Mystic Monday: Old Friends Week

I spent this last weekend with Gradual School friends at St Meinrad because it was Graduation weekend and there are still people that we went to classes with who are graduating; way to go Paul and Ben and Mike and Glory,(who had the tough job of representing as the only woman in the graduating class this year); as well as seminarians we know who are finishing up since it takes them so many more years to get their MDiv than it takes us to get our MA and MTS degrees. Congrats to Deacons Peter Marshall, Jeremy Gries, John Hollowell, and Chris Wadelton from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, who will be ordained to the priesthood in June.

Anyway, I digress (a favorite saying of one of my friends with whom I spent the weekend)

Since I spent the weekend with old friends, I have decided to revisit an old friend for Mystic Monday. Because I took a survey on Facebook on Friday and to my utter shock was told that should I choose to join a monastic order I would be best suited to join the Dominicans, I am going to return to Henry Susso, a Dominican from the 14th Century, who loved the name of Jesus so much he gave himself a tatoo of the Holy Name over his heart with his writing stylus . (personally, I would have gone for a slightly less permanent badge of rememberance, but hey if it worked for him . . .)

Here is a bit from his text on "The Computer of Wisdom" a stricture for living the Spiritual Life

In the fellowship of saints which as the morning stars shone in the dark night of this world and as the sun and moon shed forth the beams of their clear knowledge you shall find some who surpassingly were perfectly grounded not only in active life and virtue but also in contemplation, of whose teaching and example you may take the most perfect doctrine and love of true spiritual life. And nevertheless I willingly and condescendingly to your youth and inexperience shall give you some principles of spiritual living for a memory to have always at hand to set you in the right working if you desire to have the perfection of spiritual life that is to be desired by all men and if you will and desire to take it up manfully you shall first withdraw from ill fellowship and harmful company of all men who would hinder you from your good purpose, seeking always opportunity when and what time you may retire and there take privy silence for contemplation and flee from the perils and turbulance of this harmful world. Always it belongs to you first to study to have cleanness of heart, that is to say that you keep your sensory perceptions turned into yourself and there you have as much as is possible the doors of your heart busily closed from the forms of outward things and images of earthly things. Truly among all other spiritual exercises cleanness of heart has the sovereignty, as a final intent and reward of all the travails that a chosen knight of Christ is to receive.

Good companions, time to study God's word and stay away from earthly distractions that draw you away from Godly things. Isn't it amazing how easy the right stuff really is?

Pax

Mystic Monday: Henry Suso

Today dear children we visit a Dominican friend from the 14th Century, Henry Suso (1295 -1366) . Henry is one of the Rhineland Mystics and came from a noble Swabian family near lake Constance which borders Switzerland and Germany.

He later became a student of Meister Eckhart, of whom we have explored a little on our Monday visits.

His writings include: Horologum Sapeintiae, Or the Computer of Wisdom

And another Book entitled The Little Book of Wisdom

Today I want to share with you a section on self abandonment and the fruits of the union of man with God.

The first "self" he has in common with a stone, and that is existence. The second he has in common with a plant and that is growth. The third with the animals and that is feeling. The fourth with all men, is that he has a human nature like they. The fifth belongs to him individually, it is his personality, both according to the essential and to the accidental. Now what is it that leads a man astray and robs him of his salvation? Only his "last self" by means of which a man turns away from God and toward himself . . .he thoughtlessly makes himself a "self'"of his own. That is he blindly appropriates for himself what is God's, makes this his goal and eventually falls into sin.

This is his description of a truly self abandoned man:

He is quite dead to himself, is entirely lost in God , has passed into him and has become one spirit with him in all respects, like a little drop of water which is poured into a large portion of wine. Just as this is lost to itself, and draws to itself and into itself the taste and color of the wine, so it likewise happens to those who are in the complete possession of blessedness. All human desires fall away from them in an inexpressible manner, they met away into themselves and sink completely into the will of God.

Oh to find oneself so abandoned, so that it is "I who no longer live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20)

Perhaps, someday with lots of prayer and fasting and more prayer. Only this I want.

Pax