-
“Opening My Heart to the Healing Touch of God”
I have uploaded a meditation on prayer as the encounter with God’s loving gaze and his healing touch, and the way that this encounter alone can bring forth authentic sanctity and true liberation in our hearts, opening up within us the joy and playfulness of a child. It is the first of two meditations that I’ll be adding from my most recent book: Looking into His Loving Gaze: On the Beauty of Prayer.
This is a book that I have a deep desire to share, since in it I express those things that I would most like others to hear…or rather, I try to create a “space” in which God can speak and open up in human hearts the vulnerable receptivity to experience his gaze of perfect love, his healing and consoling embrace. There is a conviction within me that God has entrusted this message to me, this ministry which becomes incarnate in the words of this book, and I feel a deep responsibility to share it with my brothers and sisters. If you find yourself in agreement with what I have expressed in these two meditations, I would be greatly appreciative if you would help to spread this book to others. I would indeed be glad to send you copies at a very low price, if this is something you feel called to help me in.
I’ll be posting the second meditation in the next couple days, which is the one I most desire to share. But here is the link for the first. (You may want to read it in sections, which are provided in the text, since there is a lot of material to think about.)
-
“To See and to Hold: How Chastity Restores the Nakedness of Love”
I’ve added the second meditation on chastity, which goes much deeper into the reality that I tried to glimpse in the first meditation, deepening and expanding it towards the beauty of God’s Love as well as into the soil of our lives and relationships. Above all, I try to speak to the deep longing in every human heart to be lovingly seen, and to be tenderly held.
-
On Prayer: “Irradiated by the Light of His Eyes: The Beauty of Christian Chastity
After a delay of over a month, I’m finally getting back to posting on the series of writings on prayer and intimacy with God. (I’ve been busy writing the reflections for the 33 days of preparation for consecration to Mary!) I pick up where I left off with the first meditation on chastity, following on the heels of those I devoted to poverty and obedience.
-
Feast of All Saints: To Be Pure as He is Pure
I’ve added a reflection on the Mass readings for the Solemnity of All Saints, which seeks to uncover more deeply the beauty (and beautiful possibility!) of holiness for each one of us.
-
Interior Openness
This is a short reflection on the true nature of Ignatian “indifference” or “interior openness,” which has risen from a number of conversations I have had concerning discernment. These conversations have clarified more deeply for me the way in which God’s Love enfolds us at every step of our lives, at every moment of our process of discernment, and that he alone can hold and satisfy our deepest desires (not merely a particular vocational path). Only within this prior and all-enveloping relationship with our loving Father can the particular path of vocation then freely unfold.
-
Inner Spirit: Mary and the Beloved Disciple
The following is a kind of condensation of the inner vision that I feel such a deep desire to share, a vision that goes right back to the heart of the Gospel and the immense joy that it gives; a vision that roots us anew in the peace, rest, and playfulness of childhood which we have lost but which we thirst to regain; finally, a vision, an experience, an embrace, which allows us to remain close to Christ throughout our life, abiding at his side, intimately united to him in everything, until the definitive union that awaits us in eternity.
-
Spirit and Charism
It has been impressed upon me very strongly in the last months how deeply the spirit and charism that God has entrusted to me deeply resonates with the longings and desires of many people. This is, of course, not because of anything special in me, who remain only his little child. Rather, I believe, it is simply because this gift addresses a central need of human existence–indeed the very central reality–which is in danger of being neglected or forgotten in contemporary society (even sometimes by those within the Church). This is the truth that God has created each one of us, not for the sake of some external task, but ultimately for the joy of abiding intimacy, for the most unspeakably profound communion with him and with our brothers and sisters.
This is the deepest and most intimate longing of the human heart and also the ardent desire of God for every one of his beloved children. Yet this can so often be obscured by the burdensome sense of responsibility and obligation that we bear as a yoke on our shoulders, by a false emphasis on “mission” or an unhealthy “altruism” in serving others, which is fractured from the truth of our own belovedness before our Father. Here the sense of “adult” responsibility eclipses the childlike playfulness which was meant to cradle our entire life within itself, allowing it to unfold at every moment in true freedom and relaxation of heart.
But what is mission if not sharing spontaneously the joy of intimacy that we have received? What is love of others but our welcoming them into our hearts from within the truth of our own identity as God’s beloved child…such that two little children of the same Father meet in the enveloping mystery of his grace and love? Indeed, what is love except gazing upon our brothers and sisters with the same loving gaze that we have first received from our Father–and which has touched, embraced, healed, and liberated our own hearts? Yes, to love is not first to give, to “generously” serve others; rather, it is first of all simply the openness of heart to receive the gift of the beloved, the gift of who the beloved is…both God and one’s brothers and sisters. If there is not, at the heart of our every encounter, a pure contemplative receptivity–radiant with wonder, awe, gratitude, and playfulness–then there cannot be a full blossoming of authentic love…this precious flower and fruit of the interpersonal intimacy for which every human heart longs.
In all of my writing and my classes, of course, this profound experience at the heart of my life finds expression. This conviction that I burn to share with others, the thirst for which I see etched in every person’s face and shining in every person’s eyes…this is something that I feel I can never express enough, never manifest enough in my words, my actions, my prayer, my life. How can the gap between one and the other be overcome–between the ardent thirst of God and the thirst of every human heart which yearns so deeply for him?
I will continue to speak and write about this in whatever ways that I can. One thing that I will begin to share a little bit more about is the unique nature, the unique “contours” of my own charism, which manifests my spiritual experience of God’s invitation to receive this gift, dwell in it, and share it with others. There are certain things that it is perhaps not yet proper to share openly, not in fullness, since I do not want to anticipate the judgment of the Church, allowing things to unfold in God’s way and God’s time. But the central vision…this I desire to share, since I believe that it is universal, touching on the true heartbeat of the Church, and indeed of the Trinity himself, who draws so close to us yearning to press us to his heart.
In the section of this website entitled “Spirit and Charism,” I will be sharing things from my own writings on the mystery that I seek to welcome, to live, and to serve with my whole life–words from the “Spirit” and the “Rule of Life” that I have written for myself and for whomever God may call to share this gift with me for the good of God’s holy Church.
+ + + I begin by posting an introductory summary, which marks the beginning of the document I have written expressing these things:
-
The Risk of Love: How Obedience Opens the Way to Deeper Intimacy
I’ve added the second reflection on obedience, in which I try to go deeper into the awesome beauty of God’s love, which is the source of his “authority,” his ability to speak a word of power into the depths of our hearts and to awaken in us the desire that draws us into ever deeper intimacy with him, beyond our darkness and fears…like Peter walking on the crashing waves in order to place his hand in the hand of Jesus.
The Risk of Love: How Obedience Opens the Way to Deeper Intimacy
-
“Receiving the Gift of Love: The True Freedom of Christian Obedience”
I’ve added another reflection of prayer and communion with God, this one being the first of two on the meaning of Christian obedience as an expression of our acceptance of God’s love as his beloved children…the overflow of our union with him into the concreteness of our life.
Receiving the Gift of Love: The True Freedom of Christian Obedience
-
“To Make My Heart a Home for the Beloved”
I’ve added a reflection on the mystery of mutual indwelling that lies, in a profound way, at the heart of Christian prayer, and of the Gospel itself. I speak about how the Trinity desires to make his home within us, and in this way to take us to find our Home in his own tender embrace…and how through this intimacy we can also open our hearts and lives for the many thirsting hearts in this world.