Si Fractus Fortis

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!

The Blessed Virgin is not called Our Lady of Good Counsel for nothing. She is always giving me bits of good advice. One of these has been how to pray for people. We are not talking here about praying for the major people and situations in your life, but for more casual prayer needs which may come into your attention.

I think it’s the experience of most Christians that certain people or situations “light up” for them, in the sense that they feel called to pray for that person or situation. The problem is that often they don’t know how to do it. A few mumbled words seem inadequate somehow.

Anyway my Lady was quite specific about how to pray in such a situation. Whenever you feel called to pray for someone or something, you should hold their image in your mind, say their name and then two Ave Marias. You should continue to pray every day for that person in the same way until you feel some form of release from the burden of prayer. The ideal is a specific time of day in which you go through all the people you are currently praying for, though of course you can add to that during the day if a new situation comes to your attention.

Don’t make the list too long. Pray only for those people and situations that you feel called to pray for.

… and of course if someone asks you to pray for them.

I am always amazed at how different the experience of saying the rosary is each time. I always start by asking Our Lady to lead me through it.

Sometimes it’s just a nice relaxing quite time in which I establish a gentle rhythm and move into a quiet trance-like state. Sometimes it’s a wonderful time of communing with Our Lady in which the emphasis is on her and the meditations take place somewhere in the back of my mind.

And sometimes I am transported into the mystery, and experience something of the time and place. Sometimes I am a spectator. For instance quite often I have been sitting at the base of a pillar in the Temple and seen a woman, her husband and their newborn baby come in, and started wondering what all the fuss was about.

Sometimes I feel what Our Lady felt, and I have shared her joy, her wonder, her grief and her glory.

And each now and then I am permitted to feel something of what our Saviour went through. Last night, I shared just a tiny bit of his desolation in the Garden, the helplessness and degradation of the scourging and crown of thorns, the physical exhaustion and collapse of carrying the cross. The feeling was so intense I was lying on the floor, shaking, in floods of tears. And then I found that I was lying at the foot of the cross.

Deus, qui nos redemptionis nostrae annua expectatione laetificas:
praesta ut Unigenitum tuum, quem Redemptorem laeti suscipimus,
venientem quoque Judicem securi videamus,
Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, Filium tuum:
Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus,
per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

O God, Who dost gladden us by the yearly expectation of our redemption,
grant that we, who now joyfully receive Thine only begotten Son as our Redeemer,
may also without fear behold Him coming as our Judge,
even the same Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son:
Who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God,
world without end. Amen.

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

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.

I suppose before I decided to become a Catholic, I subscribed to the view - common among many Anglicans and Catholics too - that there really isn’t that much difference between the different Christian denominations. I basically viewed Catholicism as Anglicanism with a few bolt-on extras, such as the Pope and Mary.

Although this is a common enough Anglican view, it isn’t the view of the more evangelical Christian denominations. They see clearly the truth about Catholicism - it’s an entirely different religion.

Let examine for instance the difference between the Protestant and Catholic views of Mary the mother of Jesus. For most Protestants Mary is a relatively minor New Testament figure. She only really surfaces in the Protestant consciousness at Christmas and lapses back into obscurity for the rest of the year. She is of little more significance than, say, the figure of Zacchaeus and probably has less sermons preached about her.

When I first came as an Inquirer to the Catholic Church I still had very much the view that Mary was an extra, whom I could take or leave as I pleased. It’s only now, after nearly a year, that I am coming to realise that Mary, far from being an extra, is right at the very centre of Catholicism.

Can you imagine any Protestant or even most people who call themselves Anglo-Catholic writing in these terms about her?

The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace; being by worthiness and by merit most acceptable to Him, and, therefore, surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven…..

Thus is confirmed that law of merciful meditation of which We have spoken, and which St. Bernardine of Siena thus expresses: “Every grace granted to man has three degrees in order; for by God it is communicated to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin, and from the Virgin it descends to us.”

Pope Leo XIII Encyclical Iucunda Semper Expectatione (1894) On the Rosary

I’ll write more in the next few days about what this realisation has actually meant to me.

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli

Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,

Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,

Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem

Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore

Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

I have begun to pray the rosary seriously - not just for itself but as a way to achieve prayer intentions. I am now on the 5th day of the 2nd novena of the “54 days of prayer” and I am praying for the conversion of my wife to the fullnes of the  Catholic faith. For those who don’t know the 54 days of prayer it consists of praying five decades of the rosary each day for six novenas. The first three novenas are in petition, and the second three novenas are in thanksgiving (whether or not there has been any outward manifestation of the prayer being granted).

On the fourth day of the first novena, my son called to tell me that he had just got engaged to his girlfriend, whom he has been living with for four years. I know that isn’t exactly what I was praying for, but my experience of prayer is that whenever one prays for one thing properly, other related things come right too along the way.

As a converting Protestant, the whole concept of “rosaries” and “novenas” has been anathema to me in the past. But now I am experiencing the power of praying in these kinds of way. I am realising that the way Catholics approach prayer is different to Protestants. For Protestants prayer is like trying to wheedle something out of a reluctant parent. For Catholics it is more like writing a cheque or sending in an order on the internet. You do something and certain results follow. Not because it’s “magic”, but because that’s the way it’s been set up to work.

I have of course grossly oversimplified here, but I do really think there is a basic difference in attitude.

Anyway, I will keep praying!

Yesterday in the late morning, I felt as if God were asking me whether I was prepared to put my life entirely into his hands for the next half of the day, i.e. from 12 noon to 12 midnight. The challenge was to do nothing at all unless I felt that he was telling me to do something.

I accepted the challenge, and as a result had one of the most remarkable twelve hours of my life. What happened was that I spent virtually the entire period in prayer. The only specific actions I took were to eat two meals and wash up afterwards, make endless cups of tea, send one urgent email and read a few short passages out of “Humility of Heart”. That was it.

As far as the prayer was concerned, I said None, Vespers, Compline, Matins and Lauds out of the Divine Office at the appropriate times, but otherwise spent the whole time in an attitude of listening. At one point in the evening I got a bit distracted, but soon pulled myself back to the listening again.

Frankly before I did this, I would have said it was impossible for me to spend the greater part of twelve hours in prayer. But it didn’t seem in the least difficult at the time. In fact the Lord made it clear to me that the purpose of this half-day was to train me in hearing his voice. The essential first step in doing this was to train me in not responding to all my own impulses. I became very aware of how much unnecessary activity I am engaged in every day - how I jump from one thing to another - and also how easy it is to confuse religious activity with the true action that comes from listening to God’s will.

At the end of the day, I felt that God was challenging me to put myself in his hands for the whole of the next day (i.e. today). So far it has been very different. I’ll report on it tomorrow.

I’m reading On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins at the moment in which he posits a model of how the human brain works. His theory is that what we think of as intelligence is basically memory leading to prediction. I’ll quote the book cover:

Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent. The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness.

I was struck forcibly while reading how often the Bible talks about remembering. We are told to remember God’s covenant, his mercies, and many other things. God too is depicted as remembering his promises. Jesus asks his disciples to remember his words and his miracles. At the Last Supper the apostles were told to “do this in memory of me”.

If Hawkins is right that memory is the foundation of intelligence, then it sounds as if it is the foundation of faith too. Forgetting is the way to lose faith, and consequently spiritual intelligence.

After many long years in the wilderness I have started saying the rosary again. Yesterday was the Joyful Mysteries, always my favourite, and once again I was struck by the power and beauty of this way of praying. When I say "struck" I mean it reduced me to tears at least three times and I finished the last Gloria with a soaking wet handkerchief and my cheeks covered in water!

The inspiration that reduced me to tears was simply this: that God had on the face of it been inactive in Israel for centuries, and yet there were so many people waiting for him "to restore the kingdom to Israel", faithfully praying, faithfully watching, faithfully keeping the trust. In each of the joyful mysteries we meet more of them, first Mary, then Elizabeth, then the shepherds, then Anna and Simeon, then the doctors in the Temple and the bystanders. They are all sorts and types of people, priests, intellectuals, young women, old women, poor uneducated workers. And they all recognise that God has started to work again, that his promises are real and are coming to fruition, that their prayers have been answered and that their joy has arrived.

Each of those moments in time is surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses in spirit - all the countless people who have prayed and meditated on these scenes throughout the centuries, whether through the rosary or not. As we pray the rosary we are part of this witness; we are caught up into the heavenly chorus. We too will see the promises of God made real, our prayers answered, and our joy set before us.

Lord, over the last week I have begun to learn how by following you I can be a real light to the world. I found myself praying with people. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I prayed with our new Anglican vicar first thing in the morning. And then on Friday I found myself praying with a fellow Catholic sitting on the steps of the Catholic church at 7 o'clock in the morning. And I have had some wonderful times of prayer with you on my own as well, Lord.

How unpredictable to us humans are your ways, Lord. Neither of those things would I have expected before they happened. They are not major events, but I feel they have a significance greater than appears on the surface. They are simply moments of your grace entering upon the world.

Though I often use one or other version of the Divine Office, at the moment I am simply praying the Psalms. I have a paperback copy of the Grail Psalms and take it everywhere with me.

I read them aloud and in strict order. Obviously if I am in company I will read them under my breath, but as with the Divine Office I don't just read them mentally. Sometimes I will read just one psalm; sometimes I will read for half and hour or more. I let the Lord lead me.

One thing I have found which enhances the experience of reading the psalms greatly. This is to imagine that one is Jesus saying them during his lifetime on Earth. This is sometimes quite astonishingly powerful. We sometimes subconsciously think that it was easy for Jesus to carry out his earthly ministry. After all he was God so he could rise above it. Reading the psalms in this way quickly puts paid to this misunderstanding.

What about the psalms in which the psalmist asks for mercy on his sins? These are no problem if we see Jesus as representative man, taking our sins upon himself. Even though Jesus never sinned himself, he felt the burden of sin more than anyone.

Lord, thank you for starting me out on this great adventure of writing this blog. I know how easily this could become all-consuming. I also know the temptations of arrogance, intolerance, self-satisfaction and complacency it can easily lead to. In fact reading back over what I have written during the past 24 hours I can see evidence of these failings already.

I know, Lord, that the path to perfection leads through our imperfections. I know you use my failings and stumblings - even my deliberate sins - as ways to teach me. I know that often it's when I feel furthest from you that I make the greatest progress.

All I ask is to do your Will, and that you should never leave me.