Monthly Archives: September 2018

friars speak, media

Father Robert Elias Barcelos, OCD: The Eucharist and SaintTeresa

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PART I

PART II

(Click on the triangle to play the audio.  Below is a rough transcription of the conference)

In John 6, Jesus refers to himself as ‘I am’ – Jahweh. As Catholics, we sometimes are repulsed by the name Jehovah because we associate this with ‘Jehovah Witnesses’ and their often anti-Catholic teaching.

When God revealed His name ‘I am who am,’ this revealed who God is. It is a metaphysical expression that God is of another dimension – He is far and above creation in essence. Everything of His creation is a reflection of His beauty, His truth, and His goodness. Everything witnesses to the grandeur of God. However, none of this can fully capture who He is in His essence; this is beyond human comprehension. He is transcendent as well as eminent.

In the Western church, we lose sight of His transcendence, and we need to recapture what was at the heart of Christian mysticism. He is the only one for whom there is no origin.

God’s essence is to exist; He is the cause of our becoming. He is ultimately, supreme perfection, the absolute Absolute, that of which nothing greater can be conceived, ultimate Reality – Being itself. All these philosophical terms point to His supernatural being. He cannot be comprehended by our human understanding, though all of creation points to Him.

No image can capture God, but in the incarnation, we ultimately see God, for the God-Man, Jesus Christ, reveals the face of God. Because of the incarnation, we have a person who is tangible to help us relate to God. He gives us access to the magnificent mystery of God. He enters into full relationship with us through His Son. Jesus is God made man who made God visible.

Through the Eucharist, especially, Jesus becomes tangible in our hands; the Eucharist is at the heart of the life of the Trinity. It enters into the mystical relationship and is given to us as a foretaste of the eternal banquet. Love’s true nature is to come down. God in his humility came down to our level to raise us up to Him.

Jesus wants to feed us from heaven. In Toledo, St. John of the Cross writes a series of poems titled Romances, about God’s love for us – the divine romance. Through the Eucharist, we are being drawn into this love.

In our Catholic tradition, every saint has discovered and seen the reality of what the Eucharist is, and have freely made that as the center of their lives – the Holy communion that leads to the Holy Trinity.

Saint Teresa describes her experience of the Holy Eucharist – “in a moment, all the darkness of the soul disperses.” All afflictions of soul and body can leave in a moment through the Eucharist – exhaustion, negative sarcasm, critical spirits – can wear out our spiritual journeys but in one moment, God can alleviate us from all that weight.

In the Eucharist, Saint Teresa sees the “extraordinary majesty of God” so that “the whole experience seemed to annihilate” her. When we contemplate this truth through the eyes of faith, we’re able to acknowledge in our hearts the reality of God’s presence, though by its physical nature, we only see something very insignificant.

This mystery points to who we are as the Body of Christ. To the eyes of the world, we are ordinary human beings, with faults and defects, just like anybody else. Yet through grace, the God of heaven and earth lives in our hearts and calls us His Body and calls us to be Light for the World.

What does it mean to be Light for the World? This is not meant to be egocentric or narcissistic. It means that we must be united to the sufferings of Christ; we must experience the contradictions of the cross and experience that suffering in union with the cross. It means being His ambassador for the sake of the family. God can use us as instruments of salvation for those whom we most love. We must love Christ on the cross. This love is not about loving suffering itself – loving the bare cross without Jesus– but loving Christ on the cross.

It is true that Jesus is disguised in all creation. God is everywhere, but not everything is God.

St. Teresa recognizes the immensity of the Deity “concealed in something as small as a host…wisdom so wonderful…the stone that was rejected has become the cornerstone.” The universe revolves around the cross and resurrection, and the Eucharist enters into the victory of God’s eternal now, of love that overcomes every evil.

Where there has been destruction, the cross is somehow at work. Saint Paul says that all creation groans for the coming of the freedom that comes in Christ; all creation shares in the redemptive act. The great saints, starting with the Greek Fathers and greatest saints of the Early Christian Church and the East, understood and wrote often about this mystery.

Saint Teresa contrasts the experience of prayer possible through Communion as opposed to prayer outside of the Eucharist, mental prayer or meditation. As Christians, meditation for us means the gaze of faith on some truth that is revealed to us that expresses something about who God is and who we are.

Our spiritual life must be well-formed through proper meditation and an understanding of who God is – and then – we can go into emptiness, into the cloud of unknowing and enter into the embrace of God. In the early states of meditation, we must have proper formation. We are to use our sense to reflect on the truth of the faith that can help us deepen our relationship with God in a way that changes and transforms us.

Holy Communion is entering into God’s eternal Now. I am, Now, in the present moment. God exists to abide in the eternal now, in the sacrament of the moment, and we are called to enter into that. The present moment, where God is to be encountered, is liberating and takes us into the fullness of who God is – embracing all things, all of creation in one act of love. Whenever we celebrate communion, we enter into that experience.

God wants to make Himself enfleshed in you, now, and this happens through the Eucharist. It is an amazing marriage between heaven and earth.

Saint Teresa says, “There’s no reason to go looking for Him further away.” He is present in the humble wafer as He is in the great cathedrals. We must find that treasure in ourselves especially – and in unexpected places and people. Jesus comes not simply for us to adore Him in the tabernacle, but He comes down so that we may be His tabernacle.

What is keeping you from keeping the treasure of heaven within yourself? How is God asking you to find the priceless pearl within you?

When we start to love ourselves the way God loves us, then we can love others more freely, and see God everywhere. The key to this liberty of grace is our true awareness of God’s deep love.

SOURCE: 2018 OCDS Meeting Conference, Santa Clara, CA

seculars speak

Erin Foord, ocds: let nothing frighten you – trust in the Lord

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“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (our interpretations and imaginings).  This is one of Scripture’s most frequent imperatives.

“In all your ways submit to him (Thy will be done), and he will make your paths straight.” (Prv.3:5) This is the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ! How many times and in how many different ways does it need to be expressed before we embrace it with our whole heart, trusting with complete confidence that, “…all things work for good for those who love God”. (Rom.8:28) If we believe it from the bottom of our heart, what is there to fear?

Out of all the situations we face, are any of them legitimate for worry? Saint Matthew describes the Apostles on the brink of death. They cry out in terror, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” (Matt. 8:25)

Jesus had been asleep as the boat became overwhelmed by the wind and waves. His response is crucial to our understanding. Does he exclaim, “Close call, why did you wait so long?” Rather, He admonishes their fear calling out their lack of virtue. “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26)

I repeat the above scripture for emphasis, “Lean not on your own understanding!” With our faith, hope, and love securely grounded in Jesus Christ, “the way and the truth and the life” (Jn.14:6), we will never be threatened by loss, because we possess the real treasure. We will not be disturbed or fearful because nothing can separate us from what we truly care about, God Himself.

Saint Paul confirms, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.” (Rom.8:35,37)

By this line of her poem, “Let nothing frighten you”, Saint Teresa is encouraging us to grow in the theological virtues. Much of what we fear are mere shadows, figments of our imagination that will never be realized. They are self-created speculations stemming from some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to the present moment.

Usually it is not even the present moment that we fear, but a snap-shot of what was the present moment which has now become the past but we still cling to it. We have a propensity to avoid the present moment and dwell through memory and imagination. What could be more futile, or more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already “IS”?

In the Chinese language the character for “crisis” is the same character for “opportunity”. It is all how you perceive a situation. That perception will derive from our faith, hope, and love or lack thereof. Most “problems” cannot survive in the reality of God and the present moment. When one of life’s situations goes awry we have an opportunity to demonstrate our faith, in an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God and our hope in his will for our future as we embrace what seems unacceptable with love, peace, and joy.

Fear is a poison that stunts and cripples our spiritual growth. The antidote is what the OCDS Provincial Statues advise, “strive to make prayer penetrate our entire existence, in order to walk in the presence of the living God, through the constant exercise of faith, hope and love….” We must learn to recognize God’s presence in the simple details of everyday life, for He is everywhere, manifest at every moment for those who desire him. He is ever whispering to our heart, “Do not fear nor be dismayed, for the LORD, your God, is with you wherever you go.” (Jos 1:9)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning expressed this reality in a most beautiful way in her poem Aurora Leigh.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

seculars speak

Erin Foord, ocds: Let nothing disturb you – the present moment

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Anybody can believe in God, even demons believe He exists. It is trusting in God that takes faith. Faith is based on the knowledge that the Creator of the universe, possesses a power beyond our imagining, as well as an intelligence that we cannot begin to comprehend or fathom, and a love that surpasses all knowledge (cf. Eph.3:17).

When an attachment overpowers our virtues causing them to waver, we succumb to fear. In this way fear is very much a temptation. It arises from doubts in our heart that oppose the corresponding virtue. We are tempted against faith that God exists at all, or against hope that He is powerful enough to grant our desire, or wise enough to know what is actually best for us, or tempted against charity that He is loving enough to care.

To assuage our doubts, Saint Paul reminds us that, “Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible nature of eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” (Rom. 1:20)

God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good and loving. The Archangel assures us, “Nothing is impossible for God.” (cf. Lk.1:37) Our faith based on this knowledge establishes trust and our trust gives way to surrender, “Thy will be done.” (Mt.6:10)

It is essential that we recognize and have full confidence in God’s will as our greatest good. This is what Jesus taught and what we request every time we pray the “Our Father”. We must also realize the importance of the “present moment” as the expression of God’s will for us (permissive if not perfect).

It is in this context that Saint Teresa proclaimed, “To have courage for whatever comes in life — everything lies in that.” We should always interpret life according to our faith. When we suffer loss in the present moment we should proclaim the words of our holy mother, “Our greatest gain is to lose the wealth that is of such brief duration and, by comparison with eternal things, of such little worth.” She is well acquainted with human nature and quickly adds the lament, “yet we get upset about it and our gain turns to loss.”  

Our being “upset” takes many forms: unease, anxiety, tension, distress, nervousness, boredom, doubt, worry, and despair. They are all forms of fear caused by compulsively interpreting the present moment through thoughts of a dismally imagined hopeless future – worst case scenario, or you could say Godless scenario.

When we succumb to this temptation, we allow fear to dominate our consciousness pondering over and over an imagined list of miseries. The present moment where God dwells, is distorted into a fearful situation that we need to flee and reject. In this way fear separates us from God and thus is a precursor to sin. Imprisoned in an imagined Godless future we act accordingly to obtain our desires.

The anatomy of a sin begins with desire, is exacerbated through fear of non-fulfillment, and culminates in pride; My will be done.

Over and over in the scripture God entreats us not to fear. The phrases “do not be afraid”, “be not afraid”, “do not fear”, and “fear not” appear over 110 times.

If we include God in our imagined future there should be no reason for fear. There are only situations that need to be dealt with or accepted. It is vital that we always embrace the present moment with absolute faith and hope in God’s love for us.

We need to be vigilant that fear is a temptation against our virtues as Jesus’ explains, “…do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” (Matt. 6:30)

Jesus’ instruction extends even to legitimate needs for bodily sustenance and clothing. The natural or ordinate desires that our without sin. He continues, “…your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. (Matt. 6:30-33)

Do we believe this?