Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (14)

18th February, 1938

 

YOU LORD, ARE MY HOPE

Lord, Lord, do not delay.  Help me.  See how my feet are so wobbly if I see myself alone.  Look, I do not know how far I shall go,, and I would like, Lord, to go to the finish, but when I see my feet bloody and in such great pain …. will I endure?

Do not leave me, good Jesus.  Protect me, Virgin Mary.

I do not know why I am writing this … I do not know the purpose.  Who is going to read my weaknesses and my miseries?  I do not know and do not care, but it is a consolation for me, since I communicate with no one, to cover sheets of paper and write as if I were writing to Jesus himself.  Perhaps this will serve as my prayer and he will hear me.

Sweet solitude that makes the soul come closer to Jesus and seek only him.

Sweet penance, unknown to men, that causes one to weep in silence without anyone other than Jesus being aware of it.

Happy-happy a thousandfold- when at the foot of the Cross of Christ I recount my afflictions to him and only to him; I offer him my deep happiness at seeing myself loved by him;  at other times, I offer him my aching and distressed soul that sees itself so alone in tribulation;  I water the wood with my penitent tears …. And I sing and weep; and …. I only know to ask for love …. love in order to wait …. love, to suffer …. love, to enjoy ….  And there are moments when nothing in the world matters to me-neither man nor beast, neither darkness nor sun.  ….  There are moments when I even forget hunger …. I should like to die with my arms around the Cross of Jesus, kissing his wounds, drowning myself in his divine blood, forgotten by everything and by everyone.

Happy, a thousand times happy am I, although in my weakness I complain sometimes.

I desire nothing.  I want nothing except to do God’s will meekly and humbly, to die someday embracing his Cross and to go to him in the arms of the Most Holy Virgin Mary.

So be it.

 

 

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (13)

1st January 1938

THE VOW

 

The first day of January, 1938.  At prayer this morning I made a vow.  I vowed to love Jesus always.  I have realised what my vocation is.

I am not a religious;…. not a secular; …. I am nothing.

God be blessed, I am nothing more than a soul in love with Christ.  He wants nothing else except my love, and he wants it detached from everything and from everyone.

Virgin Mary, help me to keep my vow.  To love Jesus in everything, for everything, and always; …. just love.  Humble, generous, detached, mortified love in silence; …. may life be solely an act of love.

I see clearly that it is God’s will that I not make religious vows, or follow the Rule of Saint Benedict in everything.  Am I to want something that God does not want?

Jesus gives me an incurable disease, it is his will that I humble my pride before the misery of the flesh.  God sends me illness.  Should I not love everything Jesus sends me?

With immense love I kiss the blessed hand of God who gives health when he wishes and takes it away when it pleases him.  Job said that since we receive good things from God with joy, why should we not receive bad things?

But can all that keep me from loving him? No; …. I must love him insanely.  Life of love!

Here I have my rule, my vow …. Here is the only reason for living. 

The year 1938 is beginning.  What is God preparing for me in this year? O do not know;…. perhaps it does not matter to me; it is all the same to me, provided I do not offend him …. I belong to God, let him do with me what he wills.

Today I am offering him a new year in which I want nothing to reign other than a life of sacrifice, of abnegation, of detachment, guided only by love for Jesus …. by a very pure love.

I should like, my Lord, to love you as no one else has.  I should like to spend this life touching the earth  only with my feet;  without pausing to look at so much misery; without delaying for any creature, with my heart on fire with divine love and buoyed by hope.

I should like, Lord, to look only at heaven, where you are waiting for me, where Mary is, where the angels and saints are blessing you forever; they passed through the world just loving your law and observing your divine precepts.

Lord, how greatly do I desire to love you!

Help me, Mother mine!

I must love solitude for God puts me in it.

I must obey blindly, for it is God who commands me.

I must mortify my senses continually.

I must be patient in community life.

I must exercise myself in humility.

I must do it all for God and for Mary.

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (12)

 

HUMILITY

31 December 1937

More and more I realise that the most practical virtue for peace in community life is humility.

Humility before God helps us towards trust, for humility is knowledge of oneself; and he who knows himself, can he hope for anything from himself?  He would be insane if he did not expect everything from God.

Humility brings peace into our relationships; with it there are no arguments, no envy, no offence possible; …. who can offend nothingness itself?

I lovingly ask Mary to teach me what she mastered:…. humility before God and before man.

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (11)

29th December, 1937

 PERSEVERANCE  IN  PRAYER

One hour of prayer without a thought of God.  I hardly realized it; time had passed.  The clock struck five o’clock and I had already been an hour on my knees.

And prayer?  I do not know ….  I did not pray …. I was thinking of myself, my personal sufferings, and memories of the world.

And Jesus and Mary?  Nothing ….  I have only selfishness, little faith, and much pride!

So important do I believe myself to be ….  so highly do I consider myself!  Poor little fellow!  A tiny speck of insignificant dust in the eyes of God; since you do not know how to benefit from prayer, learn to humiliate yourself before him and then you will humiliate yourself better before men.

Lord, have mercy on me ….  I am suffering, yes ….  but would that my suffering were not so selfish;  I should like,  Lord, to suffer for your pains on the Cross, for the forgetfulness of men, for my sins and those of others;…. for everything, my God except for myself.

What do I amount to in creation?  What am I before you?  What does my hidden life represent in infinite eternity?  If I could forget myself, it would be better, Lord.

I have nothing else but refined self-love and, to repeat and repeat, a lot of vanity.

With Mary’s help I shall try to amend.  I will make the intention that every time a worldly thought comes to disturb me, I will have recourse to you, Virgin Mary, and I will say a Salve for all those who offend you in the world. 

Instead of meditating on my sufferings …. meditate on gratitude and love God in my own wretchedness.

I will persevere in prayer even though I should be wasting time.

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (10)

21 December 1937

I must convince myself of one thing, that all I do is for God;  the joys he sends me, the tears he gives me, the food I take for his sake, and when I sleep it is for him.

My rule is his will, and his wish is my law.  I live because it pleases him; I shall die when he wants it. I desire nothing apart from God.

May my life be a constant Fiat.

May the Most Holy Virgin help me and guide me on this short road of life in the world.

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (9)

16 December 1937

After a long interval (almost a year) spent in my parents’  home recovering from a bad spell with my sickness, I am back at the monastery to continue following my vocation, which is solely to love God in sacrifice and renunciation, with no rule other that blind obedience to his divine will.

I believe today that I am doing just that by obeying, without vows and in the quality of an oblate, the superiors of the Cistercian Abbey of San Isidro de Duenas.

God asks nothing more of me than humble love and a spirit of sacrifice.  yesterday, when I left home, my parents, brothers and sister, was one of the days I suffered the most.

This is the fourth time that in order to follow Jesus I am leaving everything, and I believe that this time it was a miracle of God, because it is certain that of my own strength I could not have come to the infirmary of this Trappist monastery, to go through hardships, bodily hunger due to my illness, and loneliness of heart, for I find that man is very far away …. Only God.  Only God.

This is my theme song …. it is my only thought.

I am suffering a great deal; …. Mary, Mother mine, help me ….

I have come for various reasons.

First: I believe that in the monastery I will fulfill better my vocation of loving God on the Cross and in sacrifice.

Second: To help my brothers fight because Spain is at war.

Third: To make good use of the time that God gives me of life and to learn quickly to love his Cross.

Only to this do I aspire in the monastery.

Frist: to unite myself absolutely and entirely with the will of Jesus.

Second: to live only to love and to suffer.

Third: to be the last except in obedience.

The only thing this poor oblate wants today is that the Most Holy Virgin Mary take my resolutions in her saintly hands and place them at the feet of Jesus.

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (8)

15th December 1936

FREEDOM

 

The man who meditates a little will see how mistaken the world is in the midst of what it calls freedom; he will see that true freedom is often enclosed within the four walls of a monastery.

Freedom of the body is not  freedom, for it is subject to carnal man, to his flesh and his passions, and in the spiritual  man to his spirit.

Freedom of spirit is also not true freedom for while it lives in the flesh it is a prisoner unable to fly.

Where, then is freedom?

It is in the man whose soul is not attached to the spirit or to the material, but only to God.

It is in the soul that is not subject to the egotistical me; in the soul that rises above its own thoughts, its own sentiments, its own sufferings and joys.  Freedom exists in that soul whose only reason for living is God, whose life is God and nothing else but God.

The human spirit is small, puny; it is subject to a thousand variations, highs and lows, depressions, deceptions, and so forth, and to the body with so many weaknesses.

Freedom is, then, in God; and the soul that truly passes over all things and affirms him in his life can be said, by one who is still in the world, to enjoy freedom whatever his situation.

He who clings to something that is not God or to that which represents him indirectly, such as for example the love of neighbour, the saints, the most Blessed Virgin, who sets his heart upon something outside of him, does not know what it is to enjoy freedom, although he might traverse the skies of Spain in a plane and all the countries of the earth in the speediest train.

To love God!  To live in the infinite!  To rejoice in the shutting in of the body and spirit so that the soul may fly to God …. so that it may plunge into the infinite beauties of the Eternal in order to soar into the regions of the supernatural on the wings of divine love!

This is freedom

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (7)

25th July 1936

VESPERS

 

Vespers! Evening  prayer! Hours of peace, hours of hope, moments in which the soul rests and rejoices in seeing the passing of another day.

Vespers signify the end of the day, everything passes …. soon night will come again.

Vespers! In church the sun passes obliquely through the window and illumines the tabernacle, its light is red …. its rays are weak, and as they touch the altar they do so gently, almost as though kissing it.

The chants are solemn, and the Magnificat to the most Holy Virgin stirs the emotions.

Vespers! Eveing prayer, the prayer of rest, if  rest there can be on the earth.  Hours during which the soul sees that everything is passing; the day’s labours are over …. past are whatever sorrows there may have been …. past are the joys …. past is the day, and with it we too pass, at times dragging our Cross, at others on the wings of consolation.

Everything has passed; and we are one day closer to our end, before we know it the sun that awakened creation in the morning now invites it to rest ….  it begins to set, and puts us in mind that everything in the world is ordained by God, pursuing its course ceaselessly, everything has its decline, everything has its end, whether of sufferings or of joy.

Vespers! The prayer of twilight, the prayer in which the soul asks God for the peace of a happy end.

The Trappists ask the Lord for the joy of a holy death.

How consoling are these moments of such solemnity in the psalmody, and of such peace of heart!  How much joy is contained within the hour of Vespers! What joy there is in thinking that the day is over, and that it has been passed before the tabernacle of the Lord!

What emotions are stirred in the soul on seeing the passage of another day in the service of the Lord! How grateful our hearts are for the supreme privilege of having been able spend the day singing before the Lord!  In these moments the soul would like to fly ot the heights of heaven, there to continue singing with the angels, the saints, and the Virgin.  The soul wishes that the day would never end …. that it were an eternal Vespers. The soul would like to hold back the sun, and with a Gloria Patri soar up to Heaven.

Ah, the ravings of a balmy monk.

What is certan is that for me particularly, this is one of the hours of the office that most arouses my devotion.  As I say, everything contributes to bring out the solemnity of this hour!  How sweet is an evening of singing in choir!  It is an hour most propitious for meditation and for prayer!

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (6)

28th January 1937

My Heaven on Earth

 

I have made my cell my heaven on earth.

I do not live alone; my cell is full of people.  There is laughter, songs, angels galore who play havoc with my papers.

I do not live alone; in my sick man’s cell, Christ lives, Mary is there!  There is everything in my cell; silence, peace, happiness; there is a  monk who dreams of heaven …. of a heaven without sorrow and weeping, of a heaven, not like the one he has, which is an earthly heaven; …. a heaven between walls.

My heaven is my cell.

In it there is silence, peace, happiness.

I live with the saints!

Christ is with me!

I dream of Mary!

FIAT!

Life and Writings of Brother Rafael (5)

 

God is in everything

 

11 December 1936

God is in everything, but that everything is not God.

As souls are accustomed to seeing the Creator in the smallest details of creation, in the marvels of nature, in the harmony of the Introit of a Mass, or in the heart of man, what doubt can there be but that they enjoy the Lord, and that God often makes use of all this to awaken a slumbering soul.  That the soul really sees God no one can doubt, but it is in an imperfect way, for before discerning the landscape its vision is hampered …. be it by an insect, or the sun, a piece of music, or the grandeur of a heart.

How clearly one comes to see that it is in isolation from all things that one truly finds God; how great is his mercy when having us bypass all that is created he places us on that immense plain, without stone or tree, without sky or stars …. on that endless plain, where there are no colours, where there are not even men, where there is nothing to distract the soul from God!