Another jewel given us through the Holy Spirit in the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 12th century, Cistercion abbot and Doctor of the Church. This, from Sermon 27.
I'm having a difficult morning after a challenging night, last. The physical pain is higher, but I am also so yearning for Christ, for my earthly end to come if He'd but return to me to take me with Him. He told me in September, 2012, to "Wait"--that he had to leave to tend to some other souls but would return.
However, in my waiting, I have not utilized the temporal time as well as I ought. I feel as if like the parable of the "unprofitable servant." Even now, in turning back to the good spiritual reading that my late Spiritual Da encouraged me to do, in his last note card to me 10 months ago, the reading is challenging, for I'd tended, myself, to temporal construction skills and manual labor, and accepting a most harrowing form of being stripped down. All that was very good, but the conversion, the turning to more spiritual reading and contemplation, requires another type of discipline, along with the increase in physical suffering, on going.
In the recent reading about acquired and infused virtues and the infused gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the needful sanctifying grace we are given as in a seed when our soul implanted in us when conceived and born into this world, the nurturing and tending this seed filled with sanctifying grace is to be our focus. We are to increasingly desire the supernatural end of seeing God face to face, of being united in His Real Presence for eternity.
Last night I began praying earnestly for the infused virtues and that my acquired virtues be strengthened, and both acquired and infused be in balance--as Pere Gerrigou-Lagrange terms, a happy medium. I pray with hope in God for my faith to be increased, and for charity, the supreme grace and theological virtue grow within me to whatever perfection God desires for me. And in that, I know He wills supreme good and perfect love, as God Is Love; the Holy Spirit is Love, Jesus Christ is Love.
The yearning to be with Christ, in Him, taken from this life and world can become all-encompassing indeed; the waiting can seem insufferable in some aspects difficult to describe. Yet the Holy Spirit instills peace within, and wisdom reminds of peace in the waiting. So this morning, upon reading this from St. Bernard, on the Gospel in which we learn of the healing of the ten lepers, with the one who returned to thank Jesus for the grace, for the gift of healing, and mention of all the graces given us, I know that the Lord is speaking to each of us, all of us--and also any of us who so desire union with Christ.
In writing out these words of truth, my soul shall be all the more assured that what I ask of the graces, virtues, and embrace of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, will be given and increased as this is God's will! And my gratitude for all that God's goodness and love, will grow, as well, even in the days and nights that pain and yearning and reality of my nothingness to God's All. Waiting can become intense; gratitude to, for, of, in the Holy Trinity is my hymn in the waiting of whatever present moments.
The words in the following sermon are St. Bernard's help to me in yet another way of understanding what I am reading in Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's The Three Ages of the Interior Life, of which he is explaining in those writings, what St. Thomas means in the Summa Theologica. When I told the Holy Spirit who already knows my thoughts--told Him in the night and morning--that my comprehension of the reading is difficult for me, the Holy Spirit provides yet another saint to explain in yet another way as well as a means of making a place for and assurance of the graces in virtues and gifts of God that my soul sorely needs to progress as I wait for Jesus to come for me.
"How happy was that Samaritan leper who recognized that 'he possessed nothing he had not received' (I Cor 4:7). 'He guarded what had been entrusted to him' (2 Tim 1:12) and turned back to the Lord to thank Him. Blessed are they who, after each gift of grace, turn back to Him in Whom is the fullness of all the graces, for if we show ourselves thankful in regard to Him for all we have received then we make ready a place for grace within ourselves...in even greater abundance. In fact, our ingratitude is the only thing that prevents us making progress following our conversion....
"Happy, then, are they who think of themselves as strangers and who give great thanks for even the least blessing, thinking that everything given to a stranger and foreigner is a wholly free gift. How unfortunate the wretched we are, on the other hand, if after first of all appearing timid, humble and pious, we then forget just how freely given is what we have received....
"I beg you then, brethren, let us remain ever more humbly under the mighty hand of God (I Pt 5:6)....Let us continue in thanksgiving with great devotion, and He will grant us the grace that alone can save our souls. Let us show our gratitude, not just in our words and on our lips but in deed and in truth."
God bless His Real Presence in us!
All will be well. God provides all necessary to this penitent, this contrite nothing of a consecrated Catholic hermit, simply a soul who loves deeply yet imperfectly for now, but in God's grace and tutelage. In love of God in Himself, all will be healed within, and in gratitude I must wait, am able to wait, upheld and filled by God's magnanimous Spirit of all graces and gifts, in Christ Jesus, my savior.
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