AWARENESS, ART, PRAYER

Numbering one to five: which is your favorite?
Which is your least?

Some quotes to inspire:

“The soul craves beauty.” Thomas Moore, The Care of the Soul

“Beauty is a gift of the Spirit that nourishes and heals our souls, for ultimately, Beauty is but another name for God.” Sr. Melannie Svoboda, SND

 “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.”  Georgia O'Keeffe

“Each day in our world Beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history.”  Pope Francis

“An authentic faith always involves a deep desire to change the world, to leave the earth somehow better than we found it.”  Pope Francis

“Be creative in order to achieve peace.”  Pope Francis

“Beauty will save the world.”  Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

These shapes help bring awareness to our inner live.

Shapes numbered 1, 3, and 5 are important to you.

The Five Universal Shapes

  

The Circle Symbolizes  ~ Wholeness, Unity, Self-awareness (Michaelangelo – drawing of man in circle/square)  The Divine

Meaning 

·    In their search for wholeness they desire room in which to find themselves, and develop their own identity.

In Relationships 

·       These people will feel loved and trusted when allowed plenty of space.

Underlying Fear 

·       Being caught in a situation that will restrict or restrain them

In the Extreme 

·       Narcissistic.

The Square Symbolizes  ~ Stability and Security  (Traditional)  Humanity

Meaning 

·       A foundation. Building blocks or fence. 

In Relationships 

·       Loyal.   Values integrity and authenticity, as well as responsibility and accountability.   People do what they say.

Underlying Fear 

·       Nothing will be accomplished

In the Extreme 

·       Controlling and impatient.

The Triangle Symbolizes  ~  Dreams and Goals
(point up - male / point down - female //  mountain  // 3 perfect number)   Trinity

Meaning 

·       Self-discovery and following their dreams.

In Relationships 

·       Need to feel support in the goals they pursue.

Underlying Fear 

·       That there will be no dreams to pursue

In the Extreme 

·       So absorbed in their dreams that they accomplish nothing in the present.

The Cross Symbolizes  ~ Relationships, Integration 
(Martha and Mary//spiritual and mundane // past, present, future)

Meaning 

·       Balance and the need for connection – to a creative project, to a group, to another person, or to oneself.

In Relationships 

·       Quality, not quantity. They love collaborative work

Underlying Fear 

·       Loss, abandonment, and isolation

In the Extreme 

·       Personal identity can be lost if they try to live life through another person.

The Spiral Symbolizes  ~  Growth, Evolution. 
(Native American – square shaped // shells // labyrinth //ocean waves // fingerprints)

Meaning 

·       Come to the same point but at a different level.  New perspective. Need for variety, novelty and change. They are capable of multiply tasking. 

In Relationships 

·       Flexibility

Underlying Fear 

·       Suppression of creativity, routine

In the Extreme 

·       Superficial exploration of many things at once to escape boredom.

Inside to out – introvert  /  Outside to in – extravert
clockwise – looking to the future / counterclockwise – looking to the past

The Meaning of the Positions

The order in which you ranked them, in terms of appeal to you

Position 1 ~  Where you THINK you are, the process that now has your attention,  you are on a restless journey to…seeking where you would like to be.

Position 2 ~ Your strengths and gifts; where you are currently fluid, and resourceful. This shape reveals the innate talents you are using to assist the growth occurring in Position 3.

Position 3 ~ Where you really are.  It is the most significant as the deepest desire of your heart. Very often this process is unconscious or overlooked, yet you must be aware of it in order to fully manifest the potential it represents. It indicates where your own gifts can be used correctly now. The shape in this position can be a source of unlimited creativity and healing when you support the process it signifies. Once you start paying attention, you may find this shape all around you, where you had not noticed it before.

Position 4 ~ Your motivation. The wound which motivates Position 3 points to past challenges, tests, and circumstances that have motivated your current process of change.    It describes situations that have been resolved or moved beyond.

Position 5 ~ Unresolved issues you wish to put aside for now, or have outgrown or one that you dislike, still resist. This is old, unfinished business that at a later date you will reclaim and integrate.

“Signs of Life, The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them” 
Angeles Arrien (1992)

Outline your palm on a sheet of paper.

Now decorate you palm with your shapes 1, 3 and 5.

Pray for awareness and wisdom
for yourself and the people in your life.

The Meaning of Colors

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

Marcus Aurelius

RED ~  Blood, life, love, passion, energy, anger, courage

PINK ~ Romance, joy

ORANGE ~ The color of the sun, playful, warmth, growth, friendship

YELLOW ~ Clarity, intelligence, memory, happiness, wholesome, honor
GOLD ~ power

GREEN ~ Renewal, health, bounty, hope, faith, peace

BLUE ~ Dreams, imagination, inspiration, creativity, calm

PURPLE ~ Secret, depths of the soul, emotions, royal, justice, faith

WHITE ~  Purity, cleansing, healing, safety 

BLACK ~ Mystery, elegance, fear, unknown, death, grief

THE WAYFARER

These last three years we have been true wayfarers along with Jesus, the Wayfarer.  A wayfarer is someone who has traveled, journeyed.  We have all definitely done that in the last three years by literally moving from Esopus to West Park to Beacon and three sisters to  assisted living  at Meadowview, and then to Lourdes. Now recently, Sr. Mary made her final journey to heaven. Communally, we wayfared by way of transitioning, regressing, accepting and continually growing into our new reality. 

When I look at this picture of the Wayfarer, I see it as Jesus welcoming each of us with open arms.  Jesus is ever ready to shepherd and guide us, protect and bless us.    To me it looks like he is about to place his hands around my shoulder, and on the shoulder of whoever is on the other side: you, you, you…each one of you. That made me think of a yoke; as in Jesus saying,  ‘Come to me all who labor and are heavy burdened, and  I will give you rest, take up my yoke and learn for me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.’  Mt. 11:28

On reflecting on the image of the yoke (a curved piece of wood that fits over the shoulders of two draft animals so they can work together) I thought that is what Jesus is like: He is the yoke that holds us together and guides our lives in a gentle manner; not by force but by love and an invitation to journey with him.

This invitation to journey with the Wayfarer didn’t intimidate our Foundress, Ven. Maria Celeste Crostarosa.  We know this aspect of Jesus as Wayfarer inspired Celeste to give her all and follow the one she loved throughout her life. 

In our day, Jesus the Wayfarer travels the road of life with us.  United by love, our love for God, our Redemptoristine life and each other, we journey together with Jesus regardless of our human differences that occasionally trip us up.    Strengthened by the grace-filled yoke of Jesus we rise to be our better selves and continue our journey sure in the knowledge that the Wayfarer will always be by our side.

SECOND GRADE OF PRAYER

At our last meeting we looked at Ven. Maria Celeste Crostarosa's First Step on the Mystical Ladder of her Grades of Prayer which was about faith in the one God and the knowledge of the faith which forms the pathway to prayer.  It was about ‘the gift’ of gazing at God with sheer faith and ‘the response’ to see all things through the eyes of the Beloved.

As I did last month reviewing the First Grade of Prayer, I will only give you highlights of her more lengthy writings.  To review see Nov. 9, 2014.

Ven. Maria Celeste Crostarosa
SECOND GRADE OF PRAYER

Hope and Trust: Dependence on God with full confidence
that is born of hope when one learns to abandon oneself to all that comes to us is from the Father in Christ through the Spirit. 

Oh most pure Truth, You are the faith that brings the soul all the divine treasures: and in your purity I discover my supreme Goodness in all His beauty.  But this lovely sight holds me in a purgatory of love because the true light of this faith highlights the difference that exists between Your most pure being and my own being; and if it was not for that lively confidence and hope in You that this faith produces in the soul, then it would receive a great torment from this divine beauty of Your own being. But the certainty that faith communicates to the soul, as in the previous grade of prayer, increases her hope and trust without her soul understanding how she has received it.

In that passive understanding she receives the knowledge of the wisdom, goodness and power of her Beloved through that cloud of shining faith and sees the beauty of her resplendent eternal sun, and then the soul recognizes her beginning and her ultimate end.

On this second step of this ladder, she finds her peace, as the bride does in the Song of Songs, under the wings of her Beloved and His divine attributes. 

She finds her secure refuge under these divine wings, and in Him she places all her hopes; in Him she hides all her miseries; in Him she rests in all her crosses; in Him she places all her desires; in Him she rejoices in every pain and trouble that she receives from creatures.  All fears are banished from her heart because security abounds in her soul.   In a single loving look she offers Him not only her whole self and her needs, but all the miseries of her neighbor.

She does not do this in prayer but in surrendering her heart to Him. And then the bride receives all the blessings of her beloved God and feels she has received the remedy for all her needs, and has been granted not only whatever graces she has requested, but also whatever she could desire. Therefore, such a soul cannot remain for long in pain no matter what she suffers, either externally or internally, because of the certainty of hope that faith produces a most complete and sublime trust in her beloved God.

Without holding back on anything, she gives her Beloved her own self. He, likewise, gives Himself entirely to the soul so that she may possess as her own all His divine attributes.

Therefore the soul never doubts her God, nor is she terrified by the dispositions that her Beloved ordains, be they arduous to her senses, or be they sweet, for He is never to be distrusted or feared. Because of the recourse she has to Him in her weaknesses, He is honor bound to rescue her as her father, to assist her and love her as her husband, and benefit her as her monarch. Here love is powerful in reconciling the soul to every trouble or pain; it matters little to her, because her heart expands so as not to be limited to the narrowness of her own littleness. And so she awaits the outcome of everything with great tranquility. 

The soul sees clearly that she no longer belongs to any creature; nor expects any benefit from anyone at all.   So, she declares her gift of self to Him with no other intention except to make herself entirely of Him whom she alone loves and enter into His heart - to dwell there exclusively and indivisibly. Here the bride says only one thing, “I am Yours alone and You are everything to me! (for) My Beloved is for me and I am for Him.”

Where to begin!  Celeste shares so many thoughts swinging and swaying between discovery and mystery, joy and pain, surrender and peace, exclusively and indivisibly giving herself to God while experiencing detachment from any creature.  All these are kept steady by the virtues of hope and trust, faith and love. 

The second step on the Mystical Ladder, it seems to me, is more a matter of will born of faith “in surrendering her heart to Him” than in prayer; a conscious act to trust and hope in God in every situation and to respond to all circumstance as would Jesus.   The goal is to make oneself entirely of Him. In the Associate Constitution #5 it states this clearly, “The more we strive to live the love of Christ, the more the thoughts and feelings of Christ will fill our spirit and our heart, the more we will become His faithful images and the more also will we be able to be true witnesses of the love of Him who is our beginning and our End, our Way and our Life.”

In a way the first two steps of the Grades of Prayer remind me of the first two steps of Alcoholic Anonymous Twelve Step program, but in reverse.  Celeste’s first step begins with God is God, my All, and then takes the next step recognizing her weaknesses, limits and littleness.    The first two steps of AA’s program are admitting that one cannot control one's weaknesses and then to recognize a Higher Power.   

Celeste sees this climb up the ladder as a purgatory of love because she is keenly aware of the Truth, the difference between herself and God, and her need for God in her life.  It is only with active faith, trust and hope that she finds rest from all her fears and crosses.

Even today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord takes up this theme in Celeste’s expression of ‘purgatory of love’ when Jesus presents himself at the Jordan to be baptized and John’s reaction is, “I am not worthy.”  But John is a man of hope and trust, faith and love and baptizes Jesus that he may be one with us and we may be one with God.  As Celeste explains, “Without holding back on anything, she gives her Beloved her own self. He, likewise, gives Himself entirely to the soul so that she may possess as her own all His divine attributes.”

So, to me, this Second Grade of Prayer is more about an actual state of being than prayer.  And yet, it is in prayer when we contemplate on God’s unconditional love for us and our love for God that our hope and trust grows as we continually surrender our hearts to our Beloved and in turn receives all the blessings of our beloved God who is our All.

Reflection questions:

What phrase, or phrases, from the Second Step touched your heart?How does Hope and Trust shape your prayer?

What ‘divine attributes’ have you received from the Beloved?

THANKSGIVING AND THE EUCHARIST: THE GIFT OF MERCY AND LOVE

For thy gracious blessings we give thanks, O Lord,
 For thy loving kindness, we give thanks, O Lord.

Celeste said, ‘I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me’ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

Beloved daughter, remember what the divine Word, God-Man, said, namely that He would be with you to the end of the world because He would be the food and nourishment of human beings, indeed He would be their life in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.

In this instance My mercy has not been able to go further in giving, because no greater gift can be given. At this point hold yourself still in admiration as you contemplate the countless good things you have received.

Christ instituted this Sacrament immediately before His Passion at the cost of His Blood poured out for the benefit of all. For them He would thus become their drink, their nourishment, their life and substance.

Behold then where the salvation of the just lies, behold the source where they receive all the lights and knowledge of the eternal truths. There they are filled to full measure and overflowing from the torrent of love where they become immersed in God and made able to produce the most abundant fruits of every virtue, especially love for the neighbor, because this Sacrament is love.

There they receive the Holy Spirit with all His gifts because they are transformed into God by My beloved Son. You see now, Daughter, what dignity this sacrament gives you, and how My great Mercy is without bounds: there has been no restraint in My giving. Hence your whole life should be a continual preparation for and thanksgiving for My Mercy.                                          74. Spiritual Exercises for December, med. 18

Thanksgiving is all about food.  What we put in our mouths says a lot about us.  What comes out of our mouths says even more.  As Superioress in Foggia, Celeste would share almost daily her ‘ferverinos’ with her community for their growth and edification the inspirations she received from her Beloved.  Most of her mystical inspirations came either in the presence of, or after the reception of Holy Communion – during the time of thanksgiving.  As you all know, the word Eucharist in Greek means thanksgiving.  In one way or another, her writings were all about thanksgiving. Her ‘ferverinos’ were like mobius strips – a circle never ending, continually flowing in and out of itself: it goes around and around, always coming back to trust and thanksgiving for God’s mercy and love.   Like Celeste, we are to make of our whole life a

Drawing Sr. M. Linda Magbiro, OSsR '12

sacrifice of praise to the glory of the Father by responding the only way we can for all the ‘torrent of love and mercy’ God has dignified us in being nourished by the sacrifice of His Beloved Son by being transformed into a never ending Communion of Thanks and becoming ourselves Living Eucharist for the world.

THE GRADES OF PRAYER

This will be a bird’s eye view of Ven. M. Celeste Crostarosa’s Grades of Prayer.  I, myself have only just begun to reflect on them in earnest.   In Celeste’s early life it was either Our Lord or her Confessor who ordered her to write out her mystical experiences.  In her later years, Celeste wrote down of her own volition these 134 handwritten pages which she called the Grades of Prayer to edify her community and the young women put in the Sisters’ care.  Generally, she was inspired to write and share the richness of her mystical experiences she received during Holy Communion or Adoration.    

We have Italian Redemptorist Frs. Dominico Caponi and Sabatino Majorano to thank for the great service of gathering and studying our foundress’ writing.  American Redemptorist Fr. Joseph Opptiz studied the works of those Italian Fathers and translated their writings into English as well as giving us his own interpretation of Celeste’s spirituality for our benefit.

Maria Celeste Crostarosa was a mystic.   Like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and others before her, Celeste used the imagery of the ladder to describe the steps of prayer toward union with God.  Celeste’s ladder is taller than most, consisting of sixteen rungs or steps.   Today we will reflect only on the First Grade.  In the First Step she uses the Song of Songs to illustrate the marriage union of the one being (the Bride) with the Trinity (her Beloved Spouse).  Above all else, Celeste was Trinitarian and Christocentric  - Christ is the ladder we climb; a gift from the Father planted in the merciful self-emptying (kenosis) of the Son whose image is stamped on believers by the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, our participation in the life of Christ is a transforming union drawing the soul up the ladder to God.

She describes each step in two phases; the first is the gift of prayer, and the second is the fruit of the effects of the gift: our response.  As we begin to look at the Grades I have selected pearls, samplings from Celeste’s First Step so that we may focus more easily on her shining insights.

·        Most of the time Ven. Celeste writes in the third person.   But then she will assert herself at certain times and say, “This is how I see

The First Step on the Mystical Ladder of Prayer of the Spirit

Ven. Maria Celeste Crostarosa

The Gift:  Truth and Faith in God

The Bride says in the Song of Songs:  her Beloved is like a stag that leaps over mountain and hills: the Song is explaining what faith does to the soul. 

Firstly, she recognizes the voice of the Beloved. This voice is the certainty of truth found in divine mysteries.  The soul listens to these in the speeding word that flashes by the spiritual ear.  To those who seek the Beloved’s face with a longing so pure and real, it is a gentle voice that lights up everything, creating wonderful emotions, some still, some active.  With respect, this reminds us of the Beloved: the wonders we believe in and the Divine Essence.

The Response:  

The soul stands there in astonished wonder.     She cannot keep up with the Beloved for her mind has its limits; she would love to catch up and embrace Him. Sweet Lord, let my lips say what my heart feels about Holy Faith: this is the first step on the mystical ladder, a princely highway that leads her to union with God.  

The Gift:
This is the ladder Jacob saw reaching from earth to heaven.  The earth is the Holy Catholic Church.   The prophet saw angels going up and down the ladder.  These are the facts and lights about the mysteries of Faith.  Faith is planted there and the soul rests on this steadfast base: Christ, the cornerstone.  Through the merits of Jesus, my Word-made-Man, the soul receives in her spirit multifaceted blessings through Holy Faith.  By Faith, the greatest Good becomes hers.

The Response: 
This is how I see it:  you have put into me a kind of longing, a longing to gaze upon you, to see you through your own truth –loving eyes.  This need to fix my gaze upon the Beloved One bears with it nothing of the sensual.

The core of this first step of faith-filled prayer is sheer truth.  It urges us to gaze with the greatest respect upon God as the sum-total of all good, the Highest God and to see all things through the eyes of the Beloved.  The simpler this act of faith, the greater is the quiet, safe rest she finds in God.

The Gift: 

While looking at God with this gaze of sheer faith she is disturbed by daydreams and other nuisance-things from the lower senses; even so, with faith, she gazes with great peace and calm upon her object of beauty.   The soul enjoys such oneness that the inferior part is completely relaxed as it shares the simplicity of the spirit.  This is a straight-out gift of the Holy Spirit; this is done by loving, not achieving.

The Response:
So by God she shares the loving acts of the will.  The Holy Spirit has sown a sacred love in her will and this love has the power to share this divine gift which comes through supernatural love, not by any action of the soul.

I could weep so broken-hearted for the tragedy of the unhappy world that values you so little and whose faith is nearly dead. 

The pathway of prayer is to know the truth of the divine mysteries.  The knowledge of the faith forms the road and the pathway to prayer.

Oh, if all were believers, all would be saints!

I’ll try to unpack this now with the help of Fr. Oppitiz’s commentary.

So, what is prayer?  Prayer is an interpersonal relationship, an inter-communication, a mutual exchange between a personal, loving God and a responding, loving creature.   Faith is the pathway to God.  Thus, faith and prayer go hand-in-hand every step of the way.    Prayer is also the pathway to truth.   According to Celeste, unless prayer is rooted in faith, both prayer and truth are incomplete.  What is truth?  Truth is about the truth of a personal God and the truth about the praying creature: the Creator and the created.

Celeste speaks of the fixed gaze. This fixed gaze is the intense focus of the whole person on the Loving Plan of the Father opened to us by and in and through Faith. 

This turning toward the Lord in Faith, she realizes, is initiated by God who draws her to God’s self by implanting deep within her, and within every person, a longing for the Divine at the very level of being.  Once a person practices this fixed gaze, they will begin, little by little, to see all things “through the eyes of the Beloved.” 

Simplicity is the fruit of this First Step of faith-prayer.  When we confront our creatureliness and recognize our utter dependence on the Divine we can more easily let go of the distracting nuisances in prayer that drift through our minds by simply turning our loving gaze back on God. This is, as Celeste says, a straight-out gift of the Holy Spirit.

Celeste’s prayer at the end of the First Steps of Prayer is that all would be saints.  She firmly believes one cannot be a saint without prayer and there can be no prayer without faith

Questions for Reflection:

How does Faith shape my prayer?

What phrase, or phrases, from the First Step moved my heart?

                    What is my response to this gift?

PLANS

All that is hidden will be made clear,
all that is dark now will be revealed.
What you have heard in the dark
proclaim in the light;
what you hear in whispers
proclaim from the housetops.  Bernadette Farrell

Though in the form of God, Jesus did not claim equality with God but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, human like one of us.  Flesh and blood, he humbled himself, obeying to the death, death on a cross.  For this very reason God lifted him high and gave him the name above all names.  So at the name of Jesus every knee will bend in heaven, on earth, in the world below, and every tongue exclaim to the glory of God the Father, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”  Phil. 2:6-11

The best-laid plans of mice and men /often go awry.  Robert Burns

Man proposes but God disposes.  Prov. 16:9

God writes straight with crooked lines.

Moira                                10/2014

Nothing goes smoothly according to plan.  “I had a plan to…”   You fill in the blank.    Disrupted plans are not unusual.  This is just one of the struggles of everyday life we all experience.  Still we ask, “Why it is our plans are always frustrated?”      Because we are the ‘created’ and not the ‘Creator.’ And we are not in heaven, yet, where all things will be revealed.  We are called to use our creativity here in the kingdom of God right now.

There is another saying that will help us put things in perspective and give us some peace of mind: Pray as if everything depended on God.  Work as though everything depended on you.    St. Augustine  

Through our prayer and work we are participants in God’s plan.  Ven. Celeste described this participation in ‘The Design of the Father,’ and it is summed up in our Const. #3 quoting Lumen Gentium, From all eternity, by virtue of a plan born of His mysterious and utterly gratuitous love for us, God wishes to call us to live in communion with Him, to give us His Spirit of love so that He might constantly live with us and in us.  

That being said, even Celeste had times when her plans felt like they were falling apart.  She was at her lowest while the new rule was being established; even Alphonsus wrote letters to chastise her: “It is always profitable to humiliate a soul overwhelmed with favors from God.” 

Celeste took this all to prayer and her Beloved re-assured her saying, “Live your life of constant dying to yourself, living crucified in My holy Flesh...always united to the joy of My Divine Spirit.”  And, “All that they shall do to you with regard to this work I shall consider as done to Myself and not to you.  But be assured that you shall see this work established.  Hope in Me."  These words strengthened Celeste, gave her peace of heart and she continued her work for the Lord.

This calls for much self-emptying.  Jesus is our model of self-emptying as we heard in the letter to the Philippians.  No one can say for sure that Jesus, being fully human, knew how his life would end on earth.  But with a loving and open heart he walked the path laid out by God the Father always united in joy with the Divine Spirit.   After Jesus died on the cross he rose again and brought us all the promise of new life.

Remembering our call to live in communion with God by means of being Christ in the world today, we walk the path laid out for us.  We cannot see the road ahead.    Our plans in life may feel like they go awry but they really may be blessings in disguise.  In looking back, we see how God has been with us every step of the way where growth and hidden grace is revealed as we receive unexpected new life. 

So with prayer, work, hope in God, a healthy dose of self-emptying and an open, loving heart we can proclaim, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”