Transcription
In the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. My beloved is the mountains and lonely wooded valleys, strange islands and resounding rivers, the whistling of love, stirring breezes, the tranquil night at the time of the rising dawn, silent music sounding solitude. The supper that refreshes and deepens love.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. Okay, I want to move from where we left off last week. And last week I was talking about prayer. I have no idea what I said from last week except I should have said that prayer is part of your experience of God. Whether that experience is a profound experience of something wonderful and great or an experience of emptiness, the important thing is that God is part of the experience of your life. And as life goes on, more and more of your life, in fact, is included in the experience of God. The extraordinary thing about that is that there's a consequence of that being what prayer is. So I would have told you prayer is not about saying things. You can say many things and you can be the most horrible person which means you haven't got prayer. But as God starts to be part of your life which is an inner reality, as your experience within it becomes an experience of God, the light of God which is given to the soul will begin to reveal that in your soul which is not God. And so the experience of prayer will necessarily move into another phase and that is to experience what is in me which is contrary to God. In fact you can only re really see that when God is part of you when God is within you. And what happens is is the light of God very quickly starts to show the absence of God. And there's there's no walking prayer without the beginning of the experience of the absence of God. So prayer is is not what charismatics say it is. That's part of somebody's experience of prayer. But as prepare, as the prayer grows and becomes really prayer, you begin to experience the absence or what is not God because that's what you you will begin to see within your soul. I hope I said last week that prayer will direct the the eyes of your soul inwards. I think I said from St. TZ last week that for her prayer begins as a loving look towards God but the question that we need to ask TZ is where is God that I might look at God and her answer is God is within that's the universal answer given by all the great discalites so that the life of prayer is walking a journey within and it's a journey which is towards what seems inexperienced at times to be other than God. So it's kind of counterintuitive. But the person who walks the life of prayer knows that this is the path that they must follow because to turn away from the truth of yourself is also to turn away from God. And the movement towards God brings about a certain beginning of perfection which hopefully will be what next week is about when we look at union because prayer is towards union.
Okay, let's get back to where we are. We are in the season of Lent and Lent's a time I think I must have said to people in many places, stop and think about what you need to do as a penance. You never do a penance unless you can find a reason to do it. Because otherwise penance will lead to one thing and that's pride. And that will ensure that your penance rather than bring you to God takes you away from God. How often have you got to Easter Sunday and been so pleased with yourself? I didn't have a chocolate for the whole of Lent and for Easter Sunday you eat more chocolate than you than you would have eaten during Lent if you hadn't given up. What's the point? The measure of Lent should be are you a better person? So Lent should be seen as a time of perfecting of who you are. It should be a time in which the goal of Lent is to become a better person. So Lent rather than being seen as a as it commonly seen as a time unhappy time, it's horrible. Nobody looks forward to Lent. It's funny that everyone looks forward to Advent because the other side of Advent is Christmas. Parties, meals, presents. Um, and you wonder where God is in the midst of all of that, too. But Lent has a very bad kind of reputation because it's not understood. Lent is a time of personal growth. Lent is a time in which we all become better people. Lent is a time. It's it's 40 days given to you to do certain things so that as every Lent comes and goes, you're growing into a better person. And so Lent in fact properly understood is a very positive season of the church. It's not a season which is focused on what's wrong with you. its focus on how can I become better.
Now the answer to the question how can I become better necessarily forces us to look at where we are not as we should be and that's where we begin to look at those parts of ourselves and the first part I suppose is to identify where your failings are to identify y weaknesses to identify the places of your sinfulness. That's the first step I suppose of the movement into Lent is to stop and look. But it's not simply that. Lent is a time of grace and we need to look at what God wants to show us. We don't look at what we want to look at because the grace of God, what God is doing could be quite different to what you're thinking. Um it's a useful thing to do. And and for me that's what for me often happens in Holy Week. In Holy Week, the grace often can be to see yourself a new as you walk with Jesus. to see well more importantly to experience things because the path of Lent has to be for a Carmelite an experiential path otherwise it's an intellectual path and I look around here and it's full of very intelligent people your bishop's not that intelligent but I I can recognize intelligence is up and down all the rows here all these exceptionally bright people. But what you need to address is not something that you can work out with your intelligence because you can't work out God. You can't know what God is doing or what God means for you. And and and so the movement as we discuss this part of Len is a movement through grace to look at something but it must be to look at something which you experience and I suppose there are many things that we can experience simply our the the places where we don't have freedom where we fail in many ways Um but I would say to look at two things in your experience. They are very informative and almost not certainly but very often grace abounds there. And the first b place to look at is your pride. What experience do you have which upon reflection in fact show up your pride? There is nobody in this room that does not have pride. To say I'm not proud or I don't have pride is is a failing in self-nowledge. But look at your experience. Where do you get hurt? Where do you want to be seen in a certain way? At what times are you unhappy about the way you appear to others? And all these things are are attached to pride. There is no human being without pride. Many people would would look at, as Madden would do, would look at the clothes I wear under my habit and say, "Bishop, you've got no pride. Look at the way you dress. That's what Nancy, my my PA, says to me. Oh, look at your clothes. I said, 'Well, I don't look at them, and if anyone wants to look at them, that's their problem. I will wear them until I can't wear them anymore. I don't want to waste money. That's pride. Uh, as soon as I say that to you, I recognize there is pride in me. And it is that part of me that does not want to waste. And and it kind of we're directed by these things which are so part of us and they're so part of us that they remain hidden from us. I just saw something when I gave an example and I thought, well, there we go. That's the grace of my giving you a talk to to begin to see. But it must be grounded in your experience. When you look at your experience, what are the things which are directing you? Or in other words, where do you experience in yourself lack of freedom? Where do you experience your own lack of freedom? It's a very powerful thing. And in so many ways we all lack freedom. Pride is one of the reasons. But another one is quite simply that I know that I'm right. I know that this is the way. That's pride. I don't have freedom from myself. And as I said, as we begin prayer, we begin to see and experience things within us. And where we need what this talk is about, which is detachment. When I need detachment is when I experience the fact that I don't have freedom. Because detachment is the royal road to freedom. Detachment is the opposite to attachment. Okay, that's quite simple from the English. And what am I attached to? Well, I suppose I'm attached to myself. What's part of me? What's within me? And it's so part of me that very often I only know because someone points it out to me. I don't see it. Now, one wonderful thing is because you don't see it, the chances are there's no sinful content there. But lack of sinful content in life does not mean love. This does not mean direction towards God. It does not mean growth in God. So, this is all starting to sound very scary for you. But I I think the first thing is to identify and don't be too concerned if you were like TZ. Every time she found another area, she got all excited and happy. Every time I find something, oh no, there's something else. She was a saint. A bit like Sister D. Every time De finds a fault, she gets all excited and happy and goes home and cooks rice to to celebrate what she's discovered. Okay. I think, oh no, I thought I was getting somewhere. And grace shows me, Greg, you're getting nowhere at all. First of all, because getting somewhere is not what it's about. As St. Theresa makes very clear to us the great temptation of people who are on the path to God is to want to be perfect. That's a temptation. No, that's not what God wants. God doesn't want that for me is is a nice thing to hear from St. Terresa. God doesn't want the bishop of Lismore to be perfect. And I think hooray. So now let's move on to what grace reveals. Grace will reveal those parts of you from which you need to be broken and to attain freedom. I've given hints to you as to how you will find them. The next problem is having found them, what do I do? Do I sit there distressed and not knowing what to do? The answer is no. Because the recognition is the first thing. The second thing is knowing how to respond on the presumption that you only recognize through God. You only see because God enables you to see. And so the way forward must be how do I go forward with God and what will God show me? I point you to chapter 13 of the first book of the ascent of Mark Campbell by St. John of the Cross. It's a powerful one. It comes at the end of what he speaks of as the active night of sense. It's that part of the spiritual life where I must do something to combat the waywardness of my sensitive appetites. Okay? And there's no one that doesn't have to struggle with that. It's simply there. Okay? And I want to begin by giving something that that he says which is powerful. Nevertheless, if we do not offer some immediate remedy or counsel, this part would seem very short and less helpful. Therefore, I want to set down the following abridged method. And I would do the same at the end of my discussion. So he says this, though these councils for conquering the appetites, though these councils for movement in detachment are brief and few in number, I believe they are as profitable profitable and efficacious as they are concise. That's a lovely turn of phrase, isn't it? Even though that they're very short, I think they're as profitable and efficacious as they are concise. That's what we all want. He who sincerely wants to practice them will need no others since all others are included in these. That's a very powerful thing coming from this great doctrine of the church in the spiritual life. All the other things that all the other teachers have taught are contained in these two things I'm going to say to you. And I'll read you his text. First, have an habitual desire to imitate Christ in all your deeds by bringing your life into conformity with his. It's a very powerful thing. First have an habitual desire to imitate Christ in all your deeds by bringing your life into conformity with his. Most people read that as something from the imitations of Christ, which is to say, copy him, imitate him. But that's not what John's saying. He said, first have an habitual desire. This is his key. Have as the habit of your life this desire because most of us have have as the habit of our lives wrongful desires or desires that not do not help us go forward. Desires which are not about God desires which are selfgiven selfdirected desires. He says all you need to do really is to have as the habit of your life. Now what do I mean by habit? Many years ago I went to Rome as a Carmelaite for a meeting and I was told by the order you're going all the way there don't come straight back spend some time in Italy. So I spent some time in Rome where there were people that spoke English in the general house and they said take a train to Verona. It's beautiful. So I took a train to Bologna where I had to change trains and it was terrible because the Italians kept on changing the platform and there I was barely able to speak Italian running from platform to platform hoping that I was going to the right one and I was. I got to Verona and I was met by father Antonio Ptopino. He came to meet me. He came in a habits. I knew who he was. And he said to me, "Hello, me Antonio Ptopino. I take you home." I'm thinking, "So I tried speaking and I thought not getting very far, but I'll talk to the others who can speak must have some English." I got there and I realized he had the best English of all the Carmelites in the priaryy. So I'd go wandering around looking and I would come back with my little phrase book and because I have Latin by about the third day I was able to tell them what I did and they would ask me questions and I would struggle to work out what they said but I got it right and I answered them in Italian. They were just hard conversations. But by the third day, we were conversing. Then I got back to Rome and I was met at the station by Father John Sullivan, an American and it was wonderful because he spoke to me in English and we spoke and what became very clear to me I was able to communicate in Italian with time but I didn't have the habit of the Italian language. When I go back to Rome I had the habitual English language as part of me. That's what the word habit means. And the desire for Christ, John says, needs to be part of who you are in the same way as your language as part of who you are. You don't have to think about it.
Then he says, second, in order to be successful in this imitation, this is where it gets hard. Renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God. Wow. That's why John of the Cross say people say that he's hard. But he recognizes you must find the way to say no to yourself. That's what detachment is. Because without being able to say no to yourself, you don't have personal freedom. You're a slave to your desires. And in order to make the desire for God your identity, you have to begin by saying no to yourself. And what does he mean by that? He says, "Be inclined always, not to the easiest, but the most difficult. Not to the most delightful, but to the harshest. Not to the most gratifying, but to the less pleasant. Not to the consoling, but the unconsoling. Not to the most, but to the least. And John's advice is very simple. You'll have these choices every day. Make the right choice once and you will have begun the path to freedom. You will have begun the path of detachment because without detachment you don't have the freedom to love. You don't have the freedom to desire God. You'll be bound by self-love, self-desire. You'll be bound by a simple focus on self. That's probably enough. Do you have any questions? You've got a question, sister D. Huh? That makes sense. And that indeed is part of what Lent is. If you come out the other side of Lent with more detachment, you come up with more freedom. Um, Bishop, could you talk about the role of detachment or interior freedom in discernment? >> Um, yes. Without detachment, discernment is simply discernment of yourself. it. You can sit around and do all things and go through all these Jesuit um kind of exercises, but there's no guarantee that the outcome is God. Um, and part of the outcome must be a negation of self so that you eventually have the freedom and you can get to the point where it actually doesn't matter. If it does matter, you got a problem. Make sense? Anyway, you can ask me at work now. Tell me what what happened to Jacob. I I put him off last week. He said I'll never come back. >> He's studying tonight, Bishop. Um Bishop, you taught me to at least one thing, deny yourself each day, and I think that's helped me in my journey of starting to detach myself from things. Do you think that's the the best thing to be practicing at the moment or do you think there's something else that people can focus on in addition to that that might assist as well >> in in terms of detachment? Get into the habit of being able to say no to yourself. And once you begin to have that habit, what you want suddenly does is no suddenly becomes less and less and less important because you're used to living in a different way. And when you can move that way, um I hope I don't know, but I hope that God begins to take a bigger place. Well, I'm going to run away before people ask me too many questions. Thank you again and I'll see you next week for our last talk, which is union with God. And that should be rather interesting. Thanks.