Carthusian Saints and Blesseds

Today, the Carthusians honor all those of their Order who are now heavenly intercessors, residents of Paradise – the Saints and the Blessed. At Matins, the monks listened to an excerpt from what is considered a masterpiece in Syrian spirituality titled: "Le Livre de la Perfection" by the seventh-century writer and martyr, Sahdona.

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To all those who care about their salvation, Christ our hope and our God, has taught us in the Gospel to distance ourselves from the world, waiting for God alone, devoting ourselves to prayer and spiritual contemplation. By His words and His example He has shown that no place is more suitable for both prayer and being fixed on God than a place of solitude, away from traffic and favorable to recollection.

There, in fact, the body quiets itself, because the excitements of the external senses are extinguished while at the same time the soul is no longer agitated by internal impulses. As the worldly tumult subsides, it brightens the spirit; the mind becomes liberated from dark earthly concerns: in short, man emerges purified and freed from all physical and spiritual pollution. The discerning eye of his inner light shines and it is good to know himself, to improve and guide his behavior on the clear path of justice. Under these conditions, the man is rushed into the spiritual heights, he stands before the Lord and perceives something glorious, and feels extremely blessed by the Lord Who created him.

He dwells in God alone due to holy purity of life, and God constantly abides in him, waiting to envelop him with the great remembrance of His own manifestation, to burst from the body and impulses man’s thoughts, until the last day, entering into the clouds of heaven, where his covered face will be uncovered and radiant.

Blessed devotion! Your wonders have manifested themselves since the beginning with Adam, our ancestor, and have grown through all generations and achieved miracles for us. These marvelous effects shine in those wonderful beings who are men of truth, who have been able to contemplate its significance. They have taken flight far away from the world and its distractions in order to quiet themselves, body and soul, withdrawing to the desert; by these means they strive for total peace which is rendered to them, the incredible recollection, infused by the Lord supernaturally.

Our Lord, mighty, victorious and holy, source of all holiness, courage and victory, and Who has not disregarded the toil of fasting! Who among us carnal beings can ignore or dismiss You, weak and sinful as we are, continually stuck in the mud of passions?

No one would dare to say that the adverse passions of the flesh have ever been able to touch the Lord's Body, the Receptacle of Perfection, the magnificent Temple of the Divine. Yet, although He did not have the slightest need, the Lord Jesus did not renounce the laborious practice of fasting; in order to better teach the great virtue and holiness that He confers on those who observe it.

Just as He was baptized to teach us in our turn to receive baptism and follow His example, thus He fasted to teach us to fast in His likeness. Every baptized person should feel compelled to fight against evil, as did our Lord, and so to be attached to the weapons of fasting even though we have received the fullness of the Spirit.

We fast according to the will of God, sincerely and wholeheartedly, without altering our fasting obligations to the criteria of Satan. This would occur if fasting hypocritically, being seen by others, in order to please men and receive the reward of vain praise from the people; we would thus be excluded from the divine reward, just as our Lord warned about the Pharisees, blinded, discouraging imitation: When you fast -- He said -- do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward.

Behold, rendered wholly perfect by fasting from all evil, hungry and thirsty for the spirit of felicity that comes from God, we will be able to escape the threat of misery and famine in the last days reserved for those who shall be satisfied on earth. We will merit instead the blessing of contentment that Christ Jesus has promised to the hungry in these terms: Blessed are those who hunger, they shall be satisfied.

Saints Cornelius and Cyprian

Today on the liturgical calendar is the Memorial of Saint Cornelius, pope and martyr, and Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr.  

In his work on Mortality, Saint Cyprian writes about the faithful who "cannot be moved by worldly enticements" and are able to connect with the power of God within them to "shatter the turbulent onsets of the world and the raging waves of time."

On the flip side, Saint Cyprian, in that same writing, mentions those who "resist with less temptation and will not implement the divine power" and the invincibility of their heart.  

By means of our baptism we belong to Christ; but with that comes responsibility as explained by Saint Cyprian: "He who has begun to be already a man of God and of Christ, must be found worthy of God and of Christ." He expounds on that by teaching that in this earthly life we must already hope for divine things "so that we may have no trembling at the rising of storms and tempests of the world." 

In every age of human history the people of God have faced stress, disasters, tragedies, etc. As we often hear or even say ourselves: "Why? - How could a loving God allow such things?" Saint Cyprian reminds us: "Remember that the Lord had foretold these events would come and exhorted us with His foreseeing words. He prophesied about wars, famines and plagues, with the intention of strengthening the people of His Church for endurance of things to come; and lest an unexpected and new dread should shake us, He previously warned us that adversity would increase more and more in the end times. Behold, the very things occur which were spoken; and since those occur which were foretold before, whatever things were promised will also follow; as the Lord Himself promises, saying, 'But when you see all these things come to pass, know that the Kingdom of God is at hand’" (Luke 21:31).

Most comforting, as we see and read daily the world's struggles, are the words of our Savior: "I am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believes in Me, though he die, yet shall live; and whosoever lives and believes in Me shall not die eternally" (John 11:25-26).

Saint Cyprian tells us not to forget that "we are passing through death to immortality; eternal life cannot follow, unless we depart from this life. That is not an end, but a transition, a journey through time, a passage to eternity." 

What we perhaps often forget is that we are "living here as guests and strangers." Saint Cyprian, in the midst of much grief caused by the headlining news of our modern day, finishes with a very joyous thought: "Our home is heaven. Our fathers are the patriarchs: why do we not hasten and run, that we may behold our country, that we may greet our true family? There are a great number of our dear ones awaiting us, and a dense crowd of parents, brothers, children, are longing for us, already assured of their own safety, and still solicitous for our salvation. What a great joy to attain to their presence and their embrace!"

The Most Precious Blood

Today is the Solemnity of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Really, the entire month of July is dedicated to the Precious Blood.  Here's a homily by Saint John Chrysostom.

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In Egypt, at midnight, God threatened the Egyptians with the tenth plague, by which their first-born should perish, because they kept in captivity His first-born people. But, lest the beloved Jews should share their danger, because they were all in the same place, He found, in His wisdom, a remedy. Behold then a wonderful figure, that you may learn His power in truth. The anger of the divine indignation was expected, and the Angel of Death circled over every home. What, therefore, did Moses do? Kill, he said, a yearling lamb, and sprinkle the doors with its blood. What did you say, Moses? Is the blood of a sheep likely to deliver a reasoning man? In truth, he says, not by what that blood is in itself, but because by it, there is displayed a figure of the Blood of the Lord.

For as the statues of monarchs, mindless and speechless images though they are, have sometimes been a helpful refuge to men endowed with soul and reason, not because they are made of bronze, but because the likeness they bear is a King's. And just so did this unconscious blood deliver the lives of men, not because it was blood, but because it foreshadowed the shedding of the Blood of Jesus. On that night in Egypt, when the destroying Angel saw the blood upon the lintel and on the two side-posts, he passed over the door, and dared not to enter into the house. Even so now much more will the destroyer of souls flee away when he sees, not the lintel and the two side-posts sprinkled with the blood of a lamb, but the mouth of the faithful Christian, the living dwelling of the Holy Spirit, shining with the Blood of the True Messiah. For if the Angel stopped before the type, how much more shall the enemy tremble if he should perceive the reality itself? Would you like to hear more of the power of that Blood? I am willing. Consider from what source it wells up, from what fountain it springs forth. Its fountain is the Cross itself, its source is the Side of the Lord. The soldier opened His Side, and laid open the wall of that holy Temple; and I have found that most noble treasure, and I rejoice to discover the glittering riches.

And so was it done concerning that Lamb; the Jews killed a sheep, and I have learned the value of the sacrament. From the Side flowed forth Blood and Water. I would not, my hearer, that you should pass by the depths of such a mystery as this without pausing; for I have yet a mystical and mysterious discourse to deliver. I have said that the Water and Blood showed symbolically baptism and the sacraments. For from these, the holy Church was founded by the laver of regeneration, and the renovation of the Holy Spirit. Through baptism, I say, and through the sacraments, which seem to have issued from His Side. It was therefore out of the Side of Christ that the Church was created, just as it was out of the side of Adam that Eve was raised up to be his bride. This is the reason why Paul says, no doubt in allusion to his Side: We are members of His Body, and of His Bones. For even as God made the woman Eve out of the rib which He had taken out of the side of Adam, so has Christ made the Church out of the Blood and Water which He made to flow for us out of His own Side.

The Gift of God

Today's post comes from a modern day Carthusian who died in 1987. His name is Dom Jean-Baptiste Porion. He was a monk of La Valsainte Charterhouse in Switzerland.

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Our destiny is to a life of the greatest intimacy with God Himself. This union between the soul and its Creator was established when God raised our first parents to the supernatural state. But by sin, they revolted against God, and the bond between heaven and earth was broken. It needed a man-God to heal that rupture, and it is now, by the Passion and merits of our divine Savior, that we can once again become children of God, and share in the divine life.

We received that life in baptism and, if it is our misfortune to have forfeited that life by sin, our Lord gives it back to us through the merits of His Precious Blood every time we receive absolution.

Now we realize how absolutely essential it is for us to avoid sin if we are to preserve the most precious gift God has given to man. "If you knew the gift of God . . ." (John 4:10). God grant that our Lord’s words to the woman at the well may never become a reproach to us.

All the evils in the world are nothing compared to one sin, for one grave sin robs us of the divine life. In order to understand something of the gravity of sin, think of what it means. What Christian would dare to enter a church furtively and violate the Tabernacle, scattering the sacred Hosts from the dishonored ciborium? Even if we thought of such a thing, would we have the unhappy daring to do it? Surely, even the most lukewarm Christian would not dare to commit such a sacrilege to the Body of our Lord. Yet what does sin in fact do? Does it not banish God from our hearts, and deliver us over to the power of Satan?