Fire Within--Finished

I finished reading the book Fire Within by Father Thomas Dubay, S.M. I've owned the book for many years, but I only read bits and pieces of it until recently. This time I was determined to read it from cover to cover and write notes in it as I read. I plan to re-read and meditate on it to let its message soak into my brain. The biggest and most important task is to put into practice what I have learned. For me right now, what I need to do is to set time aside each day to pray and to give myself more fully to the One who loves me. When I give myself to Him more and more generously in every aspect of my life, God will give me more and more of Himself. Christianity is a relationship, a radical love relationship, with God. I just need to live it better. There is no end to how well that relationship is lived and how intimate and close one becomes to God.

I want to share a few thoughts from the first chapter of Fire Within.
"A second thing I have learned is what St. Teresa herself learned regarding the sanctity and prayer of her companions in the early years of the reform: they were saintly women, and most of them had lofty infused prayer. That combination, holiness of life and radiant contemplation, is no mere coincidence. So it is today: men and women in any vocation who live the revealed word as Thomas More (married man), John Vianney (diocesan priest) and Catherine of Siena (consecrated virgin) lived it do enjoy a profound intimacy with the Lord they serve so completely and untiringly. Life-style and prayer grow or diminish together. If people today or in any age lack mystical prayer, it is not because it has been tried and found lacking. It is the Gospel that has not been tried" (p. 9).

Two pages later it continues:

"'I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I would that it were already blazing.' How perfectly this captures the contents of this book. The radiant Image of the Father's glory has come to light a fire in us, a burning love, a consuming yearning. There is nothing lukewarm about the God of revelation. Always radical and total, never does He reduce what He expects of us to fractions. Our communion with Him is to become a blazing fire, a perpetual ecstasy. These strong words will sound strange and exaggerated only to those who have not tasted that the Lord is good. They may have studied and read, but they have not drunk deeply.

"Reflecting like mirrors the very brilliance of the Lord, we are even in this life to be 'transformed from one glory to another into the very image that we reflect--this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit'. This text, too, is an excellent summation of much of this present work, namely, the gradual but inevitable transformation of a generous person that accompanies parallel growth in depth of communion with the indwelling Trinity. They who think that fullness of contemplation is meant to be confined to an elite few do not understand the contents of Sacred Scripture. Nor do they understand the great patristic commentators (e.g., St. Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century) who join with John and Teresa in writing of this transformation (p. 11).

"'Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it dawned upon our human imagination what things God has prepared for those who love him.' This pauline statement, astonishing however one understands it, refers not only to our final destiny in beatific vision and risen body but also to the unspeakable, indeed unimaginable, gifts God has in store on earth for totally generous lovers" (p. 11-12)

Everyone is called to this deep union with God; that, indeed, was why we were created. God made us to be His house, temple, bride and spouse. He is the Divine Bridegroom.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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