Saint Angela di Foligno and Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity

One of the influences on the thought and spirituality of Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity is a Third Order Franciscan widow from the beginning of the 14th Century, Angela di Foligno.  Pope Francis has just included this Master of Theology in the Calendar of the Saints and her feast will be January 4.   Saint Angela's Instructions #36 contains a description of some of her last experiences and words. Drawing from a translation of this work, Blessed Elisabeth quotes these tender words the dying Angela heard from the lips of Jesus, "It is "I" who come, and I bring you unknown joy... I will enter into the depths of your being."

It seems that the Word incarnate spoke to her in this way just before He entered into her in a remarkably beautiful way.  She describes that He touched her and embraced her whole being.  Even as the disintegration of death was consuming her life, she was enveloped by the love of the Word spoken by the Father into humanity for her, personally, intimately, and truly.

For the Mystic of Foligno, the coming of the Word into her was also a very personal event - like the coming of a Bridegroom for his Bride.  What a wondrous grace!  Even in the face of death, the Word of the Father - the source of all meaning and purpose in creation - enters and embraces the life of the saint so that the meaninglessness of death is not the last word.  Instead, at death, she witnesses to being raised into a love that will have no end.  It is in this current of love that the Christian takes his stand - because this love gives a life that nothing can take away.

Blessed Elisabeth understood how important this encounter with the Word of the Father is.  The fact that she would zero in on this passage suggests that something in Jesus's words to Saint Angela also resonated in her own life too.  In fact, when she copied these words in a personal letter to her prioress, Blessed Elisabeth was in the physical agony of her own final illness. What a blessing that today Saint Angela's beautiful witness to Christ's personal presence is recognized by the Universal Church.  Now, with Saint Angela and Blessed Elisabeth we can marvel at a love that is stronger than death.

A Contemplation that Hears Heaven

Beyond every psychological experience in prayer, however enlightened it might be, there is a contemplation of the Gospel of Christ rooted in a whole new outpouring of truth.  This ceaseless outpouring of love on broken humanity is always new because the Word of the Father, though unchanging, is never old.  His voice echoes with unique and unrepeatable harmony - the harmony that causes all things to be, that saves them from every danger and that orders them all to their great purpose.  Though hidden in weakness and vulnerable to every kind of evil, the Word constantly puts the eternal plan of the Father into motion.  

This is a river of primordial, salvific and heavenly truth flowing in darkness: a true unfolding miracle saving, restoring, rebuilding, raising up, providing, protecting, perfecting all manner of new life. The miracle of hope is born in these waters even as this tired old world is doomed under the weight of lifeless systems and frantic ideologies.  Christian contemplation stands in this river and in the flow of its currents, it hears heaven.   

The most radical of all forms of contemplation of any religious tradition, prayer that welcomes the Word claims the total transformation, not only of created intelligence, but of human nature itself.  This is a transformation by glory and for glory into pure and ceaseless praise.  Predestined in Christ, in the world but not of it, this humble prayer is unto the praise of God's glory.

The new and saving truth such prayer contemplates renews every aspect of one’s life.  It does so without harming our nature in any way but instead restores it to integrity and raises it to unimaginable perfection.  It is thus a real transformation in which one's unique individuality is not absorbed by some abstract absolute.  Instead of surmounting sacred humanity, by the grace of this kind of prayer, one finally begins to live.  Here, in all of one own glorious unrepeatability and frail contingency, he discovers the joy of a divine friendship the limits of our present existence cannot contain.

Although one's natural capacity for love and knowledge cannot even begin to exhaust the limitlessness of the saving truth revealed by Christ, one's intellect, one's will and one's self-awareness are all raised up into a whole new work by grace.  Christian contemplation avails the mind to supernatural operations and makes the very substance of the soul vulnerable to the sanctifying presence of the Eternal Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Within the limits of time and moments subject to duration, this mental prayer brings to birth eternal thoughts until one’s whole memory burns with hope.  It feels the movement of holy desires caused by an Uncreated Love mysteriously at work in depths of heart, depths so deep that one does not know of their existence.  Indeed, one's ultimate end is far beyond the power of natural consciousness to grasp. 

Sharing in the jubilation of God to which ears closed by the disobedience of sin are deaf, this truth based contemplation is cruciform: stretching out on the misery and mercy that collide in one's own heart, drowning all that is false, rash and callous in the abyss of love’s agony while raising up all that is tender, beautiful and noble in pure divine fire.   It is a baptism.  It is a burning bush.  Man’s own psychic energy falls silent before this hidden mountain.  It is holy ground on which one may stand only with bare feet.  

How do we find this secret mountain and how do we enter this hidden garden?  The substance of such hope cannot be clung to as long as the mind lusts for religious experience and seeks its rest in its own spiritual achievement.  At war with heaven, hubris is a noise that does not avail the heart to suffer the subtle movements of divine power in human nature.  The deaf ears of the heart must be rendered vulnerable to the breath of God.   Unless it is healed and opened by a truth beyond itself, the mind is unable to catch those triumphant canticles forever singing, thundering, showering, delicately exploring anew all the human mirth and sacred sorrow the Risen Lord pours out on the world and offers to the Father.   

Contemplation requires sacred doctrine.  It is nourished by this real food.  It is rooted in this heavenly secret.  It drinks from this wisdom of the saints.  It stands on what the Spirit and the Bride propose to the world.  The teaching of the Church, especially as proposed inerrant and inspired in the Holy Bible, makes possible and safeguards such prayer.  Familiarity with the treasure entrusted to us by faith protects prayer from the threat of self-deception and the manipulation of charlatans.  Rooted in saving truth, Spirit imbued modes of cognition are free to reach beyond limited horizons of cleverness and enchantment, opening the heart to a divine inflow, a fullness no falsehood can bear.  

It is the humbled and contrite alone who are both refreshed and made homesick by the kindly warmth of those eternal hymns resounding in the sacred silence of God’s own heart. Raised by grace beyond the futility that clouds intellects still subject to death, such prayer accesses a saving mystery to taste heaven itself and drink from life giving waters.   Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity speaks of a Divine Object that evokes adoration, an ecstasy of love.   Pope Francis describes this as seeing through the resurrected eyes of Christ.    Saint Paul explains that this living sacrifice, this spiritual worship, results in knowing God’s will, and all that is good, pleasing and perfect in His eyes (Romans 12:2).

To Satiate the Thirst of Jesus

When we begin to pray, we implicate ourselves in the plight of others, especially those who are suffering.  Prayer binds us to offer a cup of cold water to those who are thirsting because prayer allows us to suffer the thirst of God, His divine passion for the salvation of souls.  In this way, prayer disposes us to see Jesus in those who are suffering, especially those who most need a reason to hope.   If we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the thirst of Christ, we realize how precious it is to offer our sufferings and to help others offer their own sufferings to satiate that thirst.

Mother Teresa believed that many of the sick and suffering would be sanctified much faster "if they suffered to satiate the thirst of Jesus."  She had a deep conviction that Jesus was thirsty for souls, that this is the reason when He suffered on the Cross, He uttered the words "I thirst."  She had these last words of Christ put behind the altar and near the crucifix of every chapel where the Missionaries of Charity lived and served.  When I am honored to pray in one of their chapels, these words are not only a reminder, but also a heart-piercing correction, love's rebuke in the face of my own sluggishness and indifference.  In many ways, these words signify the sacred purpose of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries.   Saint Teresa of Calcutta also implicated all those this Missionaries served in this great task, especially severely ill and dying.

What does it mean for the sick and suffering to be sanctified?  Somehow when we offer our suffering to satiate the thirst of the Lord, we make space for God to work in new ways in our own life and in the lives of others.   In fact, the sacrament for the anointing of the sick effects this mysterious reality in the lives of the suffering so that in their weakness and helplessness they are established in the very mystery of the Cross, a place of great intimacy with Christ.  It is a place of such great intimacy that the Lord allows the suffering soul to extend His saving mystery through their suffering in space and time to the degree that they bear their infirmities with faith and love for His glory.  It is faith and love that transforms suffering into something beautiful for God so that even suffering reveals the holiness of the Lord in the world.

Today, in hospitals and in hospices, sometimes in households and sometimes all alone, there are those who are overwhelmed by pain and helplessness.  Sometimes they are also enveloped in the most disturbing question, and this even to the point of suffering extreme temptations to despair despite their love for the Lord and desire to be holy.   There are not many souls in our culture who would dare to accompany the sick through this agony, an agony that thirsts for hope.  Yet entering deep into prayer, into intimacy with Christ crucified does not allow us to ignore this plight. It was specifically into this pain that Mother Teresa directed her words "if they suffered to satiate the thirst of Jesus."   If we understand the great mystery her words point to, they can become a cup of cold water, a little hope when hope is most needed so that something beautiful might be done for God.

The Wonder of God's Will and the Holiness of Marriage

The Will of God is a beautiful mystery that evokes wonder and adoration.  The sluggish and self-indulgent heart is unable to fall down in adoration because it is asleep to the glory of God echoing through the world.   It is only the vigilant heart, the heart that hungers and thirsts for justice, that is ready to welcome beatitude.  My heart goes to this mystery this summer as I consider the crucifixion of marriage taking place in our society.

Powerful cultural and political interests have imposed their values on the humble and the poor once again.   The President and various state governments have acted as good chief priests while the Supreme Court and many other judiciary bodies have all played the role of Pilate perfectly.  But they are not the only guilty parties.  Each of us, in various ways, great and small, by our own petty sins against the sanctity of marriage and family life, have also chanted crucify, crucify!

All this has happened this summer even while holy women and beloved disciples reverently take down the institutional corpse to carry it to its cultural tomb.  How could marriage not die laid bear to the hidden violence of fornication, artificial contraception, abortion, and divorce?  The faithfulness and integrity that traditional family life demands is not sustainable in the context of our oversexed and banal culture.  If petty bickering and mean-spiritedness have always threatened this most holy of friendships, government does not feel obliged to protect these sacred bonds, not even for the sake of children who have a right not only to life but also to the love of a mother and father.   So, as authentic marriage is buried in the tomb of artificial and politically correct social contracts, it is right to weep over the fact that something good, holy and true has died in our nation.

It is into this mystery that we must take up the task of prayer.  God is revealing something astonishing to us if we will only look for it and allow the sorrowful events that took place in our country this summer to pierce us to the heart.  It is a matter of compunction.  To begin to pray means to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the wonder of God's Will even in the face of the crucifixion and death of marriage -- because it is only by surrender to His holy and ineffable Will that we glimpse His mercy and allow Him to bring to birth in our hearts unvanquished hope.

Wilfrid Stinissen makes an powerful observation in Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God who Loves Us (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011).  God's will is disclosed and manifested by opposition to it.  This is exactly what happened to Christ Jesus.  When He was opposed unto death on the Cross, the mercy of God for the world was revealed.  God the Father permitted His only begotten Son to be crucified so that His saving will might be made known.  Father Stinissen explains: "God makes use of evil in such a superb way and with such skill that the result is better than if there had never been evil."

To see this in relation to marriage requires a certain purification of our faith, a purification that comes through prayer and repentance.  The disciples did not start out with a clear understanding of Christ's humiliating death.  They began with bewilderment and confusion.  We, like them, must not walk away from this experience or try to forget it or attempt to convince ourselves that it is not important.  Just as the evil of human acts temporarily blinded the first disciples from seeing the wonder of God's will, our own conversion starts when we allow the Lord to walk with us and question us about where we are going with our lives.   Just as Christ's crucifixion was not opposed to anything that God revealed but rather the fulfillment of it, so too the violence done to marriage and family life in our culture is become another way God will reveal the greatness of His mercy.  Authentic marriage and family life need God and His ways more than ever -- and the beauty of what God does in the bonds of these holy friendships only shines the brighter the more our culture turns to darkness.    

Prayer helps us see that in every abuse of power against marriage and family, the Risen Christ continues to be at work in the lives of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers who turn to Him and rely on Him for their strength.   Happy marriages and holy families are the result of God's presence in the heart that prays, and not the imposition of politically correct values through social engineering.  It was into their shock and lack of faith that the Risen Lord began to disclose Himself to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus.   His saving presence and his patient explanations made their hearts burn until they recognized Him "in the breaking of the bread."  Likewise, we will only begin to recognize how God is raising up marriage when we contemplate it and beg for it in relation to the Sacred Body and Blood that has been offered for our sake.

Summer Lecture Series in Arvada, Colorado

Shrine of Saint Anne 

2013 Summer Spiritual Theology Series 

The Mystery of Faith in the Wisdom of the Saints

Conferences by Dr. Anthony Lilles

Wednesdays from 7:00pm to 9:00pm in the Parish Center

Free to the Public

The Year of Faith invites us to examine some of the inexhaustible riches of Christ in our tradition so that we can better participate in the new work of evangelization the exigencies of our time and our society demand.   Among these treasures we find the beautiful awareness that the saints enjoy of the presence of the Risen Lord at work in the world.  This mystical wisdom, a wisdom that is given through contemplation, is the key to the renewal of the Church and the new evangelization for us today just as it was for them in their day.    We will see that by allowing us to glimpse the glory they know, the great saints and mystics propose powerful reasons to embrace the discipline of the Christian life and to renew our own dedication to daily prayer.   Each evening will feature two forty five minute lectures on the spiritual theology of a different saint followed by fifteen minutes of disccusion.  The saints to be explored are as follows:

July 3:   Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

July 10:  Saint Hildegard of Bingen

July 17:  Saint Catherine of Siena

July 24:  Saint John of Avila

July 31:  Saint Teresa of Avila

Aug. 7:  Saint John of the Cross

Aug. 14:  Saint Therese of Lisieux

Aug. 21:   Saint Faustina Kowalska

Aug. 28: Blessed John Paul II