'Friends and Enemies' - from 'Delight in the Lord' (1925) by Rev Daniel Considine S.J. .

                 St Peter sinking in the waves (1766) - Francois Boucher

 I have taken another extract from Father Considine's book 'Delight in the Lord',  which is a virtual transcript of  talks given by him to religious  communities in the 1920s, and published in book form 'to help other souls attain something of that loving trust in God and joy in his service which was the aim of all Father Considine's direction.'  
We don't have to be a religious to benefit from his wisdom.

Friends and Enemies

It is very important for us to understand and be able to recognize the different influences which are at work within our souls. Ordinarily there are four.
I.    Human nature (our own).  Very often we get discouraged and think God cannot love us, or we are not called to sanctity, or the spiritual life is too difficult, because we have indigestion or are a bit run down physically.  The devil has nothing to do with this, though he highly approves of it.  It is a natural evil and requires a natural remedy – a rest, or a tonic, or something of that kind.
 
II.    The devil.  Here are a few helps to recognize his working.
1.    He cannot see our thoughts or the interior of our souls, so he does not start a new disposition there immediately.  He can only work upon us by putting some material thing before our imagination and trying to get us attend to it.
2.    He is not original  -  i.e.  he does not originate ideas in our minds,  but he seizes upon some circumstance which he knows troubles us,  and he aggravates that, so as to cause more trouble.  For example, if someone has (apparently) slighted us, he will take the opportunity to make the grievance appear much greater than it really was; and he will be perpetually bringing it before our minds.  So when anything of the kind has occurred – when we are unwell or irritable, or something has gone contrary to our wishes, or someone has said a hard word to us, we ought to be more than usually upon our guard, knowing that the devil is likely to be busy about that in a few moments.  We see this in the temptations of our blessed Lord, when the tempter took advantage of his hunger and exhaustion.
3.    If the devil has tried a certain method of attack upon us successfully in the past, he will be pretty sure to repeat it.  So be on your guard in circumstances in which you have had trouble before.
4.    The suggestions of the devil often come rudely and suddenly to a soul that is trying to serve God.  Be very suspicious of a sudden impulse, especially when you have laid yourself open to attack by some infidelity.  The devil tries to make you act quickly, without giving yourself time for reflection, or to receive the influences of grace.
5.    In general, the thoughts that make the spiritual life appear difficult or uninviting, that suggest you are not called to high virtue, that God will not forgive you easily, that you have lost your chance of sanctity – all such thoughts come from the devil.  Also, whatever tends to make you seek pleasure outside your religious life, or contrary to the desires of Superiors, is from the devil.
6.    It is a great aim of the devil to interfere with prayer.  So when you go to pray he will often try to bring before your mind all sorts of temptations, troubles and harassing thoughts, or even decisions that have to be made (but not during prayer). He wants you to talk to him or yourself, not to God. You must quietly ignore these things.  Don’t argue with him, but commend yourself quietly and trustfully to God, and occupy yourself with him alone.
7.    As the devil cannot see into your soul, but can only guess at its state, it is a pity to show exterior signs of trouble, by sad or angry words, or depression of countenance.
 
III.    Our good angel acts in all things contrary to the way in which the devil acts, calming the soul, trying to increase its confidence in God and its attraction towards spiritual things.
 
IV.    God.
1.    Whenever, without reasonable or gradual alteration, you find yourself changed from a state of sadness or depression to a state of joy and hope and love, this is the action of God.  No one but the Creator of our souls can enter into them thus as Master and fill the chamber of our soul with peace and gladness.
2.    Whatever tends to make the spiritual life seem sweet and easy and attractive – whatever makes you hopeful, makes God appear kind and loving, especially whatever makes you feel that God loves you individually, that He wants you and will help you – all such thoughts and feelings come from God.
3.    God’s suggestions come gently and sweetly to a soul that is trying to serve Him – bringing peace and light, and a peaceful humility.
4.    God’s suggestions are gradual and persistent, tending more or less in one direction. Thus, if God sends you the thought of His individual love and care for you, this thought will return again and again at various times, and its influence will grow stronger and clearer as you correspond.  It is not God’s way to be continually upsetting the spiritual life and starting a soul again in new ways, and making violent upheavals.
                                                            
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                             St Mary Magdalene - Michael Sittow 1469-1525
                 
St Mary Magdalene understood so well how to deal with our Lord, with her pia audentia (holy audacity).  Forgiven sin is absolutely no bar to the closest union with our Lord – it is only another claim on his love. From the time he said to Mary Magdalene,  “ Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee,” we never hear of those sins again.  She does not seem at all troubled by them – she never hangs back from our Lord, or thinks that others have a right to be nearer to him than herself.  She gets as close as possible to him always – and our Lord never sends her away.  She thinks of him, not of herself, and that is the secret of peace of soul and of sanctity.
    Once we have realized that we are nothing of ourselves, but full of bad inclinations, weakness and misery, all we have to do is to cast ourselves entirely into the loving heart of Jesus.  He will never despise or reject us.  Then we may forget ourselves and think only of pleasing him. There is no danger of presumption.  Our Lord is more merciful, generous and royal than we can ever understand.  Try to be with him always.  The weaker you are and the less virtue you have, the more need you have of him, and the more you must cling to him, and the more he will do for you.  It is our self-importance, not our misery, that gets in his way.  You can never trust him too much.  So go on your way rejoicing.
    Don’t be foolish and slow of heart any longer to believe in him.
                Ack. 'Delight in the Lord' by Rev. Daniel Considine S.J.

(click on this link for further extracts from this admirable little book)

Fr Alexander Crow, Martyr. ----- 'Mary's Meals'

You will notice at the top of the side-bar, the prayer for the beatification of the Venerable Bishop Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District in England, from 1758-1781. Among his many literary works was ‘Martyrs to the Catholic Faith’ – Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholics of both sexes, that have suffered death in England on religious accounts from the year 1577 to 1684’. This is an impressive and broadly based work, briefly relating the lives and circumstances of death of some three hundred martyrs, ‘carefully collected from the accounts of eye-witnesses, contemporary authors, and manuscripts kept in the English convents and Colleges abroad.’ Reading these accounts is truly humbling, and is a reminder that today there are many Catholics in the world suffering terrible persecution and death for their faith. ‘Please God, give them courage and faith in their suffering, and may we all be loyal soldiers of Christ.’ This post is primarily on one of the English martyrs included in Bishop Challoner’s book, the Rev. Alexander Crow.

                                 'Ecce Homo' - Munkacsy Mihaly (1844-1900)

Alexander Crow,  Priest.

Alexander Crow was born in Yorkshire, and for some time followed a trade in York.   ‘But going beyond the seas, out of his zeal to God and his country,’ says my manuscript, ‘he fell to his studies at Rheims, and became a priest, being, both for his said zeal and virtue, well esteemed of by his superiors, and by them sent on an orderly mission into England for the salvation of souls, anno 1584.  After he had laboured here some time, with much edification to all that knew him, he was taken at South Duffield, coming hither to christen a child of one Cecily Garnet; and at the assize held at York in November was arraigned and condemned for being a priest and remaining in England contrary to the laws of the realm.  He was hanged, drawn, and quartered at York, the 30th November 1586,’ according to this relation;  but Yepez, Wilson, Molanus, Raissius, and the manuscript annals, say 1587, being about the age of thirty-five.
    The manuscript annals give this short account of Mr Crow, anno Eliz.29:- ‘On the 30th day of the month of November, Alexander Crow, a priest of Douay College, after he had strenuously laboured in those difficult times in gathering together the sheep of Christ that had been scattered, falling into the hands of the wolves stoutly laid down his life for Christ and His sheep, being put to death at York in the like manner as the other martyrs above mentioned.’
    But the Bishop of Tarrasona, in his history above quoted, has something very remarkable relating to Mr Crow which we must not omit.  His words are as follow:- 
             ‘Another thing, not less worthy of notice happened to a priest of the Seminary of Rheims, named Alexander Crow, in the year 1587.  This priest and soldier of Jesus Christ was a prisoner in York Castle, where, after much ill-treatment, he received sentence of death; whereupon he began to be exceedingly comforted, and to show so great joy in the court that all that were present took notice of it; and returning to the prison (where he was lodged with another Catholic), he could not contain himself all that day, so great was the satisfaction he conceived by thinking that he was to die the next morning. When the night came, and the time of going to bed, he told the other Catholic to take his rest; but for my part, said he, for this one night which remains of life, I am willing to watch in prayer with Christ our Lord.  And when the other Catholic insisted that either the Father should come to bed also, or should admit him to bear him company in his watching, he would not consent, but bid him go to bed and leave him alone.  The Catholic submitted, and went to bed, and the priest, lighting a taper that was there, and setting it upon the stool, knelt down, and began to enter into very quiet prayer, as his companion took notice, who remained awake to see what passed.
   

                  Christ's Crowning with Thorns - Carravagio (c. 1604)

 ‘After an hour of silent prayer, the Father began to speak as if he were holding a colloquy, and by little and little to enter into a heat, so that his voice began to change like a man that was disturbed.  At length, getting up, he went to the bed where his companion lay, and touching him with his hand, asked him if he were asleep; his companion answered no. The priest begged of him then that he would recommend him, to the best of his power, to our Lord, because he stood in need of his prayers.  So he returned again to his place, and began in the same manner, to be troubled as before, giving signs in his exterior of being in great anguish, and, as it were, out of himself, till at length he put out with his own hand, like a man in anger, the taper that was burning by him.  With all this his trouble did not cease, but he still continued, as it were, in a conflict and agony, sometimes speaking low, and begging the assistance of our Lord and the Saints, at other times raising his voice as one angry and in a rage; and this lasted for the space of half an hour after he had put out the light, whilst the poor gentleman in bed was not a little terrified at seeing and hearing what passed, and begged of our Lord as well as he was able, to deliver him from this affliction, for he plainly perceived that he was in a conflict.
    ‘At length he saw him coming towards the bed, reciting with much joy the psalm,’Laudate Dominum de Coelis, etc. – Praise ye the Lord in the Heavens, &c., continuing it to the end; and then, as one inebriated with an abundance of consolations, he broke out into other praises of our Lord God, admiring His unspeakable mercies and His divine sweetness towards the children of men.  He set himself down on the bed by his companion, not having been able for many days to lift his feet up from the ground for the great weight of the bolts and chains, and remained as one asleep
for a quarter of an hour; but at length he broke out again into the praises of God, and asked his companion if he had not been frightened.  The gentleman answered that he had, and withal begged of him that he would tell him what was the meaning of that great noise and of those changes and alterations he had discovered that night.  The priest answered, that though as to his own part it would signify little to relate it, yet, as it might be of some comfort to the Catholics to know what had passed, he would tell him the whole matter.
  

                                           Way of the Cross - Tiepolo (1696-1770)
   
‘After a while, said he, that I had been in quiet prayer, my flesh began to creep upon me and my hair to stand on end, and I perceived myself quite changed, and on a sudden I saw before my eyes a most ugly monster which began to terrify me, and when I least looked for it assaulted me with these words:  Thou thinkest tomorrow to be a martyr, and to go straight to heaven, but I assure thee it will not be so, for I know thou art condemned to hell, and that the sentence is passed against thee in God’s tribunal, which cannot be recalled;  and tomorrow, though thou shalt be drawn to the gallows, thou shalt not be executed, but they will keep thee two years longer in prison with these bolts and chains which thou hast on, and will give thee only two morsels of black bread and a little water every day, and thou shalt be abhorred by all, and shalt lead the most miserable life that ever man led upon earth; therefore that thou mayest be delivered from so great sufferings it will be better for thee at present to put an end to thy life by a knife or a halter, and not to wait for tomorrow.  And though I shook him off, said the Father, many times, answering what God put in my mind, he never left off importuning me, and whatever way I turned my eyes, he placed himself always before me, giving me intolerable trouble with his horrid figure.  And when I extinguished the light, it was that I might no longer see so frightful a sight; but he still continued terrifying and molesting me very much, and the conflict went on still increasing, till our merciful Lord, taking pity on my weakness, sent me succour from heaven.  And this was, that at the time when I found myself in the greatest straits, I saw a great light come in at the door with two persons, who, as I believe, were our Lady and St John the Evangelist, who by their presence gave me unspeakable comfort; and then the monster that had troubled me began to draw back and tremble; and one of them said to him, Begone from hence, thou cursed creature! Thou hast no part in this servant of Christ, who will shed his blood tomorrow for his Lord, and will enter into his joy.  Immediately the monster disappeared, and they likewise, leaving me so full of consolation that I cannot express it.  Upon this, I came with great joy of heart and canticles of praise in my mouth, and sat me down here in this manner that you saw, not being sensible whether I was on the ground or in bed, in heaven or in earth.  This one thing I beg of you for Christ’s sake, that you do not speak one word of this to any one till you see my race finished, and till I am delivered of the burden of the flesh.  Having said this, they both glorified our Lord, and so continued till the morning, discoursing together with great satisfaction of heavenly things, &c.
 

                                        Crucifixion of Christ  -  Tintoretto (1568)

 ‘But the impudent enemy was not contented with having failed in this first attempt, but returned again to persecute this soldier of Christ, who being now upon the ladder at the gallows in profound prayer, before the hangman had put the rope about his neck, the devil, envying the happiness with which God rewarded His servant, and the consolation that he gave him in prayer, flung him down off the ladder; but yet he received no manner of hurt, though the fall was very high and with great violence, as it appeared to the standers-by.  This gave occasion to the heretics that were there to cry out that the Papist was in despair, and that he wanted to kill himself. But the Father mounted the ladder again, and told them with great serenity of countenance and of heart, smiling, It is not as you think, my brethren, that I had a mind to kill myself, but it was the enemy who wanted to rob me of this glorious death, and out of envy flung me off the ladder, and this is not the first time he has sought to deprive me of the crown which God gives me, who has permitted him to do what he has done in your presence that you might know how little he is able to do;  for how much so-ever he has sought it, he has not been able to do me any hurt either in soul or body, neither can he do any hurt to the servants of God more than their Lord is pleased to permit for their greater good; and upon this occasion, speaking more at large and with greater liberty to the people, he delivered many things of edification, exhorting them to the Catholic faith;  and passing through the usual course of the ordinary butchery, he gloriously finished his career, and went to enjoy his God for ever.’

                     Resurrection of Christ - Gerard Seghers (1591-1651)

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 'Mary's Meals'

 Just a few words about a book I read recently, entitled 'The Shed that Fed a Million Children', by Magnus Macfarlane-Barrow.  The author, born in Aberdeen, and now living with his wife and family at Dalmally in Argyll, tells the extraordinary story of the work of 'Mary's Meals', a charity set up by him, supported by family and friends, some years ago, with the ambitious but simple aim of providing food and education to starving and illiterate children throughout the world. Initially the author's experience of this type of work, involved  organizing the collection and transportation of clothing, medical supplies, and food, to Romania, followed by similar missions to the Balkan countries. The logistics involved considerable organizational planning over many years, leading ultimately to the decision to diversify and expand the mission through the medium of the re-named 'Mary's Meals'.
Incredibly, through belief and deep spiritual conviction, backed up by great courage and perseverance, and the  support of individuals and local communities, the system is now in place whereby 'Mary's Meals' provides a million children worldwide, with one good meal a day and basic education, without which they would be trapped in a life-circle of ignorance and poverty. Many will know of the work of 'Mary's Meals' and many I'm sure support this as far as their means allow, however I strongly recommend to all this inspiring and heart-warming book which once started is hard to put down! It is available through Amazon and no doubt other booksellers, with all royalties from the sale of the book going direct to Mary's Meals.

'Making Dogma out of Unsettled Science'

Grateful acknowledgement to Fr. George W. Rutler, for the following article published on December 14 in Crisis Magazine.

'In the Broadway production of Pygmalion, Professor Higgins regretted how proper English is considered freakish, and “in America, they haven’t used it for years.” The problem glares in the speech of television commentators, for whom coiffures are more important than diction, while grammar is banished from the social media, our urban landscape has become a jungle of incomplete sentences and dangling participles. By the time one reaches California, the subjunctive has completely disappeared. To have been reared speaking English is a blessing, for it is a language hard to learn by adoption and even native speakers can find its subtleties daunting. Consider, for instance, the differences between affect and effect, whether and if, since and because, which and that, nauseous and nauseated, farther and further, continual and continuous, disinterested and uninterested; and that is just for starters. Many English speakers think that the Greek derivative parameter means perimeter; and that leads to all sorts of problems.

A perimeter is a border, and a parameter — besides its technical mathematical meaning — is a physical property that determines the character of something. It is a measurable factor in the sense of a criterion or framework, a part of a whole. I mention this only because I want to speak of a matter of religion and science, and their parameters complement and serve each other, but are not to be confused. This was well expressed by Galileo’s friend Cardinal Baronio, or at least we may infer that Baronio was the one Galileo was quoting when he said: “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Pope Benedict XVI spoke of not a few scientists who — following in the footsteps of Galileo — renounce neither reason nor faith. On the contrary, in the end they find value in both, in their reciprocal inventiveness. Christian thought compares the cosmos to a ‘book’ — Galileo also said the same — and considers it to be the work of an Author who is expressing himself by means of the ‘symphony’ of creation. Contrary to received histories, Giorgio de Santillana, no propagandist for Christianity by any means, said in his 'The Crime of Galileo', which has remained with me since I first read it when I was sixteen: “We must, if anything, admire the cautiousness and legal scruples of the Roman authorities.“ Most of the big ecclesiastical players knew their parameters: “…like Galileo, Copernicus had foreseen resistance not at all from the Church authorities but from vested academic interests.”

In 1576 Gregory XIII licensed a chair  of “Controversies” in the Roman College. The Religious orders and societies tended to line up according to their preferred philosophical systems, the Dominicans being Aristotelian and more disposed to geocentricism. The Jesuits and the Oratorians (of whom Baronio was one) leaned more toward the Augustinian tradition. Saint Augustine warned against resolving difficult questions such as those posited in astronomy by appeal to divine revelation: “We do not read in the Gospel that the Lord said, ‘I will send the Paraclete to teach you the course of the sun and the moon’; in fact, he wanted to create Christians not mathematicians.

                                                                         Pope Sylvester II

The first French Pope, Sylvester II, who reigned during the turn of the second millennium (and upbraided the superstitious Romans who read dire portents in the number 1000) saw harmony and not fracture in his life as Supreme Pastor and his avocation as scientist. (He invented the hydraulic pipe organ, introduced Hindu and Arabic numerals and the decimal system to Europe along with an improved abacus and an astrolabe, and transformed cartography by his use of the armillary sphere.) Copernicus had the same balance, and it is important to remember that he was first of all a priest, and dedicated his prime text “On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs” to Pope Paul III.

                                                      'Nikolas Copernicus' by Matejko

Here the Church nursed science when the Protestant leaders were condemning anything that did not accord with their reading of Scripture. Martin Luther had called Copernicus “that madman [who] wants to throw the art of astronomy into confusion” by denying that Joshua told the sun, and not the earth, to stand still. The Spanish theologians Diego De Zúñiga and Melchior Cano invoked against Protestant literalists the Augustinian exegetical principle that excluded the human language of Scripture from scientific proof texts. Though a pious Lutheran, the heliocentrist Johannes Kepler, shunned by his co-religionists, found friends among the Jesuits and had the honor of being plagiarized by the Catholic Galileo. Pope Urban VIII, somewhat offended when he sensed that his protégé Galileo had satirized him as “Simplicio” in his 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems', patiently urged Galileo to stay on the right track of speculation, and not to declare theory a fact.

                              'Galileo Galelei, 1636.'  by Justus Sustermans

 It may reasonably be said that Galileo was right and wrong, and so were some of his opponents, among whom St. Robert Bellarmine did not distinguish himself. Right in asserting the motion of the earth, which opponents denied, Galileo was wrong about the “solar stasis,” or immobility of the sun, which his opponents accepted. Both succumbed to error when they paraded theory as fact and scorned opponents as “deniers.” That alchemy of pride turns science into a false cult of scientism, which is unscientific science, while clerics abusing their authority descend to a false cult of clericalism, which is irreligious religion. A salutary example of how to order things rightly by humility was Christopher Clavius, the German Jesuit astronomer and mathematician, one of the commissioners for the Gregorian calendar, revered throughout Europe, who was a firm geocentrist. Telescopic observations with Galileo changed his mind, albeit with reservations, and he remained aloof from polemics.

There is a caution here relevant to the current debates, or refusal to debate, about global warming, previously global cooling and now preached as climate change. Its details are proper to physical science, but its moral imperative is rooted in revelation, just as is the very fact of creation in contradistinction to infinity. The human race was given authority to name all living creatures. Stewardship of creation is evidence of human dignity. “Ecology” is the understanding of all things animate and inanimate as part of God’s “household” just as economics is the ordering of that domain. Theories about climate change impose serious moral responsibilities, and require that the parameters of religion and science be identified, lest saving souls be overshadowed by saving the planet, which is an ambiguous concept anyway.

This point is lost on those who acknowledge no creator of creation and consequently make ecology a new theology. In that case, creation is perceived as its own creator with a system of dogmas and heresies, propaganda and censures, and its own secular liturgy, as when a crowd recently prostrated themselves on the floor of a chapel in Paris, chanting and praying for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to save Planet Earth. That salvation was called the most important challenge facing the human race, as though the terrorists who had murdered over a hundred Parisians just days before were regrettable irritants.

Jesus loved the lilies of the field, more beautiful than Solomon in all his glory, but he beautified this world incomparably by passing through it with a reminder of its natural impermanence: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). The Church has dogmas and properly so, but they do not include making a dogma of unsettled science, just as in religion “private revelations” are not binding on the faithful. Science, by its nature is unsettled and today’s certitudes may be disproved tomorrow, and the anthropogenic theories held by even a majority of climatologists may fade like the geocentric theories of astronomers in the days of Clavius.

There are legitimate ways to consider the significance of carbon emissions in relation to variations in solar activity, changes in the terrestrial orbit and axis, fluctuations in gamma ray activity, and tectonic shifts, and the solid fact that Earth has been warmer than it is now in 7,000 of the last 10,000 years, but hypotheses should not be pronounced as conclusions. And if the Church’s “voice crying in the desert” is to be prophetic, it should not cry wolf. Nor should the Church allow herself to be appropriated by political elites and business interests and what Santillana in the instance of the Renaissance called “vested academic interests,” whose tendency is to exploit benevolent, if emotive, environmentalists.

 So it was perplexing that on the recent Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the feast itself was upstaged by an unprecedented light show cast on the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, sponsored by the World Bank Group, an environmental foundation called Okeanos, and Vulcan, Inc., a Seattle-based private company dedicated to exposing “sins against the climate.” Sins? These interests may have good intentions, but the parameters of banking, business and academe do not include imputing sin. There may be offenses and even crimes against the balance of the ecosystem, but not sins, unless science really has become a religion. The irony is that many who impute sins to those who disrupt the balance of nature, also defend and promote unnatural acts among humans. Although the Immaculate Conception was neglected by the New Age light show with its flying birds and leaping porpoises, it is consoling to remember that the Virgin Mary was completely free of sins against the climate, and departed this world without leaving any carbon footprint.

In the saga of environmentalism, the eleventh century Anglo-Scandinavian King Canute is often mistakenly evoked as a symbol of arrogance for setting up his throne on an English beach, possibly at Westminster or West Sussex or Southampton, and ordering the tides to roll back. The details are vague but the real point of the story is that Canute actually choreographed that drama to instruct his flattering courtiers in the limits of earthly power against the seas and skies. The tides did not withdraw, the king and his court got wet, and Canute pronounced: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but he whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” That was better than any gigantic light show, and better still, King Canute then placed his crown on the great crucifix in Winchester Cathedral and never wore it again. In matters of unsettled science, it would be edifying to see the members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the directors of the World Bank Group, corporate executives, and academics, do the same.
  
(Acknowledgement:  Fr. George W. Rutler and 'Crisis' magazine).

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                            'The Nativity of Christ' by Vladimir Borovikosky

"Come, ye monarchs and emperors, come, all ye princes of the world, come and adore your highest King, who for love of you is now born, and born in such poverty in a cave.  But who appears?  No one.  The Son of God has indeed come into the world; but the world will not acknowledge him."
                                                      'Thoughts from St Alphonsus' 

'Wishing all a joyful and happy Christmas and New Year'

'ADVENT' by Caryll Houselander

                                                        'Annunciation' by El Greco

Caryll Houselander,  (1901 - 1954) was an English lay Roman Catholic ecclesiastical artist, mystic, popular religious writer and poet. 'The Reed of God' was one of many books she wrote, and in this she included the following article on Advent.I find her views deeply spiritual but always practical, simple but profound.

                                                                        Caryll Houselander

'ADVENT'  by Caryll Houselander

Advent is the season of the seed:  Christ loved this symbol of the seed.

The seed he said, is the word of God sown in the human heart.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed.”

“So is the Kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the earth.”

Even His own life blood:  “Unless the seed falling into the earth die, how shall the earth be sown?”

The Advent, the seed of the world’s life, was hidden in Our Lady.

Like the wheat seed in the earth, the seed of the Bread of Life was in her.

Like the golden harvest in the darkness of the earth, the Glory of God was shrined in her darkness.

Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of Divine Love growing in silence.

It is the season of humility, silence, and growth.

For nine months Christ grew in His Mother’s body. By His own will she formed Him from herself, from the simplicity of her daily life.

She had nothing to give Him but herself.

He asked for nothing else.

Working, eating, sleeping, she was forming His body from hers. His flesh and blood.  From her humanity she gave Him His humanity,

Walking in the streets of Nazareth to do her shopping, to visit her friends, she set His feet on the path of Jerusalem.

Washing, weaving, kneading, sweeping, her hands prepared His hands for the nails.

Every beat of her heart gave Him His heart to love with, His heart to be broken by love.

All her experience of the world about her was gathered to Christ growing in her.

Looking upon the flowers, she gave Him human sight.  Talking with her neighbours she gave Him a human voice. The voice we still hear in the silence of souls saying: “Consider the lilies of the field.”

                           'Our Lady of the Magnificat' by Sandro Botticelli

Sleeping in her still room she gave Him the sleep of the child in the cradle, the sleep of the young man rocked in the storm-tossed boat.

Breaking and eating the bread, drinking the wine of the country, she gave Him His flesh and blood; she prepared the Host for the Mass.

This time of Advent is absolutely essential to our contemplation too.

If we have truly given our humanity to be changed into Christ, it is essential to us that we do not disturb this time of growth.

It is a time of darkness, of faith. We shall not see Christ’s radiance in our lives yet; it is still hidden in our darkness; nevertheless, we must believe that He is growing in our lives; we must believe it so firmly that we cannot help relating everything, literally everything, to this almost incredible reality.

This attitude it is which makes every moment of every day and night a prayer.

In itself it is a purification, but without the tense resolution and anxiety of self-conscious aim.

How could it be possible that anyone who was conscious that Christ desired to see the world with his eyes would look willingly on anything evil? Or knowing that He wished to work with his hands, do any work that was shoddy, any work that was not as near perfection as human nature can achieve?

Who, knowing that his ears must listen for Christ, could listen to blasphemy or to the dreary dirtiness of so much of our conversation, or could fail to listen to the voice of a world like ours with compassion?

Above all, who, knowing that Christ asked for his heart to love with, for his heart to bear the burden of the love of God, could fail to discover that in every pulsation of his own life there is prayer?

This Advent awareness does not lead to a selfish preoccupation with self; it does not exclude outgoing love to others – far from it. It leads to them inevitably, but it prevents such acts and words of love from becoming distractions. It makes the very doing of them reminders of the presence of Christ in us.

It is through them that we can preserve the secrecy of Advent without failing to offer the loveliness of Christ in us to others.

           Everyone knows how terrible it is to come into contact with those people who have an undisciplined missionary urge, who, having received some grace, are continually trying to force the same grace on others, to compel them not only to be converted but to be converted in the same way and with precisely the same results as themselves.

            Such people seem to wish to dictate to the Holy Ghost. God is to inspire their neighbour to see things just as they do, to join the same societies, to plunge into the same activities. They go about like the scriptural monster, seeking whom they may devour. They insist that their victims have obvious vocations to assist in, or even to be completely sacrificed to, their own interests. Very often they unwittingly tear out the tender little shoot of Christ-life that was pushing up against the dark, heavy clay, and when the poor victim has been devoured, he is handed over, spiritless and broken, as a pre-digested morsel for the next one-hundred-per-cent zealot who comes along.

            Our Lady’s example is very different to this.

            When a woman is carrying a child, she develops a certain instinct of self-defence. It is not selfishness; it is not egoism. It is an absorption into the life within, a folding of self like a little tent around the child’s frailty, a God-like instinct to cherish, and some day to bring forth, the life. A closing upon it like the petals of a flower closing upon the dew that shines in its heart.

            This is precisely the attitude we must have to Christ, the Life within us, in the Advent of our contemplation.

            We could scrub the floor for a tired friend, or dress a wound for a patient in a hospital, or lay the table and wash up for the family; but we shall not do it in a martyr spirit or with that worse spirit of self-congratulation, of feeling that we are making ourselves more perfect, more unselfish, more positively kind.

            We shall do it just for one thing, that our hands make Christ’s hands in our life, that our service may let Christ serve through us, that our patience may bring Christ’s patience back to the world.

            By His own will Christ was dependent on Mary during Advent; He was absolutely helpless; He could go nowhere but where she chose to take Him; He could not speak; Her breathing was His breath; His heart beat in the beating of her heart.

            Today Christ is dependent upon men. In the Host, He is literally put into a man’s hands. A man must carry Him to the dying, must take Him to the prisons, workhouses, and hospitals, must carry Him in a tiny pyx over the heart onto the field of battle, must give Him to little children and ‘lay Him by” in His ‘leaflight’ house of gold.

            The modern world’s feverish struggle for unbridled, often unlicensed freedom, is answered by the bound, enclosed helplessness and dependence of Christ – Christ in the womb, Christ in the Host, Christ in the tomb.

            This dependence of Christ lays a great trust upon us. During this tender time of Advent we must carry Him in our hearts to wherever He wants to go, and there are many places to which He may never go unless we take Him to them.

            None of us know when the loveliest hour of our life is striking. It may be when we take Christ for the first time to that grey office in the city where we work, to the wretched lodging of that poor man who is an outcast, to the nursery of that pampered child, to the battleship, airfield, or camp.

      

                                                            Blessed Charles de Foucauld

 Charles de Foucauld, a young French soldier of our own day, became a priest and a hermit in the desert, where he was murdered by some of the Arabs whom he had come to serve. His life as a missionary hermit seemed no more than a quixotic spiritual adventure, a tilting at windmills, on the desert sands, but he knew and said that it was worth while for just one thing; because he was there, the Sacred Host was there.

            It mattered nothing if the heroic priest could not utter the wonder that was in his heart; the Blessed Sacrament was there in the desert; Christ was there, silent, helpless, dependent on a creature; that which His servant could not utter in words, Christ would utter, in His own time, in silence.

            Sometimes it may seem to us that there is no purpose in our lives, that going day after day for years to this office or that school or factory is nothing else but waste and weariness.  But it may be that God has sent us there because but for us Christ would not be there. If our being there means that Christ is there, that alone makes it worth while.

                                                    'Visitation' by Frans Francken II
 
There is one exquisite incident in Our Lady’s Advent in which this is clearly seen: the Visitation.

            “And Mary rising up in those days went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda.”

            How lyrical that is, the opening sentence of St Luke’s description of the Visitation. We can feel the rush of warmth and kindness, the sudden urgency of love that sent that girl hurrying over the hills. “Those days” in which she rose on that impulse were the days in which Christ was being formed in her, the impulse was His impulse.

            Many women, if they were expecting a child, would refuse to hurry over the hills on a visit of pure kindness. They would say they had a duty to themselves and to their unborn child which came before anything or anyone else.

            The Mother of God considered no such thing. Elizabeth was going to have a child, too, and although Mary’s own child was God, she could not forget Elizabeth’s need – almost incredible to us, but characteristic of her.

            She greeted her cousin Elizabeth, and at the sound of her voice, John quickened in his mother’s womb and leapt for joy.

            “I am come” said Christ, “that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.” Even before He was born His presence gave life.

            With what piercing shoots of joy does this story of Christ unfold! First the conception of a child in a child’s heart, and then this first salutation, an infant leaping for joy in his mother’s womb, knowing the hidden Christ and leaping into life.

            How did Elizabeth herself know what had happened to Our Lady? What made her realise that this little cousin who was so familiar to her, was the mother of her God?

            She knew it by the child within herself, by the quickening into life which was a leap of joy.

           

                                                               'El buen Pastor' by Murillo

If we practise this contemplation taught and shown to us by Our Lady, we will find that our experience is like hers.

            If Christ is growing in us, if we are at peace, recollected, because we know that however insignificant our life seems to be, from it He is forming Himself; if we go with eager wills, “in haste”, to wherever our circumstances compel us, because we believe that He desires to be in that place, we shall find that we are driven more and more to act on the impulse of His love.

            And the answer we shall get from others to those impulses will be an awakening into life, or the leap into joy of the already wakened life within them.

            It is not necessary at this stage of our contemplation to speak to others of the mystery of life growing in us. It is only necessary to give ourselves to that life, all that we are, to pray without ceasing, not by a continual effort to concentrate our minds but by a growing awareness that Christ is being formed in our lives from what we are. We must trust Him for this, because it is not a time to see His face, we must possess Him secretly and in darkness, as the earth possesses the seed. We must not try to force Christ’s growth in us, but with a deep gratitude for the light burning secretly in our darkness, we must fold our concentrated love upon Him like earth, surrounding, holding, and nourishing the seed.

We must be swift to obey the winged impulses of His Love, carrying Him to wherever He longs to be; and those who recognise His presence will be stirred, like Elizabeth, with new life. They will know His presence, not by any special beauty of power shown by us, but in the way that the bud knows the presence of the light, by an unfolding in themselves, a putting forth of their own beauty.

       

                                               'The Road to Emmaus'  by Altobello Melone

 It seems that this is Christ’s favourite way of being  recognised, that he prefers to be known, not by His own human features, but by the quickening of His own life in the heart, which is the response to His coming.

When John recognised Him, He was hidden in His mother’s womb. After the Resurrection He was known, not by His familiar features, but by the love in Magdalene’s heart, the fire in the heart of the travellers to Emmaus, and the wound in His own heart handled by Thomas.

                              
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"Whoever would become a saint, must during this life resemble the lily among thorns, which, however much it may be pricked by them, never ceases to be a lily; that is, it is always equally sweet and serene. The soul that loves God maintains an imperturbable peace of heart."     

                                  ack. Thoughts from St Alphonsus.

e was hidden in His mother’s wombimHim