Monthly Archives: July 2017

Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love

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Tomb of Saint John of the Cross ~ Photo taken by me in Segovia, July 2017

 

I recently came back from a trip to Spain and visited the Monastery of San Juan De La Cruz, Discalced Carmelite Fathers in Segovia.  The Monastery stands next to the Shrine of La Fuencisla. St. John of the Cross is buried here.
The church has a single nave with side chapels. The marble and bronze mausoleum of St. John of the Cross is in the side chapel of the Evangelio.

There I read the most beautiful prayer by St. John of the Cross “Oracion del alma enamorada” Prayer of a soul taken with love….

You will not take from me, my God, what You once gave me in Your only Son, Jesus Christ in Whom You gave me all I desire.  Hence I rejoice that if I wait for You, You will not delay. With what procrastinations do You wait, since from this very moment you can love God in your heart? Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth.  Mine are the nations, the just are mine, and mine the sinners.  The angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine; and God Himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me. What do you ask, then, and seek, my soul?  Yours is all of this, and all is for you.  Do not engage yourself in something less, nor pay heed to the crumbs which fall from your Father’s table.  Go forth and exult in your Glory!  Hide yourself in It and rejoice, and you will obtain the supplications of your heart.
❤

Friend of Jesus

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I call you friends

Jesus in the garden (unknown source)

I call you friends.
(John 15:15)

Jesus calls us friends insofar as we go to him, cling to him, hang onto his words, scrutinize his deeds, his attitudes, his sense of values, in order to know the Father and do his will.

To be a friend of Jesus is to have as our sole reason for living the accomplishment of the Father’s will in us and through us. This is the way Jesus was.

Jesus is our Way because he refused to have any way of his own except what the Father ordained for him; our Truth because he did not stand on anything as coming from himself but only as shown him by the Father; our Life because he was utterly selfless, an emptiness for the Father’s love.

Nearly everyone (perhaps we have to say ‘everyone’, at least to begin with), in setting out to climb the mountain of God, is really after something for self. In so far our poor, blind seeking is genuine, God is able to work to purify our motivation. This must cost us bitterly.

A fundamental resolution which, if we can hold on to it hour after hour, will leave us completely open to him and certain of our goal, is simply that God shall have all, everything he asks moment by moment.

Nothing shall matter to me any more. I have ceased to be important to myself.

I stay rooted in the heart of Jesus, drawing on the endless resources of my Way, Truth and Life…my Friend. He is steadfastly loyal to me; and on my side I must never let him down. This is possible only when I live in his heart and let him share his Father with me. This is ‘leaning on the Beloved’.  

~ ‘Living Love Meditations’ by Ruth Burrows, O.C.D.