JMJ+OBT
Last weekend I was infinitely blessed to be able to attend a 3 day, silent retreat with Opus Dei at a wonderful little place called Featherock. God's faithfulness never ceases to amaze me and this weekend was a powerful example. To have any chance at pulling these ideas together in a way that will make sense, I need to start a little bit before the retreat.
The real place to start though was a discernment retreat that I went on over Christmas break with Wichita Diocese called Quo Vadis (stole the name for my blog from this retreat last year). On Quo Vadis the retreat director presented a view of discernment based on Ignatian Spirituality that I'd never heard before. He started with the premise that to discern we have to have know who we are. The only way to achieve this self knowledge is through a relationship with our creator. The stronger our relationship with God -> the more we see true selves reflected -> the greater our sense of our mission in this life. One of the keys to this presentation of discernment is spiritual healing, uncovering the lies about ourselves we've accepted and opening ourselves to God so He can show us the Truth about who we really are. Since December when I went on this retreat, I've been asking in prayer for the grace to understand who I am more fully.
Alright hang with me just a sec longer, I'm almost to the retreat not quite though. The week before the retreat I finished the biography I'd been reading about St. Thomas More for a saint report in my Theology of the Spiritual Life class, A Portrait of Courage. I picked St. Thomas because other people in the class had taken my first two choices (Charles de Foucauld, and St. John Vianney). After they got taken I decided maybe I should do St. Thomas because he was my confirmation saint and despite that I still didn't know much about him. I never really understood why I'd picked St. Thomas More, other than that at the time I was thinking I would go into politics. I got my answer (or at least part of it, I'm sure there's probably more) in the last paragraph of the last chapter of the biography. St. Thomas is writing his daughter Margaret to about her concern over her lack of courage. The biographer, Wegemer (UD English professor btw), writes:
"Surely Meg," he says to her, " a fainter heart than thy frail father you cannot have." He then gives one of his most fundamental counsels, a counsel he gave many times over the years, in many different ways, going back to the earliest of his poems. In these words can be discovered the ultimate foundation of that courage which so many have admired in the life of Sir Thomas More:
"That you fear your own frailty, Margaret, does not displease me. May God give us both the grace to despair of our own self, and wholly to depend and hang upon the hope and strength of God. The blessed Saint Paul found such a lack of strength in himself that in his own temptation he was twice obliged to call and cry out unto God to take that temptation from him. And yet he did not attain his prayer in the manner that he requested. For God in His high wisdom, seeing that is was (as he himself said) necessary for him to keep him from pride...answered, "My grace is sufficient for you." ...And our Lord said further, "Virtue is perfected in weakness." The more weak that man is, the more is the strength of God in his safeguard declared. And so Saint Paul said, "All is possible in Him who strengthens me."
Ahh! For a year now, those quotes, and that idea, "My grace is sufficient for you," and "Virtue is perfected in weakness," have been a pivotal part of my spiritual life. Now I can see whose intercession has been guiding that. Thanks St. Thomas.
So it was with this gratitude for this revelation that I headed four hours south with a bunch of other college guys to what is quite easily my favorite place in Texas. To set the scene a little, Featherock is an old ranch house that Opus Dei has converted into a retreat center, by adding several wings of single rooms, an oratory, dining facilities etc. Now I love the Spiritual Life Center in Wichita (it list among one of my 6 homes) but Featherock is my favorite place that I've ever made a retreat. It retains a home like feel and is full of wonderful little private places to pray and read. The best part though, by far, is the grounds. There is a wonderful tree-lined drive (see top), a pond, shrine to the holy family, and the best part (drum roll) they have about 100 acres of pasture with wonderful trees to climb, beef cows, etc. Plus this part of Texas was settled by Czech and German farmers so it boasts some of the most beautiful, turn of the century churches in Texas. It is probably one of the most peaceful places I've been in the US, just really a truly perfect place to make a silent retreat.
The first day and a half I really had a hard time entering into the prayer and engaging in conversation with God. I had a hard time concentrating and was just generally pretty dry. That's the nice thing about it being 3 days, God had plenty of time to break me down, I couldn't ignore Him very long. At a certain point in the second day I picked up my packet from Theology of the Spiritual Life to read an exert from a book about St. Therese of Liseux that we needed to read for class. My friend Joe had already read it before retreat and and had told me that it was amazing so I figured it was worth a try.
I thought about trying to summarize or pull together everything that impacted me while reading it but I don't think my feeble, human intellect is capable of the task. A year ago this inability would have annoyed, even troubled me, but a certain passage from this same work gave me an entirely new outlook on these kinds of great mysteries of our faith. At one point the author, or St. Therese, I can't remember who and of course that was the one passage I didn't mark, compares mysteries of the faith to a spring. They say that our thirst should be sated before the spring is depleted. Otherwise when we thirsted again we'd go back to the spring and there would be no water. Thus we shouldn't be upset over our inability to grasp fully the great depths of our faith, but rather be glad because there will always be more for us to learn.
I can tell that everything on this weekend was intimately connected, but in a way that I'll never be able to grasp completely intellectually. It was more of the feeling of recognizing the same hand in all these different signs that were too Providential not to be from God. So I think my approach will be to mainly quote from The Hidden Face, the work on St. Therese and her little way. I'll try and offer minimal comments to provide context and some basic clarifications.
Therese was convinced that without the special aid of God she would not have been able to achieve her salvation.
At her sister’s sickbed, Paulin said: “when I come to die, alas, I shall have nothing to give to God; I shall arrive with empty hands, and that troubles me deeply.” Therese responded spiritedly: “It is just the reverse with me—if I had all the works of St Paul to offer, I would still consider that my hands were empty. But that is precisely what gives me joy, for since I have nothing I must receive everything from God.” And again: “How I look forward to going to Heaven! But when I think of Our Lord’s words: Behold, I come and bring the reward with me, to give to each according to his works, then I tell myself that He will probably be embarrassed when He comes to me, because I will have none. He cannot reward me according to my works. So much the better, for I have confidence that He will reward me according to His.” Therese’s illimitable trust bubbled up solely from the springs of her jubilant poverty. What is empty can be filled. She defines her little way in much the same manner. “We must do everything we are obliged to out of love for God. But it is indispensible to place our whole trust in Him who sanctifies our works”
We must say to God: “I know well that I shall never be worthy of the things I hope for—but I hold out my hands to You like a beggar child, and I know that You will more than grant my wishes because You are so good!”
“Jesus has so incomprehensible, so uncompromising a love for us,” she wrote to Celine, “that He wants to do nothing without us; He wants us to share with Him in the salvation of souls. The Creator of the universe waits for the prayers and devotion of a poor little soul in order thereby to save a number of others who, like her, were redeemed at the price of His blood.”
Being really brave means to long for the Cross in the midst of fear, while we are as it were fighting against it, like Our Lord in the Garden of Olives
At the end of her Carmelite way she would not recant this humble insight: that Jesus did not prefigure “heroism”. “It is so consoling to think that Jesus, the divine hero, has felt all our weaknesses and shuddered at the sight of the bitter chalice—that very chalice he had so burningly desired”
Did not Jesus cry out: “My Father, take this cup from Me”? How can you say that my desires are the mark of my love? I realize that what pleases God in my soul is not that. What pleases Him is to see me love my littleness, my poverty: it is the blind trust which I have in His Mercy…. There is my sole treasure. If you bear in peace the trial of being displeasing to yourself, you offer a sweet shelter to Jesus.”
“A large part of the fear of sin in devout persons is just disguised narcissism of the soul: the tiniest sin is unbearable because it is a blotch on the precious self, a sign of inadequate performance in self-sanctification, evidence of a remnant of earthliness…. The penitence that depresses us come from vanity; penitence from God lifts our courage.”
“To surrender to love means to depend upon the omnipotence of God.”
In the same way; a saint is not a being in a different order from the ordinary Christian but is rather the term of growth to which he tends.
Ok so what did this mean for me. Her insight in to Our Lord in the Garden of Olives was so comforting to me, because I was having major trust issue is surrendering my whole life to God. It’s kind of a scary thing to give over the control of your life to someone else, that loss of our false sense of control. What a blessing is was to realize that Christ had undergone the same thing and given us His example to follow.
The major insight though, which was a direct response to my prayers for greater self-knowledge and humility, was her little way itself, building off St. Thomas More’s exhortation to put all our confidence not in our abilities but in God. Therese believed that all we are, all our gifts, talents, thoughts, our very being is not ours. It is given to us by God on loan, to use in love for Him. He has given us everything we are for the express purpose of loving Him in return. In this pursuit, we, as fallen humans, are going to fail but God knows this and so we must accept that fact in humility and offer up everything in love for Him, allowing Him to unite it to the sacrifice of the cross. I suppose I’d heard most of this before, but in that setting, with God’s grace it went a lot deeper.
Sorry if that was majorly disorganized but that’s kind of the state of my brain right now. My hope is that St Therese and St. Thomas More are awesome enough that their greatness will shine through despite my lack of organization. Also thank you to those who were praying for me over the weekend, God definitely was sanctifying your prayers and using them towards His end that weekend. God Bless!
