Henry Suso (c. 1300 - 1366)

Bl. Henry Suso (c. 1300 - 1366) studied theology under Meister Eckhart in Cologne. But Eckhart was more than a teacher to him: there is a touching account in Suso's autobiography of how he went to Eckhart when his hypersensitive conscience was tormenting him, and how Eckhart gave him complete peace. He entered the Dominican Order in his native Constance. Some years later he had a profound religious experience which he described in great detail. It was the beginning of a great love story, told with impressive literary skill in the tender language of courtly love. 'Eternal Wisdom [a feminine noun in German, as in most languages with noun-gender] offers herself in the Holy Scriptures very affectionately, as a fair beloved who adorns herself beautifully in order to be well pleasing to all men, speaking gently in the guise of a woman, in order to incline all hearts to herself.'
    The language of chivalry, parodied in a later century in Don Quixote, was still viable in Suso's century. 'Your young unruly heart,' he said to himself, 'can scarcely endure to be without a special object of love.' So he often 'meditated about her, thinking of her lovingly, and liking her full well with all his heart and soul.' The mediaeval knight delighted to suffer for the lady he worshipped.
    Two of his books are written as dialogue, a favourite literary form in the 14th century. The dialogue is between himself ('the disciple') and God ('Eternal Truth', which, like 'Eternal Wisdom', is a feminine noun). The theme is the death of the ego.

     Disciple:  Lord, what is true detachment?
   Truth: Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you can quickly grasp the truth.
    Take, first of all, the first word -- oneself or myself -- and see what it is. It is important to realise that everyone has five kinds of self. The first self we have in common with a stone, and this is being. The second we share with plants, and this is growing. The third self we share with animals, and this is sensation. The fourth we share with all other human beings: we possess a common human nature in which all are one. The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his or her own - is one's individual human self…
    Now what is it that leads people astray and robs them of happiness? It is exclusively this last self. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward this self, when he or she should be returning inward. Thus they fashion their own selves according to what is accidental. In their blindness they appropriate to themselves what is God's. This is the direction they take, and they eventually sink into sinfulness….
    Disciple: The truth be praised! Dear Lord, tell me, does anything (of this self) still remain in the happy, detached person?
    Truth: Without a doubt it happens that, when the good and loyal servant is led into the joy of his Lord, he becomes drunk from the limitless overabundance of God's house. What happens to a drunken man happens to him, though it cannot really be described, that he so forgets his self that he is not at all his self and consequently has got rid of his self completely and lost himself entirely in God, becoming one spirit in all ways with him, just as a small drop of water does which has been dropped into a large amount of wine. Just as the drop of water loses itself, drawing the taste and colour of the wine to and into itself, so it happens that those who are in full possession of blessedness lose all human desires in an inexpressible manner, and they ebb away from themselves and are immersed completely in the divine will. Otherwise, if something of the individual were to remain of which he or she were not completely emptied, scripture could not be true in stating that God shall become all things in all things. Certainly one's being remains, but in a different form, in a different resplendence, and in a different power. This is all the result of total detachment from self. 

Francis de Sales 1567 1622

“It is love that gives value to all our works; it is not by the greatness or multiplicity of our works that we please God, but by the love with which we do them.”

“We have to do everything for love, not out of force.”

“All the good we do, we do for love of God, and the evil we avoid, we avoid for love of God.”

 “Nothing else purifies the intellect of ignorance and the will of depraved affections better than prayer.”

“The true and solid devotion consists in the constant will, resolve, promptness and activeness to execute what is pleasing to God.”

“If your eye is simple all of your body will be too.”

“Let us not lower our eyes without humiliating at the same time the heart; let not others think we want the last place without truly desiring it.”

“Humility perfects us in what concerns God, and meekness in what concerns our neighbor.”

“We have to allow our minds to be pierced by the thorns of difficulties, and allow our hearts to be pierced by the lance of contradiction; to drink of the bitterness and swallow the vinegar, if this is God’s will.”


“We should perform all our actions by the obligation we owe them or by the simple acceptance of God’s will, and this is to be in calm or in storm.”

“Know that the virtue of patience is what assures us the most perfection.”

Richard Rolle 1290, 1349

Richard Rolle Quotes

It behoves thee to love God wisely; and that may thou not do but if thou be wise.

Who breathe where you will, come into me and snatch me up to yourself.

The commandment of God is, that we love Our Lord in all our heart, in all our soul, in all our thought.

For love is a willful stirring of our thoughts unto God, so that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus Christ, and therewith that it be lasting in sweetness of devotion; and that is the perfection of this life.

The first is called insuperable, the second inseparable, the third singular.

Thy love is singular when all thy delight is in Jesus Christ and in no other thing finds joy and comfort.

St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)

Born into poverty at Toledo Spain in 1542, his father was disinherited from a wealthy family for marrying below his station. He died in his prime and his mother was barley able to keep the family together.

John was sent to the poor school at Medina del Campo, he proved tobe be a bright and attentive student, but when apprnticed to an artisan, seemed incapable of retaining anything. At which point the head of the hospital in Madina took him under wing. For seven years he divided his time to tending to the poorest of the poor and frequenting a school established by the Jesuits. He entered the Carmilite order and became a friar.

He was persuaded by Teresa of Avilia to join a reformed movement within the Carmilites known as the Discalceds. He was seized and thrown into prison by a repressive wing of the Carmilites and finally escaped.

The Discalceds won their independence, yet toward the end of his life he suffered severe persecutions at the hands of his own order. He was stripped of rank and banished to a remote part of Spain where he died.

John was a mystic and an advocate for the poor. He penned a number books now considered classics of Christian mysticism. The most famous being The Dark Night of the Soul - a poem with a commentary in prose.The night which seems unwelcome becomes sweeter than the dawn and unites the Divine lover and the Beloved until each is transformed into the other.

On that glad night,

in secret, for no one saw me,

nor did I look at anything,

with no other light or guide

than the one that burned in my heart.

for further reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_the_Cross

short bio, bibliography, quotes
http://doctorsofthecatholicchurch.com/JC.html


living water reprint from 2009

Thought's from Bohme

"For he that will say, I have a Will, and would willingly do Good, but the earthly Flesh which I carry about me, keepeth me back, so that I cannot; yet I shall be saved by Grace, for the Merits of Christ. I comfort myself with his Merit and Sufferings; who will receive me of mere Grace, without any Merits of my own, and forgive me my Sins. Such a one, I say, is like a Man that knoweth what Food is good for his Health, yet will not eat of it, but eateth Poison instead thereof, from whence Sickness and Death, will certainly follow."

 Böhme, unlike Luther, does not believe that Mary was the Ever Virgin. Her virginity after the birth of Jesus is unrealistic to Böhme. The true salvation is Christ, not Mary. The importance of Mary, a human like every one of us, is that she gave birth to Jesus Christ as a human being. If Mary had not been human, according to Böhme, Christ would be a stranger and not our brother. Christ must grow in us as he did in Mary. She became blessed by accepting Christ. In a reborn Christian, as in Mary, all that is temporal disappears and only the heavenly part remains for all eternity. Böhme's peculiar theological language, involving fire, light and spirit which permeates his theology and Marian views, does not distract much from the fact that his basic positions are Lutheran, with the one exception of the virginity of Mary, where he holds a more temporal view.

 Böhme saw the incarnation of Christ not as a sacrificial offering to cancel out human sins, but as an offering of love for humanity, showing God's willingness to bear the suffering that had been a necessary aspect of creation. He also believed the incarnation of Christ conveyed the message that a new state of harmony is possible. This was somewhat at odds with Lutheran teachings, and his suggestion that God would have been somehow incomplete without the Creation was even more controversial, as was his emphasis on faith and self-awareness rather than strict adherence to dogma or scripture.

"Christ has no Body, but Yours"

A Prayer of Teresa of Avlia

 
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.


 Born in Spain, Teresa entered a Carmelite convent when she was eighteen, and later earned a reputation as a mystic, reformer, and writer who experienced divine visions. She founded a convent, and wrote the book The Way of Perfection for her nuns. Other important books by her include her Autobiography and The Interior Castle.

Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438)

Margery Kempe  is known for dictating The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language.. This volume chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia, as well as her mystical conversations with God. She is honored in the Anglican communion..

 She was born Margery Brunham in Kings-lynn, Norfolk, England. Her father, John Brunham, was a merchant in Lynn,a five-time mayor, and member of parliament. At the age of 20, Margery Brunham married a Norwich man named John Kempe. She had 14 children with him.

 The narrative of Kempe's book begins just after her marriage, and relates the experience of her difficult first pregnancy. While delivering this child, she became gravely ill and feared for her life. She called for a priest to hear her confession, as she had a "secret sin" that had been weighing on her conscience for some time. The priest began to censure her before she could divulge this sin in its entirety, and then left. Fearing eternal damnation, she fell into a delusional state, where she describes seeing devils around her, and was considered a danger to herself and others. She was chained in a storeroom for six months, until, as she describes, Jesussat down at her bedside, and asked her, "Daughter, why hast thou forsaken Me, and I forsook never thee?" She relates, at first, intending to become God's servant, but admits she could not "leave her pride nor her pompous array." Kempe undertook two domestic businesses—a brewery and a grain-mill—both common home-based businesses for medieval women, both of which endured for a little while, then failed.

Though she tried to be more devout, she was tempted by sexual pleasures and social jealousy for some years. Eventually turning away from her vocational choices, Kempe dedicated herself completely to the spiritual calling that she felt her earlier vision required. Striving to live a life of commitment to God, Kempe negotiated a celibate marriage with her husband, and began to make pilgrimages around Europe and Asia to holy sites, including Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostella. Her book consisted of her accounts related to these travels, although a final section includes a series of prayers. The spiritual focus of her book is on the mystical conversations she conducts with Christ for more than forty years.

 Two different scribes wrote for Kempe, under her strict supervision.

 Part of Margery Kempe's significance lies in the autobiographical nature of her book: it is the best insight available of a female, middle class experience in the Middle Ages. Kempe is unusual among the more traditional holy exemplars of her time, such as Julian of Norwich, a member of a religious order. In describing her visit to Julian in Norwich, Kempe tells of their discussion of Kempe's visions and assessment as to their orthodoxy. They decided that because the visions led to charity, they were of the Holy Spirit.

Teresa of Avilia (1515-82)

Born in Avilia, Spain, on March 28, 1515, to a family of converted Jews Theresa became a Carmelit nun and later founded the Reformed order of Carmelites. John of the Cross was her protege'.

She was given to mystical experiences in prayer. She encouraged an openness to such things yet did not encourage dependance on them.

Her focus was on nurturing a relationship with Christ through engaging God's presence. She taught that that divine presence was to be received with joy and not treated as a right.

She penned an extensive biography and a number of books, that she wrote during the fifteen years when she was actively engaged in founding new communities of reformed Carmelite nuns. The Way of Perfection she composed the Way of Perfection and Foundations for the special guidance of her nuns. Her best know The Interior Castle was written with a larger audience in mind, in it she writes with unwavering authority on the spiritual life.

Her orders way of life was austere and her reforms radical.

In the autumn of 1582, Teresa, although ill, set out for Alva de Tormez, when she arrived at the convent, Teresa went to bed in a state of exhaustion. She never recovered, and three days passed away.

living water repeat from 2008

"Everything is Grace."

 











Saint Therese the Little Flower Speaks

 "Jesus does not so much look at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them." 

"I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul." 

 "How happy I am to see myself as imperfect and to be in need of God's mercy." 

 "Do not fear to tell Jesus that you love Him even without feeling it. That is the way to force Jesus to help you, to carry you like a little child too feeble to walk."

 "For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus."

 "Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but simply surrender and gratitude."

 "It is only love which makes us acceptable to God."

 "What offends Him and what wounds His Heart is the lack of confidence...Your heart is made to love Jesus, to love Him passionately...We have only the short moments of our life to love Jesus!"

 Whispered to a novice while standing in front of the convent library: "Oh! I would have been sorry to have read all those books...If I had read them, I would have broken my head, and I would have wasted precious time that I could have employed very simply in loving God."


In loving memory of Brother John Henry Tilma 

Spiritual life

Spiritual life is like living water 
that springs up from the very depths 
of our own spiritual experience.  
In spiritual life everyone has to drink 
from his or her own well.  

~  St. Bernard of Clairvaux

John Tauler (1300 - 1351)

John Tauler considered one of the primary German mystics along with Meister Ekhart and Henry Suso was born about the year 1300 in Strasbourg, entered the Dominican order (probably at the age of about fifteen) and was educated at the Dominican convent in that city.  Ekhart, who greatly influenced Tauler, was active in Strasbourg c1313-26, though it is unclear what relationship they may have had.

 Around 1330 Tauler began his preaching career in Strasbourg. The city contained eight convents of Dominican nuns and perhaps seventy smaller beguine communities. It seems likely that (as with Meister Ekhart, and Henry Suso), much of his preaching was directed to holy women. Most of Tauler's nearly eighty sermons seem to reflect a convent situation, although this may partly reflect the setting in which such sermons were most likely to be written down and preserved.

 Tauler worked with the Friends of God, and it was with them that he taught his belief that the state of the soul was affected more by a personal relationship with God than by external practices.

 Tauler traveled  extensively in the last two and a half decades of his life. He made several trips to Cologne. A number of his sermons were clearly delivered there, as indicated by their survival in the Cologne dialect of Middle High German.

Tauler left no formal treatises, either in Latin or the vernacular. Rather, he leaves around eighty sermons. His sermons began to be collected in his own lifetime - three fourteenth-century manuscripts date from around the time of Tauler's return to Strasbourg after his exile in Base. His sermons,  were considered among the noblest in the German language -- not as emotional as Suso's nor as speculative as Eckhart's, but rather intensely practical, touching on all sides the deeper problems of the moral and spiritual life.

 He was one of several notable Christian universalists in the Middle Ages, along with Amalric of Bena  John of Rusybrook, and ^{Juilan of Norwich.} He taught that "All beings exist through the same birth as the Son, and therefore shall they all come again to their original, that is, God the Father."

According to tradition, Tauler died on 16 June 1361 in Strasbourg. He was buried in the Dominican church in Strasbourg with an incised gravestone that still survives

compiled from several sources

There is a candle in your heart...

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.

Rumi

 From: Hush Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi

From: Hush Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi - See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumicandle.html#sthash.RYNOWmlb.dpuf

Rumi Poems

There is a candle in your heart...

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.
- See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumicandle.html#sthash.RYNOWmlb.dpuf

There is a candle in your heart...

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.
- See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumicandle.html#sthash.RYNOWmlb.dpuf

There is a candle in your heart...

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.
- See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumicandle.html#sthash.RYNOWmlb.dpuf

Love makes us speak

Love makes us speak; 

love makes us moan;

love makes us die; 
love brings us to life; 

love makes us drunk and bewildered; 

it sometimes makes one a king.

Love and the lover have no rigid doctrine. 

Whichever direction the lover takes, 

he turns toward his beloved. 

Wherever he may be, he is with his beloved. 

Wherever he goes, he goes with his beloved.

He cannot do anything, cannot 
survive for even one moment, without his beloved.

He constantly recalls his beloved as his beloved remembers him. 

Lover and beloved, rememberer and remembered, 

are ever in each other's company, always together. 

~Sheikh Muzaffer

Sufi mystic 

Much of sufi poetry and imagery is reflective of the Song of 

Solomon in that it places God as the Beloved and the seeker 

as the intoxicated lover and concerns it's self with the union

of the lover and the beloved.

The Lover and the Beloved

Indeed, no lover seeks union without his beloved seeking him.

But the love of lovers makes their bodies into bowstrings,
while the love of beloveds makes them happy and plump.

When the lightning of love for the loved one flashes in *this* heart,
know that there is also love in *that* heart.

When love for God has doubled in your heart,
without doubt God has love for you.

You have never heard one hand clapping without the other.

The thirsty man laments, "Oh sweet water!"
The water also laments, "Where is the drinker!"

This thirst in our souls is the attraction of the Water -
we belong to It and It belongs to us.


Jalaluddin Rumi's Mathnawi, book 3, vv. 4393-4399,
from "The Sufi Path of Love," translated by W. C. Chittick, p.209.

Graphic:  Song of Solomon, illustrations, music, pictures: brookwww.song-of-songs.net 

Sufism  is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ṣūfī Sufis believe they are practicing ihsan (perfection of worship) as revealed by Gabriel to Muhammad: "Worship and serve Allah as you are seeing Him and while you see Him not yet truly He sees you".. Sufism is opposed by Wahhabi and Salafist Muslims.(adapted from Wikipedia)

Psalm 139:7-12

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths,
 you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side 
of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 
even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day,
 for darkness is as light to you. 

 graphic:  rach.users.livejournal.com

To Love is to reach God.

To Love is to reach God.
Never will a Lover's chest 
feel any sorrow.
Never will a Lover's robe 
be touched by mortals.
Never will a Lover's body 
be found buried in the earth.
To Love is to reach God. 

~Rumi 

                          Translated by: Shahram Shiva

 Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, 
and more popularly in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, was a 
13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. 

In the golden city of the heart

In the golden city of the heart dwells
The Lord of Love, without parts, without stain.
Know him as the radiant light of lights.

There shines not the sun, neither moon nor star,
Nor flash of lightning, nor fire lit on earth.
The Lord is the light reflected by all.
He shining, everything shines after him.

Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.10-11

For more background about The Mundaka Upanishad: (Sanskrit: मुण्डक उपनिषद्, Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad) or the Mundakopanishad (Sanskrit: मुण्डकोपनिषद्, Muṇḍakopaniṣad) 

is one of the earlier, "primary" (mukhya) Upanishads, a genre of Hindu scriptures 

commented upon by Shankara. It is associated with the Atharvaveda.  

It figures as number 5 in the Muktika canon of 108 Upanishads.