In Our Weakness We Shall Become One With Him

This meditation from The Magnificat reflects on how radically different Christian spirituality is to modern day secular psychology where it is all about self - loving yourself.  What makes the righteous shine is not about first loving your self but truly loving our all loving God who shines forth upon His children, His Grace and Blessings. At mass this morning, Father asked us to thank all the wonderful grand-parents leaving their imprint and tradition on us.  In this thankfulness we see how we really are - a weaving of many relationships - we are more inter-dividual, being molded and shaped by our relationships along with the Holy Spirit than we are separate and 'individual' like pseudo-psychology would make us out to be.

What Makes the Righteous Shine

What then have we to do? We must realise that God is our tremendous lover, that he is our all and that he has done all our works for us. We must believe in God and not in ourselves; we must hope in God and not in ourselves; we must love God and not ourselves. As Saint Augustine told us, there is one man who reaches to the extremities of the universe and unto the end of time. We have to enter into this one man - this one Christ - by faith, hope, and charity. We have to find our all in him. He is our full complement and our perfect supplement. No matter how weak we are, he is our strength; no matter how empty we are, he is our full­ness; no matter how sinful we are, he is our holiness. All we have to do is to accept God's plan - to say as Christ said coming into the world: "A body thou hast fitted to me; behold I come to do thy will, 0 God." We have to accept the self, and the surroundings, and the story, that God's providence arranges for us. In humility we must accept our self - just as we are; in charity, we must accept and love our neighbour just as he is; in abandonment, we must accept God's will just as things happen to us, and just as he would have us act. Faithful compliance with his will and humble acceptance of his arrangements will bring us to full union with Christ For the rest, let us gladly glory in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in us. In our weakness and in our love we shall thus become one with him, and there shall be one Christ loving himself.

DOM M. EUGENE BOYLAN, o. ClST. R.

Dom Boylan (+ 1963) was a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount Saint Joseph, Roscrea, Ireland.

Reason Must be Conquered by Revelation Part II

I did not originally intend to create a series of posts reflecting on Saint Bonaventure's "The Journey of the Mind to God" however as this is the second post on the book, and I am only through chapter 1, I got a feeling that I will be posting more reflections.

From the notes: "Saint Bonaventure follows Saint Augustine in his conception of history as a most beautiful drama, composed by God and acted by mankind.(1) The beauty of this drama and its meaning, however, can be grasped only through faith and on the basis of revelation. But since we are in such a position that we can witness only a small part of this drama, we need Holy Scripture to raise us to a point from which we can view and comprehend it in its entirety — from the creation of the world to judgment day."(2)

WOW! Gazing into this mystery is truly a challenge for any of us, especially if we are using only our reason, and that is why Bonaventure insisted that we see that reason must be conquered by revelation.

(1) "conception of history as a most beautiful drama, composed by God and acted by mankind."

My friend Gil Bailie gave a weekend retreat with Franciscan Father Richard Rohr in the '90s and out of that retreat came a number of tapes and tape sets. I particularly love, "Entering the Biblical Story at the Eucharistic Table" - so much so that I transcribed it. In this talk Gil refers to this "most beautiful drama, composed by God and acted by mankind:"

Jesus never claimed to be operating on his own. He even says in John’s Gospel, “If I had come in my own name you would believe me, but because I have come in the name of the one who has sent me you don’t believe.” We are asked to be like that. We are asked to re-present Christ to the world. To be actors in the great drama – like von Balthasar’s ‘Theo-drama’, a magnificent orchestration of the grandeur of the Christian drama in history - and so the language of drama is appropriate – and the language of re-presenting it to the world, in however way, even though we are all clay vessels, we are all clumsy, we’re all fallen and sinful, we don’t do a very good job of it, despite our clumsiness God knows how to use leftovers and misfits – in fact our clumsiness is part of it, our failures to do it are part of it.

We are called; we are incorporated; we are deputized to receive into our lives - personally and with our communion with one another - the spirit of Christ, and to step into the world and absorb all the anxieties, uncertainty and the confusion and be part of the light of Christ in the world.

In another section of the tape Gil continues:

So we take our lives, and this is our supreme privilege, we must not see this as some kind of melodramatic act of renunciation, it is the source of our freedom, to take our lives, thank God for them because it is a gift to us, and break them or let them be broken and give them away. And then, Jesus says, “do THIS in memory of me.” Do what? Do this in memory of me. Not just the gesture, of course we do the gesture; of course the Real Presence, but when Jesus says, do THIS, He is talking of something much more vast then that. He means doing that which the gesture represents – being Christ in the world. ...

... It is at the Eucharistic table that we receive this gift and are nourished for the journey to go back out into the world and be Eucharistic people - be Christ to the world, absorbing that unforgivenness and being people who are not there on their own, but rather people who are saying with Paul, "I live now not I, but Christ lives in me."

I am always blown away by his reflection... Ah, wait now, we have one more part to the original reflection.

(2) The beauty of this drama and its meaning, however, can be grasped only through faith and on the basis of revelation. But since we are in such a position that we can witness only a small part of this drama, we need Holy Scripture to raise us to a point from which we can view and comprehend it in its entirety — from the creation of the world to judgment day.

Again reread the words of Bonaventure from my last post that ring so true: There is something greater.

Christ instituted the Mass so that we can enter into His Mystery - This Drama. The Mass was not conceived in the language of modern day 'me-ism' rather we are first opened and prepared to receive the Liturgy of the Word (likened this to a willingness to sacrifice yourself) and then we actually enter into the drama - we take our part as actors in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Wondrously and mysteriously, The Story is presented and re-presented to us so as to jar our memory, the memory for which Christ asks us, "Do THIS in remembrance of me," so that with the opportunity, given to us at each Mass, we can shout 'yes' or amen and actually participate in it's trajectory so that "we can view and comprehend it in its entirety — from the creation of the world to judgment day."

At every Mass we are encouraged to repeat Mary's 'yes' and to enter into THIS Journey - to make our life apart of THE Story.  Saint Bonaventure's book is retelling this very journey to God. 

So memory matters!  We improve our memory through repetition and ritual and it is here that humankind enters the drama within the Mass.

AMEN!

Reason Must be Conquered by Revelation

In a class on the updated Mass I find myself constantly going back to Lk 11, 29-32 and that there IS Something Greater than... (myself) Here.  Then on the feast day of St. Bonaventure appearing in The Magnificat was this reflection and also found here: The Journey of the Mind to God .

Living for the "SOMETHING GREATER"

If you should ask how these things come about,

question grace, not instruction;

desire, not intellect;

the cry of prayer, not pursuit of study;

the Bridegroom, not the teacher;

God, not man;

darkness, not clarity;

not light, but the wholly fire

which inflames and carries you aloft to God

with fullest unction and burning affection.

This fire is God,

and the furnace of this fire leads to Jerusalem;

and Christ the man kindles it

in the fervor of His burning Passion,

which he alone truly perceives who says,

"My soul chooses hanging and my bones death" [Job, 7, 15].

He who chooses this death can see God because this is indubitably true:

"Man shall not see me and live" [Exod., 33, 20].

Let us then die and pass over into darkness;

let us impose silence

upon our cares, our desires, and our phantasms (imaginings).

Let us pass over with the crucified Christ

from this world to the Father [John, 13, 1],

so that when the Father is shown to us

we may say with Philip:

"It is enough for us" [John, 14, 8];

let us hear with Paul:

"My grace is sufficient for thee" [II Cor., 12, 9];

let us exult with David, saying:

"My flesh and my heart have grown faint; Thou art the God of my heart, and portion forever" [Ps. 73, 26].

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say:

So be it, so be it! Amen! Hallelujah!" [Ps., 106, 48].

In my formation studies with the SFO I gleaned that for Bonaventure, divine revelation, not human reason, is the way to God. God is to be revealed, not reasoned. Truly there IS Something Greater than... (myself) Here [Lk 11, 29-32]. Bonaventure's emphasis on revelation does not mean that we do not make use of reason. Bonaventure plainly demonstrates that devotion has to be prior to mere intellectualism.

I believe that Rome's revisions of the word use at the Mass is challenging us to move out of the false notion that we only represent an independent 'self' and enter more fully into the Mystery just as Bonaventure says, "(W)e may come to think that mere reading will suffice without fervor, speculation without devotion, investigation without admiration, observation without exultation, industry without piety, knowledge without love, understanding without humility, study without divine grace, the mirror without the divinely inspired wisdom." (P.4). On the other hand, Bonaventure tried to be well-balanced in his reasonings, that is, being scholastic without leaving the realm of monasticism; being religious and spiritual but also intellectual.

In whatever Bonaventure wrote he intended to awaken us all to the One Reality: that there is something greater than... (myself) here. Reason has to be conquered by revelation. Contemplation can not stop on the first or second level, where the rational soul contemplates the outer world and itself but recognizing that it is not complete in itself. The true and final contemplation is when the soul sees beyond the outer world and itself; when it ascends with the whole of creation above itself. There IS Something Greater than... (myself) Here!

So I contend (with Bonaventure's help) that the revised wording of the Mass challenges us all to enter more closely, more reverently and more humbly into this Mystery of Sacrifice, Real Presence and Communion.  Suddenly the words, "Lord, I am not worthy" ring so powerful.