Deeper foundation document 1

Transcription

1 deeper 1

2 Deeper foundation document 1 2

3 The Priory Deeper community This material is written for the Deeper community of the Priory. I have tried to expand and explain our foundation word, with limited success! It is one composite word, and doesn't take kindly to being treated in bits, but as we think in a linear fashion, I have no choice. Foundation word I heard a strong and insistent call of the Lord. I wondered why he was calling so insistently to me. Then I realised that he was calling through me. Leave and follow me deeper into the desert there to be united with the Lord to sacrifice and call on his name To cross the river of security into the wilderness of trust and love To abandon in order to receive To place in the world hope instead of despair to walk the old paths of surrender and sacrifice That the light may shine leading people in darkness back into his love and healing 3

4 The wilderness of prayer Here are some background thoughts to this word. Few Christians can love the Lord for love's sake. They want something in return - satisfaction, peace, joy. Pure love does not have these conditions. The wilderness of prayer will allow none of these things. We have to pray for prayer's sake. There is no safety net, no certainty that we will feel, or receive. All we have is our longing needing calling heart. This exposes us, as my vision of the plain shows. I was standing on a vast plain. There were no fences, hedges or walls. I felt very small. Then the Lord said As far as you can go, north, south, east, west - there is more of me. I was afraid at the greatness of God, and my exposure to him. What are we exposed to? We are exposed to the flame of love, the desolation of the crucifixion, the onslaught of the demonic, the pain of broken humanity and to death. Only by entering this cloud, and absorbing this wilderness can we come close to the Majesty. Let s look at these experienc- es:- The flame of love The hero wears armour. The saint is naked. Armour while keeping off the blows prevents any direct contact with reality - which is that of supernatural love. (Simone Weil. Gravity and Grace) The flame of love burns. It burns right into the soul, and transforms through intense suffering and pain. Mystic Christians have described this experience in terms of stigmata. Here is St Gemma:- 4

5 The Blessed Virgin told her: Jesus my Son loves you very much and He wishes to give you a grace. Do you know how to make yourself worthy of it? In my misery I did not know what to answer. She continued I will be your Mother. Will you be a true daughter? She then spread her mantle and covered me with it. At that moment Jesus appeared with all His wounds open, but blood no longer came out of those wounds. Rather, flames of fire issued forth from them and in an instant these flames came to touch my hands, my feet and my heart. I felt as if I would die. I fell to the floor, but my Mother supported me, keeping me covered in her mantle. I had to remain several hours in that position. Finally she kissed me on my forehead, and all vanished, and I found myself kneeling on the floor. But I still felt an intense pain in my hands, feet and heart. I arose to go to bed, and I then noticed that blood was flowing from those parts where I felt pain. I covered them as well as I could, and then with the help of my angel, I was able to go to bed. These sufferings and pains, although they afflicted me, filled me with perfect peace. The next morning I was able to go to Communion only with great difficulty, and I put on a pair of gloves in order to hide my hands. I could hardly stand on my feet, and I thought I would die at any minute. The sufferings continued until 3pm on Friday afternoon, the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus." I m not saying that the Deeper community will be a community of stigmatists, but I am saying that we will be a community consumed by the flame of love, at a depth which is almost beyond our understanding. More to the point, we will want it, long for it, want more of it. We will be a consumed community, exposed to the flame more and more. Consumed by love I come closer to the Flame. Caressed, the pain is unending burning into my soul. But in the ecstasy I want more. Into the Flame I fall, until all that remains is pure an untainted longing and yielded heart Consumed I die for love 5

6 The destruction of the crucifixion Many mystics speak of this. Here is Richard Rolles:- Jesu, my love I owe to thee, For me you died on the rood-tree, The crown of thorns, the nails three, The sharp spear that pierced thee Jesu thy love is truth knowing, Thy head bowed down, is love kissing, Thine arms spread, is love embracing Thy side all open, is love showing. Jesus when I think of thee, And look upon the rood-tree, Thy sweet body bleeding I see, Lord make that sight to wound me. (Richard Rolles Jesu in truth ) The cross is a place of many destructions. * The cross is a place of physical destruction. Richard Rolles touches on this, as do most of the mystic writes, and indeed a large part of Christendom. But what we often do not appreciate is that intense strain spent in the presence of the cross will have an impact on us physically. Evelyn Underhill summarises this well:- Most of the major mystics - Bernard, Teresa, John of the Cross, Catherine of Sienna, Francis have been in poor health. There is an immense strain which the exalted spirit puts on a body which is adapted to a different form of life. Deeper will have to take this into consideration. 6

7 * The cross is a place of emotional destruction. Cut off from friends, from having our needs met, from love, and all this replaced by aggression and pain. * It is also a place of spiritual isolation - the Lord comes to the place where all that is left is his relationship with the Father. We have struggled long and hard with the words My God my God, why have you forsaken me? Was this the point at which Jesus was finally broken from his eternal relationship with the Father as he stood and died in the place of sinners? Or was it the beginning of his victory shout, as we see in Psalm 22? For Deeper, this is not the issue. For us, we have to come to the place where we are spiritually totally and utterly exposed to the destruction of cross, that we too might intercede. Heroes wear armour. Saints are naked. Armour may deflect blows, but isolate us from the world. Saints refuse to be armoured - and are totally exposed to all that the Lord wants to show and allow. The exposure to the demonic Padre Pio tells the story of an exorcism. A young woman came, who was greatly distressed. The younger priests couldn t deal with her. Padre Pio decided to pray all night for her. At 10 o clock, Padre Carmelo of San Rosario heard a crash, and on entering Pio s room, found him on the floor in a pool of blood. Early the next morning, the raving girl was waiting for the church door to open. She screamed Last night I really hit that old man. You ll see when he comes down for mass. Padre Pio was dangerously exposed to the demonic, and when we take on deep and serious intercession, like Jesus, we will have to bear the brunt of a very real enemy, who wants only to steal and kill and destroy. What are we going to do? Saints are naked! We will have to walk into the lion s den, as Jesus did, and face the storm. I know we have the victory, but that is not the issue here. The enemy will exalt at what he can inflict. The pain of broken humanity The flood water rose higher and higher. There was only one thing to do - climb a tree. She gathered her children up, and they climbed as high as they could. The flood water swirled round the trees, but high up they were safe. But then the sun came, and burned them. They cried out for water, but there was none. They got weaker and weaker. Then there was a cry and a splash. One of the children fell from the tree, into the water and was swept away. Then another. Then another. One by one all her children - all her hope - fell like ripe fruit, exhausted and were drowned. Only helicopters could have saved them. But the government was too poor. It didn t have any. (From Guatamala) 7

8 It s not difficult for us to feel the pain of this mother, and indeed of a government that could only stand by and see it happen. But this isn t the way the Deeper community sees things. We will have to take a much more painful route through the heart of God. We will have to look at this broken situation and all of broken humanity though his eyes. This is a totally different viewpoint, and excruciatingly painful. For from here, not only do we feel his broken glass pain. We have to understand his waiting love, which will not intervene and solve our agonies, at the cost of our freedom to enter into them. Deeper - the word Now let s look at some of the issues in the foundation word. I have just picked out a few for now. Sacrifice A mother was sitting by the bedside of her son, who was dying. In desperation, she phoned a priest, who lived many miles away. O.K. he said, I will pray and offer my life as a sacrifice for your son. For a while the son hung between life and death. Then one morning, he opened his eyes and smiled. She phoned the priest. He had died that night. It is hard to understand this kind of story. What exactly was going on? Surely the sacrifice of Jesus was complete? So what was the priest thinking of when he offered his life as the sacrifice.? Another story concerned Edith Stein, a highly intelligent Jewish Christian woman, who was also a nun. She wrote:- Dear Mother. I beg your Reverence s permission to offer myself to the heart of Jesus as a sacrificial expiation for the sake of true peace, that the anti-christ s sway might be broken. I know I am doing nothing but Jesus wills it and he will call on many more to do the same sacrifice in these days. Years later, the Nazis came to arrest her, and deported her to Auschwitz. There she died in the gas a chamber with the Jewish people. She said, at her arrest Let me go and die for my people. She did. Deep in these experiences lays a painful truth. Sometimes we have to offer ourselves as sacrifices for situations and people. We don t understand it, but there is enough evidence to suggest that sometimes the Lord requires it. This is the level of sacrifice at which we begin. Deeper starts at the point where most people would finish. 8

9 Call on his name For the young Christian, this is an easy challenge. They read Acts and call on the name of the Lord. They expect every call to be answered, and move forward on their path. This is good for the beginners, but in no way reflects the calling which will come from deeper. For us, it an agonizing call. The call of Jeremiah from the pit, the call of the pregnant women being ripped open, the bone crushing nails and rope of the crucifixion. We call from the agony of broken humanity, and we call into the broken heart of God, who grieves for the brokenness of his creation. We endure the agony of God not answering, because he will not go against our will. We endure the call which is snuffed out by evil, derided by scoffing, insulted and irrelevant. We call from weakness. We call in pain. We call from weakness, from sacrifice, from surrender, from defeat. From the void we call into the eternal. Expecting nothing, believing everything. Knowing defeat, believing in victory. Crushed yet still standing we call, we call, we call. Our voice never silenced, even if we are silenced in the physical. Whoever endures a moment of the void receives the supernatural bread or fails. It is a terrible risk, but one that must be run - even during the instant when hope fails. ( Simone Weil) To cross the river of security into the wilderness of trust and love Security and wilderness are odd words to put together. Who in their right minds would make a choice? If they did, who would choose anything but security? Yet security is death to intercession. Every security is a millstone and a target. A millstone because it will hold us back from the total surrender necessary. A target because the enemy will zero in on them, and at moments of great crisis, pull us back. Family, money, possessions - these are obvious, but even in this there is a trap. We fail to see the real millstones - arrogance, pride, sin. There are deeper ones the need for recognition, satisfaction, comfort, value. 9

10 All these are millstones. They look like needs, but they are millstones. The only way to receive the fullness of God's presence, God s purposes, God s power, God s pain is to abandon every security, and enter the wilderness without either food or security. Then we are totally open to God to come and tabernacle with us and in us. We are open to his challenges, for his purposes, whatever they may be, and not our own. I m not saying it is an easy choice to make. I am saying that there is no choice to make. In Deeper we choose death or life - security or the wilderness. Trust and love are not easy words. We serve under The banner of the cross, the brightest sign, shining resplendent. (St. Columba) This is love. The cross takes us into very dark places, of deep suffering and loneliness. This will push our trust to the limit of faith, and then beyond. There are beyonds, where the blood flows and we are emotionally unable to understand, but we can feel. This is where trust and love can be found and experienced. To abandon in order to receive I am a word uttered by the mouth of God. I exist in that word. That word is me, my existence. I want to know myself, so I have to find the voice which uttered me. But he is beyond reality beyond earth, beyond life, beyond knowing. Only by dying, by letting go of earthly reality, only then can I be empty enough to be filled by him to find the voice, to be real. To place in the world hope instead of despair, to walk the old paths of surrender and sacrifice As always, these words look warm and welcoming, but contain broken glass. Of course we want to plant hope, but to do that we have to absorb the despair. That is the only way it can be isolated and negated. To do that requires sacrifice - again! In her last months, Catherine of Sienna felt that she had become a sacrificial victim for the sake of the divided church. She got increasingly ill - she looked like a skeleton walking daily to Mass. People could see what was happening. It was a conscious decision on her part. It was a surrender, willingly made. These are old pathways, well trodden and signposted with crosses. This is the only way to absorb and destroy despair. We can take a surface approach, or cut to the reality. I don't need to say which way Deeper is going to go. 10

11 That the light may shine leading people in darkness back into his love and healing. The light shines through us. This means of course that we have to be pure - so that the light can shine, untainted, not distorted or dimmed by our humanity. This carries a big issue with it. The light must purify us, which will be a painful process. But there is a deeper issue - the light will shine in the darkness. This exposes us to the darkness. Look at the pillar of fire. It was light on one side - blessing - but darkness on the other - cursing. Between the light and the dark is incessant and aggressive war. The cursed want to break through the light to destroy. How can we deal with this? We come up against some of the hardest concept in mystic thinking - the offering of ourselves as a sacrificial victim that the Lord might invoke the power of the cross. This is truly mysterious - it is almost beyond us. We stand in the gap, breaking the dark powers by allowing ourselves to be sacrificed in their presence. This is how we reach the people in darkness. We don't go and find them. We sacrifice and they will see the light and be drawn to it. The sacrifice will call to them. 11