Note:
Study leads to prayer leads to Truth.
Quote:
“Study has been called a prayer to truth.”
Source: Sertillanges, Antonin G., O.P. The Intellectual Life: its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987, page 69.
Note:
At the very least we should simplify our inner lives by removing attachments. Then, ideally, we become free to simplify our outer lives, making the exercise of our spiritual gifts (i.e., doing our work) more fully possible. It’s deeply interesting how the inner and outer operate in tandem.
Quote:
“One word suggests itself here before any other: you must simplify your life. You have a difficult journey before you — do not burden yourself with too much baggage. Perhaps you are not absolutely free to do this, and so you think there is no use laying down rules. That is a mistake. Given the same external circumstances, a desire for simplification can do much, and what one cannot get rid of outwardly, one can always remove from one’s soul.”
Source: Sertillanges, Antonin G., O.P. The Intellectual Life: its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987, page 41.
Note: Outer silence is necessary for creating and building inner silence. And inner silence is indispensable for walking the path of the spiritual life. Throughout our day we should make recourse to the inner silence whenever we find ourselves uncentered or distracted from God.
Quote: “Outward silence is very requisite for the cultivation and improvement of inward; and, indeed, it is impossible we should become truly interior, without loving silence and retirement. God saith by the mouth of his prophet, “I will lead her into solitude, and there will I speak to her heart (Hos. ii. 14); and unquestionably the being internally engaged with God is wholly incompatible with being externally busied about a thousand trifles.”
Source: Spiritual Progress: or, Instructions in the Divine Life of the Soul from the French of Fenelon and Madame Guyon: Intended for Such as are Desirous to Count all Things Loss that they may Win Christ. Edited by James W. Metcalf. NY: M.W. Dodd, 1853; quote is from chapter 14 of Madame Guyon’s Method of Prayer.
Note:
It can take some time to adjust to being in solitude and silence, just as this writer describes the adjustment period a backpacker or camper needs to break away from the tyranny of the hectic city life. This adjustment period really could argue against taking short silent retreats, only a weekend long or so. It will probably take that long just to settle down and start to empty all the accumulated noise out of your head.
Quote:
“The thoughts that run in people’s heads about being late for work and what to have for dinner and what’s on TV that night, those go away in about four days to two weeks of being in the wilderness,” Douglas said. “Then you develop a more intuitive and emotional communication in your head. You eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and you’re mindful of weather changes.”
Source: The Bangor Daily News, 10 April 2013, an article titled “‘Hermit’ burglar compound littered with batteries, ‘tons and tons’ of propane tanks.” I no longer have the author’s name, but the person quoted here was Michael Douglas, adult programs director at Maine Primitive Skills School based in Augusta, Maine.
Note: Happy Valentine’s Day! I have come to learn over the years to be more comfortable with silences in a relationship, either earthly ones, or the one God has with me. I think now that this is a sign of maturity and of being comfortable together. Early in a relationship, when you’re just starting out, you’re full of questions about each other and there can be long phone calls, multiple emails or texts each day, or (way back in the day) daily letters mailed. But sometimes you’re able to reach a point where it’s good to be sitting together silently watching the frogs in the pond, or sharing the couch while you’re both reading and the cat snoozes in between you, or walking together through the woods while you give the birds and insects a chance to share what’s been going on in their lives.
Quote: “My sense is that the mystery of silence draws us deeper into love, and love is something that we cannot control; love invites us into fresh ways of thinking and unfamiliar ways of being.
“Fundamentally, love is at the heart of our Christian faith tradition. God is love, and in consenting to silence, we allow Love to wash over us, inviting us into a ‘new we,’ a new kind of community that affirms the divine imprint within all humanity and contributes to building the kind of world we all want to live in.” (p. 164)
Source: Heuertz, Christopher L. The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2017, page 164.
Note:
Prayer in this telling is first and foremost asking for (spiritual) stuff, or expressing our desires to God. It isn’t here the sitting with God that we read about in present-day spiritual literature (note that the source of this quote is over 100 years old!). Meditation, as a subclass of prayer, is described at the end of the quote.
Quote:
“An act of the virtue of religion which consists in asking proper gifts or graces from God. In a more general sense it is the application of the mind to Divine things, not merely to acquire a knowledge of them but to make use of such knowledge as a means of union with God. This may be done by acts of praise and thanksgiving, but petition is the principal act of prayer.”
“It is therefore the expression of our desires to God whether for ourselves or others. This expression is not intended to instruct or direct God what to do, but to appeal to His goodness for the things we need….
“Meditation is a form of mental prayer consisting in the application of the various faculties of the soul, memory, imagination, intellect, and will, to the consideration of some mystery, principle, truth, or fact, with a view to exciting proper spiritual emotions and resolving on some act or course of action regarded as God’s will and as a means of union with Him. In some degree or other it has always been practised by God-fearing souls.”
Source: Wynne, John. “Prayer.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.
Note: The spiritual discipline of silence – practiced to greater or lesser degrees – is of biblical origin and has been enjoined by “all writers on the spiritual life.” One wonders, then, why it seems such an odd, foreign, and difficult practice today. It casts the character of noise in a sad and sinful light, or at least emphasizes how detrimental to spiritual growth noise is. The older I’ve gotten, the more of a fan of silence I’ve become. And here’s something I’ve learned: it really is easy to create an envelope of silence to live in (don’t turn on the radio or start the video; stand aside from the pointless nattering chit-chat where people gather; seek out quieter places); what is really hard is dealing with the constant running commentary in one’s own head.
Quote:
“All writers on the spiritual life uniformly recommend, nay, command under penalty of total failure, the practice of silence. And yet, despite this there is perhaps no rule for spiritual advancement more inveighed against, by those who have not even mastered its rudiments, than that of silence. Even under the old Dispensation its value was known, taught, and practised. Holy Scripture warns us of the perils of the tongue, as “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Nor is this advice less insisted on in the New Testament; witness: “If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man” (St. James 3:2 sq.). The same doctrine is inculcated in innumerable other places of the inspired writings.
“Silence may be viewed from a threefold standpoint:
“From the foregoing it will be readily understood why all founders of religious orders and congregations, even those devoted to the service of the poor, the infirm, the ignorant, and other external works, have insisted on this, more or less severely according to the nature of their occupations, as one of the essential rules of their institutes.”
Source: Obrecht, Edmond. “Silence.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company,1912.
Note: Obedience in the sense of the evangelical counsels is a vow taken by religious which assumes that the superior will not demand anything contrary to the will of God. These vows don’t restrict persons so much as free them up from the necessity of making so many decisions; someone else becomes responsible for that and the vowed person can focus on God more readily. At least in theory, I suppose. It seems that it would have to be really hard for someone who has taken this vow to stand up and tell a superior, “No, what you’re telling me to do is contrary to God’s will.” And it seems that it could be easy for a superior to abuse the relationship. You understand, of course, that I have not taken a vow of religious obedience and don’t personally know how it goes.
Quote:
“Religious obedience is that general submission which religious vow to God, and voluntarily promise to their superiors, in order to be directed by them in the ways of perfection according to the purpose and constitutions of their order. It consists, according to Lessius (De Justitia, II, xlvi, 37), in a man’s allowing himself to be governed throughout his life by another for the sake of God. It is composed of three elements:
Religious obedience, therefore, does not involve that extinction of all individuality, so often alleged against convents and the Church; nor is it unlimited, for it is not possible either physically or morally that a man should give himself up absolutely to the guidance of another. The choice of a superior, the object of obedience, the authority of the hierarchical Church, all exclude the idea of arbitrary rule.”
Source: Vermeersch, Arthur. “Religious Obedience.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.
Note: Chastity in the sense of the “evangelical counsels” refers to temperate control of sexual desire and function. For those in religious orders and for other unmarried people it expands to avoiding all sexual activity (celibacy), but for most Christians (i.e., the married ones) it means remaining faithful to one’s marriage vows and avoiding sexual temptations. Martin Luther talked about the same thing in his Small Catechism explanation of the 6th Commandment: “…so that we lead pure and decent lives in word and deed, and each of us loves and honors his or her spouse.” But as you can see in this quote, chastity is closely related to abstinence and sobriety.
Quote:
“Chastity is the virtue which excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite. It is a form of the virtue of temperance, which controls according to right reason the desire for and use of those things which afford the greatest sensual pleasures. The sources of such delectation are food and drink, by means of which the life of the individual is conserved, and the union of the sexes, by means of which the permanence of the species is secured. Chastity, therefore, is allied to abstinence and sobriety; for, as by these latter the pleasures of the nutritive functions are rightly regulated, so by chastity the procreative appetite is duly restricted.”
Source: Melody, John. “Chastity.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.
Note: Voluntary poverty in the spiritual sense of the “evangelical counsels” doesn’t mean cashless groveling, but rather doing without frills, being frugal, and not being wasteful. It has a lot of overlap with the idea of simplicity, or simple living.
Quote:
“Voluntary poverty is the object of one of the evangelical counsels. The question then arises, what poverty is required by the practice of this counsel or, in other words, what poverty suffices for the state of perfection? The renunciation which is essential and strictly required is the abandonment of all that is superfluous, not that it is absolutely necessary to give up the ownership of all property, but a man must be contented with what is necessary for his own use. Then only is there a real detachment which sufficiently mortifies the love of riches, cuts off luxury and vain glory, and frees from the care for worldly goods.”
“The vow of poverty is ordinarily attached to a religious profession; a person may however bind himself to a modest and frugal life, or even to follow the direction of an adviser in the use of his property. The vow may be perpetual or temporary. It may exclude private possession, or even to a certain point possession in common. It may entail legal disability or be simply prohibitive. It may extend to all goods possessed at present, or expected in the future; or it may be limited to certain classes of property; it may require the complete renunciation of rights, or simply forbid the application to personal profit, or even the independent use of the property.”
Source: Vermeersch, Arthur. “Poverty.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 