Review: Wisdom from the Christian Mystics

 

-- How to Pray the Christian Way

 

David Torkington has written a few books about contemplative prayer, describing this very deep prayer; this is his culminating effort.  This deepest interaction with God is not something we make happen.  These books, in describing that, speak of silence and persistence and trust in God as key, and underlying all these, His love.  That is something He makes available to us, for us to become more holy, more like God.  We need to grow in love, a love that is a total self-giving, but a key to our love attaining that growth is to let His love pervade us, so we can become more like Him.

This book is set as a series of talks by a man speaking of God’s never-ending love, and how we might better partake of it through contemplative prayer.  “Meditating on Christ as He once was, we can come to contemplate Him as He is now, and through Him to contemplate the Father.”  Mystical love is “putting self second and someone else first, whether you feel like it or not.”  But, “Mystical contemplation is a pure gift of God, and to suggest that it can be attained by man-made methods and techniques is heretical.”

In another place he wrote “Read, re-read and reflect all Jesus said and did in St. John’s account of the Last Supper, and these profound truths will come alive in a way that nothing I can say ever will.”  The apostles lived with Jesus for 3 years; John lived with Mary for 20 years before he wrote his gospel.  Perhaps her influence is why his Gospel is sometimes called The Gospel of Love.

If you want to grow closer to Jesus and better understand contemplative prayer, this book may open new doors for you.  

Review: The Song of the Lamb

 

 

I’ve always liked the wisdom of Robert Cardinal Sarah, and how his words open my soul to new insights.  In this book, his words sometimes made me sad, as he speaks of God’s awesomeness and beauty, and His gift of the Liturgy to man.  Sacred music played then, should immerse us --- however imperfectly --- into the atmosphere of heaven.  Yet, how often does music at mass seem to us like a mere concert, or as Cardinal Sarah writes, “like kitsch”.

This book tells how the Liturgy is “the summit of our Christian life, drawing us into the mystical presence of God Himself.”  But, as the Cardinal explains, the popular music styles such as folk, pop, jazz and rock often heard at mass serve more as a participation in the culture, and the idea of communal worship.

I think the overall feeling I came away with from this book is the need to return to more reverent music, such as Gregorian Chant, and worship expressed by silence and listening for God’s grace.  While the cardinal is from Africa, he did not speak highly of where local cultural music and dance there have been incorporated into many locations.  There is a place and time for local worship gatherings, but not at the mass, which is the summit of Christian life, the mystical presence of God Himself.  At the mass, we celebrate Christ giving of Himself to us at the Last Supper.  And we celebrate His giving of Himself for us as on the crucifix.  An awesome God, Creator of the universe, is with us.

Cardinal Sarah reminds us that the beauty of the church building and the reverence of our music makes our worship about Him, not us.

 

 

Barron Beatitude

 

I’ve just started Bishop Barron’s book Catholicism (2^nd ed).  His explanation on the Beatitudes on pages 36-45 was a great presentation which was, for me, a new way of seeing them.  I started trying to summarize his words but found myself only quoting most all of them.  So, I’ll just note a few key points.

Bishop Barron calls the first four Beatitudes as being the “more positive” ones.  In short, they note that God is love, and we should try to imitate Him.  In writing of the last four Beatitudes, the good Bishop starts by quoting Thomas Aquinas, who “said the four typical substitutes for God are wealth, pleasure, power, and honor.  The last four then are statements about people who are able to overcome those “self” urges. 

Blessed in the poor in spirit describes those able to overcome the desire for wealth by a detachment to material things, not seeking to buy happiness here, now, on earth.  Blessed are those who mourn is a reference to those who can overcome good feelings or sensations, or other forms of real or imagined pleasures.  Blessed are the meek refers to those not focused on political or other powers (including pride and sexual powers), but rather live with a feeling of detachment.  And the last of the “negative” beatitudes is: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.  This one, as Barron gives a detailed explanation, refers to those not have a fixation on approval of others (being noticed, honored, endowed with titles).   

The Beatitudes, early in the Gospel of Matthew, are Jesus telling the people how they should be living good lives, seeking to become more like God and focused on eternal life, and not focused on ourselves and this earthly life.  It is a good way of looking at that lesson.  Early on in his public teaching, Jesus is saying to be focused on our eternal life, not the short time we live on earth.  He notes that in many ways this is against what may seem to be our nature.  But he calls those natural urges concupiscence or addiction, and with our free will we can defeat those urges, and create new “natural urges” to do good.