Catholic Contemplative Life A journey of recovery within Christ and His Church

Time 2020-10-15 16:04:32

Web Name: Catholic Contemplative Life A journey of recovery within Christ and His Church

WebSite: http://humanityfaithhopecharity.com

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I am, says God, the Master of Virtues.Faith is she who remains steadfast during centuries and centuries.Charity is she who gives herself during centuries and centuries.But my little hope is sheWho rises every morning.I am, says God, the Lord of Virtues.Faith is she who remains tense during centuries and centuries.Charity is she who unbends during centuries and centuries.But my little hopeis she who every morningwishes us good day.I am, says God, the Lord of Virtues.Faith is the sanctuary lampThat burns forever.Charity is that big, beautiful log fireThat you light in your hearthSo that my children the poor may comeand warm themselves before it on winter evenings.…………But my hope is the bloom, and the fruit, and the leaf, and the limb,And the twig, and the shoot, and the seed, and the bud.Hope is the shoot, and the bud of the bloomOf eternity itself. .The faith that I love best, says God, is hope.Faith doesnt surprise me.Its not surprisingI am so resplendent in my creation. . . .That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.Charity says God, that doesnt surprise me.Its not surprising.These poor creatures are so miserable that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have love for one another.How could they not love their brothers.How could they not take the bread from their own mouth, their daily bread, in order to give it to the unhappy children who pass by.And my son had such love for them. . . .But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.Even me.That is surprising.That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better.That they see how things are going today and believe that they will go better tomorrow morning.That is surprising and its by far the greatest marvel of our grace.And Im surprised by it myself.And my grace must indeed be an incredible force.French poet Charles Péguy 1912, a portion of his long poemSuffering, honor, tenderness: Péguy seems to have come to an understanding through this experience that pain and even a vulnerability to sinfulness often are the only ways to open up channels by which real grace can reach us, particularly those of us who think our faith and morals are already enough. Royal, Robert. The Mystery of the Passion of Charles Péguy14th Hail MaryDear Jesus, give us the grace of self-surrender. Grant that we may hand over to God nothing less than our whole lives. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk. 23:46) Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:3). A flickering glimmer through a window-pane,A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass,Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleetAcross uneven pavements sunk in slimeTo scatter and then quench itself in mist.And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurledAgainst the jutting angle of a wall,And cursed, and reeled against, and flung asideBy drunken brawlers as they shuffled past,A man was groping to what seemed a light.His eyelids burnt and quivered with the strainOf looking, and against his temples beatThe all enshrouding, suffocating dark.He stumbled, lurched, and struck against a doorThat opened, and a howl of obscene mirthGrated his senses, wallowing on the floorLay men, and dogs and women in the dirt.He sickened, loathing it, and as he gazedThe candle guttered, flared, and then went out.Through travail of ignoble midnight streetsHe came at last to shelter in a porchWhere gothic saints and warriors made a shieldTo cover him, and tortured gargoyles spatOne long continuous stream of silver rainThat clattered down from myriad roofs and spiresInto a darkness, loud with rushing soundOf water falling, gurgling as it fell,But always thickly dark. Then as he leanedUnconscious where, the great oak door blew backAnd cast him, bruised and dripping, in the church.His eyes from long sojourning in the nightWere blinded now as by some glorious sun;He slowly crawled toward the altar steps.He could not think, for heavy in his earsAn organ boomed majestic harmonies;He only knew that what he saw was light!He bowed himself before a cross of flameAnd shut his eyes in fear lest it should fade.Amy Lowell 874-1925 Brothers and sisters: I know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. Still, it was kind of you to share in my distress. My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father, glory forever and ever. Amen. Philippians chapter 4 Chastity, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is a quality of one s being. It is an abiding orderliness among all of one s sexual instincts, emotions, thoughts, and aims. As a result of having this abiding inner orderliness, one s sexual impulses do not control the person but the person controls his or her sexual impulses with ease and joy. The chaste person is thus free to live out his or her sexuality in a way that leads to true happiness and avoids counterfeit happiness. Chastity comes from grace and the practice of self-control. Without it, people tend to fall into sexual sin and contract still further physical, psychological, and spiritual wounds. These wounds conspire to make self-control still harder. Chastity is often, therefore, something one arrives at over time. There is a road to chastity. It can be a hard road with many falls and frequent repentance. But it is a road that gradually frees the person from enslavement to sexual impulses and leads a man or woman to a happy self-mastery. Angelic Warfare Confraternity website Huysmans continues the conversion of the French writer/aesthete Durtal in the novel ‘Cathedral’. The Cathedral referred to by the title is Chartres. Consecrated in 1260, in the presence of King St Louis, Chartres represents majestically to Durtal all that he pursues in his rejection of decadent modernism and the embracing of a profound Catholic medieval faith. A wearied cultured man, he reverses time in order to move forward spiritually. Appropriate with the anniversary of Fatima, Huysmans opens the second novel of the Durtal Trilogy with an examination of Our Lady’s apparition at the remote Alps town of La Salette, an apparition striking solely based upon foreshadowing similarities with Lourdes and Fatima. Huysmans writes in the most devoted manner of Our Lady. Keep in mind ‘Cathedral’ was written in 1898, before Fatima. Huysmans disturbing and grand descriptions of the geography surrounding La Salette proves spiritually revealing—a cryptic revelation.He (Durtal) thought of the Virgin, whose watchful care had so often preserved him from unexpected risk, easy slips, or greater falls. Was not She the bottomless Well of goodness, the Bestower of the gifts of good Patience, the Opener of dry and obdurate hearts? Was She not, above all, the living and thrice Blessed Mother?Bending forever over the squalid bed of the soul, she washes the sores, dresses the wounds, strengthening the fainting weakness of converts. Through all the ages She was the eternal supplicant, eternally entreated; at once merciful and thankful; merciful to the woes She alleviates, and thankful to them too. She was indeed our debtor for our sins, since, but for the wickedness of man, Jesus would never have been born under the corrupt semblance of our image, and She would not have been the immaculate Mother of God. Thus our woe was the first cause of Her joy; and this supremist good resulting from the very excess of Evil, this touching though superfluous bond, linking us to Her, was indeed the most bewildering of mysteries; for Her gratitude would seem unneeded, since Her inexhaustible mercy was enough to attach Her to us forever.Thenceforth, in Her immense humility, She had at various times condescended to the masses; She had appeared in the most remote spots, sometimes seeming to rise from the earth, sometimes floating over the abyss, descending on solitary mountain peaks, bringing multitudes to Her feet, and working cures……On the 19th of September, 1846, the Virgin had appeared to two shepherd children on a hill; it was a Saturday, the day dedicated to Her, which, that year, was a fast day by reason of the Ember week. By another coincidence, this Saturday was the eve of the Festival of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, and the first vespers were being chanted when Mary appeared as from a shell of glory just above the ground.And she appeared as Our Lady of Tears in that desert landscape of stubborn rocks and dismal hills. Weeping bitterly, She had uttered reproofs and threats; and a spring, which never in the memory of man had flowed excepting at the melting of the snows, had never since been dried up.The fame of this event spread far and wide; frantic thousands scrambled up fearful paths to a spot so high that trees could not grow there. Caravans of the sick and dying were conveyed, God knows how, across ravines to drink the water; and maimed limbs recovered, and tumors melted away to the chanting of canticles.…there are no fir trees, no beeches, no pastures, no torrents; nothing—nothing but total solitude, and silence unbroken even by the cry of a bird, for at that height no bird is to be found.“What a scene!” thought Durtal, calling up the memories of a journey (to La Salette) he had made with the Abbé Gévresin (spiritual director) and his housekeeper, since leaving La Trappe (‘En Route’ monastery). He remembered the horrors of a spot he had passed between Saint Georges de Commiers and La Mure, and his alarm in the carriage as the train slowly travelled across the abyss. Beneath was darkness increasing in spirals down to the vast deeps; above, as far as the eye could reach, piles of mountains invaded the sky.The train toiled up, snorting and turning round and round like a top; then, going into a tunnel, was swallowed by the earth; it seemed to be pushing the light of day away in front, till it suddenly came out into a clearing full of sunshine; presently, as if it were retracing its road, it rushed into another burrow, and emerged with the strident yell of a steam whistle and deafening clatter of wheels, to fly up the winding ribbon of road cut in the living rock.Suddenly the peaks parted, a wide opening brought the train out into broad daylight; the scene lay clear before them, terrible on all sides.“Le Drac!” (the river) exclaimed the Abbé Gévresin, pointing to a sort of liquid serpent at the bottom of the precipice, writhing and tossing between rocks in the very jaws of the pit.For now and again the reptile flung itself up on points of stone that rent it as it passed; the waters changed as though poisoned by these fangs; they lost their steely hue, and whitened with foam like a bran bath; then the Drac hurried on faster, faster, flinging itself into the shadowy gorge; lingered again on gravelly reaches, wallowing in the sun; presently it gathered up its scattered rivulets and went on its way…the rippling rings spread and vanished, skinned and leaving behind them on the banks a white granulated cuticle of pebbles, a hide of dry sand.Durtal, as he leaned out of the carriage window, looked straight down into the gulf; on this narrow way with only one line of rails, the train on one side was close to the towering hewn rock, and on the other was the void. Great God! if it should run off the rails! “What a crash!” thought he.And what was not less overwhelming than the appalling depth of the abyss was, as he looked up, the sight of the furious, frenzied assault of the peaks. Thus, in that carriage, he was literally between the earth and sky…along interminable balconies without parapets; and below, the cliffs dropped avalanche-like, fell straight, bare, without a patch of vegetation…all round lay a wide amphitheater of endless mountains, hiding the heavens, piled one above another, barring the way to the travelling clouds, stopping the onward march of the sky…The landscape was ominous; the sight of it was strangely discomfiting; perhaps because it impugned the sense of the infinite that lurks within us. The firmament was no more than a detail, cast aside like needless rubbish on the desert peaks of the hills. The abyss was the all-important fact; it made the sky look small and trivial, substituting the magnificence of its depths for the grandeur of eternal space.The Abbé had said that the Drac was one of the most formidable torrents in France; at the moment it was dormant, almost dry; but when the season of snows and storms comes it wakes up and flashes like a tide of silver, hisses and tosses, foams and leaps, and can in an instant swallow up villages and dams.“It is hideous,” thought Durtal. “That bilious flood must carry fevers with it; it is accursed and rotten…Durtal now thought over all these details; as he closed his eyes he could see the Drac and La Salette.ChartresLa Drac 1900

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