Lenten Breakthrough

Today was the first day that I was able to attend mass in THREE weeks. These have been some of the most harrowing weeks I can remember having endured.... for those of you who know how much I love mass.

I actually came down with an awful stomach bug last night, and since my son is also sick I thought that we had better stay home and not infect people. But something in me reminded me of the great graces we receive when we are there and so I took some Vitamin C, set my jaw, and told Satan he was not going to have my Sunday. I woke up this morning feeling tired but not as sick, so off we went. And God had it all set up for me, as you will soon see. :P

I had recently felt like I needed a refresher course in deliverance ministry. First, because I had been encountering so much to ENDURE since moving into Peter's dad's house that I was-- let's be honest-- a bit depressed, and had frequently felt that I lost HOPE in God's goodness.
Ive felt a bit powerless to help others lately, and in this ministry, that is not a good place to be.

Now, how can someone like me, who has SEEN God move miraculously time after time, lose faith in His goodness? Well, it's called Sin, you see? Although my God has always been faithful, I have a short memory. And when I don't FEEL Him there, I imagine that either He is not there, or that He is there and is simply mean... uninterested in my personal welfare. I imagine that He expects too much of me or doesn't know what I can handle. These thoughts are sinful, to say the least, and I usually recognize them as such and bring them to confession. That's why today's reading was so good for me to hear:
Reading I

Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15

Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro,
the priest of Midian.
Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb,
the mountain of God.
There an angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in fire
flaming out of a bush.
As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush,
though on fire, was not consumed.
So Moses decided,
“I must go over to look at this remarkable sight,
and see why the bush is not burned.”

When the LORD saw him coming over to look at it more closely,
God called out to him from the bush, AMoses! Moses!”
He answered, “Here I am.”
God said, “Come no nearer!
Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place where you stand is holy ground.
I am the God of your fathers, “ he continued,
“the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”
Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
But the LORD said,
“I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt
and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers,
so I know well what they are suffering.
Therefore I have come down to rescue them
from the hands of the Egyptians
and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land,
a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Moses said to God, “But when I go to the Israelites
and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’
if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?”
God replied, “I am who am.”
Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites:
I AM sent me to you.”

God spoke further to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites:
The LORD, the God of your fathers,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,
has sent me to you.

“This is my name forever;
thus am I to be remembered through all generations.”

Clearly God is good. Clearly He has given us His name. Clearly this is better than bondage. But that doesn't resolve the problem of still "feeling" this despair. And boy can I have a pity party in my head when I want to.

So I went through this period of total darkness, followed by a period of repentance because I realized that this was wrong- but in which I still didn't recognize His goodness in my heart of hearts. No progress.

Then along came lent, and I prayed about it and felt that I should be responding by removing the one thing that I kept doing that I kept bringing to the confessional: Complaining. I resolved to stop complaining and just offer up whatever was bothering me. And I did.
But even though I wasn't complaining, I certainly didn't feel that I was walking in any kind of "close" relationship with God. I felt rejected by Him, and certainly defeated, particularly when Peter and I had been praying so much about certain things for our family and our prayers seemed to just hit a brick wall.
What was going on?

Something inspired me to pick up a book on Spiritual Warfare-- a book I hadn't read before but one that I had been meaning to glance over for a while. And I did. And it was as if everything fell into place. And even though I had been certain the book would be another protestant attempt to mass market spritual warfare for the spiritually unprepared, I read the entire thing in like, two hours, and was pleasantly surprised.
So surprised, in fact, that a layer of my pride was stripped right out from under me as I recognized that for months now I'd been so caught up in my Carmelite and wifely DUTIES and in accepting that suffering was redemptive that I had TOTALLY missed the part of the Gospel where God sends His Holy Spirit to be with me. This was why I had been floundering so much: I was trying to take on all these battles without the Holy Spirit's ACTUAL guidance, since I had become so prideful that I felt that I knew what the Holy Spirit was going to do next in each situation I was encountering. I didn't seek Him for answers to how to proceed in my battles, I just told Him: "This is a battle, again. I know what to do. Why aren't you helping me?" When I was met with silence, I would convince myself that the battle was won anyways, because I was still in communication with Him. But kinda like how I get mad when my husband watches YouTube WHILE listening to my innermost thoughts, I was doing the same thing to God. I refused to stop and LISTEN to Him because I felt I knew Him so well that I already knew what He would tell me to do.
Duh.

This book, The Women's Guide to Spiritual Warfare, was a great crash course in remembering to let GOD LEAD. It was, in fact, the thing I'd been missing all this time and the reason I kept wanting to go back to my protestant friends for prayer when I felt defeated instead of allowing GOD to work through my Catholic friends (yep, I did that too :P)
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with asking my protestant friends to pray, it's just that I wasn't trusting that my Catholic friends were "storming heaven" with power, if you know what I mean. Of course they were. And how dare I make fun of , say, pentacostals who say you aren't saved if you don't speak in tongues, if I wasn't trusting that the Holy Spirit could operate in ALL situations, not just the ones where the miraculous gifts were operating. In other words, I was just as bad as anyone who asked God for "signs and wonders." God is there, signs and wonders or not.
Jesus Himself said that the only sign we were promised was the sign of Jonah-- that He would raise from the dead after three days. Hellooooooo, Barbie. Wake up!
So, having read the book and being filled with a sense of remorse for just how stinking prideful I can be, I basically just fell on my face. And God was there and He gave me just what I needed: a firm discipline peppered with unconditional love. Wow.

After I finished reading the book, I prayed, and asked God what I could do to listen to Him more. One of the things He told me was to pray His Word again. Those other prayers, beautiful, eloquent, and perfect as they are that I've been relying on are wonderful. He hears them and He is pleased to answer them. But if I wanted to know His heart I needed to know His Word, and if I wanted to pray His will for people I needed to pray His Word, and since I am a person who has, like, five free minutes in a day... I needed to turn to His WORD and not just rely on other people's experiences of His Word. These are all things I knew, of course, but I guess I'm just as dumb as a box of rocks because I had completely forgotten that His Word is ALIVE. For all my Bible reading and Psalm praying, I hadn't submitted to praying IN the Holy Spirit, who tells us how to pray as we ought, in a very, very long while. I knew why. Because I hadn't recognized a battle I've been fighting since moving in here and had let Satan win for a time. I had been prideful and not prayed for myself....
But after that moment, I discerned that despair had crept into my spirit and it had to GO.

All of a sudden His Word came alive to me again. It spoke to me at every turn. And in it I not only found comfort and guidance but I began to find His presence again, because I KNEW He was good. The binding up of my evil tongue, which speaks from an evil, sinful heart, resulted in a release of power so great that I felt flooded by the Holy Spirit. And my spiritual eyes were opened and I recognized that there was a war over my family that I'd been letting Satan win.

Because you see, we live in a house were negative words, words of death, fear, anxiety, destruction, and despair are common. We live in a house with a big sign over my dining room table that says we serve the Lord, but our tongues (and I'm guilty of this as much as anyone, although this is something I've realized that, in our little family, at least, originated elsewhere in our heritage) our tongues were speaking from the overflow of our hearts. And our hearts were not sanctified by the Word. There was no LIFE in our tongues, which meant that there was very little LIFE in our lives.

It is possible, though you read your Bible every day, to remain unchanged. Not to progress spiritually. That's the beauty of the Sacraments-- they are sources of profound grace which come entirely from outside ourselves. When I received the eucharist today, I received into my person the entirety of God- His body, blood, soul and divinity. It ensured me that I was One with His Body. It covered me and filled me with His blood. It gave me a perfect love for Him and a union with Him. It helped me to become more like Him. All with just one action on my part: a willingness to receive.

I think that if I wasn't a Catholic, it is quite possible that this dark cloud which had settled over me (and by Dark Cloud, I mean this demonic and fleshly despair and not this "dark night of the soul or senses" which is a whole other animal, just to clarify) would have taken up residence for quite a while. The breakthrough came when I realized that there was a lot more going on in this house than just a hard new life. And that no amount of relics, house blessings, and regular bible reading and prayer were going to affect the Spiritual atmosphere if we weren't PUTTING TO DEATH these fleshly tendencies we have to sin. Which is where lent comes in--- it's the reminder we need each year that mortification of the senses, of the flesh, of the "icky" stuff inside us is sooo necessary to living a fruitful spiritual life. And that -- THAT--- was the key.
As soon as I stopped complaining, I can only compare it to unlocking a window to heaven, where light came pouring into our house. I literally FELT better in my body. And everything around me was illuminated-- I saw with spritual eyes again and not physical eyes. I found hope.

Of course, that made the devil mad. Everyone in my house got sick. I practically never slept. I was surrounded by turmoil and drama. But ultimately, I have been equipped, I have seen a glimpse of the reality surrounding us again, and I am determined that when God says "I give you my Name," that will be ENOUGH for me. I will not return to bondage. I will not go back to Egypt. My house will be set free and set on fire with the beautiful flame of His love.

John of the Cross: Counsels to Religious

Counsels to a Religious
By St. John of the Cross

From: THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, revised edition (1991).

Copyright 1991 ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included.

Introduction To The Counsels To A Religious

These Counsels written for a friar are similar in content and tone to the previous precautions. This fact suggests they were composed about the same time. If they differ from the Precautions in any way it is mainly in their not adhering to the fixed structure of that work. The copy that editors find most reliable was made from an ancient manuscript that had been conserved by the Carmelite nuns in Bujalance. Appearing in the manuscript after these Counsels are the Degrees of Perfection, which editors often placed among John's Sayings. The tendency now is to leave them here since they seem destined for the same friar.

Counsels To A Religious On How To Reach Perfection

Jesus Mariae filius

1. Your holy Charity1 with few words asked me for a great deal. An answer would require much time and paper. Seeing, then, that I lack both of these, I will try to be concise and jot down only certain points and counsels that in sum will contain much, so that whoever observes them perfectly will attain a high degree of perfection. The one who wishes to be a true religious and fulfill the promises of the profession that was made to God, advance in virtue, and enjoy the consolations and the delight of the Holy Spirit, will be unable to do so without trying to practice with the greatest diligence the four following counsels concerning resignation, mortification, the practice of virtue, and bodily and spiritual solitude.

2. In order to practice the first counsel, concerning resignation, you should live in the monastery as though no one else were in it. And thus you should never, by word or by thought, meddle in things that happen in the community, nor with individuals in it, desiring not to notice their good or bad qualities or their conduct. And in order to preserve your tranquility of soul, even if the whole world crumbles you should not desire to advert to these things or interfere, remembering Lot's wife who was changed into hard stone because she turned her head to look at those who in the midst of much clamor and noise were perishing [Gn. 19:26]. You should practice this with great fortitude, for you will thereby free yourself from many sins and imperfections and guard the tranquility and quietude of your soul with much profit before God and others. Ponder this often, because it is so important that, for not observing it, many religious not only failed to improve through their other works of virtue and religious observance, but ever slipped back from bad to worse.

3. To practice the second counsel, which concerns mortification, and profit by it, you should engrave this truth on your heart. And it is that you have not come to the monastery for any other reason than to be worked and tried in virtue; you are like the stone that must be chiseled and fashioned before being set in the building. Thus you should understand that those who are in the monastery are craftsmen placed there by God to mortify you by working and chiseling at you. Some will chisel with words, telling you what you would rather not hear; others by deed, doing against you what you would rather not endure; others by their temperament, being in their person and in their actions a bother and annoyance to you; and others by their thoughts, neither esteeming nor feeling love for you. You ought to suffer these mortifications and annoyances with inner patience, being silent for love of God and understanding that you did not enter the religious life for any other reason than for others to work you in this way, and so you become worthy of heaven. If this was not your reason for entering the religious state, you should not have done so, but should have remained in the world to seek your comfort, honor, reputation, and ease.

4. The second counsel is wholly necessary for religious so they may fulfill the obligations of their state and find genuine humility, inward quietude, and joy in the Holy Spirit. If you do not practice this, you will know neither how to be a religious nor even why you came to the religious life. Neither will you know how to seek Christ (but only yourself), or find peace of soul, or avoid sinning and often feeling troubled. Trials will never be lacking in religious life, nor does God want them to be. Since he brings souls there to be proved and purified, like gold, with hammer and the fire [Ecclus. 2:5], it is fitting that they encounter trials and temptations from human beings and from devils, and the fire of anguish and affliction.2 The religious must undergo these trials and should endeavor to bear them patiently and in conformity to God's will, and not so sustain them that instead of being approved by God in this affliction he be reproved for not having wanted to carry the cross of Christ in patience. Since many religious do not understand that they have entered religious life to carry Christ's cross, they do not get along well with others. At the time of reckoning they will find themselves greatly confused and frustrated.

5. To practice the third counsel, which concerns the practice of virtue, you should be constant in your religious observance and in obedience without any concern for the world, but only for God. In order to achieve this and avoid being deceived, you should never set your eyes on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the work at hand as a motive for doing it or failing to do it, but on doing it for God. Thus you must undertake all things, agreeable or disagreeable, for the sole purpose of pleasing God through them.

6. To do this with fortitude and constancy and acquire the virtues quickly, you should take care always to be inclined to the difficult more than to the easy, to the rugged more than to the soft, to the hard and distasteful in a work more than to its delightful and pleasant aspects; and do not go about choosing what is less a cross, for the cross is a light burden [Mt. 11:30]. The heavier a burden is, the lighter it becomes when borne for Christ. You should try, too, by taking the lowest place always, that in things bringing comfort to your brothers in religion they be preferred to you. This you should do wholeheartedly, for it is the way to becoming greater in spiritual things, as God tells us in his Gospel: Qui se humiliaverit exaltabitur3 [Mt. 23:12].

7. To practice the fourth counsel, which concerns solitude, you should deem everything in the world as finished. Thus, when (for not being able to avoid it) you have to deal with some matter, do so in as detached a way as you would if it did not exist.

8. Pay no heed to the things out in the world, for God has already withdrawn and released you from them. Do not handle any business yourself that you can do through a third person. It is very fitting for you to desire to see no one and that no one see you. And note carefully that if God will ask a strict account from all the faithful of every idle word, how much more will he ask it of religious who have consecrated all their life and works to him. And God will demand all of this on the day of reckoning.

9. I do not mean here that you fail to fulfill the duties of your state with all necessary and possible care, and any others that obedience commands, but that you execute your tasks in such a way that no fault is committed; for neither God nor obedience wants you to commit a fault. You should consequently strive to be incessant in prayer, and in the midst of your corporal practices do not abandon it. Whether you eat, or drink, or speak, or converse with lay people, or do anything else, you should always do so with desire for God and with your heart fixed on him. This is very necessary for inner solitude, which demands that the soul dismiss any thought that is not directed to God. And in forgetfulness of all the things that are and happen in this short and miserable life, do not desire to know anything in any way except how better to serve God and keep the observance of your institute.

10. If your Charity observes these four counsels with care, you will reach perfection in a very short time. These counsels are so interdependent that if you are lacking in one of them, you will begin to lose the profit and gain you have from practicing the others.

Degrees Of Perfection

1. Do not commit a sin for all there is in the world, or any deliberate venial sin, or any known imperfection.

2. Endeavor to remain always in the presence of God, either real, imaginative, or unitive insofar as is permitted by your works.

3. Neither do anything nor say any notable word that Christ would not have done or said were he in the state I am, as old as I, and with the same kind of health.

4. Strive for the greater honor and glory of God in all things.

5. Do not omit mental prayer for any occupation, for it is the sustenance of your soul.

6. Do not omit examination of conscience because of any of your occupations, and for every fault do some penance.

7. Be deeply sorry for any time that is lost or that passes without your loving God. 8. In all things, both high and low, let God be your goal, for in no other way will you grow in merit and perfection.

9. Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction.

10. In heaven and on earth, always the lowest and last place and office.

11. Never interfere in what you are not ordered to do, or be obstinate about anything, even though you may be right. And if, as the saying goes, they give you an inch, do not take a mile. Some deceive themselves in such matters and think they have an obligation to do that which - if they reflect upon it well - in no way obliges them.

12. Pay no attention to the affairs of others, whether they be good or bad, for besides the danger of sin, this is a cause of distractions and lack of spirit.

13. Strive always to confess your sins with a deep knowledge of your own wretchedness and with clarity and purity.

14. Even though your obligations and duties are difficult and disagreeable to you, you should not become dismayed, for this will not always be so. And God, who proves the soul by a precept under the guise of a trial [Ps.94:20], will after a time accord it the experience of blessing and gain.

15. Remember always that everything that happens to you, whether prosperous or adverse, comes from God, so that you become neither puffed up in prosperity nor discouraged in adversity.

16. Remember always that you came here for no other reason than to be a saint; thus let nothing reign in your soul that does not lead you to sanctity.

17. Always be more disposed toward giving to others than giving to yourself, and thus you will not be envious of or selfish toward your neighbor. This is to be understood from the viewpoint of perfection, for God is angered with those who do not give precedence to his good pleasure over that of humans.

Soli Deo honor et gloria.

Copyright ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included. Maintained by the Austrian Province of the Teresian Carmel