This is a two-part conversation.
The first part looks at our contemporary western society and the challenges it presents to those of us living a Carmelite spirituality as well as anyone trying to live by faith and Christian values.
The second part looks at the Carmelite spirituality of Ruth Burrows (Sr Rachel), an enclosed discalced Carmelite nun who died last year at the age of 100. A tribute to her published in THE TABLET suggested she "can justifiably be considered a Teresa of Avila of our era." (18 November 2023)
Quotations from Ruth Burrows to prompt discussion.
“I have had nothing, ever, ever, never on the level of what I could within myself feel, let’s say, God’s love for me, God’s presence to me”, in an interview, THE TABLET 12 August 2022
Two of her many books stress that spirituality is about letting God love us.
Book: Extravagant Love: The Self-Emptying of Jesus (Paulist Press 2022)
Pg 2 We are the delight and joy of Jesus.
Pg 8 God’s life is not God’s alone; it is ours also.
Pg 10 Let us take every aspect of our human experience and spread it out to God without fear, without shame.
Pgs 40-42 Because he is utterly poor, nothing obscures the Father’s likeness. It is Jesus in his stark poverty……who is the human image of God. Our own poverty…..is our greatest treasure. We form ideas of holiness, of what it is like to be close to God, and we are troubled and discontented because we do not feel holy or even good. We leave ourselves in God’s hands. We cannot make ourselves holy. Consolations does not mean success in closeness to God….”Poor” prayer from which you get no satisfaction is real prayer, and in it Jesus is offering himself to you.
Pg 69 Why is God so silent in the face of great human suffering? Is God powerless…… God is absolute love. Love never coerces. Prayer: wrest us away from our self-centered selves and assume us into yourself.
Book: Before the Living God
Pg 2 What really matters is utter trust in God; that this trust cannot be there until we have lost all self-trust and are rooted in poverty; that we must be willing to go to God with empty hands.
Pg 34 This was the moment for the grace which changed my life. At the deepest level of myself I saw that God existed. He filled my life. He offered intimacy to man. It was possible for us to be intimate with God! So powerful was this grace………that it changed me in an instant and radically. It was a real ‘conversion’. I was turned right around.
Pg 66/67 I seemed able, not to overcome the conflict, not to emerge from the storm but, in the very midst of the storm, engulfed in the ‘can’t’ as it were, to move forward to God, leaving it to him to enable to do what I experienced as impossible. This was a striking example. I went to choir, just showed him my heart and told him I could not want to give in unless he gave me the preliminary grace. He did. Peace came.
Pg 72/73 In the depths of my soul I became aware of a steadfast peace. The world could rock and reel. Everything and everyone could fail me. I myself could be broken, could be a complete failure in the eyes of men but nothing could prevent me from loving God…..a steady light always shone in my heart.
Pg 81 Years later I was to say: ‘There is a citadel within me that never yields’……in spite of sensible sufferings there was, in my depths, a serenity - call it a citadel.
Pg 80 Vaguely, too, at times, something seemed just about to break through, only to evaporate, leaving a slight touch of remembrance, indefinable, ungraspable.
Pg 94 Oh, if I had entered what I happily dreamed of as a perfect Carmel, with its fine tradition, its cloisters, I would have sought security in these externals, assumed the image of the Carmelite and escaped from God’s work in me.
Pg 100 He [God] wants us to let him love us. Most spiritual people learn to see his loving providence in the events of their lives……They find it extremely difficult to believe that he is there, offering his love to them in their present, seemingly unsatisfactory prayer.
Pg 101 prayer has nothing to do with what is ‘experienced’
Pg 115 We have to go to God with empty hands. Unhappiness and suffering are not signs of being in the wrong place.
13 сен 2024
