Aspects of Holiness - 1) finding center, 2) a sinner and 3) your life is not about you.

Fr. Barron speaking at Magnificat Day 2014 on "Luminous Images of Holiness." This talk, delivered on All Saints' Day, uses the beautiful windows in the new St. John Paul II Chapel at Mundelein Seminary to highlight the resplendence of holiness.
Note: Fr. Barron's lecture begins at 29:32 in the video above.

The lives reflected on in the talk have 3 consistent themes of holiness: finding the center, knowing you are a sinner and realizing your life is not about you. He has us gaze on holiness through windows of the saints, including: 

- St. Thomas Aquinas

- St. Thérèse of Lisieux

- St. Paul 

- Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati 

- St. John of the Cross 

- Sts. Cyril and Methodius

- Bl. Miguel Pro 

Amazing Grace

I subscribe to periodic meditations that my dear friend Gerry Straub, founder of Pax et Bonum Communications sends out.  Today I received the following reflection:

Amazing Grace

Sin is saying no to grace. Sin closes my eyes to the truth. Sin erodes the will and renders it impossible to stand against the tyranny of lust in all its manifestations. Sin weakens us, then kills us.

Christ’s resurrection turned disgrace into grace. Grace opens the door to the possibility of change. Grace changes a person. Conversion is about being changed.

Grace is the breath of Love. Beg for the grace of prayer. Hail Mary, full of grace, help me to pray.

Think about it... sin and grace... in other words:

Sin - being hood-winked into resentment, refusing to ask for forgiveness and not forgiving.

Grace - awakening after hearing the cock crow, recognizing complicity in sin and humbly asking for forgiveness.

Amazing Grace

Whenever I reflect on amazing grace I am always lured back into song. Though I have a lot of favorite versions of Amazing Grace, this one stands out for me because of he includes the "amazing grace history."  I hope you like it.  

Amazing Grace History/"Amazing Grace" By Wintley Phipps

Are you coming into or going out of focus?

Focus in life is everything.

focus fo·cus (fō'kəs): to adjust a lens or instrument to produce a clear image. To converge on or toward a central point of approach or way of looking.

Have you ever lost focus?

There are no 'sidelines' in life; we are always in motion, even standing still we are coming into focus or we are going out of focus. There is no fixed or static place lacking movement as if on the ‘sidelines’. 

We can often be coerced into thinking we have been regulated to the 'sidelines' and thus deny the “interconnectedness” of living a life lived in responsibility - in focus. 

Interconnectedness is the human mimetic dynamic and choosing to participate is the beginning of prayer entering into the realm of holiness and conversion.

Some nuggets to focus on:

In his book, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction Rowan Williams wrote that a holy image or 

icon not only reveals the mystery it portrays; it reveals what is hidden in the person who is confronted by it.

Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, poet, theologian, social critic and religious author once said, 

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth is famous for saying, 

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

François Fénélon, Archbishop and spiritual director of many, writes:  

There is nothing in me that preceded all his gifts and that could have served as a vessel to receive them. The first of his gifts, the basis of all the others, is that which I call my own "I": God has given me this "I"; I owe him not merely everything I have but also everything I am.... Everything is a gift, and he who receives the gifts is himself first of all a gift received. (cited by von Balthasar 1986, 152)

Remember, if out of focus there is always prayer.

October 4 - Canticles of St. Francis

Click on this links below for videos and meditations on the life and words of St. Francis of Assisi. The videos feature music composed by Richard Blackford, from his Mirror of Perfection CD, and narration by Jeremy Irons. The video series capture 5 of the 7 pieces from the CD. Enjoy.

Canticles of St. Francis

More meditations on the words of St Francis from The Writings of St. Francis: "The Canticle of Love."

St Francis of Assisi's 'Canticle of Love'

Love of loves, why have you so wounded me? My heart, torn from its dwelling, is consumed with love.
It is on fire, it burns, it finds no resting place, it cannot flee because it is chained up. It is consumed like wax in the fire. Dying it lives. Its languor is sweet, it prays for power to escape for a while and finds itself in the middle of a furnace. Alas, where will this terrible faintness lead me? The burning heat of this fire so stifles me that it is death to live like this.
Before making trial of it, I prayed to Christ asking for his love. I thought that I would find sweetness in his love and that I would delight in his gentle peace so much that no worries would be able to trouble me. But I experienced a torment that I could never have imagined. The heat breaks my heart. I cannot describe how I suffer. I am dying of sweetness and I live deprived of my heart.
My heart wounded by divine love, is no longer my own. I have no judgement, no will, no ability to enjoy myself or sense of feeling. All beauty seems to be like mud and delights and riches are perdition. A tree of love, laden with fruit, is planted in my heart and nourishes me. It transforms me so much that it expels my self-will, intelligence and strength.

...

If I was able to love more I would, but my heart can love no more. Clearly, I cannot give more than myself, even if I desire to give more than that. I have given everything to possess this Lover who has made a new man of me since I found him. O goodness old and always new, immense Light whose splendour is so sweet!

...

My heart is enraptured, and I can no longer see that I have to do or what I have not to do. People who observe me ask if a love without deeds can please thee, O Christ. If it does not please you what can I do? My heart is worn out with abundance of Christ’s love. Love, which enfolds me, takes away all action and all initiative. I lose all sense of feeling.
Before, I knew how to speak; now, I am dumb. Before, I could see; now, I am blind. There has never been such a great capture. I am silent, and I speak; I fly, and I am chained; I fall, and I am raised up; I hold, and I am held. All at the same moment I am inside and outside; I pursue and I am pursued. Insensate Love, why dost thou make me mad, why dost thou kill me in such a raging furnace?

...

Why have you led me into such a furnace if it is your will that I should keep within bounds? In giving yourself to me without measure you have taken all measure from me. Since I am small you fully satisfy me and as you are great I cannot possess you any more. If this is foolishness, O Love, it comes from you and not from me. You, O Love, have directed me along this path.

...

Trials? or rather offers of Invitation

It is a repeated observation of St. John of the Cross that God frustrates souls in a preliminary trial when he intends to draw them closer in love. Here a pattern is noted, calling for our insight. No doubt we need to understand the Providence of God differently.

Trials do not reflect a sign of disfavor with God. Rather, the reverse is indicated. God is offering an invitation, even if it hardly seems so. He is teaching, even if it seems a harsh lesson. It may be a hard truth to accept that God’s greater love is proven by the prevalence of trials we could not foresee, and by their lingering despite every plea for their removal. It is a rare soul that learns not to be surprised at this.

There are indeed many shocks in what can seem to be God’s rough treatment. Perhaps it is not unusual that we attempt to persuade God to be more gentle in his manner. It appears sometimes that nothing moves God  in this regard. More love for God, for example, rather than overcoming a trial, will seem on occasion to extend the duration of the time of trial. But at the end of the day we face always the same question. Would we prefer to love less if it meant not to suffer?

- Father Donald Haggerty from his book, Contemplative Provocations

Here is another great meditation from the book by Father Haggerty:

We may know that God will not allow himself to be apprehended easily, but sometimes we forget the complimentary truth. Once he is known to some degree, he will not permit us to keep at a distance on limited terms, maintaining a prudential respect. He is a hidden God, but when he deigns to show himself, he demands afterward our passionate pursuit.

Fr Giussani - How can one live? ala What makes you come alive?

Fr. Luigi Giussani - Link here to Communion and Liberation
cause for beautification and canonization

The meditation below is from The Magnificat originating from an editorial appearing in Traces magazine.  There were a number of stimulating thoughts for reflection with one being right at the start:

How can one live? - another way of asking the question I use in Spiritual Direction: What makes you Come Alive?

How can one live?

Fr. Luigi Giussani’s words rang out: 

“The great problem of today’s world is no longer an inquiring theorization, but an existential question. Not, ‘Who is right?’ but, ‘How can one live?’ Today’s world has been reduced to the level of evangelical poverty. In Jesus’ time, the problem was how to live, not who was right; this was the problem of the scribes and Pharisees.”

These words... seem to summarize the malaise we experience here and now, in a situation twisted in on itself like a screw, in which the problem of “who is right” has been carried to the extreme, to the idea that the other is an objection to eliminate rather than a good to take into consideration. 

We see it in the way we often face politics, work, family, and relationships, as if the decisive point were theories, ideas, some solution that can “settle” our problems, and not the drama of living that we bear within and that makes such problems useful, even precious, in some way, notwithstanding the difficulty, because, as Fr. Giussani reminded us, 

“in the face of questions, problems, and difficulties, that which man loves comes to the surface.”

The stronger the malaise and the harder and deeper the problems, the greater is our need to strip them of the intellectualism, the chatter, and the superficiality, down to the necessary basics: “evangelical poverty” and the question of how one can live, what use faith is in all this.

This is a question that we have already asked ourselves many times. Deep down, it is always the same question, but none is more decisive for life and faith, because a faith that does not help us live is useless. Seen another way, faith is confirmed and made indispensable for us when we see that it responds to 

“that which characterizes the human person today: doubt about existence, fear of living, fragility, lack of substance in ourselves....”

The greatest obstacle is often our resistance to facing it, as if we have within a strange resistance to asking, to opening wide the question of fulfillment that underlies our “toil in living.” Instead, when the event of Christ happens, one of the effects is that it makes us realize the importance of our need, the importance of what we are.

This is precisely what has been happening... because of the new Pope’s increasingly decisive steps, which often call us to go to the root of our “deepest need,” as these steps will be met on their path by “the only Saviour of the entire human person and of all people”–Christ.

Link to the booklet: Exercises of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation - "Who will separate us from the Love of Christ?"

Penetrating Presence of God - Madeleine Delbrêl

From We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, Madeleine Delbrel gives us a penetrating glimpse into the presence of God in our busy lives.

Allowing the Gospel message into our life means letting our life become, in the broad and real sense of the word, a religious life, a life referred to, bound back to, God.  

The basic revelation of the Gospel is the overwhelming, penetrating presence of God. It is a call to encounter God, and God allows himself to be encountered in solitude.

... to find God is to find solitude, because true solitude is spirit; whereas all of our efforts at human solitude are merely relative approaches toward the perfect solitude that is faith.

True solitude is not the absence of people, but the presence of God.

To place our lives before the face of God, to surrender our lives to the movements of God, is to roam free in a space in which we have been given solitude...

If the eruption of God's presence in us occurs in silence and solitude, it allows us to remain thrown among, mixed up with, radically joined to all of the people who are made of the same clay as we are.

~ Servant of God Madeleine Delbrêl 

(Madeleine Delbrel was a French laywoman, writer and mystic devoted to caring for the poor and to evangelizing culture.) - Magnificat August 2014