Si Fractus Fortis

My son, you are after all this time still jumping from method to method and making everything wildly complicated. I have told you exactly how to stay on the Way. I have told you not to be concerned about feelings or results. I have told you to PERSIST. And what do you do? You never stick to what I have told you to do, you give up the second you don’t feel perfect, you insist on results even though you don’t know what the results should be. As as for persisting - you can’t even persist in doing things the wrong way!

But don’t be disheartened. You have learned a lot along the way. Your heart has always remained mine, and you have been true to your desire to walk in my ways and do my will. I will honour all that.

Let us be quite clear - there is no other blessing for you in any path other than the one I have given you. I have cut all other paths off for you. That does not mean they cannot be means of grace to others - but for you, you have my command. There can be no blessing in disobeying my command.

I want you to listen fully to me on this. You must hear me out. The world is in desperate need of those who hear my voice. The forces of evil are triumphant in their own minds and the voice of good has grown very quiet. I need people to be at my disposal. Not that I as God need anything, but I have decreed that I will act through humans, through mortals. What else would be the point of the Incarnation?

Many years ago you had the insight that you are all called to act as Christ did when he was on Earth, and that if you didn’t do what he would have done, then it wouldn’t be done at all. That is because I have decreed it to be so.

And what did Jesus do on Earth? “My food is to do the will of him who sent me”. He lived utterly and completely in the will of the Father.

That is what I ask you to do. You are a son of God, adopted through the merits of the sacrifice of my Son. You are his brother by adoption. If you obey the will of his Father as he obeyed it, then you will accomplish greater things than he did. That is his promise to you all. It is a mystery to you how that can possibly be true, but in my eternal plans it is.

I am saying these words so that you will remember them when you are tempted again to leave my Way. Remember, I have shut off all other paths for you. Others may find blessing in them, but not you. Persist.

Now what do you need to know? What questions do you have? You want to know whether it is really possible for someone like you to live in the Way I have indicated. Of course it is. I would not command you to do something you did not have the power to do. And what is difficult about it? I have asked you to do nothing that is any more difficult than writing these words on the page.

You also want to know how much use you can make of the world’s methods of setting goals and managing time. My answer to that is none at all. None at all. They are quite incompatible with what I am asking you to do. You will get no blessing from them.

You are asking whether you should pay attention to money, security and so on - especially where your wife and family are concerned. My answer is that you must trust such things to me.

All will be made clear as you progress along the Way. You will learn exactly what needs to be done, how to do it, and what the results should be. But you will only learn these things by trusting yourself to me. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

This is the answer to all you questions, worries and concerns. There is nothing that is not solved by this. Grasp hold of it.

Your friend M. said that once you had overcome your initial uncertainties you would shine forth in God in a marvellous way. That is true. But remember that success is always to be judged by me and not by the world. You may be shining forth in me even as the world reviles you and all seems to be failure and dismay.

Do not fear. That has always been the watchword of the saints. Do not fear - because the Lord is with you.

Who can harm you if the Lord is with you?

You are nearly at the end of these writings. I have just a few more things to say to you. Firstly, do not be concerned about what others think of you. You are not here to make friends. The path of righteousness is often a lonely one. Secondly, remember that you need make no judgements about what you should be doing, neither need you listen to anyone else’s judgement. Only I can tell you what to do. Do not let yourself be condemned. And finally when you fail do not spend time commiserating with yourself - pick yourself up and get back on the Way.

My son, the question on your mind is “Is this what it’s supposed to be like?” You feel frustrated because yesterday you did not feel that you were floating through life buoyed up by the Spirit of God. But did I not warn you yesterday that what you feel does not matter. The important things are obedience and faithfulness. If you look at yesterday in that light you will see it very differently.

It is the same with today. You do not feel that you are doing well. You feel frustrated rather than peaceful. Yet you have done what I said - you made your resolution at the start of the day to follow my Way throughout the day and you have done what has presented itself to you as the Way. What else could you have done to please me?

Ignore your frustration. You must learn to work through it. Although you think you are acting just the same as before, you have a radical difference of heart. To you it is now my Way that is important. 

You are also haunted by the question “Have I got it right?” You want assurance that this is in fact the right way to proceed - that you haven’t been misleading yourself. This is something that can only be answered by continuing on the Way. Assurance will come.

You have read enough in the writings of the saints to know that “assurances” and “consolations” are to be valued very low. The greatest growth comes in the times when assurances and consolations are removed.

You have also some specific areas of concern. You worry about the work that needs to be done, the disorder in your life, the future - especially in terms of money. You know that you need to earn more money, but I do not appear to be guiding you to do so. Instead you are kicking your heels in inactivity. In all these concerns I say “Have faith” and “Be faithful”. Do you think I cannot change all these things overnight if I wish? Indeed I will change them very soon if you remain faithful - and in ways that will surprise you.

There is another area in which you have questions and that is about your thoughts. Should following the Way not only affect your actions but also your thoughts? After all, the thoughts which you write here are my thoughts - should you not also be having these thoughts during the day? These thoughts are diferent from your own thoughts which tend to be worries, questions, concerns.

This is indeed a legitimate cause of concern to you. You have read St Paul where he says “bring every thought captive to Christ Jesus”. You have wondered what this means in practice and at times tried to obey it literally. But understand that the mind of Christ is precisely the Way that I have outlined to you. The Way of intention and faith. What is important is your intention and your faith. If these are right your thoughts will fall in line.

Now do you understand? There is nothing hidden - the Way is clear. Follow in the Way and you will be following me. You may feel now that nothing is happening, but you will find soon enough that that is not the case.

So in answer to your first question: “Yes, this is the way it is supposed to be.” At one stage yesterday evening you lost your intention. When that happens, it is sufficient simply to bring yourself back by re-affirming your intention and starting to act out of it again.   

My son, you are worried that you have displeased me by not being faithful - and indeed you have not been faithful to what I said. But do not spend time regretting what you have and have not done. Turn rather back to me and start to walk in my ways again. That is what repentance is and my forgiveness is always given to those who are repentant.

I wish today to tell you what it is that has been going wrong with you. You need to know what to avoid, what to shun and what to follow. You also need to know how to pick yourself up again when you go wrong. Let us look at all these. 

First - where did you go wrong? The answer is a simple one. You let go of my hand. I told you exactly what you needed to do to walk in my grace and you did it for a time and then stopped. What I told you to do was two things only:

1. give yourself to me at the beginning of each day to walk in my path
2. believe throughout the day that you are walking in my path

Two things then: INTENTION and FAITH. That is all. Nothing else. What can be simpler than that? There is nothing more difficult about it than the intention and faith that you display in writing these pages.

When you let go of these, disaster follows. Why do you let go of them? Let us examine the reasons. There are basically two reasons. One is that you do not FEEL that you are on the right path and the other is that you do not see RESULTS. Feelings and results - did I ever tell you to follow your feelings? Or did I ever tell you to worry about results? No, indeed not.

So put out of your mind any ideas you have that you must experience a particular type of feeling or see particular types of results. Leave both your feelings and the results of your actions in my hands. That is where they belong. You will have feelings and you will have results - but it is not for you to worry about what they will be.

When you go wrong - and it will happen - how can you bring yourself back onto the right path?

From what I have been saying the answer should be obvious. Instead of feelings, have intention. Instead of results, have faith. Think of someone with the intention of climbing Everest. They may go through many extreme feelings but it is their  intention that will get them to the top, not their feelings. They may undergo many setbacks but it is their faith that will keep them going even when everything seems a disaster. So it must be with you.

As a general remark I would add that you tend to allow your imagination to make your worries and concerns seem real. You worry about money, about the state of the world, about your own sinfulness, about your work. Most of all you worry that you cannot trust yourself to see things through. And you are quite right - you cannot trust yourself. All these things should be in my hands.

All you have to do is to play your part. Have the intention to follow my Way and the faith that you are following it. And when one or the other fails, then hasten to restore it. That is all you have to do. I will say it again: that is all that you have to do. That is the golden thread that you follow and which will lead you through every situation and every circumstance. From the Valley of the Shadow of Death to the Heavenly City itself. Indeed it transforms the Valley of the Shadow of Death into the gates of the City.

Remember that every detail of your life is under my control and that all things therefore work to your good. Be faithful, and I will be faithful too. I am faithful even when you are not.

I have told you many times that this is your ministry. You have no other. There may be many things you will do as a result of this ministry, but they will not be your ministry - this patient following of my Way step by step is your ministry. Your ministry at this moment is to write these words. Not because writing words is your ministry but because it is the current step on the Way - and the Way is your ministry.

I emphasize these points over and over again because they are of the utmost importance. Remember that anything you do, good or evil, which is not part of the following of the Way is displeasing to me. You can only please me by following the Way. If you follow the Way you can do nothing other than please me. I will be pleased as much by the little things as by the big things. There is nothing you could do at this very moment wich would be more pleasing to me than writing these words. Not if you were to give all your money to the poor or give your life for my Gospel. One day of course you may be called to do these things - but not this moment.

Remember these words of mine. Re-read them often. 

My son, you are doing well but need to remember that your aim in life is one: to do God’s will. You need no other aim or goal or intention. You need to understand too that the way to God’s will is not by endeavour or striving, but by faith.

So how do you live during a day? Every theory about life comes down in the end to what you do right now in the present moment. How you decide that or how you come across that is the crux of the matter.

Those who have the intention of doing God’s will should have no other intention. Therefore they should go into every situation with the intention of doing God’s will, and also with the realisation that only God knows what his will is in that particular situation. Therefore you enter every situation with the intention to do God’s will and trusting that what you do will be God’s will. it is not for you to decide how the situation should turn out or what you should do in that situation. So many people who try to do my will think that it is a matter of applying rigid rules or of achieving some target or goal. That is why their lives are always lived under a sense of strain and why following me becomes a burden to them.

I gave you the example of writing these pages. Let me explain it a little further because I think you have misunderstood me a little. The writing of these pages is a model of how you should live your day.

First, you have three completely blank pages in your notebook. This is like the blank day before you.

Second,  you start writing with the intention of writing my words to you. Other than that you have no idea what will fill those three pages. Three empty pages may seem daunting to you but you simply write on in faith. In the same way you have no aims or expectations for what will go into your day but you simply act in faith. As long as you have the intention of doing God’s will and the faith that you are doing God’s will, you will be following me. You don’t have to achieve anything or reach any goals. This is what I mean by saying “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” You need nothing other than me.

Note that in writing these pages you have complete free will. You could stop writing at any time. You could change your intention and write on a completely different subject. You could start thinking and planning out what you were going to write. In all these cases the character of what you were doing would have changed.

To live in my will is perfect freedom. You live in peace. You are delivered from worry. You can meet every situation in the knowledge that my grace will be freely available for it. This is the true life of the Spirit.

Do not think for a moment that this means you will lead an easy life. The situations you face may be terrifying or heartrending or painful. I lived all of these and far worse. But you will rejoice because the Kingdom of Heaven is yours.

Read these words of mine in the context of the Gospels, and in the context of Paul’s actions and epistles, and you will see what I have said being lived.

This is how you are to live. As I have said to you before, this is not optional. It is required of you. You can turn away from it, but you cannot avoid it. You have come so far: do not turn back now. He who perseveres to the end shall be saved.

Copy out the last psalm you read.

But my people would not hearken to my voice:
and Israel would none of me.
So I gave them up unto their own heart’s lust:
and they walked in their own counsels.

O that my people had hearkened unto me,
and Israel had walked in my ways!
I should soon have subdued their enemies,
and turned my hand against their adversaries.
The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him:
but their time should have endured for ever.
He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat:
and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.
(Psalm 81: 11-16)

Remember what it says here: “they walked in their own counsels”. That is what you have been doing up to now. 

Doing God’s Will 

My son, is it not time that you trusted yourself entirely to me? You have spent much of today avoiding trusting me. I know why you are behaving this way. It is because you do not feel as if you have been walking in my will. But faithfulness is not a matter of feelings. It is a matter of holding fast in spite of whatever feelings you may have.

I have told you how to proceed. I have told you that it does not matter if you forget it for periods during the day - indeed it is impossible not to - as long as you are still acting in the spirit of it. Nowhere did I mention feelings. Nor should you be judging by results. You cannot tell what results I am bringing about. My ways are not your ways. But be sure that everything is for your greatest good, and for the greatest good of the others whose lives you touch too.

You have been worrying today about the state of the world - but you are failing to see that it is in doing my will that you rise above the world. All your fears are negated by doing my will. If God is on your side, who can be against you? Indeed many will think they are against you, but all their efforts will resound on their own heads. 

I do not call you to criticise the government or the church. I call you to obey my will and obey it only. This would still be your duty even if you were the last Christian left in the world. Indeed perhaps one day you may be, but what is that to you? I was the only person on whom the entire weight of salvation fell though many called themselves followers of God. Those who are faithful in doing my will are few. Even those who wish to do my will are few. 

Do not think that there is anything else that matters in the world. You can number all the crises in the world, all the scares that the world makes such a noise about, but nothing matters except doing my will as I reveal it moment by moment. Many identify for themselves what they think my will is, or rather what they think it should be, and set off to achieve it. But they are doing their own work, not mine. Many shall call me “Lord, Lord” but I shall reply “I never knew you”. They will point to all they have done for me - but they will have done everything except to do my will.

Do not fall into this trap. I know what your duties and commitments in life are. Indeed I gave them to you. You do not have to worry that I will forget them. As I said to you before, are you affairs safer in my hands or in yours?

Understand what I said about not worry about your next meal or all the other things that you need. I know you need them.

So I am calling you to live in a quite different way from the way the world lives. To abandon your cares and worries, your security, is considered irresponsible by the world. This is the very same world that has raised irresponsibility to the status of a religion. Take no heed of the world - it is always with us. It put me to death. And since then it has not changed its nature one little bit.

I do not mean by this that you should be indifferent to the fate of those caught up in the world. Remember: everything in the world is designed to take people away from obedience to me. Every entertainment, every philosophy,  every political idea, every campaign, every criticism or adulation - all have the same purpose - to avoid bending the knee to Jesus Christ as Lord.

These things must be. But all you have to do is be faithful to me. Follow me step by step in the manner I have indicated to you. This is how I followed my Father’s will, and in so doing I redeemed humanity. Every saint joins me in this work of redemption. Be one of them.

Copy down for me the passage from the Psalms you were reading before you started to write:

For thou, O God, hast proved us:
thou has tried us, as silver is tried.
Thou broughtest us into the net;
thou laidst affliction upon our loins.
Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water:
but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.
(Psalm 66: 10-12)

That is a description of how you arrive at the Kingdom. It is not about feeling good or feeling on top of things. It is about being faithful through trials and pains and desolation. This passage describes the nature of my path on earth, and the path of all those who are mine.

Be faithful! 

Doing God’s Will  

My son, you are now a full member of my church. Welcome into the great fellowship of the communion of saints. Welcome too to the fellowship of the saints on earth who partake in heaven in the sacraments which I have ordained. Welcome to the sharing of my body and blood, by which you are transformed into the divine image restored by the New Adam.

Life from now on will be different for you. For you are now a citizen of heaven in exile on your earthly pilgrimage. You will always be loyal to your heavenly home. Remember kindly those you have left behind and by the life of Christ living in you transform them in their turn.

I have shown you much in these pages so far, and I will show you much more in the future. Remember that there are no  half measures in the Kingdom of God. You are called to be perfect - and perfect you must and shall be. This is not a matter of choice. It is the command of your King.

What am I calling you to? This question I return to again and again because it is much on your mind. I am calling you to live moment by moment in my grace. That is what I am calling you to - everything else will be revealed to you in that act itself of dwelling in me. You will live in my grace moment by moment, and step by step you will build my Kingdom. Remember my Kingdom is not an earthly one. Any constructs or ministries or earthly kingdoms you build here are vanity except in so far as they lead to the building of the heavenly Kingdom. These are things too deep for you to understand at present.

Now to the question of how exactly you live in my grace moment by moment. Over the last few days you have lived your life, when you have recalled it, in the way I told you - similar to the way you write these pages as an expression of my Spirit in your writing without stopping. Your life in that way has become an expression of my Spirit. When you have not recalled it, when the pressure of events takes me from your conscious mind, you have continued to act in the same spirit, but without the direct action of the Spirit. I use a small s and a large S to distinguish between the different senses of the world “spirit”. 

So you see that to live more closely in the Spirit you must practise a greater degree of recollection. The more you are consciously following the Spirit’s direction by expressing him in your actions the more your actions will be sanctified. Do not worry though: this is something that will grow in you as the Spirit continues to act in you. It is not something that you can summon by sheer willpower. Your part is to remain faithful. 

Your part in my family is the same as that of every child of mine - to live in me and I in you. In that way you are all the same: there is no distinction in Christ - not between rich and poor, man and woman, master and servant. Nor too between intelligent and simple, or whole and maimed. All are complete in Christ. But observe that the way I act in each person, the way my action manifests itself in the world, will be entirely different. The root is the same; the fruit will be good fruit but of many differing kinds.

Do not be surprised therefore if you do not find yourself bearing obvious fruit in the world. There is such a thing as hidden fruit. But be sure that bad fruit is never mine.

I have one further message for you today. And that is that your prayers have been heard. Particularly your prayers for your wife. Do not worry about her; continue to pray for her; but rest in faith that my Spirit is acting in her. She is resisting him, but she has not realised that yet. When the dam breaks, the waters will flow.

Now, you are wondering how I will fill the rest of this page! I want you to copy out Psalm 1 in the Authorised Version. Why the Authorised Version? Because it is the one you love most.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor standeth in the way of sinners,
nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,
that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;
his leaf also shall not wither,
and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
The ungodly are not so:
but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous:
but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Doing God’s Will 

My son, you have done well so far. You learned yesterday what it means to do my will for a whole day. How many things did you do? You did much, and yet what really mattered was that you were attentive to my will. You will learn to trust me more and more, the more you persevere.

For I know what you need. And did I not say when I was on earth that your Father knows you need all these things, but seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you? You will find what I meant by this.

You worry about money and work and all manner of things but they are all quite unnecessary to worry about. Your Father knows you need them.

Are these things better off in the hands of God or in your hands?

But I know what you are thinking. “What if God does not really exist?” or “What if I am approaching God in the wrong way?”

If you do the will of my Father, which is my will too, you will know the truth of these words of mine. You need no proofs. You will find certainty by experience.

Do not worry about your doubts. Just persist. Use what faith you have and it will grow. Remember the mustard seed. How it grows until it becomes a great tree where the birds of the air take shelter.

You will know the meaning of these things with great clarity. They will no longer be just words to you, but lived experience.

Do not be afraid to trust all things into my hands. The lack of worry is a sign of a true child of mine - one who has given all things into my hands. Do not think though that every worry is a sin. My Father does not expect you to trust him to that extent without having tried him first. he will prove true. How could he be otherwise? But your minds are so steeped in the ways of the world that this sort of trust can only be learned gradually. This is why there are so few who trust me with their whole lives. But those who do are sharp instruments in the hands of the Lord.

I will use you. I will use you in ways that you cannot imagine and may often not understand. You may often not know when you are being used. But faithfulness is what I look for in an instrument. Faithfulness is more than just an intellectual belief. It is following me, no matter what.

Remember what it said in the book you were reading yesterday: see things as they affect God and not as they affect you. Is what happens for God’s glory or your own? If you follow my way, then all will be for God’s glory.

It is for God’s glory that you are writing now. It was for God’s glory that you worked and prayed yesterday, and it will be for God’s glory that you live today and every day. Provided that you make that day-by-day commitment to follow my way.

What you have discovered is how light my burden is, how easy my yoke. There is nothing difficult about it in itself, though some of the things I may ask you to do may be very difficult. My grace will always aid you and keep you strong and firm. You asked me for peace. And you have it. To the one who asks it shall be given. Do you think that I would be indiffent to your struggles, to your searching? Indeed not. They shall be greatly rewarded. I have promised that all who seek shall find, and that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled.

There are many ways to follow me. But it is me who must be followed. There is no other way to God. Every saint was different from every other saint. Even those whose lives seemed similar were diffent in ways that were known only to me - but different in every way that mattered. I do not want everyone to be the same. I glory in the differences of my saints. Is St Augustine the same as St Therese? Yet both are great saints, and both Doctors of the Church. And there are saints greater than these who are unknown to the world.

These things are important to know because it is me that you must follow. Not a method or a particular teacher. Did not St Paul make this clear? You are of Christ, not of Paul or Apollos. So follow my way and you will be as I want you to be. And I will use you to accomplish what I wish to accomplish. Like a good tool, you may be entirely unaware of what is being made with your help.

Do not think though that you will be unrewarded. Far from it! You will have the only reward that matters, both in this life and in the world to come.

I am your reward. What other reward would you have?

There is no other reward that will not crumble into ashes in your hands as you try to grasp it.

Be faithful. 

Doing God’s Will 

My son, I am pleased that you have come to hear what I have to say to you. Many saints have used this method of writing down what I say to them. They do it because their only desire is to do my will and to hear from me what it is. But many others have done this exercise whose motives are not so pure. People who desire power for themselves will never hear from me rightly. It is their own desires and ideas that will be speaking.

I say this because you must always come before me in humility of heart if you wish to hear me correctly. There can be no mixed motives in your heart. Your desire must be for me and for me alone. You can so easily lead yourself astray.

How can you tell? Look into your heart and see what is there. Let the Spirit enlighten you.

If you look into your heart, what do you see? I will tell you what I see in your heart. I see a great desire for peace - and sometimes that desire for peace becomes a desire for sleep. My peace is not of this world - you must be awake.

I also see still a lack of trust in me. You have gone through a great time of testing this past year in which you have found yourself pulled in many directions. Yet in spite of all you have held firm. Build on that. Your faith is till weak. But it is there. Remember what I said about the mustard seed. Do not hold back because you think your faith is weak.

What else do I see? I still see much lusting after the things of this world, and much lusting after women too. See them as your sisters in Christ. I have no wish to stop you talking to women or being friends with them. But you must honour them. To lust after them is to degrade them in your mind.

Now I will move on to other things. There are other things in your heart which I will not deal with now. The light of the Spirit brings the darkness into light gradually so that it is not to much to bear all at once. Remember the things I have said to you: be awake, have faith, honour your sisters in the faith.

The great question you have is how to follow my will. This has been exercising you for over a year now - and for many years on and off before that.

The struggle you have been through this year has been according to my will for you. You have learnt many lessons, including faith, persistency, purity and many others. Many of these have much further to go. But there comes a time when the struggle must cease and true action in the Spirit begin.

Are you ready? Have you prepared yourself to listen? 

There are many ways of following me, just as there are many ways of writing three pages on any subject. Yet the way you have chosen to write these three pages is a model of one way of living in my will. You hear me through these pages - and in the same way you can hear me in your daily life.

First, consider that you have made a choice in what you write. You have chosen to listen to me. You are not writing about business, or love, or your day, or your other concerns. You could have chosen to write about these things, and you could also have chosen to write in the 1st person. And what’s more you can choose to change what you are writing at any moment. So you have absolute free will as to what you write, and how you write it and indeed whether you write at all. Nevertheless you have made a choice and you are keeping to it. It is not difficult to maintain that choice. You do not even have to think about it, though it is implicit in everything that you are writing now.

How are you writing? This is something you have often practised. You are writing without stopping for thought. You “keep your hand moving”. That is the way to hear what is inside you without censoring it.

So in the same way you make a choice about how you are going to live your day. It is best to do that day by day. “I will live today following God’s will”. And then act in that decision without stopping. Do not worry about what you are doing or what you have done. Let me direct you just as I am directing this writing. You may not always hear me clearly but the very act will help you to hear me better.

The secret in this is to see what you are doing as a message from me. Just as what you are writing now is a message from me, so let your actions be. It is simply a matter of seeing your actions as an extension of the writing you are doing now. You should maintain an interest in what you are doing, just as you now have an interest in what you are writing. But do not think forward or back any more than you think forward or back about what you are writing now. To stop while you were writing and think about what you were going to write next would be a mistake. But to write those thoughts would be the right thing to do.

Doing God’s Will 

In the evening we went to see the excellent production of “Richard III” at Stratford-upon-Avon. Something which had never struck me about the play before (or indeed about any of Shakespeare’s plays) was how Catholic it is. In fact the whole play is one extended depiction of what happens when God’s order is ignored.

Richmond, the future Henry VII, has the God-given mission to bring back order. Before the final battle he prays:

O Thou, Whose captain I account myself,
Look on my forces with a gracious eye.
Put in their hands Thy bruising irons of wrath,
That they may crush down with a heavy fall
The usurping helmets of our adversaries.
Make us Thy ministers of chastisement,
That we may praise Thee in the victory.
To Thee do I commend my watchful soul,
Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes.
Sleeping and waking, O defend me still!

I would love to see a production which emphasises the religious aspect, rather than treat it as a quaint historical relic as most modern productions do.

11 a.m.
So far today I have got out of bed, had breakfast, read the newspaper and looked at my email - a perfectly normal Saturday morning in other words. Has being recollected before God made any difference? Not any obvious difference I have to say. In fact what has mainly happened is that I have been struggling internally with what exactly it means to be “recollected”. Is it just a matter of trying to keep consciousness of God in one’s mind, or is it something more?

I think I have inside my mind some sort of picture of what it should feel like to be doing God’s will. It’s difficult, perhaps impossible for me to identify exactly what that picture consists of, but I know when the way I am feeling does not conform to it. And therefore I am aware that just being consciously in the presence of God is not sufficient. There has to be a sense of hearing from God, of being led or guided by him as well. So there is, or should be, a strong element of of both hearing and of submission to what is heard.

I find that I hear God best when I am most surrendered to his will. What I have gradually learned over the last year is that God’s will is not just a matter of the events which happen to me and the paths which he wishes me to take. God’s will includes everything that happens, and that includes my own thoughts, feelings, impulses and actions. So there is a sense in which I have to accept from God’s hand even my own imperfect actions. Obviously there is scope for misunderstanding here. It is not a matter of doing whatever I wish and then saying “Oh, that’s all right - whatever I do is God’s will” because then I would be like Judas saying “It’s God’s will that Jesus should be crucified, so I’m doing God’s will by betraying him.”

Nevertheless when I consciously surrender my past, present and future to God and take on faith that my actions will be according to God’s will, even if they seem very imperfect to me, then at the same time I find that I can hear God most clearly. It’s the surrender that makes the difference. So perhaps my seven-day experiment is one of surrender rather than one of recollection.

I want to return to the subject of Interior Recollection, which I last dealt with in June last year. I’ve become increasingly aware over the last few weeks about how important it is. Although it is not mentioned as such in Scripture, it is implicit in everything that is said in the Gospels and Epistles. If you read my previous posting on the subject, along with Aimee Milburn’s comment, you will have a pretty good idea of what it consists of (or, to be more precise, my understanding of what it consists of).

Interior Recollection is closely related to the concept of Surrender to God. It would be difficult to be surrendered to God without interior recollection and vice versa.

So what I am aiming to do over the next seven days is to see what degree of interior recollection I can maintain, and what effect it has on me. I’m not living in a cave in the mountains or a cell in a monastery, but instead in an ordinary house, in an ordinary town, doing ordinary things. Will I feel closer to God? What effect will it have on the fabric of my life? Will other people notice any difference? Will I succeed in maintaining recollection at all?

I intend to write a daily report on this - so let’s find out!

One of the points made by Fr. Schryvers in The Gift of Oneself is that our will is always about love.

The life of the will, its need, its irresistible tendency, is to love. If the love is regulated, the whole will is good, the entire man is good. If the love is not regulated, the whole will is perverse, the entire man is bad.
Chapter 3, Article 5

This is an amazing insight. If we ask ourselves “What am I loving when I do this?” we will have an explanation for all sorts of behaviours. Why am I writing this post? Because I love sounding off, because I love being admired, because I love having an audience, because I love showing off, because I love putting other people right, because I love demonstrating how holy or clever I am (preferably both).

This is what Fr. Schryvers in the extract above calls a “perverse” will.

But if my answer is “because I love God”, then my will is going to be a holy will.

The surrendered life is one of peace. When one has surrendered to God’s will, there is an integrity, a purity, a directness and simplicity about one’s actions. Instead of trailing myriads of one’s own intentions, the eye of the spirit is single.

This sounds easy and indeed it is. But like most actions that are simple when one has learned them, they take an immense amount of practice to learn. The difficulty is not in doing God’s will. That is the easy part because God always makes his will clear when we are prepared to listen to it, and he also always gives us the grace to do what he asks of us.

No, the difficulty lies in getting our own will out of the way. Every moment of every day we are assailed with thoughts and impulses which rush into our minds. These thoughts and impulses usually come in one of two guises. One is fear and the other is pleasure. We think of something that we are afraid of or worried about, and our immediate reaction is to forget what God is willing us to do at that moment and go off and do our own thing. Or we think of something we would like to do, and exactly the same thing happens.

Neither the actions resulting from fear nor from pleasure are necessarily sins. In fact they may on the face of it be spiritual or holy things. The point is not that they are bad in themselves, but that they take us away from the “one thing necessary” - the doing of God’s will at precisely this point in time.

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42).

There was nothing wrong about the work that Martha was doing in itself and indeed it would have been the right thing to do in its place. It’s just that at that particular moment the right thing to be doing was to be listening to what Jesus was saying. And notice that, not only was Martha missing out on the blessing of that moment, she was also resenting that her sister wasn’t missing it!

Living without intent is a classic idea of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism. What it means is that you “just do” an action, rather than have intentions about it. So to give an example if you are doing the housework, you just do the housework rather than have the intent to get it finished as soon as possible, or get it out of the way, or show your mother-in-law what a good home you keep.

Done in this way actions have a purity and a restfulness about them.

When we abandon ourselves to God’s will we need to have a similar purity of intent. Anyone who sincerely tries to hear God’s will about all their actions will find themselves becoming aware of of the multitude of raging and often conflicting intentions that they have within them.

Just as the Eastern concept of living without intent is very simple (though not easy to do), so is the purity of intent we need to do God’s will. Our intention is to do God’s will, nothing else.

Therefore any intentions of our own need to be surrendered to God moment by moment. The right attitude is to do each task as if it were the only thing we have to do. Then when we have finished it we allow the Spirit to tell us what to do next. Everytime a thought enters our mind about what we should be doing, or could be doing, or ought to be doing, or would like to be doing, we share that thought with God and let it go.

That surrender is the basis of living a holy life.

The fact that the Lord seems to have established control over most of my actions has served to throw into high relief the lack of my submission to him of my thoughts and words. More and more often I come away from some encounter feeling dissatisfied with what I’ve said. What is the good of all this writing about how I am advancing on the path of sanctity when I find myself criticising my former employers, or boasting, or showing impatience? - I managed all three this morning when I went to Morning Prayer.

Worst of all, yesterday I found myself criticising the recent reception of a prominent British politician into the Church. If God is willing to welcome me into his Church with all my sins, who am I to turn round and criticise someone else’s reception? And who am I to judge someone else’s servant?

I hope and pray that becoming more aware of these things will lead to a true repentance and cleansing. At some stage before my Easter reception I have to confess a lifetime’s sins. What can I say except “And God saw that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”?

Apologies if the title of this posting implies that you, the reader, don’t know what doing God’s will is like - I know that many readers of this blog are far more advanced in this path than I am. What the posting is about is my own discoveries about what it’s like after two days’ experience - some of these discoveries have been surprising.

So here’s a list in no particular order of my impressions:

1. I was astonished at the speed at which God has been bringing order back into my life. My email and paper backlogs have vanished as if by magic. My office is starting to look tidy for the first time for ages. Loose ends have been tidied up and things are no longer left lying around after I’ve used them.
   
2. Time seems to have expanded to a remarkable degree. The day has become leisurely instead of fraught. I have had time to do things I have not been finding time for lately, such as reading. I’ve got going again on a whole heap of books which I’d started but abandoned. And most remarkable of all (for me!), I’ve been going to bed at around 10.30 p.m. instead of well after midnight.
   
3. I’ve found myself turning naturally to God in prayer during the day. Sometimes this has been about an issue in the news or in response to some trigger. One of the local Baptist ministers died yesterday after an operation. He was a fine man, and I made a point of saying the Office of the Dead for him.
   
4. My life seems to have become much simpler. There have been so many unnecessary actions making up my days - they all were abandoned. It wasn’t just actions either: I have been finding my thought processes are much simpler. I don’t get into long involved trains of thought anything like so much - and if I do find my mind wandering I just bring it back to God.
   
5. And no, I didn’t manage perfect peace and tranquillity all the time. Yesterday I exploded when Outlook crashed just as I’d completed a rather complicated email, losing the lot. But after a minute or two’s raging, I remembered that all I had to do was raise my eyes for a moment to the Divine Master. Then I just calmly went back to writing the email again and found myself of a sudden quite unbothered.
   
6. Most of the time though the greatest impression has been one of peace. Doing God’s will and nothing but God’s will involves trusting God absolutely. And who or what else is there that is more to be trusted?

Deo gratias et Maria

Here are a couple of extracts from Fr. Schryvers book, The Gift of Oneself, which I mentioned yesterday.

The first answers the question which has been troubling me for years. “It’s fine to desire to do the will of God moment by moment, but how does one actually know what his will is?”

Poor scrupulous Soul, learn to serve God in peace and tranquility!

The obligation of the present moment ceases to be a duty for thee when thou dost not recognize it. If thy mind does not perceive it, for thee it is no longer the Will of God. It is not necessary to devote long efforts to this examination. A second suffices, time to look toward God. Conscience will give the answer. If it is affirmative, the will accepts it; if the answer is negative, the will gives up the idea; if it is doubtful, the will goes on without being disturbed.

When God wishes to give us a command, He does so clearly. He does not desire us to be troubled; for trouble is a cloud that hides Him from our view.

The second extract applies the principle given in the first to the normal business of living. I have found this to be probably the best bit of advice I have ever had!

Take each action by itself, and perform it as if thou hadst nothing else to do today. Work diligently, without laziness, without slowness; but do not be tormented by the desire of finishing. The first action done, raise thine eyes for a moment to the Divine Master; then begin another duty.

Using the method contained in these two extracts, I have had two full days now living almost entirely in the will of God. I will write more soon on what that actually entails, but suffice it for now to say that already order has been brought into my disordered life to a very considerable extent.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been reading an astonishing book - a book I’d never heard of, written by someone I’d never heard of. It is called The Gift of Oneself by Fr. Joseph Schryvers, C.Ss.R.

No details are given in the book about the author or even when the book was written, but since the book was translated from French in 1934 and the author refers to Elisabeth Leseur it would seem that it was most likely written in the 1920s or early 1930s.

The astonishing thing about this unknown book is that it is without the slightest shadow of doubt the best book on living the Christian life that I have ever read. If you’ve read Caussade, then the message is similar - but unlike in Caussade it is explained clearly, simply and without ambiguity. I have been searching for the answers that this book gives long before I started this blog in March this year. And suddenly I find they are given to me all at once.

As a result of reading this book, yesterday was the first day in my life in which I felt that I had spend the entire day, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, doing nothing but God’s will. Today (so far) is the second day. It is a wonderful feeling. Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ!

If you want to read this book, I advise you to buy it quickly - before stocks are exhausted by the huge order I am about to put in so that I can give copies to all my friends and relations.

From today’s reading in Divine Intimacy by Fr. Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

This is the fundamental occupation of a soul who wishes to be a “perfect praise of glory” of the Blessed Trinity: to live interiorly in continual silence, listening and adoring God present within her, and exteriorly, being and doing only what the divine Word indicates from moment to moment.

It’s been twelve days since I wrote on Saturday 13th that I would report back on my experiences “tomorrow”. But not until now have I seemed to reach a point where I could stand back and take a cool look at what has happened.

Not that anything spectacular has happened on the outside. There have been no great developments in my life to be seen. But inside - in the “interior life” - it is as if everything has changed.

I’ve become much more sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. And it has become much easier for me to listen to this leading for quite long periods at a time. But the converse has been, that I have become much more aware of the disastrous consequences when I do not listen to the Holy Spirit. It’s almost as if I were making some beautiful artifact and then, just as I was beginning to get somewhere and it was beginning to take shape, I took a hammer and smashed up everything I had made and had to start again.

But apart from this the Lord has taught me a lot about myself. I have been shown how impulsive I am and how I react to the smallest things - how little I have been in control of my actions in fact. Paradoxically the more I allow my perception of God’s will to control my actions, the more I feel that I am now really myself.