Prayer of a Soul Taken With Love – by St. John of the Cross

Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth.  Mine are the nations, the just are mine, and mine the sinners.  The angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine; and God Himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me.What do you ask, then, and seek, my soul?  Yours is all of this, and all is for you.

When Saint John starts to write, he has already reached divine union. With the summit in mind, the synthesis that stands at the center of his whole doctrine is Christ crucified, the slain lamb. Our literature says that we must love the cross, but the point is that it’s not necessarily the love of the cross, but the love of Christ on the cross; this understanding can help keep our faith lives in perspective.

Sister Ruth Burrows, a Carmelite nun, writes, “The cross is the mysterious design of God for our glorification.” That again harkens back to the reality of our weaknesses. “We must not identify [the cross] with pain as such. Its significance lies, not in the physical and mental torment of Him who hung upon it, but in His obedience, His passionate surrender to God, and it is these we must make our own.”

When we live for love, for all that is most valuable, we cannot be afraid to be vulnerable. That’s something that is common to the whole human experience. Our call to be united with Christ, the fullness of love, takes on a whole new depth of meaning. Even in human relationships—that’s true. When we’re called to live and to love what is most valuable, we cannot be afraid to be vulnerable; we cannot be afraid to be stripped of all for the sake of All. If we are not willing to embrace His vulnerability in faith, we will not be able to enjoy the full victory of love. In this context, we can begin to better understand why Saint John is as tenacious in his ascetical theology as he is tender in his mystical theology. The two, of course, are as inseparable as the cross is from the resurrection.

Nada is Saint John’s code word. Nada is the theological shorthand which summarizes the whole of Saint John’s doctrine, his spiritual ascetism which speaks of the discipline necessary for seeking the perfection of charity. Charity cannot be made perfect, love cannot be made perfect without discipline. We cannot grow in the agape of Almighty God without first being purified by that same love. In very practical terms of spirituality, nada is to strive after nothing other than the perfect fulfillment of the law of God and the carrying of Christ’s cross.

Let’s try and sink deeply into truth of what Saint John of the Cross means by nada.   Ascetism involves depriving one’s desires of certain delights but this is not supposed to be contrived, cold, mechanical, soulless or inhuman. After all, in Saint John himself, we see sensibility, affection, human tenderness and spontaneous love.

As Father Thomas Dubay says in Fire Within, “We are to find delight in everything but cling to it in nothing.” Here’s the tricky thing. In order to actually do that, certain changes have to take place. If I’m taking delight in everything, I could subconsciously cling to it in everything. I might not even be aware that I’m clinging to the fact that I delight in it; I don’t become aware of that attachment until it’s taken away from me. It’s so easy, especially with poverty. Our spiritual life involves a tough battle. We need to have clearly defined norms, but sometimes, those norms could be so detailed and superficial that they can begin to become an end in itself. We have to be careful not to become pharisaical, but we do need the law and we do need clearly defined terms of the law. But without the law, and if we only have the ‘spirit of poverty,’ we can so easily deceive ourselves.

I could say, ‘Well, what matters is not the fact that I own all this. Jesus didn’t condemn riches in and of itself, but just the love of money. I can have all of this, but it doesn’t mean that I’m attached to it.’ That’s true, but how do you know that you’re not attached? Somebody could have all these possessions in their home and say, ‘It all serves a different purpose. This reminds me of a memory. This is for that. This is in case of a disaster. I have all these precautions, all these resources at my disposal and they’re all for practical purposes. I really don’t need them. I really don’t care about any of them.’

And hopefully you don’t, but when something is asked of us to be sacrificed, we really come to discover what is in the depths of our will. Then you see where your heart is, where your treasure is, and there your heart will be, as the Lord says. We need to “find delight in everything but cling to it in nothing”(to be continued).

Copyright 2016, Fr. Robert Barcelos. All Rights Reserved

Novena Prayer to St. John of the Cross

Lord, you endowed our Father, St. John of the Cross with a spirit of self-denial and a love of the cross. By following his example may we come to the eternal vision of your glory. Through his intercession, may we obtain the favor we ask for (pause for intention) if it be for our good and the greater glory of God. We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Faith is always first and foremost the force behind God’s ability to do great things in our lives. For every single person who encountered Him in the gospel – whether they were in need of healing of blindness, healing of withered hands, being paralyzed, being mute, having hemorrhages – whatever it was, faith was always the transformative factor that made the difference in their lives. One of the ways we will experience faith that will really test us is when we are face-to-face with our own poverty or brokenness, in whatever shape that might take. When God awakens us to be aware of those things, we have a significant decision. We are at a crossroads where we have to make a very important choice, a choice of faith. Am I going to believe more in my own weakness, or am I going to believe more in God’s love for me?

It’s so easy for us to believe more in our weakness than in God’s love for our lives. Why? Because I see my weakness everyday, and sometimes, when I’m confronted with this weakness, I’m unaware of God’s love for me. I begin to be deceived by what I see and think, ‘How can God possibly love me in this? How could God possibly love this brokenness?’

Yet Jesus is most radiant in the places from which He suffered most. So too, in glory in heaven, though it is beyond our ability to picture or imagine, what will be most radiant about us is the way God worked in our lives, especially through our weakness. It is our faith that allows Him to accomplish it, faith more in His love for me than in what I see in myself. Our human nature has the tendency to want to earn God’s love, or to want to perform and to do it, to want to take matters in our own hands, and by our own works, and by our own observances – which is all good. But what gets confused is when I put myself at the center of the drama and think that I am doing everything all by myself.

There comes a point when you cannot do it yourself! And God will break that self-centeredness so that ‘No human nature will boast before God’s presence,’ as Ephesians 2 says. You have not gained anything by your works but by the sheer gift of God’s grace. That’s one of the most absolute, primary realities of the God who has called us into a covenant relationship with Him. It is He who has chosen us, and it is He alone who can accomplish the great things that He has in store for us.

When the soul sees in itself, its abundance and greatness in the beauty of God, Saint John of the Cross says, ‘She is given the properties of the Beloved.’ It was so important to go off on that tangent about the wealth of our weaknesses. Otherwise, if we just read these beautiful passages from scripture and our saints about the glory of transforming union without a realistic picture of how to get there, then we’re just going in circles like the Israelites in the desert. We have to have a very real, concrete understanding. For us to allow God and His Word to be made flesh in us, our knowledge of self is essential and foundational in our spiritual lives.

The more we abide in communion with the love of Christ crucified, the more transformed in the Spirit of Our Lord we can become. When Saint John of the Cross speaks in language about the love of Christ crucified, it’s never a love of the cross in and of itself, but a love of Christ on the cross. There’s a big difference. Otherwise, mortification just becomes an end in itself because it’s an obligation, a demand, or what’s needed. There always has to be a relational dimension to our faith lives (to be continued).

Copyright 2016, Fr. Robert Barcelos. All Rights Reserved

Novena Prayer to St. John of the Cross

Lord, you endowed our Father, St. John of the Cross with a spirit of self-denial and a love of the cross. By following his example may we come to the eternal vision of your glory. Through his intercession, may we obtain the favor we ask for (pause for intention) if it be for our good and the greater glory of God. We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

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Our affliction is a magnet for God’s affection. There’s a tremendous truth behind that. In scripture, we often hear that God is close to the broken-hearted; that is a regular theme in the old covenant. Jesus said, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me for you, to heal the broken-hearted and to set the captives free.’  In John 20: 19-22, Jesus appears to the disciples and they are despondent in the upper room, where they have been hiding away. They were totally disillusioned and rightly so. Even though they heard the words from Jesus prophesying His death, His words just didn’t register. The raw, ugly, messy, and humiliating cross was so not according to their expectations. Even though they were given foresight, they forgot what they were told, and they became despondent.

That’s how we are. We know about the dark night, we know about the devotion to Christ on the cross, but when something really hard strikes us, more often than not, it affects us unless God sustains us by His grace.

In the disciples’ moment of despondency, Jesus came through the closed door. He didn’t have an invitation, He didn’t knock first, but He just came right through. He appears to them, and he doesn’t scold them the way he would speak to the Pharisees, ‘You fools!’ or ‘I told you so many times!’ Even Saint Paul in Galatians Chapter 1 says, ‘How could you be so stupid!’ Jesus could have said, ‘What were you thinking! What was going through your mind!’

Instead of scolding them, He did the total opposite. He imparts peace in a supernatural way. The most magnificent part of all, was that immediately after speaking the words, ‘Peace be with you,’ he gave forth His breath and the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in their deprivation. From that moment, Jesus met them where they were. Their faith had been so affected, and seemingly shipwrecked. Some of them were considering about going back to their old life. They were so disillusioned that they didn’t know what to do and where to go. Jesus came to them in their woundedness, and after imparting the words of peace and the spirit to them, He shows them His wounds.

As we know, Jesus suffered tremendous wounding on His body, but he only chose five to particularly keep in His glorified body. He deliberately chose to keep the marks of the nails and the spear in His hands, His feet, and His side. He wanted those as a reminder to us of how much we are worth to Him, as the battle scars, the war wounds of what He endured for our sakes. By His wounds we would be healed.

Hence, whenever our Blessed Lord appeared in private revelations to particular friends closest to His Heart – Holy Mother Saint Teresa, Saint Margaret Mary, Saint Faustina, Saint Gertrude – He would appear in His glorified body and the greatest light that emanated from Him came from His wounds. His wounds became the fountain of His blessings. His wounds are the wellspring of all the ways in which He wants us to share in His divine love.

So too with ourselves. Though we would want to cover and hide our wounds, those very things that we wish we didn’t have, or we see as inconvenient, or we just dismiss as getting in the way of growing in holiness, are exactly the means by which we will grow in holiness. Rather than being a stumbling block, they are actually a building block; those wounds are one of the most important building blocks we will have.

In our wounds we can encounter God in the core of our being. In that weakness, we are most united to the truth of our humanity, the truth of our poverty, our nothingness, our need for the Lord, our inability to do anything on our own. In that rock bottom, that ground zero, that nakedness, we can be consumed by the love of God. From that nothingness can come the glorious transformation of our life in His strength (to be continued).

Copyright 2016, Fr. Robert Barcelos. All Rights Reserved

Novena Prayer to St. John of the Cross

Lord, you endowed our Father, St. John of the Cross with a spirit of self-denial and a love of the cross. By following his example may we come to the eternal vision of your glory. Through his intercession, may we obtain the favor we ask for (pause for intention) if it be for our good and the greater glory of God. We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Our penances and mortification have to have a Marian character. The touch of Mary in the mortification is the safeguard, for it keeps us healthy and gives us a proper understanding of the purpose of asceticism. I recently discovered something that probably many of you are familiar with, a book titled Mary as Seen by the Mystics written by Raphael Brown. He takes four or five different mystics, and gathers what they all wrote about Our Lady in different parts of her life.

My favorite part of Our Lady’s life is when she was a little girl. I love that! It’s so precious to see and contemplate Mary as a little girl. Brown looks at different segments of what was revealed to these mystics about Mary’s hidden life, and he consolidates them into different chapters. For instance, you read about Mary’s Presentation in the Temple as a three-year-old. At first, I thought, the stories were just pious hyperbole.   The hagiography seemed so romantic that the narratives didn’t seem like they could be real. But that only lasted a second.

I quickly thought afterwards, ‘Why not? She was truly immaculate, she didn’t have any of the defects of intellect and will that comes from fallen nature; she was operating on her faculties from the beginning of her existence and anointed with the fullness of grace on top of that innocent, pure nature. If all that is true, then nothing is impossible. Why couldn’t that happen? Why doubt it? What would anyone get out of doubting the Immaculata?

Her hidden life, as she lived it with her parents, sounds like the life of a saint in a contemplative convent or other saints in the history of the Church. She had a voluntary love for mortification and practiced them in order to give God glory and to offer Him reparation. When you read and contemplate this, it’s so magnificent and inspiring! We need to understand that Marian character. Our Carmelite constitutions say that even our mortification should have a Marian character to them.

The more we abide in communion with the spirit of Christ crucified, the more we are transformed, to become pneumatic, pneumatized, and transfigured in the Spirit. You’re so spirit-filled, the Spirit of God is so palpably living in you that He possesses you. The spirit of the Risen Savior begins to take possession of the soul. One becomes transfigured in the blazing light of the Risen Christ.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a great Russian mystic of the 19^th century, a contemporary of Saint Therese, is considered the Saint Francis of the East. In the contemporary world, he lived the authentic spirituality of the desert fathers. Following the pattern of conversation of the desert fathers, Saint Seraphim was asked by one of his spiritual children, ‘What is the goal of the spiritual life?’ His answer was ‘The acquisition of the Holy Spirit.’ In my understanding, the response means, to become pneumatic, to become transformed in the Holy Spirit.

Isn’t that what Saint John of the Cross expresses in the Living Flame of Love?  To enter into the love relationship between the Father and the Son is to be transformed in the Holy Spirit. Saint John expresses it so deeply and explains that the Spirit in the soul begins to love the Father through the Son. You’re taken right into the heart of that dynamic synergy, that interplay and communion. Some mystics refer to it as the dance of divine love between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. You are taken into the way that the three persons of the Trinity love one another.

…that’s just way beyond my ability to express any further… about such things we just must be silent… (to be continued)

Copyright 2016, Fr. Robert Barcelos. All Rights Reserved

In The Spiritual Canticle, Saint John of the Cross says that the attributes of God – His love, His power, His joy, His wisdom, and so forth “produce in one’s center a most sublime and delightful knowledge of Him. The person is within the divine splendors, and is transformed in them.” In very complex philosophical language, Saint John goes on to talk about the beautific vision. “This cognitive immersion in pure beauty enthralls and transfigures just as fire ignites and makes to glow any combustible objects cast into it.” Cognitive is gnosis – to know. It’s one thing to experience it, but it’s another thing to be able to express it in Saint John’s kind of language. He had such a brilliant mind. He understood the best of theology so well and was able to express truths profoundly because of His experience.

He writes, “This contemplative transfiguration of eternity begins in time.” It begins in time. Saint Paul refers to that as the first installment of the Spirit, the appetizer to the banquet. Those glimpses of glory happen in stages, only as far God ordains according to divine providence. However, they are not necessary because God might not want us to have any glimpses. He might just want us to be satisfied with our three loaves and two fish, just as Saint Therese. He might not want us to experience the full banquet of His miracles.

Saint John continues, “The soul sees in itself the abundance and greatness and beauty of God.” These words from Saint John puts bones on the flesh of what we read from the second Letter of Saint Peter. He’s expressing the same mystical reality of grace through the redemption of Christ and is really just developing what St. Peter obviously knew!

It’s amazing how much Peter was transformed. The gospels are relentless in showing his weakness. The gospels also reveal the weakness of the patriarchs and the prophets. Scripture shows their weaknesses for the purpose of revealing that our election is based on God’s goodness more than our performance. Our election, and our being loved by God is because of His greatness more than what we can possibly offer Him. In so many countless ways, not only with the words, but also with the events that take place in salvation history, God is expressing to us that he is closest to the lowliest.

Therefore, the writers of scripture spare no pain or make no qualms about showing the weaknesses of the a majority of the patriarchs and some of the prophets in order to glorify God and give us confidence that though we are confronted with our weaknesses, it does not disqualify us from being beloved of the Lord.

In fact, the opposite is true, when we genuinely come to know our weaknesses, our weaknesses, really, are our greatest strength. When Saint Paul complained, ‘Get rid of this thorn on my side. Lord, already, please, for the umpteenth time, get rid of this!’ our Lord responds, ‘My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect through your weakness.’

And Saint Therese, in her genius, expressed the wisdom of St. Paul in a very contemporary way. She helps us realize that our weaknesses are our greatest assets in being transformed in the love of God, more so than our strengths; that makes her, the gospel, and Jesus so much more approachable

Yet we think the opposite because of the way we are hard-wired in our human condition. We look at our strengths and we try to judge ourselves based on those strengths, but our weaknesses are really where our wealth is. The more united we are with our own poverty and woundedness and the more we can begin to love that in the Lord, the more He can enrich us with Himself (to be continued).

May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. St. John of the Cross, pray for us.

Copyright 2016, Fr. Robert Barcelos. All Rights Reserved

Novena Prayer to St. John of the Cross 

Lord, you endowed our Father, St. John of the Cross with a spirit of self-denial and a love of the cross. By following his example may we come to the eternal vision of your glory. Through his intercession, may we obtain the favor we ask for (pause for intention) if it be for our good and the greater glory of God. We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

The Power of God’s Promise. Peter 1: 3-10

3His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power.4Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. 5For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, 6knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, 7devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love. 8 If these are yours and increase in abundance, they will keep you from being idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 Anyone who lacks them is blind and shortsighted, forgetful of the cleansing of his past sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more eager to make your call and election firm, for, in doing so, you will never stumble.

That’s the most direct passage from sacred scriptures that refers to what the Church Fathers refer to as the transforming union and deification. According Father Thomas Dubay in The Fire Within, “The human person’s deification in Christ is a testimony to the heart of pure Carmelite doctrine. Moreover, it is the complete reason for the incarnation and the redemption. It is the fulfillment of the divine plan.” Transforming union is the whole goal of why God was incarnate in Christ, why He was crucified on the cross, risen and poured out His spirit. This is the crown of redemption.

Father Dubay says, “Thus, all structures of the Church, priesthoods, curias, chancery offices, books and candles and all else, are aimed at producing this abundance of life, this utter immersion in triune splendor, this transforming union” (197). That’s magnificent.

Also, in the beginning of Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer, Thomas Dubay quotes Pope John Paul II, when he was speaking with the bishops of the world. The pope said ‘as pastors, your primary duty is to lead people into divine intimacy with the most Holy Trinity.’ The pope reminds the bishops that their duties are not just about administration, but about leading people to divine union.

Transforming union is entirely related to our universal call to holiness. In the contemporary Church, those terms are very popular and many have heard of that coined expression. The universal call to holiness is characterized as a radical state of healing and wholeness. Radical healing and wholeness. That is holiness.

Saint John of the Cross is a master at expressing what is meant by radical healing. The author who best communicates Saint John in a contemporary tone, without watering him down, is Father Ian Matthew in The Impact of God, where he refers to the dark night as healing. That’s exactly what it is, and that’s a wonderful approach to understand the dark night appropriately. It is a healing of the soul, just what the doctor ordered. Grant it, the dark night is a tough medicine but it’s always for the sake of this greater life, this greater health, this greater wholeness, which is holiness.

“This ongoing growth process in the grace and truth of Christ is one of continual conversion, which is the ultimate life-long love affair with One whom we know loves us with a love which this world cannot give. The state of total union of which scripture and St. John speak and to which we are all called is simply the crowning of all God’s gifts, the full flowering of the life of grace, the maturation of the life within us, of Christ’s supernatural life, into whom we were baptized.”

That reality of baptism is deepened in the Eucharist. Dr. Owen Cummings, one of the professors at Mount Saint Angel’s seminary said, ‘To receive Jesus Christ, the savior, in the Blessed Sacrament, is to feast on the DNA of God.’ His body, His blood, His soul, and Divinity are his DNA! We share in the whole aspect of His person, fully God and fully human; we share in the inner life of who He is in order to become more like Him (to be continued).

May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.

(SOURCE: Carmelite Nuns Retreat, 12/2013)  Transforming Union: The Wisdom of Saint John of the Cross- transcribed by TL

Copyright 2016, Fr. Robert Barcelos. All Rights Reserved

Novena Prayer to St. John of the Cross

Lord, you endowed our Father, St. John of the Cross with a spirit of self-denial and a love of the cross. By following his example may we come to the eternal vision of your glory. Through his intercession, may we obtain the favor we ask for (pause for intention) if it be for our good and the greater glory of God. We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.