Peter Damian: St Romuald – Summit of Perfection Wednesday, Jun 19 2013

Romuald lived in the vicinity of the city of Parenzo for three years.

In the first year he built a monastery and appointed an abbot with monks. For the next two years he remained there in seclusion.

In that setting, divine holiness transported him to such a summit of perfection that, breathed upon by the Holy Spirit, he foresaw many future events and comprehended with the rays of his intelligence hidden mysteries of the Old and New Testament.

Frequently he was seized by so great a contemplation of divinity that he would be reduced to tears with the boiling, indescribable heat of divine love.

In this condition he would cry out: Beloved Jesus, beloved, sweet honey, indescribable longing, delight of the saints, sweetness of the angels, and other things of this kind.

We are unable to express the ecstasy of these utterances, dictated by the Holy Spirit. Wherever the holy man might arrange to live, he would follow the same pattern.

First he would build an oratory with an altar in a cell; then he would shut himself in and forbid access.

Finally, after he had lived in many places, perceiving that his end was near, he returned to the monastery he had built in the valley of Castro.

While he awaited with certainty his approaching death, he ordered a cell to be constructed there with an oratory in which he might isolate himself and preserve silence until death.

Accordingly the hermitage was built, since he had made up his mind that he would die there. His body began to grow more and more oppressed by afflictions and was already failing, not so much from weakness as from the exhaustion of great age.

One day he began to feel the loss of his physical strength under all the harassment of increasingly violent afflictions. As the sun was beginning to set, he instructed two monks who were standing by to go out and close the door of the cell behind them; they were to come back to him at daybreak to celebrate matins.

They were so concerned about his end that they went out reluctantly and did not rest immediately. On the contrary, since they were worried that their master might die, they lay hidden near the cell and watched this precious treasure. For some time they continued to listen attentively until they heard neither movement nor sound.

Rightly guessing what had happened, they pushed open the door, rushed in quickly, lit a candle and found the holy man lying on his back, his blessed soul snatched up into heaven. As he lay there, he seemed like a neglected heavenly pearl that was soon to be given a place of honour in the treasury of the King of kings.

Peter Damian (c.1007-1072): Life of St Romuald, chapters 39 and 61 @ Universalis.

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Gregory the Great: The Solitude of the Heart Friday, Jun 14 2013

To whom I have given a house in the solitude? (Job 30:6).

Ought we in this place to understand the solitude of the body, or the solitude of the heart?

But what avails the solitude of the body, if the solitude of the heart be wanting?

For he who lives bodily removed from the world, but yet plunges into the tumults of human conversation with the thoughts of worldly desires, is not in solitude.

But if anyone be bodily oppressed with crowds of people, and yet suffers from no tumults of worldly cares in his heart, he is not in a city.

To those therefore of good conversation solitude of mind is first granted, in order that they may keep down within the rising din of worldly desires,

that they may restrain by the grace of heavenly love the cares of the heart which bubble up from its lowest depths,

and drive away from the eyes of the mind with the hand of gravity, all the motions of trifling thoughts which importunately present themselves, as flies which are flitting around them:

and may seek for themselves some secret spot with the Lord within, there to speak with Him silently by their inward longings, when the noise is still from without.

Of this secret place of the heart it is said elsewhere; There became silence in heaven for about half an hour (Rev. 8:1).

For the Church of the Elect is called ‘heaven,’ which, as it rises to eternal and sublime truths by the elevation of contemplation, abates the tumults of thoughts which are springing up from below, and makes a kind of silence within itself for God.

[...] But it ought to be known that we do not at all reach the height of contemplation, if we cease not from the oppression of outward care.

We do not at all look into ourselves, so as to know that there is within us one rational part that rules, another animal part which is ruled, unless we are made dead to all outward disturbance by returning to the secrecy of this silence.

[...] In this silence of the heart, then, while we are awake inwardly by contemplation, we are sleeping, as it were, outwardly.

Because then men who are separated, that is who are freed from carnal desires, inhabit this silence of the heart, the Lord gave to this wild ass a house in the solitude, that he might not be oppressed with a crowd of temporal desires.

Gregory the Great (c.540-604): Reflections (Moralia) on Job, 30, 52-54 (on Job 39:6) @ Lectionary Central.

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Gregory the Great: God Transcends All Things by the Incomprehensibility of His Spiritual Nature Thursday, May 30 2013

He is higher than heaven, what canst thou do?  Deeper than hell, what canst thou know?  His measure is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea (Job 11:8-9).

He is ‘higher than heaven,’ in that He transcends all things by the Incomprehensibility of His spiritual Nature.

He is ‘deeper than hell,’ in that in transcending He sustains beneath.

He is ‘longer than the earth,’ in that He exceeds the measure of created being by the everlasting continuance of His Eternity.

He is ‘broader than the sea,’ in that He so possesses the waves of temporal things in ruling them, that in confining He encompasses them beneath the every way prevailing presence of His Power.

[...] He is ‘higher than the heaven,’ in that the very wlect spirits themselves do not perfectly penetrate the vision of His infinite loftiness?

He is ‘deeper than hell,’ in that He judges and condemns the craft of evil spirits with far more searching exactness than they had ever thought.

He is ‘longer than the earth,’ in that He surpasses our long-suffering by the patience of Divine long-suffering, which both bears with us in our sins, and welcomes us when we are turned from them to the rewards of His recompensing.

He is ‘wider than the sea,’ in that he everywhere enters into the doings of sinners by the presence of His retributive power, so that even when He is not seen present by His appearance, He is felt present by His judgment.

Yet all the particulars may be referred to man alone, so that he is himself ‘heaven,’ when now in desire he is attached to things above;

himself ‘hell,’ when he lies grovelling in things below, confounded by the mists of his temptations;

himself ‘earth,’ in that he is made to abound in good works through the fertility of a stedfast hope;

himself ‘the sea,’ for that on some occasions he is shaken with alarm, and agitated by the breath of his feebleness.

But God is ‘higher than heaven,’ in that we are subdued by the mightiness of His power, even when we are lifted above our own selves.

He is ‘deeper than hell,’ in that He goes deeper in judging than the very human mind looks into its own self in the midst of temptations.

He is ‘longer than the earth,’ in that those fruits of our life which He gives at the end, our very hope at the present time comprehends not at all.

He is ‘wider than the sea,’ in that the human mind being tossed to and fro throws out many fancies concerning the things that are coming, but when it now begins to see the things that it had made estimate of, it owns itself to have been too stinted in its reckoning.

Therefore He is made ‘higher than heaven,’ since our contemplation itself fails toward Him.

Gregory the Great (c.540-604): Moralia on Job, 10, 14-15 (on Job 11:8-9) @ Lectionary Central.

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Gregory Nazianzen: The Word Partakes of My Flesh to Save the Image and to Make the Flesh Immortal (2) Thursday, Dec 6 2012

Continued from here…

This being He placed in Paradise, whatever the Paradise may have been.

And He honoured him with the gift of Free Will – in order that God might belong to him as the result of his choice, no less than to Him who had implanted the seeds of it,

and in order to till the immortal plants, by which is meant perhaps the Divine Conceptions, both the simpler and the more perfect.

And the man was naked in his simplicity and inartificial life, and without any covering or screen; for it was fitting that he who was from the beginning should be such.

Also He gave the man a Law, as a material for his free will to act upon.  This Law was a Commandment as to what plants he might partake of, and which one he might not touch.

This latter was the Tree of Knowledge. It was forbidden to the man to touch this not because it was evil from the beginning when planted, nor because God grudged it to us. (Let not the enemies of God wag their tongues in that direction, or imitate the Serpent.)

But it would have been good if partaken of at the proper time, for the tree was, according to my theory, Contemplation, upon which it is only safe for those who have reached maturity of habit to enter.

But this Contemplation is not good for those who are still somewhat simple and greedy in their habit; just as solid food is not good for those who are yet tender, and have need of milk.

But when through the devil’s malice and the woman’s caprice, to which she succumbed as the more tender, and which she brought to bear upon the man, as she was the more apt to persuade, alas for my weakness! (for that of my first father was mine), he forgot the Commandment which had been given to him.

He yielded to the baleful fruit; and for his sin he was banished, at once from the Tree of Life, and from Paradise, and from God; and put on the coats of skins…that is, perhaps, the coarser flesh, both mortal and contradictory.

This was the first thing that he learnt—his own shame; and he hid himself from God.  Yet here too he makes a gain, namely death, and the cutting off of sin, in order that evil may not be immortal.

Thus his punishment is changed into a mercy; for it is in mercy, I am persuaded, that God inflicts punishment.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 38, 12.

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Gregory Nazianzen: The Word Partakes of My Flesh to Save the Image and to Make the Flesh Immortal (1) Thursday, Dec 6 2012

This movement of self-contemplation alone could not satisfy Goodness.

Good must be poured out and go forth beyond Itself to multiply the objects of Its beneficence, for this was essential to the highest Goodness.

So He first conceived the Heavenly and Angelic Powers.  And this conception was a work fulfilled by His Word, and perfected by His Spirit.

[...] Thus…He gave being to the world of thought…. Then, when His first creation was in good order, He conceives a second world, material and visible.

[...] This was to show that He could call into being, not only a Nature akin to Himself, but also one altogether alien to Himself.

[...] Mind, then, and sense, thus distinguished from each other, had remained within their own boundaries, and bore in themselves the magnificence of the Creator-Word, silent praisers and thrilling heralds of His mighty work.

Not yet was there any mingling of both, nor any mixtures of these opposites, tokens of a greater Wisdom and Generosity in the creation of natures; nor as yet were the whole riches of Goodness made known.

Now the Creator-Word, determining…to produce a single living being out of both – the visible and the invisible creations, I mean – fashions Man.

Taking a body from already existing matter, He places in it a Breath taken from Himself which the Word knew to be an intelligent soul and the image of God, as a sort of second world.

He placed him, great in littleness on the earth; a new Angel, a mingled worshipper, fully initiated into the visible creation, but only partially into the intellectual.

Man was king of all upon earth, but subject to the King above; earthly and heavenly; temporal and yet immortal; visible and yet intellectual; half-way between greatness and lowliness.

In one person he combined spirit and flesh; spirit, because of the favour bestowed on him; flesh, because of the height to which he had been raised;

the one that he might continue to live and praise his Benefactor, the other that he might suffer, and by suffering be put in remembrance, and corrected if he became proud of his greatness:

a living creature trained here, and then moved elsewhere; and, to complete the mystery, deified by its inclination to God.

For to this, I think, tends that Light of Truth which we here possess but in measure, that we should both see and experience the Splendour of God, which is worthy of Him Who made us, and will remake us again after a loftier fashion.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 38, 9-11.

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Benedict XVI: St John Damascene – “The Great Sea of Love that God Bears Towards Man” Tuesday, Dec 4 2012

John Damascene was able serenely to deduce: “God, who is good…created him [man] envisaging him and creating him as a being capable of thought, enriched with the word, and orientated towards the spirit”.

And to clarify this thought further, he adds: “We must allow ourselves to be filled with wonder at all the works of Providence, to accept and praise them all, overcoming any temptation to identify in them aspects which to many may seem unjust or iniquitous, and admitting instead that the project of God goes beyond man’s capacity to know or to understand, while on the contrary only he may know our thoughts, our actions, and even our future”.

Plato had in fact already said that all philosophy begins with wonder. Our faith, too, begins with wonder at the very fact of the Creation, and at the beauty of God who makes himself visible.

The optimism of the contemplation of nature, of seeing in the visible creation the good, the beautiful, the true, this Christian optimism, is not ingenuous: it takes account of the wound inflicted on human nature by the freedom of choice desired by God and misused by man, with all the consequences of widespread discord which have derived from it.

From this derives the need, clearly perceived by John Damascene, that nature, in which the goodness and beauty of God are reflected, wounded by our fault, “should be strengthened and renewed” by the descent of the Son of God in the flesh, after God had tried in many ways and on many occasions, to show that he had created man so that he might exist not only in “being”, but also in “well-being”.

With passionate eagerness John explains: “It was necessary for nature to be strengthened and renewed, and for the path of virtue to be indicated and effectively taught, the path that leads away from corruption and towards eternal life…. So there appeared on the horizon of history the great sea of love that God bears towards man (philanthropias pelagos)”….

It is a fine expression. We see on one side the beauty of Creation, and on the other the destruction wrought by the fault of man. But we see in the Son of God, who descends to renew nature, the sea of love that God has for man.

John Damascene continues: “he himself, the Creator and the Lord, fought for his Creation, transmitting to it his teaching by example…. And so the Son of God, while still remaining in the form of God, lowered the skies and descended… to his servants… achieving the newest thing of all, the only thing really new under the sun, through which he manifested the infinite power of God”.

Benedict XVI (b. 1927): On St John Damascene [c.675-749] (General Audience, 6 May 2009).

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Hugh of St Victor: The Restlessness of the Human Heart Friday, Nov 23 2012

When I was one day sitting with the assembled brethren…, we began with one accord to marvel at the instability and restlessness of the human heart, and to sigh over it.

The brethren earnestly entreated that they might be shown the cause of these unstable movements in man’s heart, and…begged to be taught if such a serious evil as this could be countered by any skill or by the practice of some discipline.

[...] It is the property of divine grace to bring about this work, and that possession of such grace comes about not so much by man’s activity as by the gift of God and the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit.

Nevertheless, I know that God would have us work along with Him, and that He so offers the gifts of His loving-kindness to the thankful, and that from the thankless He often takes away the very things that formerly He gave.

[...] The first man [Adam], then, was made in such a way that, if he had not sinned, the power of contemplation would have kept him always in his Maker’s presence.

By always seeing Him he would thus always have loved Him, by always loving Him he would always have cleaved to Him, and, by always cleaving to Him who is immortal, he too would have possessed in Him life without end.

[...] But he was banished from the face of the Lord when, smitten with the blindness of ignorance through his sin, he came forth from the inward light of contemplation.

And the more he forgot the sweetness of supernal things, for which he had already lost the taste, the more did he bend his spirit down to earthly desires.

[...] Every temptation that assails it overthrows the soul that is bereft of the divine assistance….

The human heart, which had hitherto kept its stability in cleaving to divine love and remained one in the love of the One, was as it were divided into as many channels as there were objects that it craved….

And that is how it happens that the soul, not knowing how to love its true good, is never able to maintain its stability.

Failing to find what it longs for in those things which it has, its desire is always reaching out in pursuit of the unattainable; and so it never has rest.

Therefore, from movement without stability is born toil without rest, travel without arrival; so that our heart is always restless till such time as it begins to cleave to Him, in whom it may both rejoice that its desire lacks nothing, and be assured that what it loves will last eternally.

Hugh of St Victor (c.1096-1141): On the Moral Interpretation of the Ark of Noah, 1,1 @ Fr Luke Dysinger, OSB.

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Hesychios the Priest: The Name of Jesus, Repeated Over and Over in the Heart as Flashes of Lightning… Tuesday, Nov 13 2012

When in fear, trembling and unworthiness we are yet permitted to receive the divine, undefiled Mysteries of Christ, our King and our God, we should then display even greater watchfulness, strictness and guard over our hearts, so that the divine fire, the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, may consume our sins and stains, great and small.

For when that fire enters into us, it at once drives the evil spirits from our heart and remits the sins we have previously committed, leaving the intellect free from the turbulence of wicked thoughts.

And if after this, standing at the entrance to our heart, we keep strict watch over the intellect, when we ace again permitted to receive those Mysteries the divine body will illumine our intellect still more and make it shine like a star.

Forgetfulness can extinguish our guard over our intellect as water extinguishes fire; but the continuous repetition of the Jesus Prayer combined with strict watchfulness uproots it from our heart.

The Jesus Prayer requires watchfulness as a lantern requires a candle.

We should strive to preserve the precious gifts which preserve us from all evil, whether on the plane of the senses or on that of the intellect.

These gifts are the guarding of the intellect with the invocation of Jesus Christ, continuous insight into the heart’s depths, stillness of mind unbroken even by thoughts which appear to be good, and the capacity to be empty of all thought.

In this way the demons will not steal in undetected; and if we suffer pain through remaining centered in the heart, consolation is at hand.

The heart which is constantly guarded, and is not allowed to receive the forms, images and fantasies of the dark and evil spirits, is conditioned by nature to give birth from within itself to thoughts filled with light.

For just as coal engenders a flame, or a flame lights a candle, so will God, who from our baptism dwells in our heart, kindle our mind to contemplation when He finds it free from the winds of evil and protected by the guarding of the intellect.

The name of Jesus should be repeated over and over in the heart as flashes of lightning are repeated over and over in the sky before rain.

Hesychios the Priest (?6^th-9^th century): On Watchfulness and Holiness chs 101-105, Text from G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trans. and eds.) The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. I (Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1979), pp. 179-180.

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Humbert of Romans: Through Silence the Heart is Quieted and the Mind is Raised More Quickly to Contemplation. Friday, Oct 19 2012

“Peace is preserved by silence and the mind raised up by contemplation.”

A brother should never pass over in silence what needs to be said, nor say what should not he spoken.

When a brother intends to speak, Let him first consider his words in his heart that he may express honorably, moderately, truthfully and kindly what it is he wishes to say.

For the tongue is deceitful, puffed up, inflamed with duplicity, and hateful to God and humankind.

Dearly beloved, consider carefully what you say, to whom, when or where, how or how much, and certainly why you say it.

Otherwise, if the proper circumstances are lacking, your speech may give rise to a bad conscience in your own heart or to scandal in the heart of your hearer.

[...] Do not do battle with words, nor worry about gaining victory in disputes. Always avoid words which are damaging to the speaker or to the listener.

One should keep away from speech which is not a credit to the one who speaks, or to the one who listens, or to the one about whom a person speaks.

[...] When another has begun to speak, we should be silent, lest we appear to interrupt what the person has to say.

When we sense that our audience is not prepared for what we have to say, we should refrain from speech.

At times we should keep silence to avoid loquaciousness or because we have not yet formulated in a suitable manner what we wish to say.

[...] When we wish to speak for our own edification, let us speak of those whose teaching

can lead us to virtue. When we speak for the edification of others, let us turn to those

whom we hope can be converted by our exhortation.

[...] May you avoid every word that is bitter, proud, disparaging, flattering, vicious, sworn by oaths, superfluous, or careless.

As you ought not speak ill of those who are absent, so you should not laugh at those who are present. Do not jest with those who are senseless, nor envy the learned.

Keep silent about trivialities; speak about what will bear fruit. In your conversation do not keep your heart on your tongue, but rather check your tongue with your heart.

Surely when you come to speak, you can offer a few words that are intelligible. Love quiet

reflection; flee the business of the world.

Through silence the heart is quieted, pain is avoided, peace is maintained, and the mind is raised more quickly to contemplation.

The more you withdraw from the noise of business, the closer will God be to you.

Humbert of Romans (c.1200-1277): From the letter On Regular Observance, from the Supplement to the Liturgy of the Hours for the Order of Preachers.

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Maximus the Confessor: The Lamp Set upon the Lamp Stand – Jesus Christ – the True Light from the Father Wednesday, Oct 17 2012

The lamp set upon the lamp stand is Jesus Christ, the true light from the Father, the light that enlightens every man who comes into the world.

In taking our own flesh he has become, and is rightly called, a lamp, for he is the connatural wisdom and word of the Father.

He is proclaimed in the Church of God in accordance with orthodox faith, and he is lifted up and resplendent among the nations through the lives of those who live virtuously in observance of the commandments.

So he gives light to all in the house (that is, in this world), just as he himself, God the Word, says: No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 

Clearly he is calling himself the lamp, he who was by nature God, and became flesh according to God’s saving purpose.

[...] Lamp-like indeed, he alone dispelled the gloom of ignorance and the darkness of evil and became the way of salvation for all men.

Through virtue and knowledge, he leads to the Father those who are resolved to walk by him, who is the way of righteousness, in obedience to the divine commandments.

He has designated holy Church the lamp stand, over which the word of God sheds light through preaching, and illumines with the rays of truth whoever is in this house which is the world, and fills the minds of all men with divine knowledge.

This word is most unwilling to be kept under a bushel; it wills to be set in a high place, upon the sublime beauty of the Church.

For while the word was hidden under the bushel, that is, under the letter of the law, it deprived all men of eternal light.

For then it could not give spiritual contemplation to men striving to strip themselves of a sensuality that is illusory, capable only of deceit, and able to perceive only decadent bodies like their own.

[...] For the letter, when it is not spiritually understood, bears a carnal sense only, which restricts its expression and does not allow the real force of what is written to reach the hearer’s mind.

Let us, then, not light the lamp by contemplation and action, only to put it under a bushel…lest we be condemned for restricting by the letter the incomprehensible power of wisdom.

Rather let us place it upon the lamp stand of holy Church, on the heights of true contemplation, where it may kindle for all men the light of divine teaching.

Maximus the Confessor (580-662):Questions to Thalassius, 3 (PG 90, 667-670) from the Office of Readings (liturgy of the hours) for Wednesday of the 28th week in Ordinary Time @ Crossroads Initiative.

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