BOOK OF THE MONTH: THE REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

Posted on by Lisa Deam

Week 3: Prayer as a Way of Life

All Shall Be WellThe Revelations of Divine Love by English anchoress Julian of Norwich is our book of the month. In this spiritual classic, Lady Julian explains why prayer is a good and necessary part of life.

I am drawn to the ways Julian speaks of prayer, always emphasizing our radical dependence on God. I also like the two metaphors she uses in the first passage below – prayer is like an arrow and prayer is like a shelter. These metaphors seem so different, yet they work together to describe the gift of communing with God.

 

For prayer is like an arrow shot straight toward joy’s completion in Heaven—and prayer is also like a shelter that covers us with the knowledge that we can trust God to grant all for which we yearn. When we fall short of the joy that has been laid out for us, we are filled with longing; but as we cover ourselves with the knowledge of God’s love and with sweet thoughts of our Rescuer, then we are granted the gift of confidence in God’s firm integrity.

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For our part, we must take care to always lovingly choose prayer as a way of life. We may still feel as though we have accomplished nothing—but in reality (whether we can see it or not), we have. And if we do what we can and ask with constancy and faithfulness for mercy and grace, then all that we lack we shall find in God.

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Prayer makes the soul one with God. Our souls are like God in their essence, and they are connected to God with bonds of kinship—yet because of sin, our way of being is often not much like God’s. That is why we need to use prayer as an affirmation that our souls are aligned with the Divine Will. What’s more, prayer comforts our uneasy consciences and becomes a conduit for grace to flow into us.

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 Julian of Norwich (1342 – c. 1416) was an English visionary, mystic, anchoress, and writer. Read about her here.

I’ve been enjoying the Divine Revelations in a modern translation entitled All Shall Be Well.

For reflection:

 

Julian of Norwich - week 3

BOOK OF THE MONTH: THE REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

Posted on by Lisa Deam

Week Two: Seeking God or Seeing God?

All Shall Be Well

In her spiritual classic, The Revelations of Divine Love, English anchoress Julian of Norwich has some amazing insights about how we experience God. In one section of the book, Julian explores the tension between having God and yearning for God; between seeking God and seeing God.

Often these two states occur at the same time, she says. But it’s nothing to worry about. Julian makes the point that seeking God is our job, while seeing God is up to God.

 

All this made me realize that during this time that we suffer on Earth, seeking is as good as seeing. Leave your awareness of the Divine Presence up to God, in humility and trust, to reveal to you as God wants. Our only job is to cling to God with total trust.

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God is pleased when we seek the Divine Presence continually, even if from our perspective, we do nothing but seek and suffer. We see with clarity that we have found God only when the Spirit’s special grace reveals this to us. It is the seeking, with faith, hope, and love, that pleases our Protector, while it is the finding that pleases us and fills us with joy.

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When this [Holy] Presence comes to us, it comes out of the blue, with such speed that we are startled—and God wants us to trust and wait for this Divine Jack-in-the-Box. For God is utterly kind, and the Holy Presence welcomes our hearts with total hospitality. Blessed may God be!

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Julian of Norwich (1342 – c. 1416) was an English visionary, mystic, anchoress, and writer. Read about her here.

I’ve been enjoying the Divine Revelations in a modern translation entitled All Shall Be Well.

For reflection:

Julian of Norwich - week 2

WEEKLY PRAYER

Posted on by Lisa Deam

A prayer from St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1553)

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

Source

 

WEEKLY PRAYER

Posted on by Lisa Deam

This week’s prayer is from the Liturgy of St. Mark (2nd century):

O Soverign and almighty Lord, bless all thy people, and all thy flock. Give thy peace, thy help, thy love unto us thy servants, the sheep of thy fold, that we may be united in the bond of peace and love, one body and one spirit, in one hope of our calling, in thy divine and boundless love.

Source.

CONTEMPLATIVE PROFILE: WRITING WITH HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

Posted on by Lisa Deam

Have you ever thought of writing as a duty? The 12th-century German visionary Hildegard of Bingen introduced this idea to me. In the preface to her best-known work, the Scivias, Hildegard describes a series of visions God gave to her. One of these visions included the instruction to write down all that she had seen. But Hildegard hesitated. In the passages below, Hildegard recounts what happened when she refused the duty God gave her to write down her visions:

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But I, although I had seen and heard these things, nevertheless because of the doubt and bad opinion and divers remarks of men, refused for a long time the duty of writing, not in obstinacy but in humility, until I fell on a bed of sickness, cast down by the scourge of God, until at length I was compelled to write by many infirmities.

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When Hildegard didn’t write, she fell ill! Finally, she began setting down her visions:

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I said and wrote [these visions and words] not according to the curious invention of my heart, nor of any man, but as I saw, heard, and perceived them in a heavenly way, through the secret mysteries of God. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, “Cry aloud therefore, and write thus.”

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It took Hildegard of Bingen ten years to write down her visions, and they still inspire and challenge the Church today. Let that be an encouragement if you, like me, are a slow and sometimes reluctant writer.

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Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a Benedictine abbess, a visionary, and a writer. Read a selection of her visions here.

Reflection: Have you ever felt that God has given you the duty to “cry aloud” and write something? Have you ever hesitated or refused?

 

CONTEMPLATIVE PROFILE: CATHERINE OF SIENA ON CONTEMPLATION AND ACTION

Posted on by Lisa Deam

This month we’ve been looking at the letters of the 14th-century mystic and reformer Catherine of Siena. In a letter to a Dominican laywoman, Catherine writes a wonderful passage on the melding of contemplation and action. She doesn’t mince words when describing how Christians are to behave. Loving our neighbor, Catherine says, is the only proper response to God’s love for us:

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You know that every virtue receives life from love, and love is gained in love, that is, by raising the eye of our intellect to consider how much we are loved by God . . . Loving God we embrace virtue out of love, and we despise vice out of hatred.

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So you see that it is in God that we conceive virtues and in our neighbors that we bring them to birth. You know indeed that you give birth to the child charity that is in your soul in order to answer your neighbor’s need; and that you give birth to patience when your neighbor does you harm. You offer prayer for all your neighbors, and particularly for the one who has wronged you. This is the way we ought to behave . . .

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Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) was a member of the Dominican Order of Penance. She was a mystic, a reformer, and an adviser to popes. Her written work includes over 300 letters and a contemplative treatise, The Dialogue. Read more here.

Read Catherine’s letters here.

WEEKLY PRAYER

Posted on by Lisa Deam

A prayer before writing or teaching from Christina Rossetti (1830-1894):

Lord Jesus Merciful and Patient, grant us grace, I beseech Thee, ever to teach in a teachable spirit; learning along with those we teach, and learning from them whenever Thou so pleasest. Word of God, speak to us, speak by us, what Thou wilt. Wisdom of God, instruct us, instruct by us if and whom Thou wilt. Eternal Truth, reveal Thyself to us, reveal Thyself by us, in whatsoever measure Thou wilt.

Source

BOOK OF THE MONTH: BEFRIENDING SILENCE

Posted on by Lisa Deam

Week 3: Letting Go
Befriending Silence

In Befriending Silence, Carl McColman explores three kinds of monastic prayer that can help us today. In previous posts, we looked at the gifts of lectio divina and the Divine Office. We now turn our attention to contemplative (silent) prayer.

Contemplative prayer gives us much-needed peace and inner rest. When we pray in silence before God, McColman says, “The Holy Spirit invites us to gently set aside our attachments to our interior drama so that we might rest in God’s unchanging stability.”

Since it is mostly without words or particular agendas, contemplative prayer offers an additional benefit that can also be a challenge: letting go of our all-pervasive need for control.

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Contemplation challenges us not only as individuals but as a society because ours is a society that rewards assertive, take-charge, type A behavior, and we want to do spirituality in the same way.

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Think of it this way: every conversation requires both speaking and listening, otherwise it is one-sided. The Divine Office and other verbal prayers invite us to speak to God, while contemplation gives us the space to listen.

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Contemplative prayer fosters an inner spirit of acceptance and receptivity. It reminds us that we are not in the driver’s seat when it comes to prayer (or indeed any aspect of spiritual living). When we pray in silence, we actually embody humility in our prayer. We make ourselves available to God but without presuming to tell God what we want to have happen or what we think should happen. Rather, we shut up and let God take the lead.

Read more.

For reflection:

McColman - week 3

FEATURED ARTICLE: THE LOST LIFE OF LISTENING

Posted on by Lisa Deam

A couple weeks ago, we explored a needed Christian virtue: humility. This week’s featured article takes a look at a common vice: pride, or what the Latin fathers called Superbia. Author Paul J. Pastor believes pride to be the defining vice of our age. In an article in ChristianWeek, he defines pride not (only) as a nose-in-the-air type of attitude, but also as self-obsession. Many of us are tempted to think about ourselves so much (whether good thoughts or bad) that we miss what’s going on in the lives of those around us.

We might expect the antidote to pride to be a dose of humility. Perhaps it is. But Pastor believes another important corrective can be found in the practice of listening — of being truly attentive to another person.

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As I look around our world, and indeed within my own often-dark heart, I am convinced that listening is the needed thing. Nothing can replace it, nothing can give a short cut to it.

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Pride makes true attentiveness impossible. And in the reverse, true attentiveness sends pride fleeing like shadows before a floodlight.

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To listen requires us to set aside our view of ourselves as the unrecognized expert or the one of right opinion. To listen requires a measure of personal security that few of us have. To listen, in short, requires love, and love must be learned from the Great Lover.

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In fact, listening to others begins with listening to God:

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Listening was, you remember, the one command given to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration:

A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” (Luke 9:35 (NIV)

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[A]s deeply as I believe anything, I believe this: if we cannot listen to God, we cannot know him. Know about him? Sure! But know him? Never without presence, never without quieting out hearts and turning to him in humility. It is in listening to God that we learn the skill that can be salt and light to our world.

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In short: listening can help us be superb while letting go of Superbia.

Read more.