"Relationship" with God

[AccountDeleted]

Haven't heard of Fr Iain before! by the way I've only read parts of Dark Night Of The Soul but I have St John's collected works 

Someday planning to read it  

I started with the poems 

He writes in poetry (he is considered one of the foremost poets of Spain) and then for some of the poems he has written commentaries as well. My favorites are the Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame of Love, and I think one should read these first because they represent the destination. The Dark Night and The Ascent cover the journey.

Fr Iain Matthews is considered an expert on St John.

[MarysLittleFlower]

Fr Iain must be very prayerful! St John of the Cross - not light reading. 

 

 

Edited August 8, 2015 by MarysLittleFlower

[AccountDeleted]

Fr Iain must be very prayerful! St John of the Cross - not light reading. 

 

 

Tthat's why I suggest people start with the Canticle or Living Flame. The Flame is very light!

 

I think this is my favorite verse from it simply because 'thou art no longer oppressive'.

Since thou art no longer oppressive, perfect me now if it be thy will,

Edited August 8, 2015 by nunsense

[MarysLittleFlower]

I'd have to read the commentary cause I have my own understanding of what I think it means but it's probably something else... Lol. I'm actually really liking the poems. 

[AccountDeleted]

This has the text plus St John's commentary on the poem, translated by K Kavanagh - very well respected (another great translator of John and Teresa is A Peers).

The Living Flame Of Love by St. John of the Cross Translation by: Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, Rev. Ed. Copyright 1991 ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included. 

http://www.basilica.org/pages/ebooks/St. John of the Cross-The Living Flame of Love.pdf

 

For those who don't know the poem, this is it:

 

Stanzas the Soul Recites in Intimate Union With God.

1. O living flame of love
that tenderly wounds my soul in its deepest center! Since
now you are not oppressive,
now consummate!  if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!

2. O sweet cautery,
O delightful wound!
O gentle hand! O delicate touch
that tastes of eternal life
and pays every debt!
In killing you changed death to life.

3. O lamps of fire!
in whose splendors
the deep caverns of feeling,
once obscure and blind,
now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,
both warmth and light to their Beloved.

4. How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart,
where in secret you dwell alone;
and in your sweet breathing,
filled with good and glory,
how tenderly you swell my heart with love.

Edited August 8, 2015 by nunsense

[MarysLittleFlower]

I just read it too, its beautiful I notice it talks about a flame. Some Saints have spoken of God's love as a consuming fire and of this somehow wounding them. Seems relevant to the poem though I'd have to read what St John meant. Also it talks about this 'wound of love', as being in the very center. It is no longer only emotional: it is something between God and the soul, in the centre, where no one else can come but God 

[AccountDeleted]

I just read it too, its beautiful I notice it talks about a flame. Some Saints have spoken of God's love as a consuming fire and of this somehow wounding them. Seems relevant to the poem though I'd have to read what St John meant. Also it talks about this 'wound of love', as being in the very center. It is no longer only emotional: it is something between God and the soul, in the centre, where no one else can come but God 

When I first started reading St John (Canticle and Flame), I would start to cry from the beauty of the words (and how deeply they touched me), and then I would have to stop and reflect on them before I could read on. It was lectio divina carried to extreme! LOL

[MarysLittleFlower]

They are certainly very beautiful there are verses in the Canticle i have memorized from reading them over and over. 

[AccountDeleted]

They are certainly very beautiful there are verses in the Canticle i have memorized from reading them over and over. 

I see the Canticle as the yearning and the Flame as the fulfillment. Mm yummy. Good stuff.  

[marigold]

‌@Gabriela

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

Unsure i have a relationship with God or simply accept him as sovereign ruler of my life though i don't always obey, ask,receive and seek his will, i do a lot of asking,receiving and seeking his will for my life. Though i do believe i experience Gods presence unsure if it's a relationship in accordance with the human to human relationship, more like a human and the sunset, i just marvel and he displays.

Edited August 8, 2015 by Tab'le De'Bah-Rye

[Gabriela]

Praying with Scripture and treating prayer as a conversation with Jesus have helped me to development a personal relationship with the Lord and to recognize His voice. In His infinite love, the Lord wants to get to know each of us in the most intimate way possible. 

That's precisely what I'm asking: How do you treat prayer as a "conversation" when God doesn't (usually) "take his turn"?

 

I would say it depends on how you think God communicates, impacts and influences your life in the first place. How does he relate to you, and vice versa?  Personally,  I don't see God as aloof or simply 'out there'. I see God as close to me -  like my breath, the wind and the sun -  simply present (being and doing) regardless of whether I notice or not.  I don't see God as 'other' in the sense that I don't relate to him in a subject - object narrative or as something confined by human thoughts or concepts. So I see God in nature, people, scripture, literature, art, daily miracles, suffering, sacraments, mass (virtually everything). The Benedictine tradition sort of sees the Bible as divine poetry -  I love that idea. I believe God works to bring us, using all things, towards a spirit of love and creativity -  so we can be more compassionate, forgiving, understanding, humble, grateful etc. He is at the ground of all being.

The whole writing of scriptures is rooted in various communities, trying or failing, to seek and discover that relationship with God and eachother.  It requires lots of listening and patience. I think we have these same patterns in our own individual lives. Scripture, the church and others can help us see this too.  I think I, maybe along with most people, can often try and perceive God with the mind (which is OK, most of us are rational beings) but we also need to ground ourselves in the spirit of him that calls us to life.

I would say the relationship is as complicated as we make it.  My relationship is one where, even if I get tired and fed up, I still feel the promptings that shows me God is still there and wanting to lift me up and out to better things. Study, prayer and silent time cultivates that inner conscience and diallogue. I've had those warm glow feelings, the inner hug, the tears when praying etc and I always come back, especially through prayer, to the thought of simplicity.

I try to keep the relationship as free of distractions and ideas, instead rooted in daily life. How was God working through me today? How did God talk to me today? What words, feelings and ideas come to me through prayer and meditation? How has God changed me from the inside out? Have I been open to God changing my heart? It means answering questions too - should I be doing this or why do I keep doing this?

This is all the bread and butter of what is the relationship element for me - really, i guess at the root, trying to always see the reality that God is always there for me, even if I ain't.  The human struggle, at least for me practically, is also accepting that love requires sacrifice (always) and that we, like Jesus, have to face the cross before we can be made anew in him

Language can complicate things (it, like thought or concepts, can only point to divinity afterall), but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at

This reminds me a lot of what Marshall McLuhan said about faith, that it's a percept (i.e., a sense, like sight, hearing, taste, smell), rather than a concept. That blew my mind when I first read it. I totally understood. I still understand it, on an intellectual level, and because I've had that experience of "seeing" God in things where other people "see" nothing. Those are moments I know there's a relationship. But most of the time, it's hard to see that, and it feels like I'm over here trying to have a relationship with an absent party.

 

This is just one story - we each have our own.

I 'knew' God for years without having any experiential relationship. But I lived near a small church that had an Adoration room for anyone to go in at any time (obviousy a trusting parish but then it was a small community). I was going through a particularly bad time personally so I spent every day in the Adoration room alone with Jesus. Like Nihil said, spiritual stillness is the key to hearing God.

Then, during this same time of crisis, I was driving home from a meeting with my SD, who had just told me that I needed to develop and deep and personal relationship with Jesus. He said, 'You need to fall in love with Him.'

On the drive home, I was pondering what my SD had said but was having problems understanding what he meant (too intellectual I suppose). I pulled the car over to a spot where I could park and turned it off. I just sat there for awhile and started talking to Jesus as if He were there with me in the car. I said, 'Jesus, Father Paul says I have to have a deep personal relationship with you.He said I have to fall in love with you. But I don't know how to do that. Will you do it for me, please?'

As I sat there, I was filled with the most amazing sense of presence, as if Jesus actually were a human being, sitting in the car with me.But He wasn't just beside me, He was also descending upon me and filling me from the inside out. The feeling was so overwhelming that I started sobbing. It was the presence of sheer beauty and love. Words make it sound small. But that one moment changed my life forever. Since that time, my relationship with God has always felt personal, and defined through Jesus. I haven't always had the same experience of His presence, and sometimes I have almost felt that it was lost, but simply sitting in quiet and speaking with Him again, and then letting Him do the rest, well, I can say that the 'presence' of Jesus is a very real thing for me. He is closer to me than some 'real' people in my life.

My first SD told me exactly the same thing, and I've been trying ever since. Which brings me to...

 

"Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him...No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us...[H]e who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." - 1 John 4:7-9, 12, 20.

For me the answer is contained in this Bible passage, in which the epistle-writer links love for your neighbour so powerfully and so clearly with the Incarnation itself. The key to a relationship with God lies in our relationships with each other. "No man has ever seen God." But through loving our neighbour God is made manifest.

Some of my most profound encounters with God have been during my everyday work in a psychiatric hospital, when I was rushed off my feet and had hardly any time for private prayer. The spirituality of my secular institute revolves around Nazareth, Jesus' thirty hidden years, when he lived the busy everyday life of a carpenter. When Jesus finally began to preach, his neighbours were astounded and rattled: wasn't this just some ordinary guy? God had been with them the whole time and they never saw it. It is the same with us. We are challenged to seek and love that hidden Jesus in our own humdrum lives. In the middle of one long Saturday shift, I remember sitting with an elderly lady with dementia, praying the Our Father with her as she drifted into her afternoon nap, and hearing, "When two or three are gathered in my name..." His presence was near-palpable. Most of the time I did not have any special spiritual feeling of closeness to Christ, and it hit me with a jolt that I am just like the people of Nazareth - he's there all the time, but I hardly notice anything about him. If I had deeper love for the people around me, I would notice more and more. I had volunteered to work 1:1 with that particular lady because she was a very demanding patient and the other staff were talking about her as though she were a big inconvenience, and I felt sorry - I wanted her to feel loved and respected, even though she often tired me out too. I think that choice unlocked the door and it temporarily swung open to show me whom I was really looking after. I was sick and you came to see me...

Mother Teresa used to pray that in the broken bread that is Christ's body she would learn to recognise him "in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor". I think this works both ways: in loving service to each other, especially the most broken, we gain a greater devotion for the Real Presence in the Eucharist and a more profound understanding for what that means in our lives. The two things nurture one another: prayer before Jesus in the tabernacle, and attentiveness to our neighbour.

I've always interpreted that passage as working the other way around: If you love others, it is an outward sign that you love God, and God is in you. I think that woundedness—lack of love in one's life—makes it difficult for one to receive and give love. Experiencing the love of God deeply and continuously can heal that wound so that one may then freely share that same love with others. But without that deep, continuous experience of God's love, the individual remains wounded and cannot love others. Do you know what I mean?

In such a case, how does one come to a deep, continuous experience of God's love? I know, I know: "Ask for it, and He'll give it." I've asked, and am still asking, but...  

It probably just sounds like I'm in a dry period here. But that's not what I intended to resolve with this thread. The original question sought more of an intellectual understanding of how we construe what we have with God as a "relationship" when it doesn't fit our usual usage of that term.

Edited August 8, 2015 by Gabriela

[Anomaly]

Pretty much a relationship with God as a person, is whatever you want to make believe in the deafening silence.  A change in the static is Him talking, the absence is Him listening.   Or you just aren't worthy or doing it right.   Or you belong to the wrong religion are aren't chosen.  But what does it matter in how you live your life today?  

Aren't there enough people you can sanely see, touch, hurt, comfort, be hurt, be comforted, all around you that a relationship matters?   Does trying to understand Mother Teresa's "relationship" with God enlighten you more than trying to understand her relationships with fellow humans?   "If" there is a "God" that is on a vastly different plane of existence that almost no humans will or have experienced, it seems pointless to ignore what is for what never will be.

[beatitude]

I've always interpreted that passage as working the other way around: If you love others, it is an outward sign that you love God, and God is in you. I think that woundedness—lack of love in one's life—makes it difficult for one to receive and give love. Experiencing the love of God deeply and continuously can heal that wound so that one may then freely share that same love with others. But without that deep, continuous experience of God's love, the individual remains wounded and cannot love others. Do you know what I mean?

In such a case, how does one come to a deep, continuous experience of God's love? I know, I know: "Ask for it, and He'll give it." I've asked, and am still asking, but...  

It probably just sounds like I'm in a dry period here. But that's not what I intended to resolve with this thread. The original question sought more of an intellectual understanding of how we construe what we have with God as a "relationship" when it doesn't fit our usual usage of that term.

I think the passage I quoted goes both ways - love for God and love for neighbour are symbiotic. God invites us into that ever-flowing circle in different ways: for me it is usually through care of others, prayer in silence, and art (especially poetry).

I don't see my relationship with God as separate from my relationship with other people, so I don't experience it as something totally different and strange. He is present in our interactions with others. For me this is the meaning of the Incarnation. He came to us in human form so that we might all "see the face of God and live", but as he still goes against our expectations - "so disfigured did he look" - it is difficult for us to recognise him. For me this is a great gesture of love: in challenging me to see Christ in people whose situations are frightening and whom it may be difficult to have patience with, God helps me to understand that my own uglinesses and weaknesses and all the things that distress me so much about myself are no barrier to his love for me. I remember meeting someone who had committed war crimes and feeling so disgusted that I didn't know how I could show him any Christian compassion, so I prayed, "God, I don't love him. Show me something to love in him." God has never failed to answer that prayer, and if I can learn to love difficult people - me, with all my biases and prejudices and faults - then how much more must God love me? Often we are oblivious to God's love for us because our own distaste for ourselves gets in the way. Being compassionate to others leads to greater gentleness with self, so we no longer unconsciously treat ourselves as unworthy or feel sceptical at the idea of the divine love.

However, although God's love is not totally different and strange, there is a strangeness to it - because there is so much about him that we can't penetrate. There is a beautiful poem by R.S. Thomas, an Anglican vicar, that I love very much and that has become a prayer for me:

Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.

That image of 'the darkness between stars' haunts me. So does the idea of seeking without arriving or finding - it reminds me of the Song of Songs, and St Teresa's comment that, "Still the feeling remains that God is on the journey too." This sense of God as mysterious and remote (and at the same time very, very near, his footprints still fresh) coexists with the intimate knowledge of him that we can gain through care of one another, especially the vulnerable people with whom Christ identified himself so deeply. For me there is something holy and fiery in the tension between the two. That tension reminds me of just how great he is, and I think this is the closest our finite minds can come to grasping his infinity - through feeling the tension.

I do not always have a warm fuzzy feeling of Jesus' love. Often there is no feeling at all. But there is an awareness. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when the children are sad that Aslan has gone away, or appears to have gone away, another character explains, "He'll be coming and going. One day you'll see him and another you won't. It's quite all right...He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion." I've always liked that.

I'll pray for you, but I don't get the sense that you're in a dry place, more that you're unsure of what direction you should be taking. I might be wrong, but prayers all the same.

[MarysLittleFlower]

I don't think we would have a continuous experience of God's love until at least the transforming union lol. Most do not however we can believe in His love. I think the more we are generous in following Him, the more we love Him, the more we eventually know Him - but there could still be dry periods. 

"That's precisely what I'm asking: How do you treat prayer as a "conversation" when God doesn't (usually) "take his turn"?"

Sometimes He takes His turn not by speaking but acting in us

I think as we do more mental prayer it becomes more obvious over time?