Tag Archives: Faith

The Cloister of the Heart

Everything leads us to the love of Our Lord.
All things nourish and feed this love;
All things cherish and make it our joy;
It lives on our desires and satisfies them;
It lives on our sorrows and consoles them;
It lives on our sufferings and rewards them;
It lives on our sacrifices and makes them infinitely precious;
It lives on our pleasures and adds to them;
It lives on our hopes and fulfils them:
And in a word it will create our happiness
Now and for ever.

To LOVE, nothing will seem impossible, nay more, nothing will be impossible. You cannot restrain love; it is irresistible, mounts every barrier, triumphs over ever difficulty, laughs at every obstacle. This supernatural love-life is the only real life. Yes, this Interior Life lived with Jesus, our attachment to and union with Him, and through Him with the Father and the Holy Ghost, this IS life, OUR life, the only things to live for, without which all else is dead, and worthless and meaningless.

The one sure cloister is the cloister of the heart, where Jesus and the soul live their love-life together, untroubled and undisturbed by all the riot and tumult of the world without; with every movement of memory, mind, and imagination stilled, every desire quelled, there in that silent cloister of the heart the soul is flooded with the calm tranquil peace of perfect love and lies in glad content in the embrace of her Divine Lover. The outward cloister matters little; the inward cloister matters much.

It is to little purpose to shut out the vision of the exterior world, if imagination and memory rove over it as they will, for then the soul is more without than she was before; once enter the cloister of the heart and then, even if she live in the midst of the restless tossing of this world’s troubled throng, there will be perfect peace within. It is for lovers that the Divine Lover is calling. He comes, this Lover, Jesus, with the Great Red Wounds so cruelly gashed in Hands and Feet and Side. He comes, this Lover, Jesus, with His Body all rent, all torn, all bleeding. He comes, this Lover, Jesus, with His Head crowned with cruel thorns, with His Sacred Face disfigured with wounds and blows, with His Eyes filled with Blood. He comes to seek for lovers. His Arms are stretched out wide ready to embrace the soul that will make her response to His appeal, and say to Him: “Oh, my darling Jesus, I take You for my Lover and my All. My Love, I want to be everything to You, and You shall be everything to me!” He will embrace her with those blood-stained Arms of His and the thrill of love will surge through her at His touch.

Victims of Love, those who would love to love’s extreme limit, love without reserve; love with such love that they sacrifice themselves as living Victims to His All-Merciful Love; it is for such our Jesus is calling. It is for souls like these that He asks.

I hold Him, and nor time nor place
My soul from Him shall part—
The Heart of my most loving God,
The God of my poor heart.
❤

~ Listening to the Indwelling Presence, compiled by a Religious

To my Mother, Our Lady of Mount Carmel

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Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Photo taken by me in Alba de Tormes, Spain)

Oh Heavenly Queen of Carmel,
pure and sublime beauty!

Mother of Carmel,
I carry you deeply in my heart.
Cover my soul with your mantel, sweet Mother of mine
and fill it with your care and warmth.
My soul is secure in you,
joined together with your love.
Your hands guide my steps,
Lighting them night and day.
You are my lighthouse that leads me
to safe harbor.
Oh Star of the Sea!

Carmel is your garden and your perfume
permeates all the flowers. What a joy to feel you near!
What a blessing to have you as a Mother!
Your scent envelopes my soul when I tend to the roses and the jasmine.
Roses salute you, their beauty adorn your steps.
Your Carmel is a garden with green prairies and abundant flowers,
with many springs of living, fresh and healing water.

I thank you Blessed Mother for inviting me to your abode
and for teaching me to live day by day, step by step with you.
Let me rest in your sweet heart, Virgen del Carmen
for there is where I find the One I seek…
The Beloved!
❤

~ My personal reflection/poem

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Roses for Mary (Photo taken by me)

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Carmel is the mountain of flowers and with full hands the children of Carmel have strewn these flowers over the earth. ~ Bl Titus Brandsma (My photo)

Wishing you all a very happy and blessed Feast Day of Our lady of Mount Carmel!
Ora Pro Nobis!
❤

St. John the Baptist: Baptism

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Icon of St. John the Forerunner, art source unknown

A Sonnet for St. John the Baptist:

Love’s hidden thread has drawn us to the font,

A wide womb floating on the breath of God,

Feathered with seraph wings, lit with the swift

Lightening of praise, with thunder over-spread,

And under-girded with an unheard song,

Calling through water, fire, darkness, pain,

Calling us to the life for which we long,

Yearning to bring us to our birth again.

Again the breath of God is on the waters

In whose reflecting face our candles shine,

Again he draws from death the sons and daughters

For whom he bid the elements combine.

As living stones around a font today,

Rejoice with those who roll the stone away.

~ By Malcolm Guite – this sonnet was published in the book ‘Sounding of the Seasons,’ a cycle of seventy sonnets for the Church Year.

The Life of Prayer – Meditation #2

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Art by Annie Henrie

Since prayer does not consist in thinking much but in loving much, a life of continual prayer will consist much more in love than in thought. Nevertheless, a certain amount of mental activity is necessary, either to direct the heart toward God, or to maintain it in this direction.

The soul who applies itself well to mental prayer will easily be able to collect in itself some good thoughts which it can use during the day to keep its heart turned toward God. Therefore, it will be useful for the soul to try to recall these thoughts often in the midst of its occupations, and to apply them practically to its life.

Thus, for example, if during prayer, we have been considering God’s infinite mercy toward us, we shall strive to preserve this thought even during our occupations, recognizing many signs of this mercy in the various circumstances in which we find ourselves. in fact, many happenings which, from a purely human point of view, are unpleasant and painful, hide, in reality, great mercies of the Lord who, by means of the sorrows, fatigues, and the trials of life, wants to detach us from creatures, make us practice virtue, and advance in goodness. Likewise, in our dealings with our neighbor, we shall try to imitate God’s mercy. “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful” (Lk 6,36). Although our prayer was spent in aridity, without leaving us any definite thought, but only a deeper realization of our nothingness and the infinite greatness of God, we shall make a treasure of it by attempting during the day to fulfill our duties in a spirit of humility and homage to God. We shall rejoice if some opportunity occurs for humbling ourselves, acknowledging our littleness—even before creatures—and exalting the grandeurs of the Lord.

In this way prayer will not be an isolated item in our day, but will permeate it, by conferring on each action and circumstance the tone of continual prayer.

~ A Meditation by Father Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, O.C.D ~ Divine Intimacy

❤

“Give me, O Lord, such great fervor and immense love that I shall see no difference between this or that life, this or that state, person, time, or place, but shall do what is most pleasing to You, whatever or wherever it may be, tending always to You by the affection of my soul. Grant that I may see all things in You, and nothing but You in them, ever eager and anxious to serve You in all things; and that, all on fire and burning with love, I may not take into consideration what is easiest and most agreeable for me, but only what is most pleasing to You.”
~ St. Bonaventure

Love’s Choice

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“O God, O Creator, O Spirit of life overwhelming Your creatures with ever new graces!
You grant to Your chosen ones the gift which is ever renewed:
The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ!”
~ St. Angela of Foligno

The Body and Blood of Christ by Theophilia

The Eucharistic Heart of Jesus
Art by Cecilia Lawrence ~ 2018

This sonnet is about the experience of receiving Holy Communion:

This bread is light, dissolving, almost air,

A little visitation on my tongue,

A wafer-thin sensation, hardly there.

This taste of wine is brief in flavour, flung

A moment to the palate’s roof and fled,

Even its aftertaste a memory.

Yet this is how He comes. Through wine and bread

Love chooses to be emptied into me.

He does not come in unimagined light

Too bright to be denied, too absolute

For consciousness, too strong for sight,

Leaving the seer blind, the poet mute;

Chooses instead to seep into each sense,

To dye himself into experience.

~ A Sonnet for Corpus Christi, by Malcolm Guite. It was published in ‘Sounding the Seasons’ a cycle of seventy sonnets for the Church Year.

“The eternal tide flows hid in Living Bread. That with its heavenly life too be fed…”
~ St. John of the Cross, O.C.D

Wishing you all a very Blessed Feast of Corpus Christi!
❤

Our Secret Garden

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My Photo, taken in Bayfield, Ontario ~ June 2020

Beloved,

Here we are,
in our meeting place.
Our secret garden,
in a beautiful day of June
late afternoon.

I find You in the flowers.
I find You in the birds,
the trees, the ducks, the butterflies.
All rejoice and praise You.
Your presence is here with me among the lilies.
Your fragrance is everywhere.
Your love and tenderness follows me
wherever I go.

Beloved,

Nature is Your playground.
The sky is Your canvas.
I stop and let all these precious moments
stay with me forever.

They console my heart.
You know my heart is aching
from the losses of three dear friends.
Three beautiful souls that recently departed
To Your loving arms.
May You welcome them in your Kingdom,
where there are no more tears and pain.
Blessed them with Your everlasting love and peace.

Beloved,

Your Heart I seek.
I want my heart to become a shrine for
Your Sacred Heart.
A place where You can rest and I can rest
in You.
My Jesus,
my All
and my God.

~ My short poem to Jesus
❤