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THE INTERIOR LIFE. (5)
Prayer
"Behold I come that I should do Thy Will: O my God, I have desired it, and Thy law in the midst of my heart."
(Ps. xxxix. 8, 9).
1st. Prelude.Vas spirituale. Vas insigne devotionis.
2nd. Prelude. Grace to "pray without ceasing." (1 Thess. v. 17).
Point I. The Spirit of Prayer
Amongst all the lessons that Jesus living in Mary teaches us, that on prayer must ever hold a foremost place. What is Prayer? "The lifting up of the heart and mind to God," the Catechism tells us. To love God, then, and to think about Him is to pray. Jesus lived in Mary uniquely to do the Will of His Father. He and the Father were one– one heart, one mind. He took pleasure in all that concerned His Father: "Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." He taught us to pray in the same way, taking our thoughts away from ourselves to our Father, and when we do ask for something for ourselves, letting it be just a short prayer for mercy or for help, acknowledging our weakness and misery and nothingness, while we keep our eyes fixed on our Father – He God, I His creature; He everything, I nothing. "God be merciful to me a sinner," this prayer contains all we need.
O my little Jesus, Who didst think of me in Thy communion with Thy Father, for Thou didst come to do His Will, and His Will was that I should be saved, teach me to think of Thee and to love Thee so much that my life, too, may be one perpetual prayer, that is, that communion with God may be the attitude of my soul.
Point II. Mary's Spirit of Prayer
She was ever holding colloquies with her God within her, pondering things over in her heart, that is, talking them over with Him from Whom she had no secrets and between Whom and her soul she put no obstacles. Her life was spent with Him; whatever her duties might be, everything was done with Him, that is prayer. If duties or conservation demanded all her attention for a while, did it matter? No, for He was there all the same. He, in her, carried on the blessed converse with His Father; there was never any separation between Mary and the Blessed Fruit of her womb, Jesus. She would come back to Him with all the more joy, and tell Him what she had been doing and saying. Oh, blessed life of union between Jesus and Mary! Teach me, my Mother, what prayer is. Thou didst understand it so well. It was prayer that made thy life interior for thou wast ever communing with Him Who was within thee. "O Mother of the Word, despise not my words."
Point III. "Learn of Me."
When we think of Jesus praying for nine months to His Father, when we think of Mary's nine months' colloquy with Jesus, we begin to think that there is something wrong about our methods of prayer, that they need re-modelling. Let us try to understand something of what His prayer was. We think of Him, and quite rightly, as talking over with His Father all His plans for man's salvation, praying for each individual thing that would be connected with it through all time. We love to think that He prayed particularly for each one of us. But all this was not the essence of His prayer, if it were, we might well be discouraged and feel that we could never copy such a model; our distractions and fatigues, our ignorance and want of memory, to say nothing of our times of dryness and distaste for prayer would make such prayers, except perhaps now and again in times of consolation, impossible for us. Am I to turn away sadly then from Mary this time, saying: It is too hard for me, I cannot copy thy Son here? No, rather let me ask what was the essence of His prayer? What was it which lay behind all? It was the intention. And what was that? We have meditated upon it many times: "Behold I come to do Thy Will, O my God." The essence of His prayer was: Thy Will be done and I am here to do it. Naturally there are many different ways of doing that Will, and many degrees in the perfection with which it is done; and that is why we are quite safe in picturing to ourselves Jesus in the womb of His Mother forgetting no single detail; or perhaps a truer picture would be a union with His Father so perfect that everything lay open before them both, and that there was no need to talk about what was so evident. Now let me apply all this to myself and I shall find that instead of being discouraging it is most encouraging, instead of making my prayers harder it will make them far easier. What is my intention in my prayers? Is it not to please God and to do His Will? What does my Morning Offering mean, but that the prayers, work and sufferings of the day are all offered to Him? I form then my intention for the day, and as long as I do not deliberately take back that intention, it is there, even if I forget to renew it each morning. Now let me see how this works out in practice. I pay a Visit to our Lord, perhaps I am too tired to think about Him, I may even sleep in His presence; perhaps I am so busy that I find it impossible to keep away distracting thoughts; perhaps I am more taken up with the spiritual book I am reading than with Him – the time is up and I go, thinking, perhaps, what is the good of paying Him a Visit like that? There is great good even in that Visit which all the same might have been so much more perfect. What was my intention in paying it? Certainly to please Him. Then I have pleased Him. It was a pleasure to Him to see me come in and sit with Him, even though I was occupied with my own concerns most of the time. We are too much taken up with asking how we say our prayers, but the important question is why do we say them. To go and sit in His presence, because He is lonely or because I am tired and I would rather sit with Him than with anyone else is prayer, even if I say nothing. What God is doing for me is of far more importance to my soul than what I am doing for God; and all the time that I am there, whether I am thinking of Him or not, He is impressing His image on my soul, and this is true, if I am in the state of grace, not only of my stated times of prayer, but of all the day long and the night too. What God wants in our prayers is simplicity. To help us to understand what simplicity is, let us think of a little child with its mother. The mother gives it something to play with or something to do. Is she very much concerned about what the child is doing or how it is doing it? Not at all, that is of no consequence; nothing it does can be of any real service to the mother; but there is something that concerns her very much, and that is whether her child loves her, is happy to be with her, and wants to please her. We are only children and God is more tender than the tenderest mother. It makes very little difference to Him what we are doing while we are with Him or even how we do it (how can our little services make any difference to Him!); but whether or no we love Him, whether or no we care to be with Him, whether or no we want to please Him, these things make all the difference.
Colloquy with Jesus and Mary about prayer.
Resolution. To try to live more in the spirit of prayer.
Spiritual Bouquet. "Let nothing hinder thee from praying always" (Ecclus. xviii. 22).
THE INTERIOR LIFE. (6)
Zeal
"Behold I come that I should do Thy Will. O my God, I have desired it, and Thy law in the midst of my heart."
(Ps. xxxix. 8, 9).
1st. Prelude.Jesus living in and working through Mary.
2nd. Prelude. The grace of zeal according to His methods.
There is a very close connection between prayer and zeal; the more perfect the prayer, the greater necessarily will be the zeal. Why? Because prayer is identifying oneself with the mind and Will of God, and doing everything with the unique intention of pleasing Him. What are the Will and pleasure of God? The salvation of the world for which He became incarnate – The closer we unite ourselves to God in prayer, the dearer will His intentions be to us. The best workers are those who pray best, those who enter most deeply into God's Will and plans. When we find our zeal flagging, it would be well to examine ourselves on our spirit of prayer.
Point I. The zeal of JESUS living in Mary
This zeal showed itself at once. No sooner had He become incarnate than He inspired His Mother to take a difficult journey into the "hill country" to visit her cousin Elizabeth. The zeal of Jesus showed itself first of all, as it naturally would, on His Mother and filled her spirit with the humility and charity and forgetfulness of self which were needed for the journey. It then effected Elizabeth and filled her with the Holy Ghost, but these were only the overflowings of His zeal on His way to make what Father Faber calls His "first convert." The soul of John the Baptist, His chosen Precursor, was very precious to Him and as yet it lay unconscious at a distance from God in darkness and the shadow of death. One of the first acts of God Incarnate was to deliver that soul from prison and let it see what great things He had in store for it. At the sound of the voice of the Mother with her Child, a change was wrought in that dark soul; it was set free from the curse of original sin, it was flooded with grace, it was brought nigh to God, the Holy Ghost with all His gifts took possession of it and as a consequence, it leapt in the womb in joy and gratitude and adoration.
The voice of Mary directed by her Child had simultaneously worked two miracles of grace. Elizabeth heard the salutation first, but it was the leaping of the Babe in her womb which made her understand that the Incarnation had taken place, and cry with a loud voice: "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb."
If the zeal of Jesus was so powerful during the first hours of His life, what must it not have effected during the nine months! How many souls without knowing (as St. John the Baptist did) the cause, were brought nearer to Heaven by the presence of the Incarnate God in the world!
Point II. Mary's zeal
We have no need to dwell at any length on the zeal of her whom Jesus used as His instrument during the nine months. Mary's was a zeal which compelled her to spend and be spent in the service of those whom Jesus loved; and the secret of its force was the interior life which she lived with her Son – a perfect union of will and purpose with His.
Let me try to copy my Mother in her interior life and then I may hope that her Son will use me too as an instrument of some of His zeal for souls. He must use someone, for He has made Himself as dependent now in the Tabernacle as He was during the time that He lived in Mary. He has deliberately put Himself in the position of needing instruments for His work and He will naturally choose those who are most imbued with His spirit and who are willing to adopt His methods. Such an instrument was Mary. She put no obstacles in His way, because she had no will apart from His, her zeal was only a reflexion of His.
Point III. "Learn of Me."
If I am to fashion my zeal after the pattern of the zeal of Jesus, I must be careful to see that my methods are the same as His. What were His?
(1) Solitude. Such was His solitude that no one but Mary knew that He was there. He chose solitude not only during this first stage but during the greater part of His life on earth, and He chooses it still in His Eucharistic life. It must then be a very necessary accompaniment to zeal. "Learn of Me." What am I to learn? That if my zeal is to be efficacious I must live a hermit's life far from the haunts of men? Not necessarily. It would be possible to do this without finding the solitude that begets zeal; and it is quite possible to find the necessary solitude even in the midst of the world's tumult. To say that I have no opportunities for doing good because I am in uncongenial surroundings, or because I am obliged by my circumstances to lead a lonely life or to live where there is apparently no scope for work for souls is to fail to understand what zeal is. Why do people shut themselves up in convents, cries the world, when they might do so much good outside? Uniquely because of their zeal for souls – they have sufficient courage to adopt Our Lord's methods. If I am one whom He has trusted with the trial of loneliness in my life, let me cultivate a devotion to Him in His Mother's womb, and let me take heart and be of good courage. All the activity in the world that is of any use is of use because of the prayer that is behind it. Whose prayers who shall say? They may be mine if I live an interior life, for those who live in the retreat of their own heart with God have a limitless scope for their zeal.
(2) Silence. Zeal for God and His work does not depend then, on words. I need not be troubled because I am not eloquent, or because I have an impediment in my speech, or because I never know what to say. How could such things matter to God, the Omnipotent God! He could alter them in a moment if necessary. The Word Himself Who could have spoken so attractively and with such power was silent for most of His life. The time He chose for His Incarnation was "while all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her course" (Wisdom xviii. 14); and He is silent still in the Tabernacle; He loves silence, and the more the soul is interior, the more it will adopt His method of silence and the more it will understand what a marvellous help it is to zeal. How can this be? Because the silence that we choose to keep for God means shutting out all else, that we may talk to Him alone. Could there be a better method than this for making us zealous for the work so dear to His Heart?
(3) Obedience. Think of His obedience in the womb of His Mother. His very Incarnation was an act of obedience, He waited for Mary's Fiat. His waiting for nine months was purely an act of obedience to the laws of nature, for His Soul and Body were perfect from the moment of His conception. All the time that He lived in Mary, He obeyed all whom she obeyed – St. Joseph, the Roman Emperor, the people at Bethlehem. He gave up His own Will to others.
This was His method of being zealous. This is how He did the work that He had come to do. Can I adopt this method? It is not easy. I do so love to follow my own sweet will especially when I am working for the souls of others. I feel that no one has a right to dictate to me, that my work ought to be spontaneous, not cramped nor confined nor limited nor any other adjective that the devil can persuade me to use, if only he can make me believe that it is a blessed thing to be independent! If my zeal for God is to be worth anything, let me follow the methods of God Incarnate in the womb of His Mother and be absolutely obedient to God, to His Holy Church and to those whom I ought to obey.
(4) Poverty. "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich, He became poor for your sakes, that through His poverty you might be rich" (2 Cor. viii. 9). In His zeal for our wealth, He made Himself poor, He deliberately adopted poverty as one of His methods in His life of zeal. Poverty is the voluntary laying aside of all that we might have, in order that our purpose may be single. All can do this whether rich or poor, for all have much that they would rather not lay on one side, and all have self. Let us think what the Eternal Word was as God, and then what He was in Mary's womb, and we shall understand what poverty means. If we are to be zealous in His service, we must not only understand, but copy.
(5) Patience. Patience is a twofold grace, that of waiting and that of suffering, both are a great aid to zeal. The Eternal Word's zeal for the salvation of men had existed in all its perfection and all its fulness from all eternity, yet think how long He waited! When the conditions were changed and He had at length become incarnate, He still waited patiently for nine months, and after that He waited for thirty years! This was zeal, zeal in its perfection. Is my zeal tempered with patience? Am I patient with souls, patient with myself, patient above all when God says: Wait, do nothing?
Jesus showed His patience in the womb of His Mother not only by waiting; but by suffering, as we have already seen, all the inconveniences that were incident to His new existence. He doubtless also forestalled all the sufferings that were in store for Him and offered them all to His Father. Zeal without the aid of suffering cannot go far and it was one of the methods He chose. If I have not courage enough to choose it, I must, if my zeal is to be at all like His, be ready for it when He chooses it for me.
It will probably be seen one day that those whose lives have been lives of suffering, and who have never been able to do any active work for Him, are those whose zeal has effected the most for His glory and His Kingdom.
Those of us who are not entrusted with this wonderfully blessed gift of suffering, can at any rate offer to Him for souls all the many little inconveniences and incommodities of our lives, and so copy to some small extent the life of Jesus hidden in Mary.
O my little Jesus, help me, at whatever cost to self, to copy Thee.
Colloquy with Jesus hidden in Mary, asking Him for grace, so to adopt His methods that He may use me as an instrument of His zeal.
Resolution. Not to shrink from adopting His methods.
Spiritual Bouquet. "Every one that hath zeal … let him follow Me" (1 Macc. ii. 27).
O SAPIENTIA!
December 17th.
"O Wisdom Who camest forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end mightily, and disposing all things sweetly, come and teach us the way of prudence!"
(Vide Wisdom viii. 1).
1st. Prelude. The Tabernacle of the hidden God.
2nd. Prelude. The grace of prudence.
For seven days before the Vigil of Christmas, the Church makes use of seven solemn antiphons, commonly known as the "Seven O's," because they all begin with "O." One is sung every day at Vespers reminding us that Our Lord is to come in the evening of the world's history. They are a sort of cry or invitation of the Church, addressing her Bridegroom by some spiritual title and begging Him to come. Before and after the Magnificat is the time the Church chooses for these solemn antiphons in order to keep constantly before our minds the truth that He is coming by Mary. As the days of Advent draw nearer to their close, this truth is plainly marked in the Mass. The Epistle, Gospel and Communion for Ember Wednesday (in the third week) are all full of Mary; the Gospel for Ember Friday gives the account of the Visitation; the Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, as if the Church were loath to leave her out, brings Mary in at the Offertory and Communion; and that for the Vigil of Christmas devotes its Gospel to her. Let us then as we meditate on these great antiphons look in the direction of Mary where our King is as yet hidden, remembering that it is she who when Christmas comes, is going to shew unto us the Blessed Fruit of her womb Jesus.
Point I. "O Wisdom that proceedest from the mouth of the most high."
He is the Eternal Wisdom, and He has now become the Incarnate Wisdom. It is to Him that the Church is calling to-day. He is the "Wisdom of God" (1 Cor. i. 24) and the Source of all wisdom; and yet as man the Spirit of God has rested upon Him and filled His human Soul with the seven-fold gifts, of which Wisdom is the first. This gift enabled Him as man to know all mysteries, all God's secret designs and plans, and to enjoy to the full all His perfections. The subject is so vast that it seems impossible for me to meditate about it, but I will take one of the many things which the Holy Scriptures say about Wisdom, one which will lead me again to the Sanctuary where I would be.
"God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom" (Wisdom vii. 28). He so loved His poor fallen world that He gave His only begotten Son to be incarnate for it, and now all He asks from His children in return is their love and that they should show it by dwelling with Him. He came to be Emmanuel, God with us. He tabernacled among us, and what His Father asks is that we should not shun Him and live far away from Him, but that we should dwell with Him. Let me keep close then in spirit to His blessed Mother, the Tabernacle where my God is hidden, and let me keep close in reality to the Tabernacle on the Altar where He is expecting my confidences as surely as He expected those of His Mother; let me treat Him as my Friend to Whom I can tell everything that concerns me – how anxious I am to desire Him to come and yet how little desire I seem to have. There is a way of dwelling with Him which is even closer still: "He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood abideth in Me and I in him" (St. John vi. 57). This is the extension of the Incarnation, the way that Infinite Wisdom devised by which poor fallen man could nevertheless dwell with Wisdom.
O Eternal Wisdom, help me to make better use of this Thy most wonderful plan for continuing the Incarnation! He was incarnate for me in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, but He is incarnate for me in a more special and personal way each time that I receive Him in Holy Communion. By means of my Communions and their effects I can dwell always without any interruption in the tabernacle of the Most High, for it is of me that Eternal Wisdom speaks when He says: "My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make Our abode with him." (St. John xiv. 23).
Point II. "Reaching from end to end mightily and disposing all things sweetly."
Wisdom "can do all things" (Wisdom vii. 27) and it is God hidden in the womb of Mary, Who is reaching from end to end of the earth and ordering the whole world to be enrolled everyone in his own city. Why was this? Because the Roman Emperor wanted to know the number of the subjects in his vast empire just to satisfy his ambition? This is the answer the world would give, but in this case the children of Light – the children of the Incarnate Wisdom know better. The world is being agitated, though it does not know it, not by the command of any earthly monarch, but by the King of kings Who is about to be born and Who must fulfil a certain prophecy as to His birthplace. The prophet Micaias said of Him: "His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. And thou, Bethlehem Ephrata art a little one among the thousands of Juda; out of thee shall He come" (chap. v. 2); and Mary, the mother who had been destined from all eternity to give birth to Him Who was "from the days of eternity," was living quietly at Nazareth making all her preparations for His birth there. But could not God have devised means to send Mary to Bethlehem without disturbing the whole world? Yes, but He would show to those who have eyes to see, that wisdom "can do all things," that though He is to all appearances helpless, hidden and dependent, yet it is He and not any other Who is King of the whole world, and that even now before His birth He can reach from end to end of it mightily and do what He will therein. And so "there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled … everyone in his own city," and Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem and it so happened (as we should say) "that when they were there, her days were accomplished, that she should be delivered" (St. Luke ii. 1-6) and the King was born in Bethlehem. Sweetly He had ordered all things to suit His divine purpose.
Point III. "Come and teach us the way of prudence."
Come, my little King, Who art nevertheless the Eternal Wisdom, come and teach me this heavenly prudence. I know Thy power and I know Thy gentleness. I know, that is to say, that Thou canst do everything and that Thou art disposing sweetly everything in my life; but I want Thee to come and teach me to put my knowledge into practice. If the whole world could be set in motion by Thee just in order that one little desire of Thy Divine Providence might be fulfilled, shall I not be ready to own that Thou art indeed the King, that whatever may happen in the earth, it is the Lord Who reigneth; and in my own life when things seem, as they sometimes do, inexplicable and beyond all human ken, Oh! come and teach me that the way of prudence is to lie still like a little child in its mother's arms, not to try to fathom nor to understand, but to say: I am in the Arms of the Eternal Wisdom, Who can do all things, Who loves me with an infinite love and Who is disposing all things sweetly, gently, mercifully for my sake.
This is the lesson the Child yet unborn would teach. His Mother understood, for, as we have seen, one principle guided the two lives; but it was not easy for her to have all her plans disarranged, to hear that she and her husband must take a long journey perhaps of two or three days, to know that her Son could not be born in her own little home so dear to her with all its hallowed memories, to know that she could not lay Him in the little cradle that she had so lovingly prepared for Him nor surround Him with the little comforts that she had been able to provide. All this would have been much even for a rich mother to give up, and Mary was poor and she knew that she and Joseph would have to take just what they could get and no more. Yet in Mary's heart there was no anxiety, no murmuring, no hesitation, no regret even. Why? Because the Babe within her taught her prudence, taught her, that is, that God's ways are best, that it was He Who was ordering all things sweetly, and that if her plans were upset, it simply meant that they did not happen to be God's plans; and she willingly gave up hers for His.
O Mary as I kneel before the Tabernacle where Thy Son as yet lies hidden, present my petitions to Him. Tell Him that, cost what it may, I do want His Will to be done, I do want to realize that it is He Who is ordering all things sweetly for me and that though the way is often difficult it is His way and therefore mine – "the way of prudence."
Colloquy with the Incarnate Wisdom.
Resolution. "I purposed therefore to take her (Wisdom) to me to live with me, knowing that she will communicate to me of her good things" (Wisdom viii. 9).
Spiritual Bouquet. "O Sapientia! … come and teach us the way of prudence."
