v Meditations of a Modern Starets v
NOTE: The following inspired meditations, some expressed in Our Lord's own words, were written by a Servant of God--a spiritual director of souls both consecrated and secular--who has long since passed on to the Father. Written in the middle of the previous century and previously unpublished, these meditations, meant for the spiritual well-being of the many fellow Christians whom he counseled, no less than for his own spiritual welfare, are brought to light here for
reasons we trust will be self-evident.
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The Good News about Sin
WHEN YOU SEE YOUR INCLINATION TO SIN,
there are two wrong ways and one right way of dealing with it.
THE FIRST WRONG WAY is to say, Well. it’s what I want to do, so I’ll be simple and honest about it and just go ahead and indulge myself. This way quickly leads to profligacy and ultimately can lead to moral ruin. It’s the way of the libertine, the person who has managed more or less to shut down the life of conscience. Alas, their number is legion nowadays. But this way of dealing with sin hardly applies to our readers here.
THE SECOND WRONG WAY is to say, Well, I admit I want to sin at times but I know it’s really wrong and so I mustn’t allow myself to want what I see myself wanting at such times. I must use all my powers to avoid it, even though I know at times I probably won’t be able to. This approach to sinful inclinations, if left unresolved, will lead to moral sickness for you are locked in an unresolved conflict of not wanting what you do in fact want, and vice versa. What’s at work here is the conviction that if you see an inclination to sin in yourself, and especially if you give in to it, you shut yourself off from God. And so the way to correct that is to fight this attraction to sin. But the difficulty is that you are fighting to not do what you in fact want to do. And every time you lapse, the problem only gets deeper. What’s wrong here, theologically speaking, is the conviction that this is your personal moral dilemma and you have to address it somehow on your own. Prayer or no prayer, it's up to you to not be this way. This is your dilemma: (1) The ball is on your side of the net and now it’s up to you, and (2) The opponent you face is actually yourself. No wonder we have sick and troubled consciences, even among the faithful, unless we have been properly formed about our inclinations to sin.
THE THIRD WAY OF DEALING WITH SIN AND THE INCLINATION TO SIN, the healthy way, is to say, Well, it’s true, I know that I have this inclination to sin, and that in myself, on my own, especially if I thought I could get away with it, I probably will wind up giving in to it. But the theological truth is that I am not on my own. I have Jesus and in the measure that I believe that and stay close to Him I am holy and free of sin. And if I happen to fall, it’s out of weakness, not malice, and does not separate me from God. This third way is the way of St. Paul. He knew himself and freely acknowledged that, in his words: The good that I would do I do not. And when he sinned, he could say these most remarkable, liberating words: It is not I that sin but the sin that is within me. Paul is the model of a healthy mind. He can admit in all simplicity that he has sinful inclinations, yet he does not allow sinful inclinations to convince him that he really wants to sin, and least of all that it separates him from God. Who shall separate us, he asks. Neither heights nor depths, powers or principalities can separate us from the love of Christ.
Paul’s words are liberating, It is not I that sin, he wrote. The “I” here is the “I” that is in Jesus. Paul understood and believed that the liberated Christian can truly say: It is not I that live, but Christ that lives in me.All you really are, after all, is what you are actually. So if you are actually in Jesus, you don’t want the evil things you might feel drawn to, not even though there is indeed something in you that does want it and even may at times bring you into doing it. If that happens, it is not the you that is in Jesusthat wants it or that does it. It is sin that is within you, not you. You are within Jesus, where your life is now securely hid.
This healthy state, then, is the spiritual state which does not look upon inclination to sin and even actual sin as something which separates us from God, not if what we want more than anything else is to be in Jesus. Jesus in our lives is infinitely more powerful than any trace of our fallen nature that, in God’s Providence, may continue to operate. The sick mentality does not believe that. Just to the extent that the sinful inclination remains, the sick mentality takes this as a sign that, in his or her case at least, sin is still stronger than grace. But this inclination to sin on the part of the faithful is no such sign. Jesus explained in the parable about the wheat and the tares, that sometimes it is better to leave the tares where they are, for the sake of the wheat. A sick conscience believes it cannot go to God with sin. A healthy conscience knows that that is exactly where we must go when we sin. There is the story of how Jesus once came to St. Jerome and complained to him that Jerome had not given Him everything. Jerome became very upset at this. Lord, he said, I have given you all I have, he cried. What have I held back? Jesus replied: No, Jerome, you have not given me everything. You have not given me your sins.A sick and troubled conscience is like someone trying to walk on roller skates, always on the verge of a hard fall. The healthy conscience, when it sees an inclination to evil, turns to Jesus. And when it falls, it knows that it has fallen out of weakness and that that weakness does not separate the soul from God. In fact, the fall has just the opposite effect, for our very weaknesses are what impel us to stay ever closer to Christ. And He receives us, for it is precisely the sinner that He came to save. And is that not, dear friends, the Good News of the Gospel? (top)V
WHY IS IT SO HARD to turn to Jesus right after we have sinned? The difficulty comes from our lifelong habit of looking for our peace in what we do and are capable of, in and of ourselves. So if our habitual disposition is to feel good when we can see order and peace in ourselves, then the experience of committing some kind of sin, whatever it is, would disrupt that peace. If the sin is a bit serious, it's likely to become a crisis and at that point we would get despondent. We would get despondent because we would see ourselves wanting something that we realize God does not want for us. The problem is in some way or other the sin is what we want, otherwise we would not have committed it. (We are talking here about habitual sins, typically of sins of weakness.)
Sinners no less than saints are called to lead a life of grace. So if we become despondent when we sin, there is something wrong with our understanding of this life of grace we are called to lead.
What is behind the sinner's despondency is a false understanding of how grace works. Grace works by moving your will to do what you can't in and of yourself. To get an increase in grace you have to venture to do what you can't do. If you're always able to do, with your own resources, what you are called to do, there would be no increase, no growth. The increase of grace is the reality of your doing something which you in yourself can't and won't do. It's like Peter walking on the water. When you live by grace you live by faith.
When Jesus said to Peter: "Come over to Me," how is that essentially any different from His saying to us after we have sinned, "Come over to Me"? Because we are sinners, because of sin, we don't believe we have that capacity in ourselves. And of course that's true, we don't have it in ourselves. But the principle here is that Jesus calls us, and when we come, when we step out of the boat of our own resources, then we're living by faith and that is when we have an increase in grace that enables us to do what we can't do by ourselves. That experience of responding to Jesus is the very reality of an increase in grace.
There is a certain luxury of spirit operating against the life of grace, whereby we want to luxuriate in what is within our own capacity. We know by faith that after we have sinned Jesus is calling us. But, like Peter, many of us, maybe after a good start, then give up. When Peter gave up, Jesus said, "O ye of little faith," because Peter was unwilling to operate by the power of Jesus instead of by his own power, which was powerless.
Taking delight in ourselves--We are aware of how much we want to feel good about ourselves when some sinful act reminds us we can't, and we become despondent. There is a right way and a wrong way to feel good about ourselves. The wrong way is to feel good because of something we have, something we are in our own right. But the more we live by faith, the more we become aware of ourselves as instruments, and being instruments, we take our delight in the way God uses us, as a violinist takes delight in the music he plays more than in his own playing. As soon as we become aware that we're taking delight in ourselves instead, we should go back and renew our union with Jesus. What else could we do? With a Pelagian conscience we would think: "This is wrong, I have to change it." But we can't change it because that is the way we are. So we go to Jesus trusting Him to do what we know we don't even want to do in ourselves. We can't change that Pelagian conscience by working on it directly. We can change it the way we take out a bad appendix, by letting the surgeon operate! And we don't try to anesthetize ourselves either!
"Without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). The most important use of our free will is to be united more and more with Jesus in the realization that in ourselves we don't even desire virtue. A false conscience would make us preoccupied with what we thought was wrong and what we had to change in ourselves, and so it would try to convince us that we don't want what we do in fact want. Habitual sin, however, shows us that there is something in us that does want it. If we know we want it, how can we will to stop it? It is like going north and south at the same time. Most of the time, we solve the dilemma by repressing the knowledge. But sin brings it out.
When we are united with God He wants us to take delight in our goodness. Otherwise it would be puritanical. God wants us to experience the achievement of doing good, but He doesn't want us to make that achievement our end. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."
When we put God first, and the more we desire that He be first, the more He can let us achieve things, because He is not going to let us be seduced by our achievements. So we should be able to accomplish more and more and to take delight more in what we accomplish, because our delight is really in God.
(top)
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THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF SOULS, those who seek good outside of Me in order to please themselves, those who seek good outside of Me in order, as they think, to please the Father, and those who seek only Me in My Mother in order to please the Father. The first are those who are walking to their destruction, the last are My beloved children, the saints. Those between are souls more or less enslaved by their ignorance, their fear, and their pride. If, then, you know that you belong neither with the first nor with the last, then beg Me to teach you the lesson of My Love, and use your mind to understand and to meditate day and night on this simple truth which is your consolation, that I alone am pleasing to the Father because I came out of Him, and nothing that is not in Me, therefore, can be pleasing to Him, and therefore, when you give way to anxiety, striving by yourself to make yourself pleasing to the Father, you are struggling in vain, you are living a lie, and you are thereby opening your soul to Satan, the father of lies (Jn 8:44), who will use this opportunity to drag you into sin, sin which I permit only to prove to you the vanity and stupidity of seeking to please the Father outside of Me. You must learn, therefore, to understand and to interpret your anxiety correctly. It means only one thing--it is My Voice calling you, "Come over to Me, all ye who are burdened, and be comforted (Mt. 11:28). Come over to Me, all ye who seek the Father, but who, in your ignorance, seek Him outside of Me, where you can never find Him, and where you are in danger of losing both Him and Me for all eternity."
John 14:6 (JB)
I am the Way; I am Truth and Life. No one can come to the Father
except through Me
(top)
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(Letter to a Spiritual Child)
SO, MY BELOVED CHILD, do not worry your little head about your deficiencies! Love Jesus from Whom you must receive everything, and He will show you what you need, to love Him more and more, always. So promise me, my darling child, that the very moment you feel a misgiving about yourself and your deficiencies, you will stop thinking about that right away, and go to Jesus, to find out what you need and what to do, but never leave Him to get what you need. That is how He teaches his littlest ones that He is God, that there is nothing outside of Him. And the one mortification we need is to mortify the silly idea that we need anything else. That is how we grow perfect, oh so fast! when we give up trying to find out what we need to please Him outside of Him, outside of His Peace which He gave to us. His Peace, which is Himself. Please ponder this very much, in His Heart, with me, your beloved little brother and father, and you will see that His Peace and your contentedness in Him are everything. Then you will receive everything, because those who have shall receive (Mt 25:29; Lk 19:26). (top)
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EACH MORNING YOU SHOULD TURN YOUR MIND away from everything and turn your mind to God and your relationship to Him. That is how you should start your day. In our fallen nature we don’t always do this. Some never do. In our fallen nature, unless we act to correct it, we will start the day filled with preoccupations and these preoccupations will immediately take precedence over our relation to God. What you should be concerned with at the start of the day is what God moves you to be concerned with, when you want Him above all else.
During the day if you have a job to do, your mind has to be on the job, obviously, but if you start the day the way you should, you would do the work like St. Paul: “I live, not I, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20) God will be accomplishing the work with you because you won’t be attached to what you are doing on your own, by your own wits and strength. When you’re thinking of nothing except God, or when you’re working in God, in both ways you’re giving yourself to God totally. And He is giving Himself to you. If God wants you to do something during the day, you’re doing it because He wants it and in the way He wants it…
We only exist, you know, because God sustains our being. So it follows that our actions and operations achieve their perfection in the measure that we allow God to act in us. In our action, at those times when we’re called to be acting, we allow Him to move us the way He wants and at the same time we’re concerned with what we’re doing. We can be so united with Him that as soon as we want something in a disordered way, we would become aware of that. We should renew our union with Him and then go on doing when He wants.
In the morning, when you contemplate, you set the day with this act of union with God and you work in the spirit of contemplation. Then you would know when something was taking hold of you, you would feel the anxiety, and you would hear Him saying, “Come over to Me, all ye who are burdened.” (Mt 11:28)
If you make a lot of interior noise you can’t hear what God is saying. He stops speaking because you don’t listen. The one who would know best how to operate an automobile would be the engineer who designed it. The more perfect we are in relation to God, the more perfectly we act in accordance with our own nature. As soon as we want something which is not moved by God, there is a disorder in the way we operate. That is why He says, “Come over to Me…” (Mt. 11:28) If you’re burdened by anything you come to Him immediately. Otherwise you’re like a ship without a rudder. What you have to cultivate is a sensitivity of conscience, because the closer you are to God, the more sensitive you are to this need for Him, the less you’ll have to go astray before you realize this. Otherwise, hours could go by before you turn to Him.
It is so important to start the day this way because if you don’t get this image in the beginning, what is going to happen for the rest of the day? If you start the day with your anxieties and preoccupations, they will just accumulate.
There is a right anxiety and a wrong anxiety. The right one comes from a certain tension because of your desire to do what God wants and their realization of your own inclination to do the opposite. This tension keeps you more united to God. The wrong anxiety, when it occurs, is a sign of dissipation, a sign that you have lost your sense of God’s presence, and then you’re frustrated with everything you do. As a result of certain disorders, forgotten about God, you find yourself in an anxious state. But then without realizing it, you could get attached to the previous state when you weren't’t anxious. When you’re recollected and then at some point you lose your recollection, you feel anxious; you say, I have to get back to that recollected state.” But this is wrong. God wants you to come to him the way you are right then. (top)
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WHEN YOU GET SAD, look and see if it is not because you had identified being united with Me with some way I had been pleased to use -- and now when I no longer come to you in that way, it seems that I have deserted you. Do you see? Do you understand how important it is to be poor, to give everything away -- even My consolations? And do you see how your suffering this way is the work of My Love, My Love Which is constantly teaching you to want only Me, to despise everything else? I never leave you, but you must learn to love Me in Myself, to understand whatever it is I send you as My token of Love, My embrace -- but it is not Myself -- and therefore it is good only as coming from Me at this moment.
O Jesus, give me the purity to love You alone, only You, and at every moment. (top)
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THE MEASURE OF MY LOVE is my trust of Jesus. When I am distressed by my weakness in a way to doubt His Love for me, to that degree I do not love Jesus, because I do not believe He will provide what I need -- which is to be loved by Him, only that. Charity is love of friendship, and a friend knows that he will be taken care of by a friend -- even when it seems that he is being neglected. Therefore, even when I have succumbed to temptation, I can say to the enemy: "Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above" (Jn 19:11). For even God's permission of my falls is the work of His Love. I know He lets me fall because it is His desire to bind me to Himself in the knowledge of what I am in myself, away from Him. But the more He lets me see what I am in myself, the more grace He gives me to cleave to Him.
IT IS LOVE AND LOVE ALONE that prevents anything from coming between you and Me. When you are not loving Me it is because you are permitting something to come between us, and since you do want to love Me with all your heart, what could that be but some anxiety, some preoccupation with this or that fault, or the lack of some virtue which you are led to believe can keep you from Me? (top)
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This is how you will love Me more…by the loving solicitude which moves
you to understand my Goodness more and more
YES, YOU HAVE MANY FALSE IDEAS OF ME––but do not think that they are unimportant practically, do not think that they do not hurt you. That is another great and terrible error which so many of My children make––as though loving Me had nothing to do with the way you thought, nothing to do with the truth. No! Your act of love is an act of your reason, and it is the very effect of your love to purify your understanding more and more, and the purer your understanding becomes, the more purely, the more perfectly will you love Me. No! that is a dreadful error so many of My children fall into. They must learn to use their minds to know Me, to understand Me, to penetrate more and more into My Love for them, My Father's Love.
When you understand Our Love for you, you will see that your love for Us is the resonance of Ours for you, the response of your heart to Our Love as your heart is moved by your understanding, your understanding of Our Goodness. When you have realized this, you will strive unceasingly to understand Our Goodness more and more. That is what love is––a force that moves you without rest to know Us, more and more. That is why those who love Us more in this life will know Us more perfectly in the next life.
We give each soul exactly what it wants. We are perfectly simple. Those who love Us more want to be united with Us more––and since you are united with Us in knowledge, those who love Us more will, in the end, know Us more. But not only in the end. For in this life, as you are growing in love, you seek more and more to be united with Us in understanding, and so you grow in wisdom––until it is almost as though there were only a thin veil between Us, between Our very Essence and your understanding.
And so, My beloved children, do not permit yourselves to be led astray, but use the mind I have given you to understand Me always more. This is how you will love Me more, and that, too, is how you will make a perfect use of your freedom––and that too, is how you will know that I am loving you, by the loving solicitude which moves you to understand my Goodness more and more.
Those who have the idea of God's mercy and
those who experience its actuality
live in very different worlds
The Starets Reflects on his own Spiritual Difficulties
(Rome -- March 6, 1961)
I USED TO THINK I UNDERSTOOD the words of St. Paul, "I rejoice in my infirmity," and "when I am weak I am strong." And in a way I did, in a general way that is, because the knowledge I had of my sins and weaknesses moved me to hope in Jesus insofar as I had any hope at all--and that led me to think I was hoping a lot in Him--because relatively speaking it was a lot, since I had no hope in myself or in anything else. Yet this did not prevent me from looking for motives of hope in myself--and for the approval of others by which one seeks vainly to confirm false hope--even after God had shown me how hopeless I was in myself. Poor proud man, even knowing I had no virtue in which to hope, I was attached to the virtue I did not have. And so there developed, or rather continued to develop, a certain slavery to the love and approval of others--even as I used the little truth I had learned about God's Love and Mercy to draw souls, not to God, but to myself. And in my blindness. O my God, I even tried to convince myself (and often did) that this was a work of charity.
And yet, as I think of this, for all the perversity I can see in myself, it seems to me that the great obstacle to the perfection I was seeking was not so much my perversity as my ignorance--ignorance of the very thing I thought I understood so well, God's loving Mercy.
And the, suddenly today, I understood what was meant by the words of St. Paul, "gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me." No, it is not that Paul glorified in his knowledge of his infirmities, and in his knowledge of the power of Christ. That is what I had been doing. But Paul says, "I glorify in my infirmities," that is to say, he glories in the very actuality of his weaknesses, in his total incapacity to overcome temptation by his own strength, for what else was shown to him in that temptation which he begged be taken away. And why hadn't it been given to him if not, as he says, "lest the greatness of the revelation should exalt me?"
And so it is that God, loving me as He loved Paul, shows me my own weakness--but not so that I might understand, merely, in an abstract way--that "I must depend upon God." For I can understand that perfectly even as I continue, actually, not to depend on Him--depending, really, on my idea that I must depend on Him. But that idea, even though it is an idea of God, is a creature, not God. What does this mean, then, this strength of which Paul speak, the strength he has when he is weak? It is the actuality of depending on God's Strength, depending only on that, of actually receiving our strength from God, of being filled with it--even as the God who fills us with His Strength is showing me my own weakness, overwhelming me with the knowledge of my hopeless inclination to evil, totally hopeless in myself. It is the reality of understanding that only the Strength of Jesus can overcome the temptation which, He teaches us abundantly, I cannot overcome by myself. O how blind we are to this truth!
Ask yourself if it is not true that when temptation comes and you pray, whether your prayer is actual reliance on the Strength of Jesus--which is yours if you will accept it; or whether you do not, as I have done all my life, pray as offering your petition in order to overcome the temptation by your own strength--so that you might take more complacency in the illusion that you posses a virtue which God is using this very temptation to show you do not have.
How we must pray, therefore, for light to see this perversity even in our prayer! And as I write this, I think of the prayer of the Pharisee--which, too, I thought I had understood--how the Pharisee's "prayer" is really a request for God to confirm him in his pride. And now I think how often my prayers in temptation were not answered--because of God's love for me--because my prayers, too, were just that, the desire to avoid, not sin, but the sight of my own sinfulness.
And again, as I write this, I think of Jesus' words, of their simplicity, "ask, and you shall receive." How often I had done what I thought was to ask, and did not receive! And did I not then, at least virtually, make Jesus out to be a liar, He Who said, "ask, and you shall receive," thinking in my heart, "Yes, Lord, but I ask and do not receive!" And now at last I understand the answer: "That is because you did not ask!" That is what I understand now, that to ask is to glory in my infirmity, actually, to be strong when I am weak, with the Strength of Jesus, because I believe that His grace is sufficient, that its sufficiency is all from Him--only I must ask, ask in the very knowledge that what I am asking for is not the strength to do by grace what I could not possible do by my own strength. No! What I am asking for is for Jesus Himself to do in me what I could never do of myself.
And again, as I write this, I think of the Apostles in their little boat (Matt 8:23-27) and how the same lesson was taught to them. Only the wonder is that for so many years I had thought I understood this lesson perfectly--yet actually I had not even begun to learn it. For what would be signified by the boat covered with waves if not the power of temptation as it actually threatens to overcome me? And what strength did the poor apostles have in themselves to overcome the power of a tempest? "But he was asleep." Jesus is God, and God never sleeps, even if the man sleeps. Why then did He sleep? Why, except to teach His disciples to trust Him when they saw they could not trust themselves? How else are we to grow in grace if not by doing, by grace, what we are not able to do of ourselves--if not by trusting Jesus to do that which He asks when we ourselves are not able to do it even with the help of His grace?
And yet, this too, I thought I had been understanding perfectly all these years. And now I know that I was understanding it hardly at all.
And what I did not understand was precisely this, that it was the Strength of Jesus that would quiet the storm. Yes, I had understood that He was able to do it, and that He would do it--if I called on Him--but I did not have the understanding which called on Him. The understanding that I had was that if I prayed, then He would give me the grace by which I would be able to overcome the temptation. (But what kind of understanding was that when I saw that I was not able to overcome it?). But I did not understand that it was He in me Who would overcome it--even as I saw that I myself was not able to overcome it--just as it was Jesus Who commanded the winds and the waves to be quiet, of Himself, not the Apostles with His help.
And now I think how Jesus complained--even before He had calmed the sea--"Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" The Apostles had prayed, as I had prayed. Jesus, then, does not condemn them for praying, certainly, but for being scared and of little faith even as they prayed. And what is this fearfulness?
An evil is feared, feared unduly, when one is not confident that what can be overcome will in fact be overcome. And now it is clear how and why the apostles feared unduly. It was not merely because they saw they could not overcome the storm by their own powers. That was the simple truth. They were afraid because they did not believe that that which they themselves could not do would in fact be done. Even as Paul feared unduly when he prayed for the temptation to be taken away. And as Paul says, not only that he rejoices in his infirmities, that is to say, rejoicing in the very midst of them as he feels himself overwhelmed by the waves--like the apostles overwhelmed by the waves--but he gives the reason, which now I too understand for the first time: "That the power of Christ may dwell in me." For the power of Christ dwells in me, in a certain fullness, as it is actually necessary, and it is actually necessary when I see that I myself, of myself, am unable to overcome temptation even with the help of grace. And this dwelling of the power of Christ within me is cause for rejoicing.
And now it is most clear how I to have been fearful and of very little faith--because all these years I have not believed that Christ Himself, His power within me, would overcome the temptation which I knew I could not overcome, even with the help of His grace. And there, even as I prayed, I was limiting the power of Jesus top what I could do by its help. And so, naturally, when I knew from experience that there were temptations too great for my strength, aided or not, I prayed, but I did not pray with confidence.
And so, too, I can see now exactly why Jesus would have complained, even after His disciples had prayed. For it would seem, on the surface, to be unfair for Him to have complained. For all all they had asked for His help, and certainly it was natural to fear a tempest at sea in a little boat, when the waves were falling over it. But now it is clear that Jesus complained only because they had limited His power to what they could do with its help--whereas what Jesus wanted them to believe, and me too, is that He will always do what is necessary for me to keep His Law--no matter how far it is beyond my capacity to do, even with the help of grace..
And thus it is clear that there are three ways in which evil can be overcome: (1) by natural power and virtue; (2) by natural powers aided by grace; (3) by the power of Christ, as I call on it, when the work is beyond human strength.
And just as I recall the words of St. Augustine to the effect that if we do what is within our own power to resist temptation, God Himself will take issue with what is beyond our power. Only it is so important to understand that He will do this as I believe in Him, trusting completely in His Loving Mercy, not in a general way merely, but in the very situation where I am being actually overwhelmed by evil too great for my own strength.
There is one further point, a corollary, which I think should be added here, and it is this: I think there is a certain psychological complication related intimately to this point, and involving a certain duplicity which, I think, might accompany this lack of trust and the ignorance of Christ's grace and His power within us. When by force of an evil habit there is a certain inclination to sin, there is a further motive not to trust God in moments of violent temptation so that a soul can feel innocent and not responsible should it succumb to that which it cannot overcome. There is, then, this further temptation to satisfy concupiscence while feeling innocent at the same time...
I think this is perhaps more common than realized, and it is evidently a part of "neurotic behavior." But all the greater is the need to convince souls of this great truth, that the grace of Christ is sufficient--not merely as it helps us to overcome temptation, but as He will overcome it by His own power that is too much for us, if only we call on Him, and call on Him, not in a general and inefficacious manner, merely, but just as we see ourselves inundated by evil too great for our own strength.
Thoughts About Fathers
The reason you need a spiritual father is because by yourself you don't have the sufficient foundation to believe in the Goodness of God.
The beginning of all real virtue is in the child delighting in his father and the father delighting in the child. The father is the womb of the child's soul.
A father doesn't communicate just his own goodness; he communicates the goodness of God. To live this way, naturally speaking, prepares the way for faith in the Heavenly Father. This is how grace perfects nature.
The need to depend on the goodness of God and to rejoice in the goodness of the father is the deepest thing in a human being. "Fathers, provoke not your children" If fathers would realize [make real] their relation to the Father in Heaven, their children would honor them. Fathers think their responsibility is the generative act and making money. They not only think like this but they use their children to rationalize their own "perfection." When a father feels he is not right with God, he tries to do things with his children to justify his own existence. When you're peaceful with God you have reverence for your child -- you want to cooperate with God to make that child what God made him to be.
In our time, the role of the father in the family has been lost. It is the father's task to bring his children to the Father in Heaven.
Unless the father really believes that God is communicating His Goodness, he won't be able to communicate anything about God. All he'll communicate is his own goodness, e.g., "Why can't you be more like me?" Then the child communicates, even though he mightn't put it in words: "Who wants to be like you?" Then, psychologically, the child becomes his own father and what he wants is to rejoice in himself.
A good father allows his child to feel free to express hostility.
A stupid father says. "If you're good, I'll love you." when actually it's when you're bad that you need his love more, because you have more misgivings about yourself.
Maturity is the ability to be lost in another and to delight in another. And you cannot give this to yourself. Dependence on and delight in a father is essential to this process.
When a child reaches the age of reason, he should realize through his father a relation to God. In that sense they would be equal, even though the child is still immature.
A good father delights in the maturity of his son. When a father lives by faith your child is liberated because he becomes mature and has the same relation to God as the father has. Yet, in the genesis of faith, it is the father who shows the son how to hate his sins. If a father doesn't do that the child is thrown back into himself and withdraws from his father who is seen as an enemy, and so God too becomes an enemy. The cure for this is for the child to be open with his father (who knows the worst about the child and still loves him).
God could show you what you need to learn (and be corrected about) directly, but He wants you to learn it through a father..
The most important thing a child needs to know is that he is loved despite all his perversities and deficiencies, and where can he (or she) get that except from his father?
People have the need to get out of themselves in love for one another, especially in the love for their own father. Then this love draws all the natural desires to the right object. You've got to be loved by another to be drawn out of yourself. This is the meaning of ecstasy--standing outside yourself (in another).
"Let the little children come to me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Children has no pretentions. They are what they are,. That is why He said, "Unless you become as one of these you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." When you want with your whole heart to see goodness in God, you're a child.
A parent is a cooperating artist (e.g., provides conditions for the seed to grow). He should be cooperating with God to make the child what God made him to be, but if he is not doing that with himself, by his own docility, he is not going to do it with his child either. Furthermore, he's probably convinced he is doing good and that his child just doesn't appreciate his love.
Knowing you are loved by your father is what makes you really independent. The more you're identified with the father whom you love and trust, the more independent you are.
The natural foundation for faith (and a healthy moral life) can only be realized through a faith. In the natural order of things, a child's faith comes from his father's faith. A child comes from the father -- loves the father -- wants to please him -- and the instinct to do what is right comes from this love. We are made (to the image and likeness of God) to express the spirit of love in the experience of being one with the father. If you cut the child off from his father you eliminate the natural basis for the supernatural life.
If your own natural parents betrayed your trust, you would instinctively look for a spiritual father you could trust.
When the mother and the father are not united, the child concludes that he can't trust either of them and so he becomes his own father and mother. Without that trust and love he would manipulate and maneuver his parents but he would be his own father.
If you have a society where parents don't live by faith, you have a society that breeds little monsters.
In a home where the children love the father, they love each other. What happens in families where mothers take their children away from their fathers? This is a classic formula for making homosexuals. The father and mother should be one.
It is instinctive to want the love of a mother and father, and since you can't deny natural law, when that love is absent, young people today play mother and father to each other and then it gets mixed up with drugs and sex. Not having had the experience and pleasure of a child's ecstasy with a father, people try to get it out of the flesh...
Unless you believe you're loved and being taken care of, you can't face hard truths about yourself. You wind up with no self-knowledge.
When a child believes he is loved, he wants what the father wants and that is the foundation of all discipline. But if the father communicates what he thinks is right without sufficient love, the child will rebel and look for something outside the father's will in which to take pleasure. There are two wrong ways of disciplining the child: (1) not to correct when it is called for; (2) to correct in such a way as to destroy the union with the father. Faith orders the whole process. Love without discipline is wrong. Discipline without love is wrong.
The father's love for the son is the process by which he conforms the son to himself. But if that love is disordered, i.e., outside of a love for God, the father will deform his son. There is a right love, motivated by faith, by which the father wants the son to be right and the son wants to be right because he loves the father. There are two
A father withdraws too when he feels he is not loved and trusted by the child. There is a tendency in our society to blame the father for everything. We don't understand how much he needs to be trusted and loved in order to act as a father.
God didn't intend fathers to be perfect. In their falls and mistakes, the father learns to depend on God that much more.
If the father doesn't have reverence for his child, the child will not have it for himself.
The father can make or destroy the child.
When children love a good father, they are really loving the Father in Heaven through him.
Right and Wrong Ways to Relate to God
THERE ARE TWO EXTREMES, each of which is bad, and which you must learn, therefore to avoid. One is to seek your peace in Me, as you think, but without striving to conform yourself to Me. And the peace you are seeking, therefore, is not My Peace, but a sensual complacency in yourself which you would like to think is in Me. But it isn’t. And that is why My Love for you cannot allow you to rest in that kind of peace––because it isn’t mine.
Then, realizing that something is wrong, you swing to the opposite extreme, now trying [by your own efforts alone, without Me] to conform yourself to Me, in order to please Me––and by that motive your act is good, yet it is disordered and so, again, I cannot allow you to find your peace, i.e., My Peace, in it.
What We Do Wrong When Our
Failings Come to Light
And here is the very heart of this lesson, that when I show you––through a severe temptation, or sometimes even permitting you to fall––how prone you are to evil, you conclude, rightly, that you are not, in the measure of your evil disposition, conformed to Me. I mean this, not merely in a general way, but in a very particular and precise sense, that you are not conformed to Me now. And consequently it is impossible for you to be in peace, My Peace, unless you are actually conforming yourself to Me––not in a general way, but just in the way that I want you to be conforming yourself to Me at this moment.
And here is the mistake you make––you do not understand that the very realization of your inadequacies is My Voice calling you to come to Me in order to get what you need to please Me. And so the mistake is to seek what you need apart from Me––and then things go from bad to worse, because then you allow yourself to be separated from Me more and more, and this in the illusion that you are pleasing Me thereby!
The Right Way to Act
Now do you see the lesson I would teach you? That the more you recognize your lack of conformity to Me the more promptly you must run to Me and the more closely you must cling to Me, to My Heart––not to remain as you were (that is the other extreme) but to become what I want you to be, realizing that only as you are united with Me can you receive the grace necessary to do what I am asking of you at this moment. And then, after this realization, as your soul is in My Peace, you will know, clearly, what you are to do by your own powers––and you will understand that each thing you are doing is pleasing Me––and then your peace will grow as you are actually conforming yourself to Me––because your every act will be My action in you. You must understand that My Peace which I give you is not something completed in which you can rest as in an end. No! It is My Life, your participation in My Life, which is a constant becoming.
Understanding How Our Own, Distinct Free Will
Works within God’s Will
You can see, too, in this, how the error comes from your incapacity to understand how the distinct principle––your own free will and its operation––is distinct, not as it is separated from Me, but just as it is united with Me. But in your ignorance you are moved to undertake your responsibility in relation to Me by separating yourself from Me, as though it would not be your own act if you were united with Me. Whereas the truth is the very contrary––far from being your own act without Me, it would not be any act at all. And so, the natural consequence of your notions of freedom and responsibility is that your act becomes more and more disordered as you remove yourself more and more from the Principle of your acts, your Life. And this increasing disorder, you can see, gradually approaches the state of non-being, or nothingness.
Do you see now? Do you see how true it is that without Me you can do nothing? Ponder this lesson very much. It is the secret of My Peace, My Peace which I give to you.
--Excerpted from The Mystery of Work (click here)
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