Our Holy Mother St. Teresa and the New Age

How genuine Carmelite spirituality transcends the lies of the New Age.

St. Teresa of Avila's understanding of the link between the trinity and all other human mysteries is enough to discredit the pseudo-mysticism of the New Age, according to a Spanish prelate.

Bishop Cecilio Raúl Berzosa Martínez of Ciudad Rodrigo said this Sept. 4 at the conclusion of the weeklong 2nd International Teresian Congress.

Bishop Berzosa is the author of "Nueva era y cristianismo. Entre el diálogo y la ruptura" (New Age and Christianity: Between Dialogue and Rupture).

He explained that St. Teresa's "The Way of Perfection" provides "keys or antidotes to confront the mystical deceits of the New Age." For example, he drew from her teachings to refute pantheism, and the pretension of being able to save oneself.

The prelate detailed spiritual features and theological elements of New Age and highlighted some of the points in which it contrasts with Christianity. He contrasted it with the mysticism of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross....

Bishop Berzosa went on to point out four spiritual "lies or temptations" of the New Age, which already appear in Genesis and whose author is the Tempter: You will be like gods (pantheism); you will never die (reincarnation), you will know good and evil (moral relativism and subjectivism), and your eyes will be opened (Enlightenment esoterics).

"The Christian faith is not an esoteric initiation," he said. "Nor does salvation consist of an experience of cosmic plenitude through a process of reincarnation." (Read entire article.)

Conjugal Love

A quote from Dietrich von Hildebrand:

The physical union between man and woman still retains its subjective significance and its intrinsic beauty. Is conjugal love in itself not sublime enough to sanctify and justify this union? Is not the reason for the creation of woman stated in Genesis: "It is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a help like unto himself." Can a childless marriage be regarded as a failure, as something that did not fulfill its meaning? Can we justly assert that it would have been better if such a marriage had not been brought to pass? Can it not have its full divinely-appointed meaning simply as the highest communion of love, and glorifying God by this very fact? Is not the ideal of marriage fulfilled to an even higher degree when both partners, even though childless, belong to each other in the most perfect conjugal love, in unchangeable loyalty to one another, in imitation of the union of the soul with God, than in the case of a marriage with perhaps many children, where the partners are unfaithful to each other and desecrate the sacred tie by lack of love and loyalty?...Is this not a clear indication that marriage is a symbol of the union of the soul with God, that it possesses, as such, a sublime importance and that it exists in the first place for its own sake and not exclusively for the sake of any result that it produces? (Read entire post.)

Thoughts on Chapel Veils

I think that this blog post is a grand meditation on human respect in general.

I was hung up about being seen as holier-than-thou if I wore a chapel veil.  And I, too,  had this longing in my heart for a *long* time to wear one. I had read much on veil wearing in booklets, blog posts and articles. Through that reading, prayer and supportive discussions with my husband my desire grew. I wanted a very personal way that I could show my love, respect and belief in Our Lord truly present in the Holy Eucharist. A gift to Him and a reminder to myself. In the simplest terms it is for me an outward act of Faith, Hope, and Love. I have been wearing a chapel veil to Mass and Adoration now for the past two years. I started wearing one after the day I realized that, for me personally, it would be an act of humility. Because everything in me wants to blend in and not stand out. I don't want people to judge me or not like me. Unfortunately, I focus too much on people pleasing. This fear of mine is/was rooted in pride. I had to force myself to just wear it to Mass one time. Sure, I got some looks the first few times, but that's because I'm the only one at my parish wearing one. People will naturally look at something that is new or different. Now, I get nothing. No looks or comments. It turned out to be no big deal after all. Just like most things in life that we like to stress about.

I also have to point out that my fear wasn't just the thought of others judging me as little-miss-piety, but that they would think that I was somehow judging them. I didn't want other women thinking that I was somehow saying (by my wearing a veil) that they weren't holy without one. It's laughable really, that any woman would think that just because they cover their heads that they are somehow better or closer to God than other women. It's also laughable that anyone would assume that just because a woman would cover her head that she would somehow think less of those that don't. The whole thing is ridiculous really. What we women do to ourselves and to one another. Over-thinking everything. Will we be judged? Will they feel judged?....it's endless, isn't it? (Read entire post.)

Memories of Mother Teresa

From Ireland's Cardinal Brady:

Mother Teresa wrote in her diaries that her first year of this new mission was fraught with difficulties. She had no income. She had to resort to begging for food and supplies. She experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the relative security of convent life. She wrote in her diary: ‘Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross … Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard.’

The fact is, anyone who earnestly desires to follow Christ will, sooner or later, come to this same decisive moment in their life. For most of us, it confronts us many times, even many times in the same day! It is that moment when, with the full weight of our own free will, we are invited to first choose and then to trust in God’s will and logic when our own will and ‘logic’ is drawing us in a more comfortable, even a more reasonable direction.

This tension is played out in the Gospel passage we have just heard. Peter rejects the idea of a Christ who will suffer greatly and be put to death.  For him, the cross represents failure and who wants to be part of a failure? It is worth remembering that Peter is also a strong man.  Trusting others, even a good man like Jesus, was never going to be easy. Yet that is what Jesus asks him to do. He asks him to set aside his human instinct for strength, for security, for certainty and logic and to accept the utter poverty of the cross.  By rejecting suffering and death, Christ tells Peter that he is thinking, not as God thinks, he is thinking as human beings do.  St Paul tells us all that we must put on the mind of the Lord.

‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (Mt 16:24). It is interesting to note that Jesus does not say here that you must take up ‘my’ cross.  Instead he says to each disciple that he must take up ‘his’ cross. There is always a temptation to imagine that we already know beforehand what our cross and time of testing will be. It is often much more difficult to recognise the cross Jesus intends for us personally and to accept it once we have recognised it. It is one thing to know about carrying our cross in the abstract; it is another to live it in the daily anguish of our deeply personal hopes and fears. Each of you I know will have your own personal cross that you carry with you here today. (Read entire article.)

The Sacred Wounds

They are our glory. In the words of St. Pius X:

Do not despair, however, because Christ foresaw that his Church would be persecuted; and it must be a glory for us to carry the Wounds of Our Divine Redeemer. If the world hates you, Christ says, know also that it hated me first. Remember those words that I said: The servant cannot be more than his master; if they have persecuted Me, also you will be persecuted: "Si Me persecuti sunt, et vos persequentur."

In the world, you will be troubled, "pressurant habebitis," but be trustful: I have overcome the world: "Ego vici mundum;" and this victory is assured by the very word of Christ, who guards and protects His Spouse, the Church, and repeats to her the words of Isaias: The peoples and the realms who have not served you will perish, "Gens et regnum quod non servierit Ubi, peribit," but you will not end until the end of the world, "Ecce ego vobiscum sum usque ad consummationem saeculi."

Also, even in tribulation, consolations will not lack. You will always have the one that is clear when good is done, when duty is accomplished, when suffering with Christ, secure in the predestination to the eternal award, conforming yourselves to the image of the Divine Son. (Read entire post.)

On Beauty as a Way to God

Our Holy Father Pope Benedict recently said:

Today, I would like to consider briefly one of these channels that can lead us to God and also be helpful in our encounter with Him: It is the way of artistic expression, part of that "via pulchritudinis" -- "way of beauty" -- which I have spoken about on many occasions, and which modern man should recover in its most profound meaning.

Perhaps it has happened to you at one time or another -- before a sculpture, a painting, a few verses of poetry or a piece of music -- to have experienced deep emotion, a sense of joy, to have perceived clearly, that is, that before you there stood not only matter -- a piece of marble or bronze, a painted canvas, an ensemble of letters or a combination of sounds -- but something far greater, something that "speaks," something capable of touching the heart, of communicating a message, of elevating the soul.

A work of art is the fruit of the creative capacity of the human person who stands in wonder before the visible reality, who seeks to discover the depths of its meaning and to communicate it through the language of forms, colors and sounds. Art is capable of expressing, and of making visible, man's need to go beyond what he sees; it reveals his thirst and his search for the infinite. Indeed, it is like a door opened to the infinite, [opened] to a beauty and a truth beyond the every day. And a work of art can open the eyes of the mind and heart, urging us upward.

But there are artistic expressions that are true roads to God, the supreme Beauty -- indeed, they are a help [to us] in growing in our relationship with Him in prayer. We are referring to works of art that are born of faith, and that express the faith. We see an example of this whenever we visit a Gothic cathedral: We are ravished by the vertical lines that reach heavenward and draw our gaze and our spirit upward, while at the same time, we feel small and yet yearn to be filled. … Or when we enter a Romanesque church: We are invited quite naturally to recollection and prayer. We perceive that hidden within these splendid edifices is the faith of generations. Or again, when we listen to a piece of sacred music that makes the chords of our heart resound, our soul expands and is helped in turning to God. I remember a concert performance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach -- in Munich in Bavaria -- conducted by Leonard Bernstein. At the conclusion of the final selection, one of the Cantate, I felt -- not through reasoning, but in the depths of my heart -- that what I had just heard had spoken truth to me, truth about the supreme composer, and it moved me to give thanks to God. Seated next to me was the Lutheran bishop of Munich. I spontaneously said to him: "Whoever has listened to this understands that faith is true" -- and the beauty that irresistibly expresses the presence of God's truth.

But how many times, paintings or frescos also, which are the fruit of the artist's faith -- in their forms, in their colors, and in their light -- move us to turn our thoughts to God, and increase our desire to draw from the Fount of all beauty. The words of the great artist, Marc Chagall, remain profoundly true -- that for centuries, painters dipped their brushes in that colored alphabet, which is the Bible.

How many times, then, can artistic expression be for us an occasion that reminds us of God, that assists us in our prayer or even in the conversion of our heart! In 1886, the famous French poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel entered the Basilica of Notre Dame in Paris and there felt the presence of God precisely in listening to the singing of the Magnificat during the Christmas Mass. He had not entered the church for reasons of faith; indeed, he entered looking for arguments against Christianity, but instead the grace of God changed his heart.

Dear friends, I invite you to rediscover the importance of this way for prayer, for our living relationship with God. Cities and countries throughout the world house treasures of art that express the faith and call us to a relationship with God. Therefore, may our visits to places of art be not only an occasion for cultural enrichment -- also this -- but may they become, above all, a moment of grace that moves us to strengthen our bond and our conversation with the Lord, [that moves us] to stop and contemplate -- in passing from the simple external reality to the deeper reality expressed -- the ray of beauty that strikes us, that "wounds" us in the intimate recesses of our heart and invites us to ascend to God.

I will end with a prayer from one of the Psalms, Psalm 27: "One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple" (Verse 4). Let us hope that the Lord will help us to contemplate His beauty, both in nature as well as in works of art, so that we might be touched by the light of His face, and so also be light for our neighbor. Thank you. (Read entire article.)

Blessed Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster, O.S.B.

The devil is afraid of holiness.

Ildefonso Schuster, the son of a Roman tailor, the Abbot of Saint Paul-Outside-the-Walls, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan, was at the same time a scholar learned in the Church’s liturgy, in history, in art, in catechesis, spirituality, and archeology; he was a shepherd of souls, a diplomat, and a peace-maker. Beneath the scarlet robes of a Prince of the Church, he remained a monk, a child of Saint Benedict. Thus was he able to say:

Before all other things, and even above all things, O Venerable Brothers, we are essentially adorers. “This is how one should regard us, as ministers of Christ” (1 Cor 4:1). After that we must also be ministers of the people, the salt of the earth, and fishers of men, etc. but first, it is absolutely necessary that we be true servants of God: Ministers of Christ . . . appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God (Heb 5:1).

As Cardinal-Archbishop, Blessed Schuster never failed to direct the energies of his priests toward the One Thing Necessary. A few days before his death he withdrew to the seminary he had built and there he delivered a final message to his seminarians, warning them of the futility of an apostolate without personal holiness:

I have no memento to give you apart from an invitation to holiness. It would seem that people are no longer convinced by our preaching; but faced with holiness, they still believe, they still fall to their knees and pray. People seem to live ignorant of supernatural realities, indifferent to the problems of salvation. But when an authentic saint, living or dead passes by, all run to be there. . Do not forget that the devil is not afraid of our [parish] sports fields and of our movie halls: he is afraid, on the other hand, of our holiness. (Read entire post.)

More on Blessed Ildefonso, HERE.