withdrawing from bodily objects must no doubt be good, seeing that it is recommended by persons who are so spiritual; but, in my opinion, it ought to be done only when the soul has made very great progress; for until then it is clear that the Creator must be sought for through His creatures.

When God suspends all the powers of the soul – by some means of prayer -- it is clear that, whether we wish it or not, this presence of the most Sacred Humanity of Christ is withdrawn. Be it so, then, the loss is a blessed one, because it takes place in order that we may have a deeper fruition of what we seem to have lost; for at that moment the whole soul is occupied in loving Him Whom the understanding has toiled to know; and it loves what it has not comprehended, and rejoices in what it could not have rejoiced in so well, if it had not lost itself, in order, as I am saying, to gain itself the more. But that we should carefully and laboriously accustom ourselves not to strive with all our might to have always -- and please God it be always -- the most Sacred Humanity before our eyes -- this, I say, is what seems to me not to be right: it is making the soul, as they say, to walk in the air; for it has nothing to rest on, however full of God it may think itself to be. It is a great matter for us to have our Lord before us as Man while we are living and in the flesh.

We are not angels, for we have a body; to seek to make ourselves angels while we are on the earth, and so much on the earth as I was, is an act of folly. In general, our thoughts must have something to rest on, though the soul may go forth out of itself now and then, or it may be very often so full of God as to be in need of no created thing by the help of which it may recollect itself. But this is not so common a case; for when we have many things to do, when we are persecuted and in trouble, when we cannot have much rest, and when we have our seasons of dryness, Christ is our best Friend; for we regard Him as Man, and behold Him faint and in trouble, and He is our Companion; and when we shall have accustomed ourselves in this way, it is very easy to find Him near us, although there will be occasions from time to time when we can do neither the one nor the other. We must not show ourselves as labouring after spiritual consolations; come what may, to embrace the Cross is the great thing.

The Lord of all consolation was Himself forsaken: they left Him alone in His sorrows. Do not let us forsake Him; for His Hand will help us to rise more than any efforts we can make; and He will withdraw Himself when He sees it to be expedient for us, and when He pleases will also draw the soul forth out of itself. God is greatly pleased when He beholds a soul in its humility making His Son a Mediator between itself and Him, and yet loving Him so much as to confess its own unworthiness, even when He would raise it up to the highest contemplation, and saying with Saint Peter: ‘Go away from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man’ (Saint Luke 5:8). I know this by experience: it was thus that God directed my soul. Others may walk by another and a shorter road. What I have understood of the matter is this: that the whole foundation of prayer must be laid in humility, and that the more a soul humbles itself in prayer, the more God lifts it up.

I come, then, to this conclusion: whenever we think of Christ, we should remind ourselves of the love that made Him bestow so many graces upon us, and also how great that love is which our Lord God has shown us, in giving us such a pledge of the love He bears us; for love draws forth love. And though we are only at the very beginning, and exceedingly wicked, yet let us always labour to keep this in view, and stir ourselves up to love; for if once our Lord grants us this grace, of having this love imprinted in our hearts, everything will be easy, and we shall do great things in a very short time, and with very little labour. May His Majesty give us that love -- He knows the great need we have of it -- for the sake of that love which He bore us, and of His glorious Son, to Whom it cost so much to make it known to us! Amen.

Their Faces are Uncovered and Radiant

Today, the Carthusians honour all those of their Order who are now heavenly intercessors, residents of Paradise – the Saints and the Blessed. At Matins, the monks had proclaimed to them a very familiar teaching of our Lord from the Gospel of Saint Matthew. This was followed by an excerpt from what is considered a spiritual masterpiece in Syrian spirituality titled: ‘Le Livre de la Perfection’ by the seventh-century writer and martyr, Sahdona. Here are both the Gospel from Saint Matthew and the excerpt from Sahdona’s masterpiece.

From the Gospel of Matthew, 6:5-6, 16-21
Since the disciples had gathered around Jesus on the mountain, He told them: ‘When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites who love to pray standing in synagogues and at the street corners to be seen by men. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward. But when you shall pray, enter into your chamber, and having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret, and your Father Who sees in secret will repay you. And when you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But you, when you fast anoint your head, and wash your face; that you appear not to men to fast, but to your Father Who is in secret: and your Father Who sees in secret, will repay you. Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through, and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth consumes, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where your treasure is, there is your heart also’.

(My translation)

From ‘Le Livre de la Perfection’ by Sahdona

To all those who care about their salvation, Christ our hope and our God, has taught us in the Gospel to distance ourselves from the world, waiting for God alone, devoting ourselves to prayer and spiritual contemplation. By His words and His example He has shown that no place is more suitable for both prayer and being fixed on God than a place of solitude, away from traffic and favorable to recollection.

There, in fact, the body quiets itself, because the excitements of the external senses are extinguished while at the same time the soul is no longer agitated by internal impulses. As the worldly tumult subsides, it brightens the spirit; the mind becomes liberated from dark earthly concerns: in short, man emerges purified and freed from all physical and spiritual pollution. The discerning eye of his inner light shines and it is good to know himself, to improve and guide his behavior on the clear path of justice. Under these conditions, the man is rushed into the spiritual heights, he stands before the Lord and perceives something glorious, and feels extremely blessed by the Lord Who created him.

He dwells in God alone due to holy purity of life, and God constantly abides in him, waiting to envelop him with the great remembrance of His own manifestation, to burst from the body and impulses man’s thoughts, until the last day, entering into the clouds of heaven, where his covered face will be uncovered and radiant.

Blessed devotion! Your wonders have manifested themselves since the beginning with Adam, our ancestor, and have grown through all generations and achieved miracles for us. These marvelous effects shine in those wonderful beings who are men of truth, who have been able to contemplate its significance. They have taken flight far away from the world and its distractions in order to quiet themselves, body and soul, withdrawing to the desert; by these means they strive for total peace which is rendered to them, the incredible recollection, infused by the Lord supernaturally.

Our Lord, mighty, victorious and holy, source of all holiness, courage and victory, and Who has not disregarded the toil of fasting! Who among us carnal beings can ignore or dismiss You, weak and sinful as we are, continually stuck in the mud of passions?

No one would dare to say that the adverse passions of the flesh have ever been able to touch the Lord's Body, the Receptacle of perfection, the magnificent Temple of the Divine. Yet, although He did not have the slightest need, the Lord Jesus did not renounce the laborious practice of fasting; in order to better teach the great virtue and holiness that He confers on those who observe it.

Just as He was baptized to teach us in our turn to receive baptism and follow His example, thus He fasted to teach us to fast in His likeness. Every baptized person should feel compelled to fight against evil, as did our Lord, and so to be attached to the weapons of fasting even though we have received the fullness of the Spirit.

We fast according to the will of God, sincerely and wholeheartedly, without altering our fasting obligations to the criteria of Satan. This would occur if fasting hypocritically, being seen by others, in order to please men and receive the reward of vain praise from the people; we would thus be excluded from the divine reward, just as our Lord warned about the Pharisees, blinded, discouraging imitation: When you fast -- He said -- do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward.

Behold, rendered wholly perfect by fasting from all evil, hungry and thirsty for the spirit of felicity that comes from God, we will be able to escape the threat of misery and famine in the last days reserved for those who shall be satisfied on earth. We will merit instead the blessing of contentment that Christ Jesus has promised to the hungry in these terms: Blessed are those who hunger, they shall be satisfied.