Hermitage Note - Faith Energized By Love

It has been a very good Lent thus far. Not so much enhanced by particularly giving up of anything. The Lenten penitential expectations of the Roman Rite are extremely lenient in comparison to the penitential expectations levied in the Eastern Catholic Churches and in Orthodoxy. It has been more so enrichened because of focusing on our own consecration and devotion during these past weeks.

On February 11th [Feast of our Lady of Lourdes] Shirli and I completed a 33-Day journey with Saint Louis de Montfort’s Total Consecration to Jesus Through Mary. This coming Friday, March 19th [Feast of Saint Joseph Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary], we will complete a similar 33-Day journey of Consecration to Saint Joseph using the book written by Fr. Donald Calloway to guide us along the way.

I suppose, in a sense, we could choose to think of the time it takes to do these 33-Day journeys as a sacrifice. But how can we think of something as a sacrifice when its garnered benefits far exceed any time or effort invested in it?

Both of these 33-Day journeys, one before Lent and one during Lent, have been quite illuminating and grounding in the historic Christian faith that we discover in Catholicism. And not just illuminating in the sense of gaining knowledge through learning information, though there is plenty of learning of information involved. The illumination is grounded in the energy of Love himself who is personally experienced along these paths of personal consecration.

I concurrently began reading the words of Saint Diadochos in the Philokalia.

“Spiritual discourse fully satisfies our intellectual perception because it comes from God through the energy of love. It is on account of this that the intellect continues undisturbed in its concentration on theology. It does not suffer then the emptiness which produces a state of anxiety, since in its contemplation it is filled to the degree that the energy of love desires. So it is right always to wait, with a faith energized by love, for the illumination which will enable us to speak. For nothing is so destitute as a mind philosophizing about God when it is without him. Saint Diadochos of Photiki (c. 400 – c. 486)

It is Love himself who makes these journeys so meaningful and worthwhile. It is in personally experiencing and knowing this Love that we are able to escape the destitution of merely philosophizing about God, and the things of God, as though he and they are merely branches of science.

From our reading in Isaiah … Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind. Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; for I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people. Isaiah 65:17-18

Our own remembrance of things past keeps us from becoming and being all that we are meant to be in Christ. Even with our own personal acceptance of Christ’s supreme offering of Atonement on the Cross!

We so easily pretend and fool ourselves in thinking that because Jesus paid it all that we are free to rationalize and justify ourselves. We demean and degrade his Salvific Offering on the Cross by refusing to do penances as the fruit of repentance. We remember our sins and cling to their memory. We remember the sins of others committed against us and cling to the memory of them. We remember our failures and become sullen and distant from God. We remember our successes and become swollen with pride and distant from God.

We remember. We also worry.

We angst because of all the cares and concerns that we have, especially cares and concerns for loved ones whose past sins keep us on alert … always waiting on news that we do not want to hear.

How close we are to the kingdom of God, yet how far away we are from realizing the fullness of the kingdom of God that is within us. How close we are to the peace that our souls long for, yet how far we are from realizing the fullness of this peace. Now we have brief moments where we escape and lose ourselves in peace. Then we will be totally immersed in peace.

Yet a little while. Yet a little longer.

Until then, we pray while our faith, energized by love, leads us there.