THE REED OF GOD

Advent is the season of the seed: Christ loved this symbol of the seed.  The seed, he said,  is the Word of God sown in the human heart.  The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed.  So is the kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the earth.  Even his own life-blood:  Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and died, it remains alone.

The Advent, the seed of the world’s life, was hidden in our Lady.  Like the wheat seed in the earth, the seed of the bread of life was in her.  Like the golden harvest in the darkness of the earth, the glory of God was shrined in her darkness.

Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of divine Love growing in silence.  It is the season of humility, silence, and growth.  For nine months Christ grew in his Mother’s body.  By his own will she formed him from herself, from the simplicity of her daily life.  She had nothing to give him but herself.  He asked for nothing else.  She gave him herself.  Working, eating,sleeping, she was forming his body from hers.  His flesh and blood.  From her humanity she gave him his humanity.

Walking in the streets of Nazareth to do her shopping to visit her friends, she set his feet on the path to Jerusalem.  Washing, weaving, kneading, sweeping, her hands prepared his hands for the nails.  Every beat of her heart gave his heart to love with his heart to be broken by love.  All her experience of the world about her was gathered to Christ growing in her.  Breaking and eating the bread, drinking the wine of the country, she gave him his flesh and blood; she prepared the host for the Mass.

This time of Advent is absolutely essential to our contemplation too.  If we have truly given our humanity to be changed into Christ, it is essential for us not to disturb this time of growth.  It is a time of darkness, of faith.  We shall not see Christ’s radiance in our lives yet; it is still hidden in our darkness; nevertheless, we must believe that he is growing in our lives; we must believe it is so firmly that we cannot help relating everything, literally everything, to this almost incredible reality.

This attitude it is which makes every moment of every day and night a prayer.  In itself it is a purification, but without the resolution and anxiety of self-conscious aim.  How could it be possible that those who were conscious that Christ desired to see the world with their eyes would look willingly on anything evil?  Or knowing that he wished to work with their hands, do any work that was shoddy, any work that was not as near perfection as human nature can achieve?  Above all, who, knowing that Christ asked for their hearts to love with, for their hearts to bear the burden of the love of God, could fail to discover that in every pulsation of their own lives there is prayer?

This Advent awareness does not lead to a selfish preoccupation with self; it does not exclude outgoing love to others – far from it.  It leads to them inevitably, but it prevents such acts and words of love from becoming distractions.  It makes the very doing of them reminders of the presence of Christ in us.

Caryll Houselander

4th March 1938

HOW LONG LORD?

May the serene and adorable most blessed Trinity be ever blessed.

Today, in the name of God, I take up my pen in order that my words, as they are being written on paper, may serve as a perpetual praise to the blessed God, author of my life, my soul, my heart.

Would that the whole universe with all the planets, all the stars and the innumerable sidereal systems might be an immense smooth surface where one could write the name of God.

Would that my voice were more powerful than a thousand thunderclaps, stronger than the rush of the sea and more terrible than the din of volcanos, in order merely to say, “God.”

The rush of the sea

Would that my heart were as big as the sky, pure as the heart of angels, simple as the dove so that it may have God within it.

But since all this dreamed up greatness cannot be accomplished, be content, Br. Rafael, with what is little, and you who are nothing should be content with nothingness.

What hypocrisy for one who has God to say he has nothing.  Yes!  Why keep quiet about it?  Why hide it?  Why not cry out to the whole world and publish the marvels of God to the four winds?  Why not say to the people of all nations and to everyone who might want to hear it:  Do you see what I am?  Do you see what I was?  Do you see my wretchedness dragged through the mire?  Well, it does not matter; be amazed; in site of everything, I have God ….  God is my friend! Let the sun sink and the sea dry up in astonishment!

God loves me so dearly that if the entire world could comprehend it, all creatures would go crazy and roar in amazement!  But still-all that is nothing. 

God loves me so much that the very angels do not understand it!

A view of the river in full flood on the monastery property

Psalm 68

Save me, O God,

for the waters have risen to my neck.

I have sunk into the mud of the deep

and there is no foothold

I have entered the waters of the deep

and the waves overwhelm me

An unusual day occurred last  Wednesday in Glencairn when our community opened its doors to 25 6th Year pupils from Ard Scoil na nDeise, Dungarvan, Co.Waterford who came to the monastery for a retreat day to be given by the sisters.

They were accompanied by two teachers and their chaplain Fr. Flor O’Callaghan OSA.

During the day the were introduced to the different elements of our monastic way of life and experienced something of our balance of prayer and work, as prescribed for monks and nuns by Saint Benedict, the 6th Century monk whose Rule for Monasteries we follow.

Sr. Denise explains how her quiet work in solitude leads her to God

They saw how Eucharist Bread  is made by the sisters, one of the ways in which we make our living, and were given enriching talks on prayer by Mother Marie, the Abbess of our community.

The presence of our student visitors was a special addition to our celebration of the Eucharist where they read and sang so beautifully.

Later in the day, two of the younger members of our community shared their stories of their own personal faith journeys and call to the monastic way of life here in Glencairn and the girls had an opportunity to ask question to the sisters!

The students were invited to compose their own prayer petitions to place before God in a time of silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and the day ended with the prayer of None in the Church, sung together with the community.

Since we are an enclosed monastic order and host only a small number of school visits in the monastery every year, we always greatly value this contact with young people, sharing our lives with each other in a meaningful way on these special days.

The sisters say farewell to the students

Thank you, student of Ard Scoil na nDeise and well done for your participation on this retreat day. We remember your needs and intentions particularly during this, your final year at school.

May the Lord show you the path of life and direct your hearts always.

26th February 1938

BLESSED BE THE LORD

Blessed by the Lord.  The slightest intimation on his part after a temptation or trial brings great peace to my soul.  A good thought, a word read by chance in a book …. a phrase of the Gospel is enough to dispel my darkness and fill my soul with light.

Bless be God …. a thousand, thousand times blessed by his servant Rafael, who does not know how to express his gratitude for so great a favour and wants only to plunge into the abyss of his nothingness in order to give glory to the greatness of the Lord!

My life is a continual change from desolation to consolation.

The former is periods of sadness and sorrow,, sometimes very deep …. thoughts that disturb me, temptations that cause me to suffer.  The consolations are the same but the other way around, unknown interior joys, longings to suffer, love of the Cross of Jesus that fills my soul with peace and rest in the midst of my solitude and pain, and that I would not change for anything in the world.

Here is a recent example.  The other day I saw everything black, my life dark, enclosed in the infirmary without the sun, without light, without anything that could help to bear the load God has placed upon me …..  sickness, silence, abandonment ….  I do not know ….  My soul was suffering very much; the remembrance of the world, freedom …. overwhelmed me ….  My thoughts were sad, gloomy;  I saw myself devoid of  love for God, forgotten by men, without faith and without light.

The habit weighed me down ….  I was cold and sleepy ….  I don’t know, everything piled up together.  The darkness of the church saddened me;  I gazed at the tabernacle, and it said nothing to me.  I saw myself dead in life;  I saw myself shut up in the monastery like a dead man in a tomb-worse than in a tomb, for there, at least, one rests.

In short, those were my thoughts the other day, before receiving the Lord in Communion.

The idea of being buried alive obsessed me drove me crazy …. the devil was set upon making me suffer with the memory of the world, of light, of freedom ….  And he hinted at the joie de vivre ….. Monks appeared to me like souls in torment, who were also living dead men, suffering the enclosure of the tomb.

All right, I do not know how to explain myself ….  in those moments I would really have wanted to die, really  …. so as not to suffer.  Afterward I saw that this thought was temptation.

With my soul in this state I went to receive the Lord.

I had just knelt down, intending to ask Jesus to comfort my spirit, when I felt great fervour and an immense love for Jesus, and I forgot absolutely all my former thoughts as I remembered some words that I believe Jesus brought to my mind at that moment:  “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

Why try to express how  much my soul was consoled!

I almost cried with joy upon seeing myself buried alive at the feet of Jesus.  My hands tightened on the crucifix and my heart would have liked to die, but now, for love of Jesus, for love of true life, true freedom.  I would have liked to die on my knees, embracing the Cross, loving God’s will, my illness, my enclosure, my silence, my darkness, my solitude, loving my pain, which, in a moment of  light …. and with a tiny spark of God’s love, is so quickly forgotten.

How petty everything seemed to me!  The world with all its creatures … how insignificant human interests ….  how small the monastery with its monks …. In short, how everything was disappearing before the immense goodness of a God who abases himself to me in order to say:  Why are you suffering?  O  I am health ….  I am the life  ….. What are you looking for here?

Ah!  Good Jesus ….  if men but knew what it is to love you on the Cross!  If  men only suspected what it is to renounce everything for you.

What happiness to live without a will!  What a great treasure it is to be nothing and nobody …  the last  …. what a great treasure is the Cross of Jesus, and how well one lives embracing it-no one can suspect it.

Do with me what you wish, good Jesus ….  Send me consolation when I need it and let not my desolation matter to you; in then is my life my love, my ….I don’t know what I am saying.

Lord, I would like to love your Cross insanely; let me not depart from it.

Look at my life as a Cistercian oblate:  to suffer, to endure, and to love madly everything that God in his infinite love may want to send me.  he it is who does it ….  And f he sends me consolation, he also sends me pain….  How not to love God who does everything for our well-being?  How not to go crazy with happiness on seeing that it is God who sends the Cross?  How not to adore until death that blessed Cross that is our only salvation, resurrection and life?

I do not know …. if I keep on writing I lose myself.

I can say only that in loving the Cross of Christ I have found true happiness and I am happy, absolutely happy, such as no one can suspect when I embrace the blood-soaked Cross and see that Jesus love me, and that Mary also loves me, despite my miseries, my negligence, my sins.

But I am not important.  Only God.

23rd February 1938

I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE

The sun was beginning to rise. Great peace reigned in nature.  Everything was beginning to wake up …. earth, heaven, birds …. everything little by little was sweetly awakening at the command of God ….  Everything was obeying his divine laws without complaint, without being startled, meekly, sweetly, the light as well as the darkness, the blue sky as well as the hard earth covered with early morning dew.  How good God is, I thought …. There is peace in everything except in the human heart.

And gently, sweetly, God also taught me to obey by means of this sweet and peaceful dawn … Great peace filled my soul ….  Only God is good, I thought,k everything is put in order by him …. What does it matter to me what men do and say ….  For me there must be only one thing in the world: …. Dios.  God, …. who is putting everything in order for my good.

God who makes the sun rise every morning, who melts the hoarfrost, who causes the birds to sing, and who is constantly changing the clouds of the sky into soft colours.

God, who offers me a corner of the earth where I can pray; who gives me a corner where I can wait for what I am awaiting.

God, so good to me that in silence he speaks to my heart and keeps teaching me little by little, with tears perhaps, always with the Cross, to detach this heart from all creatures, not to seek perfection except in him, to show myself to Mary, and to say, “Here is the only perfect creature …. In her you will find the love and charity that you will not find in men.”

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.

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.

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.

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.