CALL TO HOLINESS - part 2

Imitate Jesus

 

When we stay with Jesus for a long time, and watch him in prayer and contemplation, we begin to know him well. He is pure of heart, meek and humble, forgiving, patient, full of unlimited loving-kindness toward all.

How shall we imitate Jesus?

Jesus himself gave the answer: humility and love.

 

First: “Learn from me, meek and humble of heart.” Matthew 11:29

 

Second: “Love one another as I have loved you.” John 13:34

At the last supper, when Jesus got down on his knees and washed the knotty feet of the twelve apostles, he said: “I have given you an example to do likewise.” Imitate Jesus: Be a humble servant to one another; for service is both love and humility at the same time.

Humility

Jesus thirty years of silent life in Nazareth was an example for our benefit to teach us humility. This thirty year period of Jesus’ silent life is described in one sentence: “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.”

Blessed Charles de Foucauld that “going down to Nazareth” means humility, abjection: “Jesus descended with them and came to Nazareth. Throughout his life he descended, by becoming flesh, by becoming an obedient little child, by becoming poor, abandoned, exiled, persecuted, tortured, by always putting himself in the last place.”

“He went down, he humbled himself – his life was one of humility. His life was one of lowliness: the place he took was the lowest of all. Jesus went down with them to live their life with them, the life of the poor laborer, living by working. They were obscure, and he lived in the shade of their obscurity. He was subject to them…his life was one of submission.”

“Everyone who wants to be perfect must live in poverty, imitating with the utmost fidelity to Jesus’ poverty at Nazareth. How clearly He preached humility at Nazareth by spending thirty years in obscure labors, and obscurity by remaining so completely unknown for thirty years … and obedience.

“How little esteem He showed of the things of this world, of human greatness, and the ways of the world, of everything the world holds dear; nobility, wealth, status, knowledge, cleverness, repute, honor, worldly distinction, good manners.” 

“I should imitate as faithfully as possible this hidden life of Jesus.”

“Everyone who wants to be perfect must live in poverty, imitating with utmost fidelity Jesus’ poverty at Nazareth. How clearly he preached humility at Nazareth.’

“Imitate Jesus in his hidden life. Be as small and poor as he is… Work for our daily bread farming, gardening. Pray at night, work by day, love and contemplate Jesus unceasingly with all my heart, in poverty, holiness, and love.”

“Silently, secretly, like Jesus in Nazareth: obscurely, like him, pass unknown on earth like a voyager in the night; in poverty and in toil, humbly, with charity, like him; defenseless and mute before injustice, like him; letting myself, like a lamb, be shorn and immolated without resistance or protest; imitating in everything Jesus in Nazareth and Jesus on the cross.”

Love and Charity

 

After teaching us humility for thirty years, then, for the next three years of his public ministry of miracles of healing, he taught us love and charity: Holiness is love of God and love of people.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus said. “This is my commandment, that you love one another.” “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Blessed Charles said: “It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them, or to improve them: it is necessary only to live among them sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.”

“Be loving, gentle, humble, with all human beings; this is what we learned from Jesus. Not to be aggressive with anyone. Jesus taught us to go out ‘like lambs among wolves’.”

We must never be the ‘boss’ of another person. We must never make anyone afraid; never make anyone cry. 

Jesus’ example: “he went about doing good.”

“I’m called to live is through prayer and penance and the practice of Gospel virtues – love, fraternal and universal love, sharing my last piece of bread with every poor person, with every visitor, and welcoming each person as a beloved brother or sister,” Charles de Foucauld said. 

“I should carry on in myself the life of Jesus, think his thoughts, and repeat his words, his actions. May it be that he lives in me. I must be the image of the Lord in his hidden life: I must proclaim by my way of life, the Gospel from the rooftops.”

Let us focus attention on the poor.

“Let us not worry about those who want for nothing, those who people think of. Let us worry and be concerned about those who lack everything, those who nobody thinks of. Let us be friends that have no friends.”

“There is no statement in the Gospel, I think, that has made a greater impression or transformed my life more than this: ‘All that you do to one of these little ones you do it to me.’ When one thinks that these words are of eternal truth with what strength one is moved to seek out and love Jesus in the ‘little ones’, these sinners, these poor, and bring all the spiritual resources one has for the conversion of souls, all one’s material resources for the relief of temporal destitution.”

Mother Teresa called this teaching “the five-fingered gospel: You Did It To Me.”

To imitate Jesus is to be pure of heart; to willingly forgive; to feed the hungry; to welcome strangers; to give drink to the thirsty; to clothe the naked: to shelter the homeless; to teach children and youth; to visit the sick, elderly, and prisoners; to comfort those who are burdened.

CALL TO HOLINESS - part 1

“God calls all souls he has created to love him with their whole beings, here and hereafter, which means that he calls all of them to holiness, to perfection, to a close following of him and obedience to his will,” Charles de Foucauld said.

 All people are called to holiness, to be saints, to be contemplatives.

“Every Christian must be an apostle; this is not a counsel, it is a commandment. My apostolate must be an apostolate of goodness. On seeing me, people should say to themselves, since this man is good his religion must be good,” Charles de Foucauld said.

But what exactly is holiness? How can be become holy? Blessed Charles answers the question, saying we learn holiness from Jesus himself; and it has three stages:

    (1) to “come” to Jesus;

    (2) to “stay” with Jesus and to “watch” Jesus;

    (3) to “imitate” Jesus.

We must come to Jesus, sit with Jesus, observe Jesus, listen to Jesus in silence, stay in company with Jesus for a long time, until we hear him in the silence and solitude of our hearts. We must follow Jesus where he leads. We must take Jesus by the hand and walk with him, and never let go.

In the Gospels we often see Jesus calling: “come to me”, “come follow me”, “he that comes to me I will not cast out,” “let the children come to me,” and “when I am lifted up I will draw all things to myself.”

“Come to me and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart,” Jesus says. “Those who come to me I will in nowise cast out.”

Again and again he says “come to me… come to me… come to me.” Never does he utter an expression of rejection, “go away”.

We come to him, stay with him, we stay with him and watch him, and learn to love him, and to be transformed by that love.

 

When we come to Jesus, we leave the self, the ego, behind. “Whoever comes after me must deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow after me,” Jesus said.

Charles de Foucauld calls this loss of ego “abasement” of the self: “Abasing ourselves is most powerful way of joining Jesus and doing good for souls. When we are able to suffer and to love, we can do much, all that is in our power to do in this world. We feel that we are suffering. but we do know that we want to love, and to want to love is to love. We find that we do not love enough. We shall never love enough, but god, who loves us more than a mother, has told us he will not reject the one who comes to him.”

Come to Jesus

“Watch and imitate him. Jesus himself suggested this very simple method of achieving union with him and perfection to his apostles," Foucauld said.

 “All perfection is to be found in the presence of God and of Jesus and in the imitation of Jesus. It is perfectly obvious that anyone doing as Jesus did is perfect. So we must throw ourselves wholeheartedly into imitating him (a task sweeter than honey to the loving heart, as an urgent need for a loving soul a need that becomes more compelling as love becomes more ardent) and watching him, the divine Spouse (a task to less sweet or indispensable to love).

“Anyone who loves, loses and buries himself in the contemplation of the beloved.”

 

A cave where Jesus meditated in Galilee

Come to Jesus in the Scriptures

After we “come” to Jesus, we must “stay” and “abide” with him.

Young apostle John saw Jesus by the Jordan River and followed him. Then Jesus turned and spoke to him “come and see (where I stay).” John followed him, and “stayed with him”. “It was about four o-clock in the afternoon.”

We can find Jesus in reading the scriptures, especially the four Gospels. “We must read and reread the gospels without stopping so that we have the spirit, deeds, words, and thoughts of Jesus before us so that one day we may think, talk, and act as he did,” Charles de Foucauld said.

  

“The Gospel showed me that the first commandment is to love God with all ones heart, and that everything had to be endured in love; ….. each of us knows that the first effect of love is imitation… I therefore had to imitate the hidden life of the poor, humble workman of Nazareth.”

  

“When one loves, one longs to be forever in converse with the beloved whom one loves, or at least be always in his sight. Prayer is nothing else. This is what prayer is: Intimate intercourse with the Beloved. You look at Him. You tell Him of your love. You are happy at his feet. You tell him you will live and die there,” Foucauld said.

Stay with Jesus and Watch Jesus

We can also “stay” with Jesus in prayer and meditation. 

 

The shepherds were the first to see Jesus, because they were “watching” in the night, keeping “alert” and “vigilant”, “guarding their sheep,” that is guarding their wandering minds.

The starry heavens opened to them and they were illuminated and heard the angles. They ran to see to the manger and they “saw Jesus”. They returned to their fields of meditation, “rejoicing for what they had heard and seen.”

Charles de Foucauld said we can encounter the living Jesus is to “stay” with him, and to “watch” him. This means to spend time “patiently enduring” and “abiding” in silent prayer, and “watching” in meditation and contemplation.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked his disciples to “abide here” and “watch with me”. When he came back and found them sleeping, he asked them, “could you not even abide awake with me for one hour?”

The words “abide” and “stay” and “watch” and “awake” seem to have deep meaning to Jesus.

Over and over again during his public ministry, Lord Jesus urged his disciples to “Be watchful! Be alert!” (Mk 13:33). “Watch therefore.. do not sleep. I say to you and I say to all: WATCH!”

“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and anxieties of daily life…Be vigilant at all times and pray…” (Luke 21:34…)

 

The Sea of Galilee, viewed from Jesus' meditation cave.

“Be watchful! Be alert!” (Mk 13:33)

“Watch therefore…do not be sleeping…What I say to you all: WATCH!” (Mk 13:37)

“Wait here and keep awake with me…Why are you sleeping. Keep awake and pray.” (Mt 26: 36, 41)

Jesus was teaching his disciples and friends to “abide” and endure patiently with him, focusing their attention on him, leaving the world behind, adoring and loving him. He comes into their hearts and fills them with his presence and light.

When we watch with Jesus, we are struck by his withdrawal into obscurity and silence and solitude. We are impressed by his silence and his presence; by his stillness in contemplation in communion with the Father.

“And getting up very early, going out, he went into a desert place, there he prayed.” Mk 1:35

When we follow Jesus, we find ourselves following him into the desert, into the silence of the night.

 

A cave where Jesus meditated in Galilee

part 2: Imitating Jesus

THE BODY OF JESUS


When you meditate on the body of Jesus, you are flooded with illumination of his divinity, for Jesus is divine, and every thought of him, every impression of him, every footstep, even his shadow, is infinite mystery, infinite revelation.

His hands and feet, his sides, his back and shoulders, his backside and legs, his sacred loins, his head and face, his mouth and eyes -- everything is flooded with divinity, with light.

Even the words on the page of scripture which speak of him, the very words, the very ink and paper, ring like bells and gongs,echo like drums in the heart and throughout the cosmos and the multiverse, the divine manifestation of dearest god, dear with his inclined head on the cross, dear his opened arms, his vulnerability, his stripped naked body elevated in mid-air, expression o f the heart of mystery....

How open is his heart! How faithful and true in love!

When you meditate on his humanity,  you are led into contemplation of his divinity.

When you mediate on the body of Jesus, not only do you contemplate divinity, but you begin to understand humanity, for to look at Jesus is not only theology (Christology) but is anthropology.

You see what is is to be a human being. In Jesus, you see God teaching you how to be human. If God can be human, why can't you?

He changed his body and blood into bread and wine.

Prayer in Charles de Foucald

“Why are you sleeping? Wake up and pray…”

~~ Jesus, Luke 22:46

Charles de Foucauld learned deep contemplative prayer from an intense study of the gospels; he spent time with Jesus in wonder and admiration, and would then imitate the practices of Jesus he found there. In the silence of the desert, Brother Charles often spent 5 hours each day in silent, still meditation before the Blessed Sacrament. At other times, he would go for prolonged retreats, alone, into the Sahara desert.

He kept notebooks in which he recorded his prayer practices and contemplation.

“We learn from Jesus," de Foucauld wrote. "He himself taught us to 'watch' and to 'imitate' him – to 'come and see'." 

“Watch and imitate him. Jesus himself suggested that very simple method of achieving union with him and perfection to his apostles. The very first words he said to them on the banks for the Jordan, when Andrew and John came to him were: Come and see. “Come” – that is follow me, come with me, follow in my footsteps; imitate me, stay with me, contemplate me.”

“All perfection is to be found in the presence of God and Jesus and in the imitation of Jesus. It is perfectly obvious that anyone doing as Jesus did is perfect. So we must throw ourselves whole heartedly into imitating him (a task sweeter than honey to the loving heart, as an urgent need for the loving soul, a need that becomes more compelling as love becomes more ardent) and watching him, the diving Spouse (a task no less sweet or indispensable to love).

“Anyone who loves, loses and buries himself in contemplation of the beloved.” [Spiritual Autobiography, p. 152]

“When one loves, one longs to be forever in converse with Him whom one loves, or at least to be always in His sight. Prayer is nothing else. This is what prayer is: Intimate intercourse with the Beloved. You look at Him, you tell Him of your love, you are happy at His feet, you tell Him you will live and die there.” [Charles de Foucauld, Orbis books, p. 92]

As he searched the scriptures for clues to Jesus' prayer, he discovered several methods of prayer, and suggested that we should imitate Jesus' example. 

Jesus often prayed in silent adoration throughout the night, that is, "contemplation, a silent adoration which is the most eloquent of prayes; tibi silentium laus [Silence praises you]. It was that kind of silent adoration which confirms a declaration of love most passionately; just as love, expressed in wondering admiration, is the most ardent love."

Secondly, Jesus would often express thanksgiving and rejoicing, "first for the divine glory, for the fact that God is God, then thanksgiving for graces bestowed on teh world and on all vreated things."

Thirdly, Jesus wouls pray for "forgiveness for all the sins committed against God, forgiveness for those who do not ask for it themselves, and express contrition and sorrow for seeing God offended."

Finally, Jesus would often make petitions for individual people, and for the whole world.

 Prayer is very simple; but not easy, he said. “Prayer is all intercourse of the soul with God."

“It is also the attitude of the soul when it contemplates God without words; solely occupied in contemplation, speaking its love with constant regard, though lips are silent and even thoughts are still.

“The best prayer is the most loving prayer."

 “Prayer, in the widest sense of the word, may be either a silent contemplation or one accompanied by words.

“Words of adoration, love, self-immolation, the giving of all one’s being, words of thanksgiving for the graces and blessings of God, for favors shown to one’s self or to others, words of regret or of reparation for ones sins or those of others, words of supplication.”

“Prayer is above all to think of me [Jesus] with loving thoughts, and the more you love, the better you pray. Prayer is to have the attention lovingly fixed on me. The more loving the attention, the better the prayer.” [Charles de Foucauld, Orbis Books, p. 110]

 

“Prayer is primarily thinking of me [Jesus] with love. The more anyone loves me, the more he prays.”

“Prayer is the attention of the soul lovingly fixed on me. The more loving that attention is, the better is the prayer.” ~~ Eight Days in Ephren, p. 160

“Prayer is any conversation between God and the soul. Hence it is that state in which the soul looks wordlessly on god, solely occupied with contemplating Him, telling Him with looks that it loves Him, while uttering no words, even in thought.” [Foucauld, Retreat in Nazareth 1897, Orbis books. P. 105.]

In his notebooks, we learn that Charles de Foucauld practiced two forms of prayer. First, in Lection Divina, he spent many hours with the four Gospels, memorizing them, and in his imagination, put himself in the scenes in a sort of visualization practice. He would spend time with the Lord Jesus and ask himself these questions:  Quis? Quid? Ubi? Quibus auxiis? Cur? Quomodo? Quando?

Who took part in this incident?

What did they do?

Where was it?

Who else was present?

Why?

In what way did things happen?

When?

Secondly, Jesus would enter a pure form of contemplative prayer, in "adoration" with the lord. It was a silent, wordless, loving adoration of Jesus; especially before the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. He sat motionless in the desert silence, for many hours at a time.

How to practice this silent "Interior Prayer"? He explained: "What do you want to say to me, O God? For my own part, what I want to say to you? Saying nothing else, gaze on the Beloved."

“Your mind, it should be full of the love of God, forgetful of yourself." he said.

“It should be full of contemplation and joy of my [Jesus’] beatitude, of compassion, and sorrow for my sufferings, and joy at my joy.

“It should be full of sorrow for sins committed against me and in ardent longing to glorify me.

“It should be a mind full of love for your neighbor – for my sake, for I love all men as a father loves his children.

“It should be full of longing for the spiritual and material good for all men for my sake."

Nazareth Spirituality –

“We must imitate Jesus by doing our life’s work for people’s salvation in such a way that the word “Jesus”, “Savior” is the perfect expression of what we are, just as it signifies perfectly what he is.” ~~~ Charles de Foucald

 

Charles de Foucald lived in Nazareth many years, working silently as a gardener in a Poor Clare convent, and meditating on the Gospels, particularly the life of Jesus in Nazareth, with mother Mary and father Joseph.

“Imitate Jesus in his hidden life. Be as small and poor as he is,” De Foucald wrote in his journal. “Work for our daily bread farming, gardening. Pray at night, work by day, love and contemplate Jesus unceasingly with all my heart, in poverty, holiness, and love.”

“Silently, secretly, like Jesus in Nazareth: obscurely, like him, pass unknown on earth like a voyager in the night; in poverty and in toil, humbly, with charity, like him; defenseless and mute before injustice, like him; letting myself, like a lamb, be shorn and immolated without resistance or protest; imitating in everything Jesus in Nazareth and Jesus on the cross.”

 

Pope Francis praised Charles de Foucald as a role model for gospel-living adequate to meet the needs of the present circumstances of the modern world.

“Charles de Foucald, perhaps like few others, grasped the import of the spirituality which radiates from Nazareth. This great explorer hastily abandoned his military career, attracted by the mystery of the Holy Family, the mystery of Jesus’ daily relationship with parents and neighbors, his labor, his humble prayer.

“Contemplating the Nazareth family, Brother Charles realized how empty the desire for power and wealth really is.”

Mother Teresa, another ‘modern’ saint and role-model also celebrated Nazareth spirituality. “I believe we must look for holiness, joy, and love in our own homes,” she said. “We must make our homes like a second ‘Nazareth’ where Jesus can come and live with us. Holiness is not a luxury, meant for only a few. It is a simple duty for each one of us.”

 

Pope  Paul VI visited Nazareth in 1964, the first pope since Saint Peter travel to Nazareth, in order to draw attention of the modern world to the Nazareth spirituality , which he called the “school of the Gospel” in which we can study the life of Jesus.

“Here one learns to observe, to listen, to meditate, to penetrate into the profound and mysterious meaning of that simple, humble, lovely apparition of God among men.”

“Here one learns almost imperceptibly to imitate him.”

Pope Paul said we learn three lessons in Nazareth: Silence, family life, and the dignity and value of labor.

Most importantly we learn love, he said. “Christ in his gospel has spelled out for the world the supreme motive and the noblest driving force for action and hence for liberty progress: Love.”

“No one can surpass it.

“Nor can anyone subdue or supplant it.

 “The only sound law of life is his gospel.

“The human person reaches his highest level in Christ’s teaching.

“Human society finds therein its most congenial and powerful unifying force.

“We believe, O Lord, in Thy Word, we will try to follow it and live it.”

 

 

 Silence

Silence is the first lesson of Nazareth, Pope Paul said in his Nazareth sermon: “May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind revive in us, deafened as we are by so much noise, by so much tumult, by so many voices of frenzied modern life.”

“If only we could once again appreciate its great value.”

“The silence of Nazareth should teach us how to meditate in peace and quiet, to reflect on the deeply spiritual, and to be open to the voice of God’s inner wisdom and the counsel of true teachers.

“Nazareth can teach us the value of study and preparation, of meditation, of a well-ordered personal spiritual life, and of the silent prayer that is known only to God,” Pope Paul said.

 

Mother Teresa also emphasized the silence of contemplation: “It is very important, that union with God. You must be full of silence, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. An empty heart God fills…Silence of the heart, not only of the mouth, but the silence of the mind, silence of the eyes, silence of the touch,” she said. “Then you can hear him everywhere.”

In another context, she said: “The most important thing is silence. Souls of prayer are souls of deep silence. We cannot place ourselves directly in god’s presence without imposing upon ourselves interior silence. That is why we must accustom ourselves to stillness of the soul, of eyes, of the tongue.”

“God is the friend of silence. We need to find God, but we cannot find Him in noise, in excitement. See how nature, the trees, the flowers grow in deep silence. See how the sun, the stars, the moon move in silence….”

“We cannot put ourselves directly in the presence of God without the practice of internal and external silence..

“When you have listened to the voice of God in the stillness of your heart, then your heart is filled with God.

“The contemplative and ascetics of all ages and religious have sought God in the silence and solitude of the desert, forest, and mountains. Jesus himself spent forty days in the desert and the mountains, communing for long hours with the father in the silence of the night.

“We too are called to withdraw at intervals into deep silence and aloneness with God…to be alone with Him … to dwell lovingly in his presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. We cannot find God in noise and agitation.” [Heart of the World, p. 93]

******

 “When it is difficult to pray we must help ourselves to do so. The first means to use is silence, for souls of prayer are souls of great silence. We cannot put ourselves directly in the presence of God if we do not practice internal and external silence.”

“God is the friend of silence.”

“Let us adore Jesus in our hearts, who spent thirty years out of thirty-three in silence, who began his public life by spending forty days in silence, who often returned alone to spend the night alone on a mountain in silence. He who spoke with authority, now speaks his early life in silence. Let us adore Jesus in the Eucharistic silence.

“We need to find God and he cannot be found in restlessness and noise. See how nature, the trees, the flowers, the grass grow in perfect silence – see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they more in silence…The more we receive in silent prayer, the roe we can give in our active life….

“Jesus is always waiting in silence. In that silence he will listen to us, there he will speak to our soul, and there we will hear his voice. Interior silence is very difficult but we must make the effort. In silence we will find new energy and true unity.” [Life in The Spirit p. 20]

 

Family

“May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character,” Pope Paul said.

Mother Teresa said the family is the family is the cornerstone of civilization, all the troubles in the modern world arise from the suffering of the family unity. So many economic and social forces are destroying family life in the present age.

“Today there is so much trouble in the world and I think that much of it begins at home,” Mother Teresa said. “The world is suffering so much because there is no peace. There is no peace because there is no peace in the family and we have so many thousands and thousands of broken homes. We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly and so bring peace.”
              “Make your house, your family, another Nazareth where love, peace, joy and unity reign, for love begins at home,” she said. “You must start there and make your home a center of burning love. You must be the hope of eternal happiness to your wife, your husband, your child, to your grandfather, grandmother; whoever is connected to you. Smile at each other.”

 

In meditation on the Holy Family of Nazareth, we learn the virtues of “tenderness” and consideration for one another, Mother Teresa said. “Thoughtfulness is the beginning of sanctity. If you learn this art of being thoughtful, you will become more and more Christ like, for he was always meek and he always thought of the needs of others,” she said. “Our life to be beautiful must be full of the thought of others. Jesus went about doing good”

“The thoughtfulness of Jesus and Mary and Joseph was so great that it made Nazareth the abode of the Most High God. If we also have that kind of thoughtfulness for each other, our homes would really become the abode of God most High.”

 

Charles de Foucald also taught the virtue of “tenderness” that he learned in the school of Nazareth.

“Have the tender care that expresses itself in little things that are like the balm for the heart,” he said. “With our neighbors, go into the smallest details, whether it is a question of health, of consolation, of prayerfulness, or of need.”

“Console and ease the pain of others through the tiniest attention,”

“Be tender and attentive towards those whom God puts in your path, as a brother towards a brother, as a mother towards a child.”

“As much as possible, be an element of consolation for those around us, as soothing balm, as our Lord was to those who drew near him.”

“Imitate Jesus as much as you can.”

 

 

Dignity of Labor

Pope Paul VI said, “Nazareth, house of the ‘Son of the Carpenter’, how we would like to understand and to praise here the law of labor, to restore the dignity of labor, to recall that work can not be an end in itself, and how free and elevated it becomes, beyond economic value, in proportion to the values which motivate it.”

Charles Peguy wrote a poem celebrating the holiness of labor of Nazareth:

Oh, that we might be able to look upon the man of Nazareth.

He, the carpenter, the woodworker in elm and birch,

And the man of the boat and Gennesaret,

And the stately path of his feet upon the waters.

Oh that we might be able

To see him again as he was on earth,

The man of wood of comeliness and the wood of birch.

And he carries himself, controlled in this humble misery,

Seated above the errant boat, riding along with the current.

 

“Let us stay with him in the humble house in Nazareth,” Charles de Foucald said, “people who live by exercising humble trade, poor and lowly people who live disregarded, obscure, hidden and prayerful in the solitude and seclusion, in silence, forgottenness and communion with God, that poverty helps us so much to obtain.”

 When he was planning his way of live for a new brotherly fraternity, he wrote, “Like Jesus of Nazareth, no particular dress, no enclosure, no dwelling far from all; habitation should be near a village like Jesus of Nazareth.”

“No less than eight hours of work a day, manual work or otherwise – like Jesus at Nazareth, no big estates or large houses, like Jesus of Nazareth….”

 “It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them, or to improve them: it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love,” he said.

The great German theologian Karl Rahner said Nazareth spirituality is the center of Christian life in the present age of the world: “Our relationship to God today must either be mediated perhaps more explicitly than ever before through our relationship to the concrete  Jesus of Nazareth, to his life and death and his relationship to his fellow men, or it will not exist at all….”

 

 

Contemplative Prayer in the Desert

“Give me strength that waits upon you in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest...And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love...You alone.” ~~ Thomas Merton

When we retreat into the desert place to be with Jesus in meditation and contemplative prayer, what do we do? People want to practice meditation and contemplative prayer but they don't know how to begin; what to do. 

In an astonishing passage of his book New Seeds of Contemplation (1) , Thomas Merton laid out the entire process of meditation that leads, from the beginning to the end of the most profound state of contemplative prayer.

The steps, one by one, are:

* “Withdraw from illusion and pleasure…”

* “Keep the mind free from confusion…”

* “Entertain silence in my heart and listen for the voice of God:”

* “Cultivate an intellectual free from images of created things in order to receive the secret contact of God in obscure love.

* “Love all men.”

* “Rest in humility and find peace in withdrawal.”

* “Have a will that is ready to fold back within itself and draw all the powers of the soul down from its deepest center to rest in silent expectancy for the coming of God, poised in tranquil and effortless concentration upon the point of my dependence on Him.

* “Gather all that I am, and have...and abandon them all to God, in the resignation of perfect love and blind faith and trust in God to do His will.”

* “Then wait in peace and emptiness and oblivion of all things.”

Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Dei. 

- It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of God.

“We can, in love, experience in our own hearts, the intimate personal secret of the Beloved. And Christ has granted us His friendship so that in this manner he may enter our hearts and dwell in them as a personal presence...”, Merton (2)

Like a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun like a burning point of heat that sets fire to paper, Jesus concentrates the light of love on us and we feel the burn – love bursts into flames in our hearts.

Merton says that Jesus dwells within us in a way similar to the incarnation within the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“Dwelling in us… [Jesus] has united and identified our inmost self with Himself. From the moment that we have responded by faith and charity to his love for us, a supernatural union of our souls with His indwelling Divine Person gives us a participation in His divine sonship and nature...It is a mystical union in which Christ Himself becomes the source and principle of divine life in me.”

“Christ Himself ...’breathes’ in me divinely in giving me His Spirit. The mystery of the Spirit is the mystery of selfless love...” (3) 

Little Brother of Jesus Carlo Caretto offers further insight on how to practice contemplative prayer.

Caretto suggested: “Choose one word or a little phrase which will express your love for Him: and then go on repeating it in peace, without trying to form thoughts.”

Especially, the holy name of Jesus is an appropriate word for meditation.

“And with this word or phrase transformed into an arrow of steel, a symbol of your love, beat again and again at God’s thick Cloud of Unknowing.

“Don’t become distracted whatever happens. Chase away even good thoughts; they serve no purpose now.”

“Put yourself in front of Jesus as a poor man: not with any big ideas, but with loving faith. Remain motionless in an act of love before the Father. Don't try to reach God with your understanding; that is impossible. Reach him in love: that is possible.”

“After some hours, or some days of this exercise, the body relaxes. As the will refuses to let it have its way it gives up the struggle. It becomes passive. The sense go to sleep. Or rather, as Saint John of the Cross says, the Night of the Senses is beginning. Then prayer becomes something serious, even if it is painful and dry.” (4)

In order to bear fruit, this prayer of quiet must last over a prolonged period of time over hours, days, even weeks, Caretto said.

“True prayer demands that we remain more passive than active: it requires more silence than words, more adoration than study, more faith than reason. We must understand thoroughly that true prayer is a gift from heaven to earth, the Father to the child; from the bridegroom to his bride, from he who has to him who has not, from Everything to nothing.” (5)

(1) Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation p. 45.

(2) Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation p. 54

(3) Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation p. 159

(4) Carlo Caretto, Essential Writings, p. 166

(5) Carlo Caretto, Letters from the Desert, p. 56