EP 1 - Contemplation and the Fruits of Contemplation
00:00 No, no, peace, domine, domine, no, no, peace, domine. Ze domini, ze domini, tu da domina, Norru nobi e sfoni i toimine, Norru nobi e sfoni e sfoni.
01:02 I would like to begin this course on prayer by telling you of an important watershed moment that took place about 30 years ago.
01:12 It took the form of a phone call from kathic writer Peter Stanford. He was at the time the editor of the Catholic Herald.
01:22 And he said, would you mind writing for us a column under the heading of Inner Life? And begin it with a series on prayer, beginning with prayer from the very beginning to the heights of mystical contemplation.
01:38 I said, no problem at all, I put down the phone. No problem at all. Oh, calamity! I thought, what, oh, what have I done?
01:52 You see, what poor Peter Stan, for didn't understand what you don't understand, but which I do understand, and it is this, that I am now have been and always ― ― unri dyslexic.
02:10 In fact, that it degrees of dyslexia, and I am about 40 degrees below zero. So, how was I going to do this course?
02:24 My arrogance had cajoled my vanity into condemning me to the literary equivalent of 30 years of penal servitude.
02:36 şekilde?�ahrei hend'la 2006 Henda bat nati henda Henda bat prea qu., nah chalita gat nhao cha seed a Mei ― ― ― It was hard work, but I tried the best I had it took me about a week to produce each little talk in the series.
03:21 It was hard work for me, but I was getting there. After a few months I thought, yes, I'm beginning to get the hang of this, but, but, but, but, but.
03:31 There was a big butt. The editor had never given me a ring to say how well I was doing. What the fans thought of me.
03:40 No fan mail, even friends and relatives who knew what I was doing didn't say a word I began to get the jitters.
03:49 I was about to pack it all in when, quite out of the blue, I received a snail mail from a reader.
03:57 She said, dear David, I love every single word you write, and I totally agree with every word you say.
04:11 Furthermore, I love the way you explain yourself. Now, at last, salvation. La letter was signed, sister Wendy Beckett. Now, you've heard of sister Wendy Beckett, sister Wendy Beckett, rather.
04:34 Many of you have seen her on the television, giving art programs, or rather traveling around the world and talking about art.
04:44 Halt! You also perhaps know that she is a hermit, or should be a hermit, but you find it difficult to equate her appearances on television with living the life of a hermit.
04:57 Let me tell you, she absolutely hated living her hermitage. She gurned to get back to it. The only reason why she gave these talks was she had no money.
05:10 Art was her great hobby, and she used it to support herself and have somebody left over to give to the caramelites of their monastery equipment, because her hermitage was in their grounds.
05:29 Now, here was a hermit, a genuine hermit, have you ever read her on prayer? I recommend a book, pukes, believe me, they are profound.
05:39 She said to me, I agree with every word you are saying, but that's not all. She went on to say, and the way you explain yourself.
05:53 Now let me explain myself to you or rather, let me explain sister Wendy Beckett to you. Because, before she became a hermit, She was a teacher.
06:08 She taught English at six-form level. In order to do this, she got a degree from Oxford University, not any degree, but an absolutely top degree, double-first with congratulations.
06:21 And further to this, when she went into her final examination, the whole examining board stood up and applauded her. She had received more marks in English than anybody before her.
06:35 Swin. … this was a person writing to me. Staring and I loved the way you explained yourself. Oh music to my ears.
06:45 Thank you sister Wendy Beckett. I wouldn't be here speaking to you now without her. I wouldn't have written ten books in the intervening years on prayer and early Christian spirituality.
06:59 Thank you sister Wendy Beckett. ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � Ther was the great curse of my life was its greatest blessing.
07:36 My weakness was the greatest blessing that God had given me. Let me introduce you to one of the great principles of the spiritual life and it is this, God's power finds scope in weakness.
07:51 More precisely, God's power not only finds scope in human weakness but can only find scope in weakness. This is a great secret of the spiritual life that goes right through the Bible into the New Testament.
08:12 Remember Abraham, with his wife Sarah, when God appeared to him and told him that he and his wife were going to be going to have a son, and that son would be the father of a great nation.
08:25 …remember Sarah, bursting out laughing at the very idea of it. Impossible. No, all things are possible to God. Remember the story of… Remember the story of Moses, Moses, the stutterer?
08:48 Had a terrible stutter, a speech impediment? Yet he was the one that God chose to be his spokesperson before Pharaoh.
08:58 He chose the stripling David to fell the giant Goliath. Peter, who betrayed him three times with a rock upon which the church was founded.
09:09 Paul, who pursued the Christians through the manger jail, had them flogged and put to death was chosen to become the prophet to the Gentile world.
09:20 God's power works most perfectly in human weakness. St Paul was the first to pen this. He was the first to put it down.
09:29 Remember God's power finds full scope in human weakness. He knew by experience. But the best example of course is the example of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
09:45 Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God who emptied Himself of all things in order precisely to enter into human weakness, to be like us in all things, to be laid as a helpless baby in a wooden crib.
10:06 This was what the Greek father's called, his canosis, his total and utter self-emptying. …and then he dies as a helpless man on a wooden cross.
10:18 …and the moment he dies in his weakness, it is to be filled with God's love, to be raised up …into his what Saint John calls in his gospel, into his glorification …and then to pour out what he receives on that first pentecost day, …so that we can be taken up into him, into his mystical body to begin
10:43 a journey a maternity. This is being God's plan from the beginning. To take us up into His Son, to take us onward onward into eternity, to come to know and experience God's infinite loving in a journey that simply goes on and on and on and on because God wants us to share in the ecstatic bliss of the
11:10 fullness of love ― ― ― ― That's why he created the world in the first place, put us in it and sent Christ to lead us onwards from within, from within Himself this journey goes on and on into infinite loving there is no end to this journey because God is infinite love 1.
11:40 The reward of the traveller is to go on travelling the solace of the searcher, to go on searching for this journey never comes to an end.
11:51 2. And we make this journey not just on our own, but in with them through Christ and with all who are in him, with our parents, our family, all who we hold dear and love, we are travelling with them.
12:08 We go out continually toward God in what's intergust in one's called a continual ecstasy. St Gregor of Nissa, one of the great fathers of the church said, no, he invented a new word to describe what is happening.
12:26 He takes the word ecstasy and he puts a prefix onto that word to create a new word at the end alex to see that means to go out of ourselves, onward, onward, onward into the love of God, into the heightened depth and length of breadth of his love to all eternity, and to experience the endless joy and
12:53 delight of being penetrated evermore fully by the love of God. This is what St Paul calls the Mysterion, from the Greek word meaning hidden, unseen, secret.
13:09 This has been God's secret plan, from the beginning, gently unfolded in the Old Testament, even further expanded by Christ Himself, brought about on that first Pentecost Day.
13:20 This is our destiny, into the life of the three in one. As I am speaking, I am just thinking of that wonderful icon of Rubenov that is behind me, where you see the three angels at the Oak of Mambula, through whom he appears to Abraham.
13:43 There is the Eucharistic table. See the chalice full of wine. He who takes this wine, – in the vine of the kingdom of God – – is taking to themselves and drinking the very life and love of our Savior Jesus Christ, – to be drawn up into Him an onward into our final destination, – into the three in one
14:12 . – This is our calling, this is our destiny. I have no words to explain it. ― ― ― ― to write a little in the intervening work years.
14:22 But I haven't got to adjective, superlatives to explain this incredible calling from God, this destination that is our heritage.
14:36 But have you ever noticed wherever we hear good news? There's always a butt somewhere. I'm afraid there's a butt here.
14:49 …and the but is this, this journey can only begin if we freely choose to receive the love of Christ poured out on that first pentecost day.
15:12 Love cannot be forced. Forced love is a contradiction in terms. We know this from our own experience. It is physically impossible.
15:24 It is metaphysically impossible. Theologically impossible. It is impossible in every way, forced love is simply a contradiction in terms, do you remember when we were children and the question was posed in when we were studying apologetics, can God make a square circle?
15:49 The answer is no, not because God is limited but a square circle is merely a contradiction in terms, what we were taught was an oxymoron, only a moron would believe otherwise.
16:06 So love has to be received and if we choose not to receive the Holy Spirit, then we are committing the sin against the Holy Spirit.
16:18 And many of us have been committing it for years. The sin against the Holy Spirit. Now prayer is the word we use traditionally to describe the way in which we open ourselves radically and completely to allow God's love in, to allow the Holy Spirit to penetrate us, to draw us up into Christ's mystical
16:50 body and onward to our ultimate destination. Now that this whole sort of mystical dynamic was summed up in three words by a great medieval mystic, his name is known to you, but not as a mystic.
17:06 His name is St. Thomas Aquinas, who at the end of his days were swept up into the love of God, swept out of himself into ― ― union, or the mystical marriage, and he stopped writing.
17:25 No more summer, it came to an end. And he even said, compared with what I experienced now, all that I have written is but straw.
17:37 Now, it was St. Thomas Aquinas, who summed up this whole mystical dynamic that I'm trying to in the three words, and he did it, firstly, to explain the very raison d'être of the Dominican Order, of the Dominican Friars, and of the Franciscans, and of the Carmelites, and of the Augustinian Friars who
18:02 came under attack in the 13th century. A certain William of Santa or President of the University of Paris fancy in your monastery in the 1st century she was not really worried about the first 1st century but her university or on the other of the universities these young men were highly intelligent they
18:30 were clever they were taking of all of the great chairs of philosophy, the theology get back to your monastery and so Terre Sa Bowl this is our call this is and before I go any further La osanita, m'est scatterbord, i s'il francaisca, i s'il comprenava la dignanda, a'Orga-st 물론, i s'il comprenava la
18:50 dignanda, ce qui a usata. Conte-pla-ta alli-estra haré la molemissé, la molemissé est est convainc, …and then to share the fruits of our contemplation with others.
19:15 Now, what precisely did St. Thomas Aquinas mean by contemplation? He could have said our calling is to pray and share the fruits of crowd with others.
19:27 He could have said that our calling is to meditate and share the fruits of meditation with others, but he didn't he said are calling and that is all of us now make no mistake about it all of us is to contemplate and share the fruits of contemplation with others what does he mean precisely by contemplation
19:53 well firstly what does he not mean he he doesn't mean that we are to contemplate the the flowers that bloom in the spring trullar he doesn't mean bermet alors complatisNeverey.
20:05 Tようin ordona'a navigating ligaidbisevarlirle through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is no other way, that is the only way, so the way that we're going to be talking about therefore in this course is to lead us on to contemplate in with them through Jesus Christ our Lord.
20:48 Please don't say, oh this is not for me, oh I've only got an elementary school education, I'm not a professor, I'm not a monk, lai mea sei, tais dua quite clearly.
21:01 Contemplation is for all. This is not only clear from St. Thomas, but from one of his more recent disciples. The great spiritual Theologian, Gadigal Agraj, throughout his book, it is for all.
21:15 Not just for monks and monasteries, it is for all. And don't say, yeah, but it's very difficult. l'e complicated , if the point is, you have to wait, I will outright this, I will outline this as the course unfolds, but you will see that it is the simplest of prayer and it is for all why, because it is
21:38 the pure gift of God. You can't roll up your sleeves and attain it by your own endeavour. It is a pure gift of God given to those who continually en persistently, tendently try to raise their hearts to him through prayer, through contemplation, through, sorry, meditation, and then into the beginnings
22:02 of contemplation to be purified and to be refined so that all living can then be honed in such a way that it can be united con la love of Christ.
22:20 To love the Father, to gaze upon the Father in with and through Him, and then to receive the fruits of contemplation, into our hearts, into our minds, into our whole spiritual metabolism, so that Christ can be reborn again in us.
22:40 Now that is for all, not for a chosen few weirdos, it's not an extraordinary way for the few. Let me be clear on this because we're going to be going back to early Christianity.
22:59 We're going back to see an exam in the spirituality that our Lord Jesus Christ introduced into the early Church and we're going to see the prayer life that they lived there.
23:11 So let me make this point this juncture so there be no misunderstanding. In the early Church the Dominicans didn't exist nor did the Franciscans nor did the Carmelites nor did the Augustinians nor did the Benedictines nor did the Irish monastic monks nor did the desert fathers.
23:32 They weren't even thought of in those days Kh theological Power…. нейwear… …ahaa… Du… …aha… …ahaa… …ahaa… »He deeply symbolic what Christ was telling them that he had come now to change the ordinary Walter of human love into the wine of divine love, that the human and the divine love would be united
24:20 as one to go out and transform the world. The source of all apostolic action lay in the family. St Bonoventure once said that contemplation is learnt at the mother's breast.
24:34 Loose, it is there in the family that we first learn to love. It is precisely a sacrament, because it is the place whereby the divine love of God suffuses, a charge is human love, and enables us to go out from there, as the first early Christians dei gelende i giorni di giorni di Vor world.
25:06 Dei were the first apostles. So, this is the place where we go to be charged with power and strength. We go to Christ to receive the fruits of contemplation.
25:18 And the fruits of contemplation are the infused virtues, ― ― silen to i di rar altrowor st110 4.
26:06 First way is that you so embody the goodness, truth and the love of God that whosoever meets you and counters his divine love through you, and it is he, not you who calls them to change their lives, to conversion, to repentance.
26:35 And then he said, almost as an afterthought, he said, oh yeah, and there is another way and that is by preaching and the teaching.
26:46 pero si tu try a preach and teach the gospel of the Lord without embodying the gospel, which is Jesus Christ and his love within you, then you will get nowhere, and people will point the finger and quite rightly say hypocrite.
27:11 Perhaps the greatest evangelist or preach, I'm using the word evangelist here, but you'll see why our preacher is in the 19th century, was a priest, a secular priest.
27:28 It was a total failure in the seminary. Couldn't pass his examinations and academic cripple. They didn't know what to do with him.
27:36 Yes, he was pushed through ordination. He did just about make it, but then they sent into this out of the way parish at ares, where half the parish were tepid christians, the other half pagans, and he completely transformed that parish towards the end of his life 40,000 people were pouring into that
28:02 parish to listen to him speak. Now, I've read some of his sermons by little children. Your father, God loves you.
28:15 Love him in return. They read like an anthology of pious clichés, but when he delivered them, they were propelled out of him by a profound love, the love that possessed him like St.
28:32 Paul, he was alive with Christ. ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � God's love simply oozed out of that man, not just a San Giovanni rotundo, but outside the boundaries of that little village, outside the boundaries of Italy to encompass the world.
29:22 That is the power of the sort of love that is generated when a person allows the Holy Spirit to lead them into Christ and to open them to receive the fruits of contemplation in all their abundance.
29:38 And we need these people now in the church today to go out not just to show the world the goodness of God, but his truth, the truth must be heard.
29:49 The truth must be preached. True truth must be preached to power like never before. But remember and beware, the truth is not a dainty dish to be served to the most dangerous animal on earth.
30:13 Particularly if he or she has political or religious pretensions, they prefer to be fed on the maari agā, mīgat garāüs vahm Go ison They can condemn, they can cancel, they can crush, they can kill, they can crucify.
30:55 It has been done before and it will be done again. But those who have the courage to speak the truth, no, no, no, no, no, the truth is not a dainty dish to be served to the most dangerous animals on earth.
31:15 I've been cancelled more times than I'd cared to remember. In fact, I think they've run out of ink. I haven't heard from them recently then.
31:29 I think they think I'm dead. Dead and buried, or at least a dead's door. ,and what can the dead, what harm can the dead do?
31:42 Dead men tell no lies, dead men tell no lies. They can be extremely dangerous. Now remember, when we were baptised, We went down into the pool with Christ.
32:03 We went down into the pool to die with Christ three times we were plunged down into the pool. In those early Christian times they spent two years preparing for this great moment in their lives.
32:18 They prepared with prayer, with instruction, with charitable works, and with fasting. …and when the day finally came, they came together on the east of Vigil.
32:29 …and the first thing they did was to cast off the clothes they were wearing, …representing their old life. They wanted no more of their old life.
32:39 …thank you very much. It was gone. It was passed. …and then they would renounce Satan three times …before plunging into that pool to die with Christ to be buried with Christ, and then to wise with Christ, for when they came out of the pool, they were dressed in a shining white garment.
33:02 It was the life and love, the glory of the risen one, shining through dazzling people. Now they were to go out and represent Christ to the world.
33:16 Christ was now alive in them. Now they could embody his goodness and truth. Now they could speak Resween aeft esta , وقد цبي nو OFF Company o rest فو Ctrl ف رو هی nو Mt OMG اين resurrection حي��لًا حيادало..
33:33 فو know i la spoon Joki ج grade جدا ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � on every day to die to self, to die to the world, to live for Christ.
34:28 For this is why they were now raised up from the tomb that Christ had laid in for three days to be closed in a shining white garment, as I would sign an assemble that they could say now Orals with St Paul I live, no, it is no longer either live, but St Paul who lives in me.
34:51 These are the people we need today, because let me be frank and I'm using this Word adviserly. We are in a terrible within a h11ness in the church at the moment.
35:04 Things are crumbling, they're falling apart. Maybe, yes, we're responsible because we have forgotten Baptism is not just a once-in-a-lifetime event that happens when we are very young, but something that must keep happening in our lives every day.
35:21 When we make our morning offering, we should remember to denounce the devil, denounce the power of evil, and see that we have now been born again in Christ.
35:39 Only Christ can save us in the predicament that we are living in at the moment. Why? Because the world or rather not the world, the church has been taken over precisely because people have not been practicing their baptism daily, then evil has got into the church.
35:58 Un'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a Noi exactly what they want, when the world is in a state of chaos, bewilderment, they can win through, they can take power and project their dogmas, their policies
36:45 onto the people. I hadn't noticed that this was going on. It's been going on for some years. e' bun' so busy ." Evolution,"My Rights, a people keep saying to me, do you know what was going on in the churchäche, I said, ôe yea, when I've heard bits and pieces I thought they will just conspiracy theories
37:05 . They so, seem so ridiculous. Éibreadly couldn't believe them! And so it would seem It was true of many other laity who are unfortunately have been lacerated in their later您s, sitting on the fence, omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen
37:38 omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen omen – Ym, who wants to imagine the unimaginable, but I have been woken up at last?
37:58 – To begin with, I was like Mr Pod snap!? – Do you remember, Mr Pod snap, that creation of Charles Dickens, in our mutual friend?
38:11 – I don't believe it with his catchphrase. I don't believe it! Hodeufti undi di se sdia di ire ederimi, nimwuni I'l g ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � leash the language as a camouflage.
39:18 They talk about now we must go to the people of God. Why? Because the people of God have the census fidelium.
39:32 Do they not? Therefore today God is speaking to us through them. Don't go to God anymore. God July God's dead is Nietzsche's head as far as their concern.
39:42 Then we go to God who is speaking through his people. They're tellyous, they're alive in the contemporary world. They know what's going on.
39:51 Let's go to them for revelation. And so they send out men and women to interview them, to collate, what they're saying, where they're wisdom is very, very, very few of them incidental have been interviewed.
40:08 And then these clever collators helping them because they do find a little problem with language, the only ordinary people, of course, then that language is translated into what is music to the ears of the sinner that will shortly be meeting in Rome.
40:24 And then that sinner would be a success. They talk about a retreat. Of course, we must have a retreat. We must listen to prepare ourselves with Christ.
40:34 We must have a discernment process that the Holy Spirit guide us ,and teach us into the truth, the truth, may I say, that they have all ready decided.
40:45 The decisions have been made, the new dogmas, the new heroses, they're ready and waiting, they're in place, they know that all this is a complete sharan and this is the terrible mess that we're in today.
41:00 I didn't see it! I had to be woken up, but now nobody needs to be woken up, you just need to turn on the radio.
41:07 listening to the news from Rome. Listening to our friends, the Vaticanologists, they'll tell you and I'm afraid it is true and the question is, what can we do, what can we do?
41:20 And i'm telling you this, you can do nothing I can do nothing It's too late. We can do nothing. Now you'll be able to appreciate what I felt like when I was a young man, a dyslexic and everybody else was going forward to go to enter into the professions.
41:41 And I was utterly helpless, helpless. What did I do? I could only do one thing. I wasn't pious, I wasn't holy.
41:48 I turned to God and I prayed and prayed and prayed and I persisted in prayer, because only God can help me.
41:55 Be sure of this, that only God can help us now. That's why we're running this course Scrolls to go back to prayer, because prayer is merely the word we use to describe the way in which we allow God in.
42:13 To change us and through us the terrible things that are happening to our church. That is why we've decided to run this course.
42:27 Now, when I say pray to God, I don't just mean proud of petition. Yes, that's fine, petition God. Please God help us.
42:35 Oh God, come to our aid. Oh God, make haste to help us. Yes, yes, yes. But having invited God, then we must prepare a place for him to come in us by generating deep, profound prayer that we are going to learn from our early forefathers in the early church.
42:56 – the Christ come again in us, – because this is the only way he works in the world, – and the only way he will again work in the world.
43:05 To restore his kingdom of Heaven, – on earth, so please join us again, – next time – to continue this core song prayer.
43:23 gee, finally, may I quote again from Charles D*******, this time from a Christmas Carol, this time from Tiny Tim. Remember God bless us all, God bless us all and every one of us.
43:41 And God bless you too. Please join us next time.