ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

We need to exercise our ourselves greatly, to lay upon ourselves many hidden labors after a life of negligence, in order that our spirit which resembles a greedy and irritable dog may obtain purity and vigilance through simplicity, gentleness and fervor. However, be of good heart. If the passions lord it over us and we are weak, let us with great confidence offer to Christ our spiritual weakness and our impotence; let us confess them before him. He will help us irrespective of what we deserve, on the sole condition that we descend continually to the bottom, into the abyss of humility. JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 1st Step

What a mistake it is to be tormented and sad because you have no light or consolation in prayer, to strain your head seeking after sensible devotion at Holy Communion, and to neglect little faults, small observances, and occasions for mortifying your own will and desires, for conquering your human respect and for procuring your own humiliation before others! If we were reasonable, we should think only of these last and not make the slightest effort to succeed according to our own ideas; because, as a matter of fact, we never succeed better than when we humbly endure dryness and the privation of this false fervor that nature so loves and that the real love of God despises and even rejects as far as it is able. ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE Letter 7

Contemplation should not be exaggerated, distorted, and made to seem great. It is essentially simple and humble. No one can enter into it except by the path of obscurity and self-forgetfulness. It implies also much discipline, but above all the normal discipline of everyday virtue. It implies justice to other people, truthfulness, hard work, unselfishness, devotion to the duties of one’s state in life, obedience, charity, self-sacrifice. No one should delude himself with contemplative aspirations if he is not willing to undertake, first of all, the ordinary labors and obligations of the moral life. THOMAS MERTON The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

Drama in the Desert From the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew and all the way to Golgotha, we see plainly that Christ Jesus did not come into this world to tread the broad and easy way. As his disciples, we should keep that fact foremost in mind. On the contrary, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit he goes without detours to the place where divine battles are fought: that is, to the depths of the human heart, symbolized in Matthew, first, by the depths of Jordan’s waters , where demonic monsters were thought to lurk, and, today, by the desert , where only the saint or the demon can survive. If Satan is the hero of the world—the lord of the earthly-minded, plotting the disruption of the divine order of unity and love at every step—Christ is the divine Hero who comes to confront Satan’s logic with clear-headedness, dogged determination and humility. In this forbidding wilderness two diametrically opposed solutions to the human plight are at loggerheads: on the one hand, capitulation ...

One who watches carefully over the heart will quickly see how the heart of its own nature is emitting light. As a coal catches fire, or as the fire lights a candle, so does God set our heart ablaze as it looks in contemplation at him who is dwelling in our heart. HESYCHIUS OF BATOS On Vigilance, 104

I would like to focus on one important grace of this Lenten season, that is, prayer. St. Paul said to the Corinthians, “Working together, then, we implore you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” Prayer – individual prayer and prayer in common – are two expressions of this very important grace, and each of them finds a place in today’s readings. First, our prayer begins with God and goes to God. It is our exchange with God, our contact with God in faith, hope and love. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit but it is prone to attack from all that is against God. Jesus shows one way that prayer is under attack. It happens when our pride wants to take credit for prayer and boast before others. After all, prayer sets us apart from the majority of men. It elevates us, or seems to. We have something special, and we know it. This kills prayer, so Jesus immediately prescribes steps to remove this exaltation. He tells us to pray in secret, closing the door of our inner prayer room, and then si...

Faith is to know that we are loved. It is to answer love with love. ‘Love me with love, you who are loved.’ To love God is not a duty but a cry of recognition, when we understand that he has first loved us, even to the horror of the cross, of hell. Then our timid liberty is stirred, our heart is moved and all that matters henceforward is that wound by which life comes to us. OLIVIER CLÉMENT The Roots of Christian Mysticism, Ch. 3

We are said to drink the blood of Christ not only when we receive it according to the right of the mysteries, but also when we receive his words, in which life dwells, as he said himself ‘:The words that I have spoken to you are a spirit and life’ (John 6.63). ORIGEN Homilies on Numbers, 16,9  

Today, in the United States there is so much controversy about who is an American citizen, and even about who can become an American citizen.   It is a painful period in our history.   In the time of St. Matthew, the evangelist of today’s gospel, there was tremendous controversy over who can become a Christian—was it only for Jews?   What started as an all-Jewish movement of the Spirit after Pentecost quickly began to encounter non-Jews impelled by Jewish Christian preachers (such as Paul) and moved by the same Holy Spirit to become themselves followers of Christ. The Jewish Christians found the idea of eating, praying and associating with non-Jewish Christians repulsive as it was against their traditions to eat and voluntarily associate with the “unclean” gentiles—they still thought of themselves as Jews.   This occurred even though all these people, Jews and gentiles alike, were saved by the same Lord Jesus into the Church, which was seen by Jewish Christians as th...

Be the doorkeeper of your heart and do not let any thought come in without questioning it. Question each thought individually: ‘Are you on our side or the side of our foes?’ And if it is one of ours, it will fill you with tranquility. EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS Letter 11  

What is it then to be a fool for Christ? It is to control one’s thoughts when they stray out of line. It is to make the mind empty and free so as to be able to offer it in a state of readiness when Christ’s teachings are to be assimilated, swept clean for the words of God that it needs to welcome. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM On the Incomprehensibility of God, Sermon 5

We have to take particular care to follow the Gospel precept that bids us go into our inner room and shut the door to pray to our Father. This is how to do it. We are praying in our inner room when we withdraw our heart completely from the clamor of our thoughts and preoccupations, and in a kind of secret dialogue, as between intimate friends, we lay bear our desires before the Lord. We are praying with our door shut when, without opening our mouth, we call on the One who takes no account of words but considers the heart. We are praying in secret when we speak to God with the heart alone and with concentration of the soul, and make known our state of mind to him alone, in such a way that even the enemy powers themselves cannot guess their nature. Such is the reason for the deep silence that it behoves us to keep in prayer… Thus our prayers should be frequent but short, for fear that if they are prolonged the enemy might have an opportunity to insinuate distraction into them. This is tr...

There are three stages in the life of those who are converted: the beginning, the middle, and perfection. At the beginning, those converted encounter the enticements of sweetness; in the middle, battles against temptation; at the end, the perfection of fullness. Sweetness at first to strengthen them; then bitterness to test them; finally the delight of the ultimate joy to establish them. GREGORY THE GREAT Commentary on Job

It is not by fighting against the passions that one prevents them entering the heart. That is achieved rather by the gratification of conscience, by the knowledge with which the soul is filled, and by the desire for its own acts of contemplation. ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascestic Treatises, 38