"Prayer is the inner bath of love"

Today is the feast day of Saint John Vianney. One thing he said was:
“Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.”

It is prayer that is the means or receptacle for receiving God’s grace, God’s very life. God pours Himself out like water, and since God is love, God pours out love. The “water” of God’s life is love, and we tap into this superabundance when we pray. Indeed, it is prayer that opens our hearts more to receive the awesome graces of the sacraments. When we pray, rivers of living water flow out from our hearts because prayer is the inner bath of love. Prayer cleanses us and re-invigorates us and fills us with God’s love.

From the deepest part of our hearts, God dwells and gives Himself to us. Since He respects our free will so much, He waits deep within our heart to give Himself more fully to us. As long as we are in the state of grace, He is there abiding with us. We do not become a flowing spring of God’s love and light until we give ourselves more completely to Him and open ourselves to Him—which means we must pray each day. With daily prayer we open the “faucet” of God’s splendid shower of love. It is that infusion of God’s love which gives us the strength to do all things for love of Him.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Saint Thomas Aquinas: Mystical Marriage and Mary

I was wondering about Saint Thomas Aquinas and mystical marriage the other day, and so I googled it. I came across this short article by Sister Thomas Mary Mc Bride, O. P., entitled: "The Marian Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas." The full article may be found here.

Toward the end of the article it states this:
"In the contemplation of St. Thomas the virginal body of Mary, as well as her soul, overflowed with grace. 'The soul of the Blessed Virgin was so full of grace that it overflowed into her flesh, thus fitting it for the conception of God's Son.'1 Her immaculate heart, her feelings, mind and will were all involved in the conception and care of her Son, just as it is in helping each of us conceive and bring forth Christ in our soul."

As Mary's soul overflowed with grace into her body to prepare a place for Jesus and then nourish Him as a baby, so she is the conduit of God's grace to you and me to conceive Christ in our soul, give birth to Him, and nourish our relationship with Him through prayer and the sacraments.

The article continues:
"Mary not only brings Christ to us, she also brings us to Christ. St. Thomas, in interpreting the mystical meaning of the wedding of Cana considers that Mary is present in the mystical marriage of the soul with God and that it is she who 'arranges the marriage, because through her intercession, the soul is joined to Christ through grace.'2 St. Thomas points out that it was the fiat of Mary which allowed the spiritual marriage between the Son of God and human nature to take place. In the plan of God, Mary's "yes" stood for the "yes" of all God's people thereby making it possible for every person to pronounce his or her own fiat and attain intimate union with the divine nature.3 St. Thomas calls Mary mediatrix and consolatrix4 and in his prayer he entrusts his entire person to the intimacy of her pure, grace-filled and loving heart."

It is interesting to note that the author of this article and Saint Thomas Aquinas assume that souls are mystically married to God; the point Saint Thomas is making here is that Mary is present and is the one who arranges the marriage between the soul and God. It was Mary's yes to God that allowed God to become man, that wedded divinity to humanity forever in Jesus, and so now we are all able to say yes to God and enter into intimate union with Him. As children of Mary, you and I are introduced to her preeminent Son Jesus, and it is her sole desire that we become intimate with Him. We, too, are to become houses, temples and spouses of her Divine Son. Entrusting ourselves into her care, she protects our heart and encourages us to love, trust and obey God. She cooperates with God to help form Christ in us so that we can become other Christs.

Notes:
1. St. Thomas Aquinas, The Three Greatest Prayers: Commentaries on the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Apostles' Creed, trans. Laurence Shapcote, O.P. with intro. by Thomas Gilby, O.P. (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1956), Commentary on the Angelic Salutation, Namely, the Hail Mary! , 32.
2. St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, ed. James A. Weisheipl, O.P. (Albany, N. Y.: Magi Books, Inc., 1980),1,10, n.201, 98; and 2,1, n.336, 338, and 343, 151-152.
3. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 3a, 30, 1.
4. St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, 2,I,n.344, 152. See also St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 51, Our Lady, Appendix 1, ed. and trans. with Appendices by T. R. Heath, O.P (N.Y.: Blackfriars-McGraw Hill, 1969) 94.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Our Daily Bread: the Source of Holiness

A few days ago I reflected on Jesus’ encounter with and words to the Samaritan woman at the well; toward the end of that event, Jesus tells the apostles that his food is to do the will of him who sent him and to finish his work. Today, the third Sunday of Lent, the gospel is the entire passage of the Samaritan woman at the well.

I have been pondering this passage more where Jesus tells his apostles what His food is, and that made me think of the Our Father prayer He teaches them. In that prayer, I think the only prayer He teaches as recorded in Scripture, He says, “Give us each day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3). In the singular prayer we have from Jesus, He does not teach us to pray for tomorrow’s bread. We only pray for the bread for today. There is no retirement account for this bread. The same was true for the manna in the wilderness; it vanished after a day, so no matter how much one gathered in a day, it would not be there for tomorrow. Each day they gathered it in a new. The one exception to that was on the Sabbath; they did not gather on that day. They would gather a double portion on Friday which would last them through Saturday.

In a similar manner, we can not store up our prayers seeking the bread of today for tomorrow. Each and every day we must pray for that bread. What is this daily bread? Certainly, Jesus wants us to rely upon Him for all our physical needs and to thank Him for all of our overflowing blessings. The more significant and life-changing bread that we pray for each day is God’s life in us; to have life and live it abundantly, we need to have a deep communion with God wherein we put on the mind of Christ and conform our wills to His. He dwells in us and we dwell in Him. For this sharing of our lives together with our Merciful Father, we need to pray each day as Jesus showed us.

Thinking about this word “daily,” I looked to see where else this word is used in the New Testament and checked it in the Greek to make sure it is the same word (καθʼ ἡμέραν). One of the places it is also used is two chapters earlier in Luke where Jesus says: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” Luke 9:23-26.

Jesus tells us to take up our cross daily. We are to pray each day for our daily bread, and we are to take up our cross daily. Is there a connection between these two, our daily bread and our daily cross? I think there is. For you and me to be willing to lose our life, to lose the world, to take up our cross, we have to be filled with God’s life. Unless we are fully alive and entirely given over into the hands of our Savior, we aren’t going to be able to give up everything. The only motivation strong enough to do such a seemingly crazy thing is that God has won over our hearts and we trust Him fully with all that we have and with all that we will need in the future. To take up our daily cross, we must have our daily bread.

Another instance of the use of “daily” is found in the other writings of Saint Luke. In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles when the Church is just getting off the ground, Luke uses the word “daily” (καθʼ ἡμέραν) twice in a short passage: “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2: 46-47).

With glad, generous hearts, the disciples gathered daily for their bread, and daily the number of disciples increased. Earlier, I mentioned the connection between daily bread and being able to carry one’s daily cross. Here, the daily bread is what is the impetus and source for growth in the Church. Daily bread can simply be God’s grace that He showers down upon us for strength for the day, but it is most completely the Holy Eucharist itself. Jesus Himself, the True Bread from Heaven, is the perfect daily bread. When we gladly and generously give ourselves to Him when we receive Him in the Holy Eucharist, then we are able to carry our daily cross and then we will be fruitful personally; partly because our holiness is attractive and partly because God provides the fruit, our faithful and worthy reception of the Eucharist brings others into the Church as well.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life (Lumen Gentium #11): it is our daily bread which gives us strength to carry our daily cross and which bears much fruit, especially with the expansion and growth of the Church. As the second Eucharistic Prayer states right before the epiclesis, “Lord, you are holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness.” The fountain of grace God has established is the Eucharist; as it says in today’s gospel, it is the gift of God and the source of living water. All that we need for life and sanity, for hope and trust, for generosity and self-sacrifice, is found in the Eucharist: the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist is the very Love Exploding Heart of Christ which poured itself out completely for you and me, and with that heart within us, we have life and we can carry our cross and we will bear much fruit.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Each of Us is the Woman at the Well

I have been meditating on John 4 the past several days. At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus is passing through Samaria on His way to Galilee when He stops to rest at the city’s well about noon. A woman comes there to get some water, and Jesus, being thirsty, asks her for a drink. She is stupefied by the fact that a Jewish man is talking with her, and He replies, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).

Wells in the Old Testament were the places that the patriarchs often met the woman they would marry, so there is a marital undertone throughout this passage by the well of Jacob. The Samaritans were some of the most hated people to the Jews since they were the unfaithful remnant of the ten northern tribes of Israel after they had been mostly wiped out by Assyria in 722 B.C. and partially repopulated with foreigners. Samaria, for the most part, was what was left of Israel while the Jews remained strong down south in Judea. The Jews and Samaritans simply didn’t talk to one another if they could help it.

So here was Jesus, a Jew, talking to a Samaritan and a woman at that. She could not believe it. Jesus tells her that if she knew that she was speaking to God, and if she knew the good gifts God wants to give, she would ask Him to give her living water. She asks Him how He is going to get the water, and He responds, “…whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Jesus doesn’t answer her question, but He further clarifies the water He is talking about: the living water that He gives becomes in the one who receives it a spring of water which leads to eternal life.

The conversation moves toward the woman’s husband; she currently has no husband. She has had five, and the one she is with now, she has not married. This has a double meaning since the Samaritans had had five rulers, or husbands, too. Both the woman and the Samaritans were looking for ultimate, lasting happiness in their husbands, but they had not found it. Now Jesus, True Husband of Souls, meets her at the place of meeting a spouse, and offers to give her His life which we call grace and which is symbolized by living water.

His disciples come back from going to buy food and are amazed that Jesus is talking to this woman. The woman left her water jar to go and tell other Samaritans that she had found the Christ. “Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat of which you do not know.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has any one brought him food?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work’ ” (John 4:31-34).

This is the passage I want to look at most closely. When Jesus says to His disciples, “I have food to eat of which you do not know,” He is making a linguistic reference back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Jesus has food to eat of which they do not know, and in a similar manner, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not to be eaten: in both instances, there is food and not knowing or not eating. Jesus refers to the tree of life when He says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” The tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God; in other words, it is to do the will of God and accomplish the task given by Him.

The Samaritan woman at the well, unfaithful and sinful, symbolizes every one of us. Even though we are unworthy, Jesus is thirsty and seeks us out. He thirsts for our love, and asks us for a drink; He asks us: “Will you marry me?” On our own, we have nothing to give Him, but we can ask Him, and He will pour out His life into our hearts, making them springs of living water. In the middle of each day as we go about our mundane tasks, Jesus asks us if we will satisfy His thirst. We do so when we give our entire self to Him in love and trust and do what He commands, even and especially in the little ways.

Jesus seeks to be our husband and to give us the gift of God, which is God’s very life. To receive this most awesome gift, we have to ask for it just as the Samaritan woman did. Jesus is eager to give His life to us if we ask Him for it; He does not force His life upon us. When we receive His life in our souls, it becomes a spring of living water and leads us to eternal life.

A while later, Jesus went back to Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles and said the same thing that He had said to the woman at the well. “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, ‘If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’ ’ ” (John 7: 37-38). When we love, trust, and obey God, our heart becomes a tree of life which flows with living water and bears fruit ever month of the year.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

I Got a Comment!

Since this comment is buried in an old post, and since I am so long-winded in my answer, I thought it best to use it as my post tonight so others could read it and in case others had a similar question. Let me know what you think.

Mary Anne asked: "Who creates one's soul, then? Is is a mere natural entity? or one that springs from Satan?"

I responded:

Hello Mary Anne,

God is the Creator, and He still is the one to create us, both body and soul. Satan has no part in creation, nor is he capable of creating anything, other than a mess. He is a powerful and potent creature, but he is still only a creature and a twisted and, in the true sense, impotent one, too.

What I am saying is that God creates the soul, and the soul is meant to be a home for Him. The original plan was virginal conception wherein God would provide the fruit; thus, the children would be born His true children and endowed with sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is not made to be passed on through physical generation, so once Adam and Eve chose the route of having children through physical generation, children were born without grace. Because they trusted in the wisdom of the serpent to achieve this new life of a son in direct disobedience to the one command, they somehow covenanted themselves to satan. Satan, thus, steals God's spouse and takes us to himself, in some sense. Humanity, then, is stuck in a deed-end relationship with an evil master bent on destroying us without any human hope for escape; this is symbolized when the Israelites were trapped up against the Red Sea with the Egyptian army bearing down upon them to slaughter them...and God saved them through the water of the Red Sea. The passage to a new life, the destruction of the enemy, is what happens in baptism wherein we are born again, born from above, and made God's actual children.

Baptism frees us from our bondage from sin and satan so that we can belong to our new spouse, Jesus. Then we spend the rest of our time in the desert on our way to the Promised Land being fed by the bread from heaven, the Eucharist.

I am not sure I have answered your question.

What I am saying is that the soul is created by God, but it is empty. It is made to house God's life, but we are born without that sanctifying grace. Satan doesn't do any creating; all he does is steal God's spouse, and as such, he has some claim against us so we are not free to go to heaven. Since in baptism we are born again, our old self dies thus breaking the bond we had with the serpent. Baptism frees us to be united to our One True Spouse.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We are God's True Children

Tomorrow’s first reading is a mighty one, and again it is from the first Letter of Saint John. I will provide it here in its entirety:
“If you consider that God is righteous, you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him. See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him” (2:29-3:6).

God actually makes us His children; we are not just called His children. God is pure, and there is no sin in Him. We become like Him when we grow in purity and righteousness; those who remain in sin are not really his children. His children make themselves pure and are not attached to serious sin. A good tree bears good fruit. The gospel is that with God’s grace, we become His children, are made a new creation, and actually become inwardly and outwardly good. Salvation is not just getting into heaven. Salvation is being transformed into another Christ and becoming partakers of the divine nature as Saint Peter said:

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4).

God’s power makes us His children and frees us from the slavery of sin and death and transforms us into Himself. We share in His divine nature and become pure as He is pure. His heart and mind we take on, and it changes everything we do. Now we live for Him and love and think as He loves and thinks. The law is written upon our new heart of flesh, and we actually desire to do what pleases Him. We don’t just worry about getting into trouble or going to hell like a slave would do; we actually love Him and are careful not to hurt the one we love more than life. We are God’s children now, and if we give ourselves more and more to Him and grow in our prayer life and ability to truly love, God will perfect us and make us into His bride. Then we will fully become one flesh with Him.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.