'spousal' Imagery In The Lives Of The Saints, And Ours ...

[domenica_therese]

Thanks for the post! if I offer any reparation to Him at all, truthfully that would be very incredible, but I do believe, He just wants our love. :) If I thought about it and reflected before hand, I think I'd be all prideful too - and who knows, I'm sure I have all sorts of hidden pride anyway. I think the only reason it's not forced at times, is because of the pull I feel towards this.. I know I'm probably making my spiritual life sound a certain way, but I'm quite ordinary, and if anything happens it's only because of God's mercy.. maybe I'm too weak without consolations, who knows. Anyways, I'm just saying that - I'm sure it would be forced and arrogant for me otherwise, - unless I really loved like a saint and only thought of Him amidst spiritual trials, or something. Thanks for the recommendations! :) I actually bought the booklet about St Gertrude a while ago because it was recommended on this forum. I love how Jesus talks about confidence there, it's really amazing and just shows so much of His love for us. :) I now want to buy the book about St Gertrude's life. I remember the part about reverence and love, and how each is beautiful :) About the whole question, I start wondering either if the imagery is okay (for me, not for the Saints), and I don't always understand what happens to me, I mean even when my intentions are less selfish.

 

Okay I feel so ashamed having talked about this so much, lol, I'd just welcome any wise advice (all your advice has been great :)) and I'm sorry for having went on about this.

 

I wouldn't worry about the pride; some of us think we're too worthy, others not worthy enough. Just because I happen to have an ego the size of CA... :P Virtue is somewhere in the middle, the mean in between the excess and the deficiency. :) It's funny though, spiritual pride was a lot more of an issue for me when I really had nothing to be spiritually proud about. When I actually started to pray "well" I was very aware that, as you said, it was only because of God's mercy. I worry a lot less about how others perceive me in prayer now because my prayer is now a relationship, and they aren't a part of that, so it's none of their business. When I look at the tabernacle, they don't exist. I've been enormously blessed with consolation lately -- and I know it's because I'm weak too. It does make it hard to explain how I feel vocationally to others though without them assuming I'm super-duper-holy. I always feel so bizarre whenever anyone asks me how I perceive God, because that's ultimately such a deeply intimate question. If even other Catholics can't really understand how an individual relates to Christ, how can someone from a secular perspective hope to understand? Even I can't explain it, I just know I'm loved, and I am undone.

There's a gorgeous statue of St. Teresa in Ecstasy by Bernini in a church in Rome, and some of my friends were praying there when a tour guide came through with a group and started making wildly erroneous and totally inappropriate comments about how "erotic" the statue was, and how it was a disgrace, and shameful. My friend got mad and gave him a good ol' Texas talking to. She was still practically livid even when she told me about it later. St. Teresa's been constantly misunderstood, but haters gonna hate. :P

 

What fascinates me about the saints is that the more reason they have to be proud, and the more the world upholds them and lauds them as paragons of awesomeness, the humbler they were and the more they relied on Christ as the source of everything. I think that's ultimately what John of the Cross is all about when he speaks of detaching ourselves from reliance on consolations. The end is not to not experience consolations or not dwell in consolation; at the Summit we have fullness of joy and everything given back to us. The only problem is when the joy, the peace, etc. becomes the end instead of a by-product of being filled with Christ; because if I'm filled with joy, there's no room for Christ, but if I'm filled with Christ, I already possess joy in fullness.

 

St. John of the Cross ultimately resorted to poetry to explain his experience of God. He did commentaries on his poems to try and explain them to others, but oftentimes he didn't finish the commentaries, or he deliberately left it unfinished, like in Living Flame of Love. He ends by saying words couldn't explain what he was saying; you had to experience it. So to that degree I would say don't worry about not knowing why you have these desires or these movements in your heart. To another degree though, we do have to discern which of our desires come from God and which don't. So I would make sure the desires come from God, and then that's enough -- knowing why they come from God is probably unnecessary, and perhaps impossible, to ascertain by dissecting it. To that end I would recommend The Discernment of Spirits by Fr. Timothy Gallagher. 

 

God is radically in love with us and desires the deepest intimacy with us imaginable. Why else would he dwell inside us, not just through the Holy Spirit, but through the Eucharist?

 

I'll pray for you to find the words to talk to your SD about all this; I know the feeling.

[God's Beloved]

Dear MarysLittleFlower,

 

Yesterday during Mass and the novena to OL of Perpetual succor  with Adoration , i was constantly remembering you. I felt touched with your love for Jesus , impressed with the way you make an effort to please Him and love Him. I placed you very close to Jesus and prayed for you.

 

Have you read Deus Caritas Est ?  http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

 

Please meditate upon the section   "Eros” and “Agape” – difference and unity . I think most of your doubts will be cleared.

 

Another insight that might be helpful is to  reflect on  the gift of " Fear of the Lord " You will find more material on the internet.

 

Fear of the Lord  as a gift of the Holy Spirit  helps especially  in the living of a Spousal spirituality as it purifies love . Every human being , every Christian  'should' feel and have the desire for Union with God.  He alone can give lasting fulfillment to every dimension of our being .He created us to  know, love , serve Him. The spiritual life does not need any rites of profession or consecration .

 

Some persons e.g. CV are called in the particular vocation to make this Love more visible and explicit ....Why ? Not to make a CV special , but to be a blessing to all other  Christians and to remind every baptized person of their own identity as bride of Christ.  Imagine if there were no persons in the Church who symbolized the bride of Christ , people would soon forget  due to secularization in this globalized and confused world  , that  we all have an inner thirst to love God and be loved by God . Similarly if there were no ordained priests , people would forget their own priesthood as baptized . If there were no religious , people would forget the evangelical counsels .

 

So please do not hesitate to love Jesus or be loved by Him only because you are not yet in any formal vocation in the Church. Just  allow your entire being : body, mind, spirit  to love Him . At same time , see that the fruit of this kind of prayer  is an increased love of neighbour , especially the last , the least , the lost .

 

 

[AccountDeleted]

I wouldn't worry about the pride; some of us think we're too worthy, others not worthy enough. Just because I happen to have an ego the size of CA... :P Virtue is somewhere in the middle, the mean in between the excess and the deficiency. :) It's funny though, spiritual pride was a lot more of an issue for me when I really had nothing to be spiritually proud about. When I actually started to pray "well" I was very aware that, as you said, it was only because of God's mercy. I worry a lot less about how others perceive me in prayer now because my prayer is now a relationship, and they aren't a part of that, so it's none of their business. When I look at the tabernacle, they don't exist. I've been enormously blessed with consolation lately -- and I know it's because I'm weak too. It does make it hard to explain how I feel vocationally to others though without them assuming I'm super-duper-holy. I always feel so bizarre whenever anyone asks me how I perceive God, because that's ultimately such a deeply intimate question. If even other Catholics can't really understand how an individual relates to Christ, how can someone from a secular perspective hope to understand? Even I can't explain it, I just know I'm loved, and I am undone.

There's a gorgeous statue of St. Teresa in Ecstasy by Bernini in a church in Rome, and some of my friends were praying there when a tour guide came through with a group and started making wildly erroneous and totally inappropriate comments about how "erotic" the statue was, and how it was a disgrace, and shameful. My friend got mad and gave him a good ol' Texas talking to. She was still practically livid even when she told me about it later. St. Teresa's been constantly misunderstood, but haters gonna hate. :P

 

What fascinates me about the saints is that the more reason they have to be proud, and the more the world upholds them and lauds them as paragons of amesomeness, the humbler they were and the more they relied on Christ as the source of everything. I think that's ultimately what John of the Cross is all about when he speaks of detaching ourselves from reliance on consolations. The end is not to not experience consolations or not dwell in consolation; at the Summit we have fullness of joy and everything given back to us. The only problem is when the joy, the peace, etc. becomes the end instead of a by-product of being filled with Christ; because if I'm filled with joy, there's no room for Christ, but if I'm filled with Christ, I already possess joy in fullness.

 

St. John of the Cross ultimately resorted to poetry to explain his experience of God. He did commentaries on his poems to try and explain them to others, but oftentimes he didn't finish the commentaries, or he deliberately left it unfinished, like in Living Flame of Love. He ends by saying words couldn't explain what he was saying; you had to experience it. So to that degree I would say don't worry about not knowing why you have these desires or these movements in your heart. To another degree though, we do have to discern which of our desires come from God and which don't. So I would make sure the desires come from God, and then that's enough -- knowing why they come from God is probably unnecessary, and perhaps impossible, to ascertain by dissecting it. To that end I would recommend The Discernment of Spirits by Fr. Timothy Gallagher. 

 

God is radically in love with us and desires the deepest intimacy with us imaginable. Why else would he dwell inside us, not just through the Holy Spirit, but through the Eucharist?

 

I'll pray for you to find the words to talk to your SD about all this; I know the feeling.

 

 

A couple of things jumped out at me here.

 

The first is the discernment of spirits. Good call DT - that's a great book.

 

I once had a concern about experiences in prayer and asked my (Jesuit) SD about them. He told me that 'you can always tell the devil by his tail'. And then he explained it like this - look at the results of your experiences. If they are from the devil then you will be filled with a sense of self-satisfaction and pride which could manifest itself in a variety of ways - from feeling that you are somehow better or 'more special' than others in God's sight to wanting to tell others about your experiences so that they might be impressed or think of you more highly. This danger is one of the reasons that God is often very tough on His saints - He doesn't want them to fall into the sin of pride, which can manifest itself in many subtle and hidden ways.

 

On the other hand, if the experiences you have in prayer make you even more aware of your littleness and your need for Christ, if they lead to an increase in kindness and charity towards others, and a desire to keep these experiences quietly in your heart instead of trumpeting them aloud - then they are indeed divine in origin. Anything that increases virtue cannot be from the devil.

 

 

The other thing that I wanted to comment on is Bernini's statue of St Teresa in ecstasy (my favorite sculpture in the whole world). Yes, it is true that she has an expression of a woman in the throes of physical passion. I don't think there is any doubt about that. But for me, it doesn't detract from the statue - because what Bernini was trying to do was to capture the essence of the height of human love - but in a spiritual context. But what else could he use for a model than human love? It is no secret that the union between a man and woman (when it represents love and not lust), was designed by God to be an ecstatic experience of the flesh (and when deeply in love, of their spirits as well).

 

The thing is that, not knowing any better, the secular world can't see beyond that to what was actually happening with Teresa. The experience of union between her soul and God can never be known or understood by any of us. In fact, Teresa herself probably didn't understand what was happening - only that it did. She tried, as St John did, to explain things in words, but both of them felt unable to completely express themselves - simply because God is beyond what we can put into a box. On the other hand, both Teresa and John said that their bodies were affected by what was happening within their soul. John said to try to ignore it, Teresa tried to describe how she felt afterwards, without much success. And later in life, someone asked Teresa why she didn't still have so many ecstasies, and she said that she had 'gotten used to them' - in other words, her body was better able to cope with the intensity of the experiences.

 

Each one of us is called to union with God - and each in our own unique and special way. If you look at any of the saints, you will see that no two had exactly the same type of reaction to their union with God. He spoke to them differently, gave them different experiences, and united with them in the way that He had created them to do this. The roles we are called upon to play in this life have two purposes, to sanctify us, and to help others. But being human beings, we get hung up on status and position and image. When only one thing matters  ...

[BarbTherese]

Keeping you in prayer, Mary'sLittleFlower.............Barb :)

 

One of the most noticeable things about Our Lady (and St Joseph too) was that they made nothing of their exalted state in life and lived very ordinary everday and humble lives it seems since we know so little about their lives.  Today we see the outstanding saints that they were and how their lives Glorified God in outstanding humbleness.  Also, Jesus does not chooe to come to us proclaiming in Glory His Amazing Identity, rather He comes to us poor and humble.  The essence in fact of outstanding Poverty and Humiity.  His death that of a common criminal.

 

Edited August 8, 2013 by BarbaraTherese

[BarbTherese]

Apologies for typing errors - I was racing to beat the available time for editing posts having jumped back to edit when an afterthought occurred. :blush:

[God's Beloved]

Fr Timothy Gallagher's talks on Discernment according to Ignatian Spiritual exercices are available  in mp3 format at the following site.

http://www.discerninghearts.com/?page_id=1146

 

They are excellent !!!

[Laurie]

MarysLittleFlower, I will pray for you & sorting out this intention!

 

A few varied thoughts:

 

1. Lots of beautiful input here from others.

 

2. You might want to copy & paste much of this into a document that you can send/give your spiritual director. He could probably get the gist in 5 minutes of scanning what you've written far better than in a conversation in which you try to explain it, especially since you will probably be nervous in explaining it.

 

3. I recall that St. Therese used the informal "you" when talking to Christ (tu) rather than the formal "you" (vous) and she ran this by one of her sisters (Celine? don't remember). She was slightly concerned at one point whether it was okay to address him informally and then came to a place of peace and rest realizing it was just fine. Don't remember the citations here.

 

4. I read two biographies of Teresa of Avila side by side (Walsh & Marcelle Auclaire--don't remember which book the following thought comes from) in which she described going through a period of being EXTREMELY jealous of Mary Magdalene!!! She really struggled with this for some time, on an emotional level, and it took quite a bit of reassurance from Christ for her to get past it.

 

#3 and #4 above are just to say that human anxieties and emotions are perfectly normal and they crop up throughout our spiritual lives. The thing to do is to recognize them above all (which you have done) and bring them to your spiritual director (which you plan to do). So you are on a good track.

 

Finally, here are two excellent quotes from a beautiful book, I Believe in Love: Retreat Conferences on the Interior Life by Fr. Jean D'Elbee (available on Amazon):

 

http://www.amazon.com/Believe-Love-Personal-Retreat-Teaching/dp/1928832288/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375964313&sr=8-1&keywords=i+believe+in+love

 

This book is particularly helpful in giving advice that encourages us to place ourselves before Christ and let him recalibrate our interior life, in all sorts of situations.

 

The first quote, regarding any time you might have misgivings about poor choices, however minor, you may have made in the past (I do a lot of work and spiritual direction with prisoners, and they love this book):

 

"We must have confidence not in spite of our miseries but because of them, since it is misery which attracts mercy--misericordia-- 'miseris cor dare,' a Heart which gives itself to the miserable...Or an even more beautiful way to pray is: 'Jesus, I know you that you make reparation in me, that you supply for me, I know that you will draw the good from the bad that I do, and even, as St. Augustine said, a greater good than if there had been no evil in it...Even a fall strengthens us if we repent it, since Jesus brings good out of evil...If you make each sin an occasion for you to kiss the wound of his Heart with repentance and confidence, each sin will become a rung in the ladder by which you ascend in love. From misery to misery we go from mercy to mercy."

 

And, on confiding in him in an intimate manner:

 

"Be with Jesus as a friend with his friend, very loving and very beloved. Take your weaknesses and faults to him, as you take him your acts of generosity. The acts of generosity are for the Judge who is so good; the weaknesses and faults are for the Savior. And everything is for the Friend."

 

There is another line that I can't seem to find. It basically says, when you go to Christ with everything, all that is good, all that is bad, all that brings you joy, and all that distresses you, you give Him His greatest joy, the joy of being your Savior.

[AccountDeleted]

And another thought MLF - I just finished watching Jesus Christ Superstar online - don't think I have actually watched it again since the 80s. But one of the songs I love is 'I don't know how to love Him' because it is about the same dilemma you have - how to love Him. We are human so our love will be filtered through that-but He can convert it into anything He wants. Just love Him. And don't worry so much about the logistics of it. :) He will purify it all for you.

 

And don't be jealous of anyone else  - not even Mary Magdalene! Jesus loves you in a way the He doesn't love anyone else. God created you especially for Him, and no one can love Him in exactly the same way that you can!  :love:

Edited August 8, 2013 by nunsense

[MarysLittleFlower]

Thank you so much for the responses! :) they're all so thought out and kind. I was afraid people would just say there's something seriously wrong with me.

 

I'll definitely take a look at the discernment information!!

I read before about the 'effects' of the experience being very important. I try to use that in my own spiritual life, because you can often tell the effects of something.

I always need to regulate my pride because I have so much of it. With this, - I need to think. With discerning vocations, there were times I got tempted to pride, but this wasn't in relation to any experience in prayer, - after prayer it was different. Maybe with my SD, I could describe to him these experiences more and how I felt afterwards.

With the images etc - when my intention is more pure, - I don't think it makes me holier, - and regarding venerating images it's something I can only do in private.

[MarysLittleFlower]

(continued cause the editing timed out...)

 

I also don't want to talk about it, - the only time I did talk to anyone in person other than my SD, was because the question was bothering me so much, like now, lol. However, I don't fully know myself and there must be pride in me that I don't see.

Anyways, I'll definitely bring this up with my priest too :)

I think that's a good point, about not speaking about one's spiritual life so much. I used to do this a lot as a new convert. Now, I don't want to talk about any graces or experiences in prayer to my friends, I try to only tell them to my SD now, so he can guide me. However, I still talk to my friends about my difficulties with spiritual things, but I'd like to talk less about myself in general. I don't know if there's any pride in talking about difficulties. I know there could also be the opposite thing, - being prideful in not being able to take advice.

In any case I'm sure that I still need  much humbling, lol! :)

[MarysLittleFlower]

I wouldn't worry about the pride; some of us think we're too worthy, others not worthy enough. Just because I happen to have an ego the size of CA... :P Virtue is somewhere in the middle, the mean in between the excess and the deficiency. :) It's funny though, spiritual pride was a lot more of an issue for me when I really had nothing to be spiritually proud about. When I actually started to pray "well" I was very aware that, as you said, it was only because of God's mercy. I worry a lot less about how others perceive me in prayer now because my prayer is now a relationship, and they aren't a part of that, so it's none of their business. When I look at the tabernacle, they don't exist. I've been enormously blessed with consolation lately -- and I know it's because I'm weak too. It does make it hard to explain how I feel vocationally to others though without them assuming I'm super-duper-holy. I always feel so bizarre whenever anyone asks me how I perceive God, because that's ultimately such a deeply intimate question. If even other Catholics can't really understand how an individual relates to Christ, how can someone from a secular perspective hope to understand? Even I can't explain it, I just know I'm loved, and I am undone.

There's a gorgeous statue of St. Teresa in Ecstasy by Bernini in a church in Rome, and some of my friends were praying there when a tour guide came through with a group and started making wildly erroneous and totally inappropriate comments about how "erotic" the statue was, and how it was a disgrace, and shameful. My friend got mad and gave him a good ol' Texas talking to. She was still practically livid even when she told me about it later. St. Teresa's been constantly misunderstood, but haters gonna hate. :P

 

What fascinates me about the saints is that the more reason they have to be proud, and the more the world upholds them and lauds them as paragons of amesomeness, the humbler they were and the more they relied on Christ as the source of everything. I think that's ultimately what John of the Cross is all about when he speaks of detaching ourselves from reliance on consolations. The end is not to not experience consolations or not dwell in consolation; at the Summit we have fullness of joy and everything given back to us. The only problem is when the joy, the peace, etc. becomes the end instead of a by-product of being filled with Christ; because if I'm filled with joy, there's no room for Christ, but if I'm filled with Christ, I already possess joy in fullness.

 

St. John of the Cross ultimately resorted to poetry to explain his experience of God. He did commentaries on his poems to try and explain them to others, but oftentimes he didn't finish the commentaries, or he deliberately left it unfinished, like in Living Flame of Love. He ends by saying words couldn't explain what he was saying; you had to experience it. So to that degree I would say don't worry about not knowing why you have these desires or these movements in your heart. To another degree though, we do have to discern which of our desires come from God and which don't. So I would make sure the desires come from God, and then that's enough -- knowing why they come from God is probably unnecessary, and perhaps impossible, to ascertain by dissecting it. To that end I would recommend The Discernment of Spirits by Fr. Timothy Gallagher. 

 

God is radically in love with us and desires the deepest intimacy with us imaginable. Why else would he dwell inside us, not just through the Holy Spirit, but through the Eucharist?

 

I'll pray for you to find the words to talk to your SD about all this; I know the feeling.

 

Thanks for the prayers, and the post! :) I see what you mean about talking to others about vocations. I feel sometimes like it's a good idea to just speak to my SD, or if I really need advice from someone, like for example speaking to a Sister and asking questions. Some of my close friends know the problems I also have, but the ones that know less - I'm afraid that when I spoke of my vocational thoughts, or how I feel about Jesus, or spiritual things, - they maybe got an exaggerated impression of me. My SD know the worst things about me, though, lol. With my friends, they don't know all my sins, etc, and now I try to not talk about spiritual experiences or consolations especially because that just makes me seem "holier" (though consolations don't mean I'm holier) - than I am. Even vocational stuff - if you feel drawn to giving away everything for Christ, or being His bride, or something like that, - even if you feel unworthy of it and like it's a gift, it can turn into a temptation when you talk about it to friends especially if they don't feel the same way. Sometimes I just want to talk about Jesus if I feel love for Him, I hope that's fine if you're talking to someone who would understand, and if it's more about Him, then about me.

 

It's funny you mention the St Teresa statue by Bernini, because I was thinking of that too. I came across comments about the statue, or St Teresa, that I think just missed the point. When you read her writings, you can tell her experiences were so spiritual and pure!

[MarysLittleFlower]

Dear MarysLittleFlower,

 

Yesterday during Mass and the novena to OL of Perpetual succor  with Adoration , i was constantly remembering you. I felt touched with your love for Jesus , impressed with the way you make an effort to please Him and love Him. I placed you very close to Jesus and prayed for you.

 

Have you read Deus Caritas Est ?  http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

 

Please meditate upon the section   "Eros” and “Agape” – difference and unity . I think most of your doubts will be cleared.

 

Another insight that might be helpful is to  reflect on  the gift of " Fear of the Lord " You will find more material on the internet.

 

Fear of the Lord  as a gift of the Holy Spirit  helps especially  in the living of a Spousal spirituality as it purifies love . Every human being , every Christian  'should' feel and have the desire for Union with God.  He alone can give lasting fulfillment to every dimension of our being .He created us to  know, love , serve Him. The spiritual life does not need any rites of profession or consecration .

 

Some persons e.g. CV are called in the particular vocation to make this Love more visible and explicit ....Why ? Not to make a CV special , but to be a blessing to all other  Christians and to remind every baptized person of their own identity as bride of Christ.  Imagine if there were no persons in the Church who symbolized the bride of Christ , people would soon forget  due to secularization in this globalized and confused world  , that  we all have an inner thirst to love God and be loved by God . Similarly if there were no ordained priests , people would forget their own priesthood as baptized . If there were no religious , people would forget the evangelical counsels .

 

So please do not hesitate to love Jesus or be loved by Him only because you are not yet in any formal vocation in the Church. Just  allow your entire being : body, mind, spirit  to love Him . At same time , see that the fruit of this kind of prayer  is an increased love of neighbour , especially the last , the least , the lost .

God's Beloved, thank you so much for remembering me, and for your prayers! :) that's so kind of you :) I also appreciate the advice, - I'll take a look at the document, and read more about "fear of the Lord". I have a book called the Sanctifier that my SD recommended and there's a whole chapter about that :D

[Benedictus]

Also, I know we shouldn't worry too much about what 'the world' thinks, but it really frightens me sometimes to think about how some people might potentially view someone's desire to be Jesus' bride, etc. With this point of view, then the only reason I'm drawn to Jesus in this way has nothing to do with spirituality. In the secular view, getting 'married' to Jesus is like having a wedding without a groom, they'd see it as something make belief or strange. I don't have any doubts about Jesus. But I've been exposed to some of these views before and I felt hurt.. because they were seeing the very concept (not just my approach to it) as something else. It's as if - if I found a boyfriend, I'd find "real love" and would have to stop "pretending". How can any guy compare to Jesus is beyond me. I hope that people who say this would get to experience His love, and they'd see it's so beautiful and not pretend. Or, in some other instances, people (usually educated people) would talk this way about some of the Saints. :( I'm not going to say who though, it wasn't here anyway. Maybe they just needed to look at the language they used in a different way, I don't know. Our culture is so sexualized too, so maybe some these individuals were affected by our culture. But in certain times, I get afraid of all this, about myself, - or I get afraid not of the idea but wondering if my approach is okay. I guess I hope Jesus would help me see if my approach is correct.

Jesus said: ''Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

I'd try to stay steady in your own inner strength in your knowing and relationship with Jesus. It's an intimate communion that others can't take away from you, and I'd therefore not be too concerned about their cultural ideas or prejudices. People have views about all sorts of things, including things they have no clue about. But I'd advise being aware of this and simply filtering out what isn't constructive, wise or useful. I know many people who'd pass negative comments on a church vocation or try and sway my discernment based on their ideas - so I would avoid raising the topic with them or cut the issue off as soon as is politely practical. The important thing is that the relationship with Jesus is healthy for you and makes you thirst for a greater love of God, and neighbour. 

 

Edited August 8, 2013 by Benedictus

[MarysLittleFlower]

A couple of things jumped out at me here.

 

The first is the discernment of spirits. Good call DT - that's a great book.

 

I once had a concern about experiences in prayer and asked my (Jesuit) SD about them. He told me that 'you can always tell the devil by his tail'. And then he explained it like this - look at the results of your experiences. If they are from the devil then you will be filled with a sense of self-satisfaction and pride which could manifest itself in a variety of ways - from feeling that you are somehow better or 'more special' than others in God's sight to wanting to tell others about your experiences so that they might be impressed or think of you more highly. This danger is one of the reasons that God is often very tough on His saints - He doesn't want them to fall into the sin of pride, which can manifest itself in many subtle and hidden ways.

 

On the other hand, if the experiences you have in prayer make you even more aware of your littleness and your need for Christ, if they lead to an increase in kindness and charity towards others, and a desire to keep these experiences quietly in your heart instead of trumpeting them aloud - then they are indeed divine in origin. Anything that increases virtue cannot be from the devil.

 

 

The other thing that I wanted to comment on is Bernini's statue of St Teresa in ecstasy (my favorite sculpture in the whole world). Yes, it is true that she has an expression of a woman in the throes of physical passion. I don't think there is any doubt about that. But for me, it doesn't detract from the statue - because what Bernini was trying to do was to capture the essence of the height of human love - but in a spiritual context. But what else could he use for a model than human love? It is no secret that the union between a man and woman (when it represents love and not lust), was designed by God to be an ecstatic experience of the flesh (and when deeply in love, of their spirits as well).

 

The thing is that, not knowing any better, the secular world can't see beyond that to what was actually happening with Teresa. The experience of union between her soul and God can never be known or understood by any of us. In fact, Teresa herself probably didn't understand what was happening - only that it did. She tried, as St John did, to explain things in words, but both of them felt unable to completely express themselves - simply because God is beyond what we can put into a box. On the other hand, both Teresa and John said that their bodies were affected by what was happening within their soul. John said to try to ignore it, Teresa tried to describe how she felt afterwards, without much success. And later in life, someone asked Teresa why she didn't still have so many ecstasies, and she said that she had 'gotten used to them' - in other words, her body was better able to cope with the intensity of the experiences.

 

Each one of us is called to union with God - and each in our own unique and special way. If you look at any of the saints, you will see that no two had exactly the same type of reaction to their union with God. He spoke to them differently, gave them different experiences, and united with them in the way that He had created them to do this. The roles we are called upon to play in this life have two purposes, to sanctify us, and to help others. But being human beings, we get hung up on status and position and image. When only one thing matters  ...

 

Thank you for the response, Nunsense! :) I see what you mean about determining the cause by the effect, - I talked a bit about this in my other post, after I read yours. With what I described, during it I feel longing for God or love for Him, and afterwards I don't think I have a desire to tell of it to others to impress them. Because of my whole question and the fear that I get at times, it doesn't seem like something that would impress anyway, coming from me. There were times I got tempted in the past, like I said about, or times when it was too much about me, - but I'm talking about the times when my intention was better. I often get afraid though if I'm being too "bold".

 

I see what you mean about the Bernini sculpture! I think it's kind of similar with language - it must have been difficult for the Saints to explain their experiences, so they had to use certain language or metaphors. I think with the sculpture, the comments that it's only something physical might be from people who don't know about the spiritual experience she had.. I don't know.

 

God bless! :)

Edited August 8, 2013 by MarysLittleFlower