Do you think I have come to establish peace on the earth? (Luke 12:49-53)

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?

The angels sang at Jesus’ birth: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). When we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the birth of the Incarnate Word, God-with-us, we depict it with beautiful nativity scenes, a lone star radiant in the peaceful night sky, simple shepherds worshipping the newborn King of kings and Prince of Peace laying in a manger. It is only those who participate at Mass on weekdays who immediately get plunged in division. Starting on December 26, the Mass celebrates a number of individuals who paid the price for their faith in Christ with their very life. Saint Stephen is martyred, the Holy Innocents are silent witnesses with their death to the birth of the Son of God, and Saint Thomas Becket who engaged in conflict with Henry II, King of England, over the rights and privileges of the Church is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by followers of the king.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to be invited to martyrdom either through the giving of one’s life for one’s belief in Christ or through the living of one’s life out of one’s belief in Christ and adherence to his teaching.

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

This word of the Savior is foreboding. This division sets people against one another. It certainly is easy to brush this aside as we hear the examples given by the Lord himself: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother and so forth. Someone who has followed her faith at the cost of acceptance within her own family, however, will not read those lines so glibly. I’m thinking of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in New York City to a prominent Episcopal family on August 28, 1774. After seven happy years of marriage to William Magee Seton, her husband became very ill with tuberculosis. She travelled with him to Italy hoping to find a cure, but he died there in 1803. While in Italy, Elizabeth discovered Catholicism through the kindness of friends who offered her comfort as she grieved her husband’s death, inviting her to Mass with them. A year later in New York, Elizabeth officially converted to Roman Catholicism. Her choice to convert resulted in three years of financial struggle and social discrimination. She opened a boarding house for boys, but when the students’ parents discovered that she was Catholic they removed their sons from her house. Two years later she was invited to move to Baltimore with her family and to open a school for girls. Women began to join her work and, after moving to Emmitsburg, Maryland, she founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, the first congregation of women religious in the United States.

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

Each of us is called to this living martyrdom, for the Lord we follow died, out of amazing love for us, on the Cross. We are worth that much in God’s eyes that he calls us to a heroic living (and sometimes dying) in imitation of our Savior. This division to which Jesus calls us may be as simple as not contributing to slander or it may be as consequential as walking away from a potential financial windfall that is at the expense of some group “on the peripheries.” It could be quiet decisions made in private or could entail very public statements. I think of Saint Francis of Assisi who renounced his wealth and his inheritance to follow the call of God to rebuild his Church. Summoned by his father before the Bishop to account for bolts of cloth he had sold for the poor, Francis famously removed his garments and gave them to his father saying, “Until now I have called you my father on earth. But henceforth I can truly say: Our Father who art in heaven.”  Francis renounced the considerable wealth of his family to embrace the life of poverty and joy to which he was called.

Today you may wish to consider: Where does the division established by Christ cut through your career? Your relationships? Your life as a Christian?

Praying with this Passage of Scripture

Lectio Divina is a way of listening to God as he speaks in his Word. It is a practice of communicating with God through Scripture and attending to God’s presence and what he wishes to tell us. In this slow and prayerful reading of the Word of God, we allow ourselves to be transformed by the Spirit who forms us into the image of Christ. There are four movements in Lectio Divina: Read (lectio), Meditate (meditation), Pray (oratio), Contemplate (contemplation).

Begin by finding a still space to pray. Breathe deeply and become quieter within. Abandon any agenda, worries or thoughts you bring to this prayer and entrust these things to the merciful care of God. Ask for the grace to be receptive to what God will speak to you through this Scripture reading. Grant me, Jesus Divine Master, to be able to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God and your unfathomable riches. Grant that your word penetrate my soul; guide my steps, and brighten my way till the day dawns and darkness dissipates, you who live and reign forever and ever Ame

Read (lectio)
Begin by slowly and meditatively reading your Scripture passage out loud. Listen for a particular word or phrase that speaks to you at this moment and sit with it for a time.

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Meditate (meditatio) – Read the same passage a second time. As you re-engage the text, let the word or phrase that stood out become your invitation to speak from your heart with God who wishes to share his heart with you. Allow this word or phrase to wash over you and permeate your thoughts and feelings. You may wish to repeat this phrase quietly and gently for a period of time

Pray (oratio) – Read the text a third time. Listen for what God is saying to you. Speak heart to heart with God. Notice the feelings that this conversation with God raises up within you. Share with God what you notice about your response to this conversation. You may wish to return to repeating the phrase quietly and gently, allowing it to permeate you more and more deeply.

Contemplate (contemplatio)
Read the text a final time. Now be still and rest in God’s embrace. Ask God to give you a gift to take with you from this prayer. You might ask God if he is inviting you to do some action, for instance, make some change in your thoughts, attitudes or reactions, in the way you speak or how you treat others. Thank God for this gift and invitation as you conclude your prayer.

Photo Credit: Amorsanto via Cathopic

“To know the forest thaws” – Horizons of the Heart 9

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

Horizons of the Heart is a retreat-in-life inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and my own notes from a thirty-day Ignatian retreat in 2022. See an index for the whole series.

The grace we are asking of God: a deep heartfelt knowledge of how God has chosen to fulfill his vision for all his creation through Jesus

In Chronicles of Transformation: A Spiritual Journey with C. S. Lewis I happily discovered the poem “On Knowing Him Here for a Little, A Poem in Seven Parts” by the poet Madeline Infantine. Each of the parts of her poem introduce one of the seven essays, one for each of the Narnian Chronicles. The first line of the poem immediately seized my attention. Like a magnet it brought into line my fragmented awareness:

“To know him here is to know the forest thaws.”

My inner world immediately stood at attention as these words pierced my heart. In a trice my imagination was activated, an intuitive response thawing my own inner world. Yes. When God meets me on the road of life, when he stares into my eyes to  catch my attention, my outer world crashes into silence…and my inner me thaws.

“To know him here is to know the forest thaws.”

To know.

To know him.

To know him here.

To know the forest.

To know the forest thaws.

Image by FrauLehrerin from Pixabay 

As I read these words for the first time the veil that covers the spiritual reality of the material world that I see with my senses was pulled aside for one very long expectant hush. And at that moment I knew. I touched what was beyond touch and saw what was beyond sight. For just a flash, this poem had touched my imagination and I knew with a felt experiential knowledge that could not be doubted.

St. Ignatius and Lewis both reverenced the imagination as the organ for deep meaning, the opening to the soul onto what is truly true. When the imagination is startled into silence, as mine was when I read this line of the poem, the eyes of the soul are lifted to the Really Real, as Lewis would say, to the land of the True North we are all seeking, our everlasting home.

In a similar way the Ignatian Exercises baptize our imagination by immersing it again and again into the Really Real. He guides the retreatant to contemplate the life of Jesus and the heart of the Father using their imagination, or more deeply, baptizing their imagination, blessing it, transforming it, redeeming it.

“To know him here is to know the forest thaws.”

The Annunciation, public domain via Wikipedia.

The angel quietly enters a humble house in Nazareth to announce that the world was about to thaw: she was to be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah, the Fire of the Father’s Love sent upon the earth to gather souls to salvation in the Kingdom.

Mary travelled to assist her elderly cousin Elizabeth. This elderly woman felt her child leap in her womb, as she proclaimed—the first human to do so—the Lord present on this earth, hidden now in the womb of the Virgin. She intimately knew that the frozen ground was beginning to thaw.

St Joseph, asleep when assured by an angel that he was needed as foster-father, protector, guide, provider. Bethlehem, a city packed with Israelites who were there for the census proclaimed by the Roman authorities… Even the forest thaws….

This “thaw” is God’s vision for the world.

There is a difference between reading and meditating, between pondering a mystery and entering into it, between being spiritually moved by religious truths and existentially changed by them.

In the second week of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius begins to lead the retreatant through a number of Gospel contemplations of the Incarnation. Beginning with the Annunciation, Ignatius invites us to enter into the Gospel stories surrounding the Incarnation of the Son of God and his birth and childhood. Why? Because “to know him here is to know the forest thaws.” Another line of Infantine’s first poem opens up the amazement of meditation: “where once was silence, only song.”

“God sent his Son, born of a woman, born in the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4). “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have life everlasting” (Jn 3:16). “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16).

“For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’” (Acts 13:47)

Image via Pixabay

During my Ignatian retreat, I found great healing as I prayed with the Gospel stories around the birth of Jesus. Very tenderly, Jesus touched me in ways that gave me new insight. He opened my heart to experiences of mercy I could never deserve. He wrapped up the broken places of my spirit and helped me stand again in his service.

These days I am praying through the Spiritual Exercises once more and find myself in a very different place. As I enter into these meditations my heart is being moved by the humility of God who lowered himself to come down on our level, to babble in our language, to walk our streets and take an interest in what concerns us. And why did he do this?

“To know him here is to know the forest thaws.”

To a world frozen over with idolatry, mediocrity, sin and death, Jesus came to bring a new warmth, a new hope, a new life.

As I pray now with these Gospel meditations I feel my heart thrill. I too want to give my life that others might live. I too want to lay down my life for the salvation of others. I too want to labor at the side of my humble Savior, to wash the feet of others that they might experience the radiant glory of his mercy.

Infantine invites us at the end of this first poem to come and to see, to witness, to behold, to ponder, to burst through frozen silence (where all has been subjugated to the powers of sin and death) into the praise that leads to adoration and contemplation. There, she says, we will discover life in the fire of his touch and the thaw of spring from the warmth of God’s breath.

In the next segments I will be offering Gospel meditations of Ignatius that make up the journey of the second week of the Exercises, that you might know anew that the forest thaws.

Featured image: by Ирина Кудрявцева from Pixabay 

How to Bear the Fruit of Christ in Your Life

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https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-2ekuh-12d92b2

I certainly would never compare my life to that of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. The memories I have of my childhood are of a little girl who always wanted to be a nun and who was—by my own standards at least—well-behaved. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, however, had a will of steel and a temper that raged into violent outbursts even at the age of four. She was impossible to control. Family and friends recalled how she would lock herself in a room in a rage when she didn’t get what she wanted, kicking the door in her fury. Only when she had spent all her energies and was exhausted could her mother sit down with her and attempt to teach her gentleness and charity.

Though my childhood personality, at least as I remember it, was pretty calm, I have a distinct memory at twenty-one of raging against God. Just a month after suffering a stroke, and a year after my first profession of vows, I was silently before Jesus in the Eucharist one day in the chapel and from somewhere deep inside came words which surprised me, even shocked me. “I hate you,” I said to him. I had lost dreams and ambitions and physical abilities and, what seemed to me as a young adult, my future. And from somewhere within me, this anger and hatred at the one I felt was to blame came raging out. It took me by surprise, for, after all, I had been “well behaved” up to that point. Day after day, in a struggle that stretched to weeks and months and years, I submitted my heart to the transforming action of the Spirit at work in the Eucharist. Each day after receiving Jesus in Communion I prayed, “Help me, for I see now how poor I am, how in need I am of you, Jesus.”

In her diary, Elizabeth herself recorded how her first encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist was a moment of transformation. In fact, she said that it was decisive for the rest of her life. She began to take on from that moment the gentle self-control that would characterize her as an adult.

“In the depths of her soul, she heard his voice…. [The] Master took possession of her heart so completely that thenceforth her one desire was to give her life to Him” (The Spiritual Doctrine of Sister Elizabeth, pg 2)….

You, yes YOU, are God’s choice (Horizons of the Heart 8)

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https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-pc9w7-12d40ac

The most important truth to be convinced of is not that God loves you. As broken, wounded, wandering as we each may be, as desperately yearning to know that we matter and that we are worth someone’s attention, contrary to what we might think, we do not need most to know how much God loves us.

I almost cringe as I write these words. For almost 40 years this has been both my mantra and my misery, my hope against hope, the alphabet of my feelings of spiritual failure. I had not realized that I was seeking for something that was only half-true, a shabby imitation of the fierce and passionate, surprisingly disconcerting way of divine love.

In the first week of the spiritual exercises, St Ignatius draws the retreatant into love through the very narrow and demanding path of coming to grips with what is not loving in one’s life. The retreatant comes to Jesus in prayer, again and again, begging for the grace to acknowledge the mystery of iniquity which spins a web of deceit around them. Repeatedly I came before Jesus begging for the grace to become deeply aware of my personal sin history and my hidden disorders. I begged Jesus and Mary for interior knowledge of my sins, an awareness of the disorder of my actions, that I might hate them and allow God to bring order once again to my life.

The way of truth is the only foundation for the confidence of love. But ah! how hard is this truth!