Learn to be alone

     Physical solitude, exterior silence and real recollection are all morally necessary for anyone who wants to lead a contemplative life, But like everything else in creation they are nothing more than a means to an end, and if we do not understand the end we will make a wrong use of the means.

     We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good.  But this is only a secondary end.

     The one end that includes all others is the love of God.

     How can people act and speak as if solitude were a matter of no importance in the interior life?  Only those who hae never experienced real solitude can glibly declare that it “makes no difference” and that only solitude of the heart really matters!  One solitude must lead to the other!

     However, the truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.

     An this abyss of interior solitude is by hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire, and the man who has found solitude is empty, as if he had been emptied by death.

     He has advanced beyond all horizons.  There are no directions in which he can travel.  This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.  You do not find it by traveling but by standing still.

     Yet is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin.  It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is in profound repose, vision in obscurity, and beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Quote: Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pgs. 82-83

     “To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason fo my existence, for God is love.

Love is my true identity.  Selflessness is my true self.  Love is my true character.  Love is my name.

If therefore, I do anything or think anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy.

To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God.  And to enter into His sanctuary I must become holy as He is holy, perfect as he is perfect.

How can I even dare to entertain such a thought?  Is it not madness?  It is certainly madness if I think I know what the holiness and perfection of God really are in themselves and if I think that there is some way in which I can apply myself to imitating them.  I must begin, then, by realizing that the holiness of God is something that is to me, and to all men, utterly mysterious, inscrutable, beyond the highest notion of any kind of perfection, beyond any relevant human statement whatever.

If I am to be “holy” I must therefore be something that I do not understand, something mysterious and hidden, something apparently self-contradictory; for God, in Christ, “emptied Himself”.  He became a man, and dwelt among sinners.  He was considered a sinner.  He was put to death as a blasphemer, as one who at least implicitly denied God, as one who revolted against the holiness of God.  Indeed, the great question in the trial and condemnation of Christ was precisely the denial of God and the denial of His holiness.  So God himself was put to death on the cross because He did not measure up to man’s conception of His holiness…. He was not holy enough, He was not holy in the right way, He was not holy in the way they  had been led to expect.  Therefore he was not God at all.  And, indeed, He was abandoned and forsaken even by Himself.  It was as if the Father had denied the Son, as if the Divine Power and mercy had utterly failed.

In dying on the Cross, Christ manifested the holiness of God in apparent contradiction with itself.  But in reality this manifestation was the complete denial and rejection of all human ideas of holiness and perfection.  The wisdom of God became folly to men, His power manifested itself as weakness, and His holiness was, in their eyes, unholy.  But Scripture says that “what is great in the eyes of men is an abomination in the sight of God,” amd again, “my thoughts are not your thoughts,” says God to men.

If, then, we want to seek some ways of being holy, we must first of all renounce our own way and our own wisdom.  We must “empty ourselves” as He did.  We must “deny ourselves” and in some sense make ourselves “nothing” in order that we may live not so much in ourselves as in Him.  We must live by a power and a light that seem not to be there.  We must live by the strength of an apparent emptiness that is always truly empty and yet never fails to support us at every moment.

This is holiness.

None of this can be achieved by any effort of my own, by any striving of my own, by any competiton with other men.  It means leaving all the ways that men can follow or understand.

I who am without love cannot become love unless Love identifies me with Himself.  But if He sends His own Love, Himself, to act and love in me and in all that I do, then I shall be transformed, I shall discover who I am and shall possess my true identity by losing myself in Him.

And this is what I call sanctity”.

  I thought that this was a great way to begin the New Year.  I enjoy spending time with Merton and I hope that this will be useful to you as well.  Though the quotes are generally shorter, but I wanted to capture all of what he was saying.  As you read this what resonates most within you?  How might it cause you to live differently this year?

Quote: Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pgs. 63-65

Thoughts on Contemplative Prayer

    “Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy.  And yet in a certain sense, we must truly begin to hear God when we have ceased to listen.  What is the explanation of this paradox? Perhaps only that there is  a higher kind of listening, which is not an attentiveness to some special wave length, a receptivity to a certain kind of message, but a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void.  In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light.  He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation.  He does not demand light instead of darkness.  He waits on the word of God in silence, and when he is “answered,” it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence.  It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him in a word of great power, full of the voice of God.”

     Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, pg. 90

     Thoughts in Solitude

     “The Psalms are the true garden of the solitary and the Scripture are his paradise.  They reveal their secrets to him because, in his extreme poverty and humility, he has nothing else to live by except their fruits.  For the true solitary the reading of Scripture ceases to be an “exercise” among other exercises, as means of “cultivating” the intellect or “the spiritual life” or “appreciating the liturgy.” To those who read Scripture in an academic or aesthetic or merely devotional way the Bible indeed offers pleasant refreshment and profitable thoughts.  But to learn the inner secrets of the Scriptures we must make them our true daily bread, find God in them when we are in greatest need—and usually when we can find Him nowhere else and have nowhere else to look!”

Quote: Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master the Essential Writings. pg. 248

     Today starts the beginning of a regular feature on the thoughts and prayers of St. Catherine of Siena.  A woman who had a profound impact on others and the world around her, as she lived her life before God.

                                           A Prayer

     Godhead! Godhead! Eternal Godhead! I proclaim and do not deny it:  you are a peaceful sea in which the soul feeds and is nourished as she rests in you in Love’s energy and union by conforming her will with you high eternal will that will which wants nothing other than that we be made holy.  So the soul who considers this strips herself of her own will and clothes herself in yours.

     Oh most gentle love, it seems to me you are showing that the truest sign people are dwelling in you is that they follow your will not in their own way, but in your way.  This is the surest sign that people are clothed in your will: that they see the cause of events in your will rather that in human will, and that they rejoice not in material prosperity but in adversity, which they see as given by your will and motivated only by love.  So they love adversity just as they love all the things you have created, all of which are good and therefore worthy of love.  But sin is not from you and is therefore not worthy of love.  And I, miserable wretch, have sinned by loving sin.

     I have sinned against the Lord.  Have mercy on me!  Punish my sins, my Lord.  Purify me, eternal Goodness, ineffable Godhead.  Listen to your servant; do not look at my great many sins.

     I beg you to guide toward yourself the heart and will of the ministers of holy church, your bride, so that they may follow you, the slain lamb, poor humble, and meek, along the way of the most holy cross–  in your way, not their own.  Let them be angelic creatures, earthly angels in this life, for they must administer the body and blood of your only begotten Son, the spotless lamb.  Let them not be senseless beasts, for beasts are irrational and are not worthy of this.

     Bring them together now and wash them , divine Compassion, in the calm sea of your goodness, so that they may not dawdle any longer, losing what time they do have for  the time they do not have.

     I have sinned against the Lord.  Have mercy on me!  Listen to your servant; wretched as I am  I beg you to hear my voice crying out to you, most compassionate Father.

     I pray to you also for all the children you have given me to love with a special love through your boundless charity, most high, eternal, ineffable Godhead.

Amen.

Quote: Suzzane Noffke, OP, Translator and Editor, The Prayers of Catherine of Siena. pgs.18-20