EP 11 - A Contemplative and Historical Summary
0:00:00 No no peace, no guine, no guine, no no peace, no guine, Zegonini, Zegonini, Gorda Roino.
0:00:26 Before I go any further, I must thank so many of you for the writing to say how helpful you found this course e la intervie di John Henry Weston.
0:00:41 Am so pleased you found the course helpful. However, there have been some criticism, some questions asked, and I'll come to that in a moment.
0:00:53 But first, I want to say to you is that if you do have any questions, and I'm sure you do, – glissate them to Ryan Morrow at Ascentialis Press.
0:01:07 – because shortly we're going to have question and answer sessions, hopefully by the end of January. However, before coming any further, I want to answer …eva дуже which very important question.
0:01:26 ‒rze werd simply in front of God. ‒… …eva of the most important …eva packaging of the,. …cherarm strange of God.
0:01:45 On electrode we know of conscience jacak No, my questioner is absolutely right, he does not need to be taught how to contemplate, he does not need to be taught divine contemplation.
0:02:07 That was a gift of God from the beginning, and that continued throughout his life, throughout his infancy. a c Ouicë c'è crispy cuatro é c'è p macht onost itinden ndi pië, p net i ca ono fecha hurrils Harr nutan gador gózpa hise� a cæb y ditht er dī ia it den sam y papine warn Product o re e e d d buenos
0:02:33 nī dilsi wë n xeu e z ne di o cono Nomamed rpaGahdan bau y vu te cUS謝謝 Q G Y C A P in a profound mystical contemplation.
0:02:48 No body, no body could teach him that form of, But there was another form of prayer for me, that he had to learn.
0:02:59 I say he had to learn, He had to learn, This is the key point, because he chose to learn. In choosing to behave like our seeing everything, and notice.
0:03:12 wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa wa
0:03:36 jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jelinkale wa jel l JO d 나온 fra news and understanding of what happened a year ago.
0:03:49 See him in the crib at Christmas and he has a small body, tiny fingers, arms and legs, now they gradually grow with the year's, they so do the muscles of his body – – – – in the same way – – – – – do the muscles of his mind.
0:04:10 So, by the age of about, twelve years of age, he could engage the doctors, the rabbis, the scribes in the temple.
0:04:20 And totally enswore them, with his teaching, yes, he was a child prodigy, but he had had to learn. as everybody else has to learn, because he chose to do so.
0:04:37 The misunderstanding in recent years, or no, perhaps for 1500 years, has come about because of the heresy of Aryanism, you've all heard of Aryanism, heard how terrible though it may seem, nearly 90% of practicing Catholics era pola'onmente con bu era a Burba Priest, � bagota na atconaро neid災胖ia au fra
0:05:09 2 c grieving a a timeneut dialectus alias odpowessory, a timeneutu alias przedi na edon abnormalile. Alexandre was his foremost enemy.
0:05:25 Now the teaching of Aryan was quite simple. Christ is not God, might be a wonderful man. Might be the greatest man who ever lived, yes.
0:05:37 He may even be called, if you're like a son of God, in that God had specially chosen him, Ale, in the words of the nice, seen, creed, consubstantial, with the father, no, no, no, no, he was just a man.
0:05:59 Now, it was because of this heresy. In days when we hadn't got the mass media, no radio, television, even newspapers and so on and so forth, …that the church coined a slogan, …and they repeated it over and over again like the beat of a drum.
0:06:20 Christ is God, Christ is God, Christ is God. So eventually, everybody got through to everybody that Jesus Christ, our Lord, was truly God.
0:06:35 The battle was fought, the war was won. But every war is one utter price. And the price of this particular war was that Christ's humanity was undermined.
0:06:53 The emphasis on his human nature no longer received the emphasis that it did in the early days of the church de Christ was not just truly God but truly truly truly man and that means once again like us in all things all things all things but sin at that met that meant growing as we grow learning as we
0:07:27 learn and that meant learning to prayer to pray as we learn to pray that's why as we eşe output 독 hacia menus.
0:07:53 Sres, . . . immuneaszon, ? . . springs ERSM har to learn how to pray, he has to learn because he chose out of love, to be like us in every way possible to learn to love us.
0:08:14 We do, to show us, as I've been showing, in these talks, how to practice the shema as he did, to consecrate the whole of the forthcoming day.
0:08:28 It was all part and parcel of the sacrificial spirituality that our Lord introduced into the early church by practicing it so himself, by his own example, so we could see the sacrifices that he made to offer himself to God by loving him with his whole heart con his body and soul through everything that
0:08:55 he did in the day and learning from him, we follow. And that's why I showed how this Jewish Shema was the full runner of our morning offering.
0:09:08 When we enter into the new temple which is Christ, the new priesthood which is Christ, to offer in with and through him ourselves, through everything that we say and do in the forthcoming day he learned it and showed us therefore in the way he learned it how we can follow his example in prayer.
0:09:38 As we practice this prayer he gradually leads on to a far more profound, a far far more a sublime prayer, to which our Lord kneaded no teachers at all, and that was contemplation.
0:10:01 That's why my quest was absolutely right. Nobody could teach him this and as he learned to contemplate, therefore today's lovingly gaze upon his father in love, Jhann hun вещu baiei strakelu na hamnalli.
0:10:17 Man h PVENTELLI asti ca็m eghern virgin hajzressuanas terminara иск. Dogo beth horeje hrugdonu'o'o'ndite ma His life was redulent.
0:10:37 But if we believe that we can live as he did and practice the wonderful virtues that we see, he enacted in his life as an example to us if we think we can live them without being inspired by the same profound prayer that inspired him, then we've got it all wrong.
0:10:58 We have not a hope with love, all things are possible without it nothing is possible, without God's love nothing is possible and that's what Jesus shows us in his own prayer life, particularly then in his contemplation to which vocal prayer gradually leads us, our morning prayer leads us on through sacrifice
0:11:25 to enter into contemplation When God gives us this gift as He gave it to His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, to receive, therefore, the theological virtues, the cardinal virtues, the moral virtues, the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
0:11:45 I won't detail them because I believe that about over 60 virtues in the old textbooks. I'm not going to enumerate them and you don't need to do because you receive them without realizing it.
0:11:59 If you are led on now, through your shame, or through your Christian morning prayer to sacrifice your day to God, and then that day learned to love him ever more deeply, then God gradually leads you into contemplation, without which we are nothing.
0:12:18 Because without the love of God we are nothing, and contemplation is merely the word we use to describe how we, like Jesus Christ, are Lord before us, receive the love of a God.
0:12:31 The pleroma, as the fathers of the church used to call it, the pleroma, the cornucopia of divine infinite loving that has within it.
0:12:44 All the virtues that we indeed to be Christ like people. …and they are given to us gradually as our prayer-life unfolds and leads into contemplation.
0:12:57 Now it was not only our Lord, but of course our Lady herself who could contemplate. …and we see this brought to perfection, and I've mentioned this before, On the first Pentacostea the Holy Spirit was sent, although apostles received the Holy Spirit and taughturn gateway with disorder, and seen that
0:13:27 he could people hopedordu, and told what he was doing. lui. . . . Hymn was able to gaze upon the love of the Father in pure, simple act of contemplative loving, that her name enabled her to receive all the fruits of contemplation, that were ogue wyn erhusharnos m· – —gir Truth the nukunds – —he was still
0:14:34 small, no longer gfar , was been fighting over who was g Wr―and admit she threatened her doomle. Liw at Liv ako Simelf dOR saw that Bamberg arrived W JER bottle.ก็ mòng prepareно,sporked to his egoistus focusing Choo Yeah, beating its I guess Bixoys I get�ig ― ― ― ― …has instant sanctity.
0:15:02 They were on the way, because they were in the way. They had been taken up through their baptism into the way, and the way was Jesus Christ our Lord, now risen and glorified.
0:15:18 They were on the journey. They were in the process, at the beginning of the process of being made saints, Men, when they looked at the mother of the church, who was still with them.
0:15:34 She was the perfect exam, exemplification of where they were going. When they looked at her in prayer, taken up into her beloved son, when they saw the, her Regilent with all the virtues that love had endowed her with, the fullness of love with which she had been endowed, south, peche b growth inảnha
0:15:58 ora why might to and the fallen sky was white, that Into the speech they by a death shut to a fume Dontenhurst.
0:16:10 And ha Papa Klaid, Britney, Bitting Westell John to remember. She had her household task to perform. She had teaching. She taught Saint John too, as she taught Jesus.
0:16:33 Not only by her example, they lived in the same house. Jesus had given her to John at the same time that he had given to us as our perfect example.
0:16:46 Now look at her example now, for when she turned to God, now in contemplation therefore she was filled with all the virtues, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
0:17:01 She was the perfection at which the apostles were aiming and they continually looked at her and she showed them the way as she showed us the way.
0:17:13 daras deg what is the way it is to be taken up after being purified. In this life into the contemplation of Jesus Christ, our Lord, that is why I say again and again and again contemplation is for all, it must be for all!
0:17:33 It is the prelude to union with God! That's what purification is about in the spiritual way …and that's what we see now with our Lady.
0:17:46 And so, when the apostles now remained at Jerusalem, and notice they did remain in Jerusalem, they didn't rush out to change the world, they weren't ready, they weren't prepared.
0:17:59 They had to learn to pray more deeply. They had to learn the contemplation that would empower them. That would enable the Holy Spirit jo per a hāorry- jo iguali of ihrer â embarrassed jo miu a tro herramienta j Handling jus to heißili my hon of su dice a che ro Bir e da' lad'in tuta sizes touched'un
0:18:41 na flattering Vorili revite fi Fortenhigh, Fortenhigh, Forten high, Forten High, Forten High, Forten by the …a love that they showed, the healings, their miracles.
0:18:54 We know that that could not possibly have been done …without the fullness of the Holy Spirit, …given or grew a found contemplation.
0:19:09 Now, although we don't see it, and they don't write about mystical contemplation, …as late mystics did and one of the reasons why they wrote about it is because everybody forgot about it.
0:19:24 Then it was for all and one of all I mean families too, ordinary families. They were led armed through sacralizing the day to sacralizing themselves so that they could be possessed by the love of God …and all the fruits of contemplation that enabled them to cooperate with the apostles in transforming
0:19:44 the world …and in living such perfect lives and enduring such terrible deaths with equanimity. …because they were possessed by the love of God that they had received.
0:20:01 Remember our Lord, now at the last supper let me remind you again, …if he said, …you observe the commandments, all of which are summed up in the first commandment.
0:20:16 ― ― ― ― ― Merely to perform that that Jesus then goes on to say the last supper does he not then I will send the Holy Spirit who will be with you no, no, no, he will be in you and I will come with the Father and we will make our home within you.
0:21:09 St. Paulicard was slowly burnt to death and they could see him all the while smiling for he was full of the love of God who was alive and suffering in with and through him.
0:21:29 Or even the ecstasy of Blandelnia as she was scorched to death before being thrown to the wild beasts in the arena.
0:21:40 Harpus, the Deacon, it was said, was all but laughing as he was being nailed to the cross. They'd never seen anything like this.
0:21:48 This is why some of the first converts were torturous. Jailers, Executioners, because they saw the life of the living God, living in them.
0:22:08 Perhaps one of the best examples is that of Saint Felicity and a Saint Perpetua. When they were awaiting their death, they were going to ―She she first struggled and then turned into the scourged ― ― The blood would flow to attract the animals when there was thrown into the arena ― ―horrible death.
0:22:38 ―But before they were thrown into the arena for części was giving birth to her child in her prison cell.
0:22:49 – And she was screaming with the pangs of childbirth. And the jaylor said, Listen to you, what will it be like when you're thrown to the wild beast in the arena?
0:23:05 But she gave that famous retort. Now, she said it is I who suffer, then it will be another who suffers through me.
0:23:16 …and when she was scourged before being thrown into the… …to the beasts and their arena, she said nothing. She seemed to be all the while in an ecstasy, …because Christ was living in her, supporting her, …dying again in her, …ising again in her.
0:23:40 That's why they, so many converts, came into Christianity. ― ― ― Telle is one exception to the rule and it is the story of St Paul.
0:24:02 I've even noticed if not go to Chapter 2 of his second letter to the Corinthians …and there, at the beginning of those first twelve verses, …so he tells us of a high mystical experiences that he had.
0:24:26 Yes, visions, heard words. Yes, he tells us, caught up in an ecstasy, …that took him into what he calls the Third Heaven.
0:24:39 This was fourteen years before he wrote, These words, before notice he began this apostolic ministry, before that began. That's important.
0:24:53 I'll come back to that in a minute. Now anybody who knows anything about mystical theology, who has read, for instance, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross knows this, you can't come to the point a f'having such sublime experiences that you find enumerated in St.
0:25:21 Teresa's famous book The Interior Castle. You find them there. You can't come to that point unless you've spent years in what St.
0:25:31 John of the Cross calls the dark night of the soul when you've been purified. So in Saint hall therefore we ciuwhat was happening in the other apostles of preparing them for the apostleate.
0:25:48 We ciu them led inke contemplation to recieve the fruits, the gifts, that enable them ― ― ― ― ― ― sainte, all before we go any further.
0:26:15 The moment he heard Christ speaking to him on the Damascus road. And he did hear him. This was a personal encounter.
0:26:28 He didn't just come through reading the, well, the Gospels weren't written then, but he didn't just come by me through talking to and meeting other Christians.
0:26:37 He had an experience of God's presence. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And then he goes into strut-blind, remember?
0:26:49 And then only receives his sight back with baptism in Damascus. What does he do, therefore? Say, yes, now I want to tell the world about Christ.
0:27:02 And rush out on his famous missionary journeys. No, and he doesn't do it for ten years. Do you realise that?
0:27:10 He doesn't do it for ten years. Do you know where he goes? Immediately he goes for three years into the desert.
0:27:22 Christianity is not a sort of new ideology. It is a way of life in Christ, in and through whom we have to be purified and reformed in order to become uchsustered in the image and lightness of Christ.
0:27:38 He goes for three years into the desert. And then in the words of great Catholic historian, Father Phillip Hughes, he spends 10 years in all in what he calls his n你看re.
0:27:59 Preparing before he goes up the cheek to go out …and they were ready to change them well … ,and same with the apostles of Jerusalem".
0:28:10 Now, I'm telling you this for a purpose … …because I want to make a point before moving on… …because unfortunately, today … …and I have seen this time after time … …I've ever seen converts coming into the church … …is if they're coming into a new ideology … METANOYA – the Greek word means to change your
0:28:38 mind. They've changed their mind. They don't want to have women please. They've changed their mind. They will accept the Pope.
0:28:48 They've changed their mind. They now do believe in transubstantiation and one day they belong to another Christian denomination. de nrexdei di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di …and
0:29:19 writing books to help other Catholics, leading them, setting themselves up as leaders, founding, founding, publishing houses, being made the editors of Catholic newspapers.
0:29:39 You are not called by God because even if you've had and perhaps some of the worst, or those who actually have had a genuine experience, like St Paul.
0:29:50 And they think, therefore, they've been called because they've been living a virtuous life, or are being called because they've been living a perfect life.
0:30:01 No, they are being called to the virtuous life, to live a virtuous life, to become perfect because God has plans for them.
0:30:12 ma hangsa Settin' themselves up as leaders of the faithful.
0:30:44 If they are immediately God's gift of the church, nobody is immediately God's gift of the church after their conversion, they need to go some way, somehow, into a desert to prepare.
0:30:58 You know Saint Antony of the desert spent 20 years before he came out to teach others, ,of, when he died, he ...veewis wasn't.
0:31:05 He preso ced promoting down the dlor ,to the place where he was , ,imseagull charco ,up to heaven. Emampita, gu utterti pi, ,hoos il no li dominatedan rhan, ,bechu Pumpá committed ,di pensiamio il salio, ,di soldare bill bambio gener atki ,d a primeiro diele a hermitage, a hermitage was in her own home
0:31:39 . She went into a room and she stayed there for three years before she dared to come out and even then a similar thing happened to St.
0:31:47 Francis. She didn't think she was ready. She didn't want to come out. She wanted to stay and experience the joy, the beauty, the glory of contemplating God and Christ comes and knocks on the door and say, e ho znak le hovering.
0:32:04 nous era welis, as initially we thought that he h疫 a setit so enveloped by the love of god, he imededed but he child ad d'ammm to his Foi predecc.
0:32:17 Cameronствikaa c' a he sent cent silvestre afran sys Depot ph нравитсяota banwed MUST not stay to enjoy, spend the whole day enjoying the glory of God.
0:32:36 You must go out to preach repentance and draw others. That is why you've been given the Holy Spirit. So firstly, therefore, we must learn to convert, must learn that they're not just joining a new ideology.
0:32:52 They've only got a way with it because everything is so weak in the Catholic church at the moment At the ceremony not aatic, somebody came to become a convert Well to be a priest or religious, they'd have to wait for 2-3 years Then they'd spend 6 more years sometimes 7, sometimes even longer
0:33:15 ena be tender as some of this mandate before, ever they were allowed to start preaching and teaching And leading and guiding the faithful Now they do it in 2 minutes practice Élmost wagon slightly shallower It seems quite не Гайн poctaring ng egy Sini lumi, BICsemblekondullаз sourbilemefng
0:33:36 Hof reserv, Willowo stati kompсли magi M gel In the early days of the church then, people horrified if you try to say that they were mystics or their practice contemplation, there were all, most of them were contemplatives in that they had been drawn up through prayer to enjoy the contemplation that
0:34:20 Christ enjoys. No, you don't find it in the scriptures, you don't find it in the acts of the apostles, you don't even find it first in the writings of the early church.
0:34:33 Why? Because it's all a case of the elephant in the room, the elephant in the room. Do you know what our friend, the elephant in the room?
0:34:47 Do you know the story, the original story? Hirlecord 000 1990 22 interessante feist 22 22 22 hypotheses ἀγεραν impairedского παιδιά,โι hypocolatei asti, اὀ delivering rate, δ� hacνο bé�� ᵁγadaysim, לכῷ that we earned the attention for people in the brand, as they were in the menu where they grewitives
0:35:14 from. Einehm parchi Maybe AS anything of what butاض peav dance. He the list to be curator and abroad. He said, you have gotten a great job?
0:35:25 Why hadn't you forgotten something? Written and said, And you're forgotten something left something out? No, we've got what he saw there, you've forgotten the elephant in the room because in the middle of the room was a huge elephant.
0:35:39 I believe it was a woolly mamma. They said, but everybody knows about that, everybody sees that everybody will go away remembering that, they all know about that.
0:35:50 So they took it for granted and it's the same in the early days of the church. «I've been talking about the Christian shaper, how our lady told you to our Lord, how the disciples do it, I was practised in those early days, three times a day, I was sacralised the whole of the day, do you find it in the
0:36:08 gospels or in the acts of the apostles? No, you don't, you find traces of them going to the synagogue three times a day, et cetera, it doesn't tell you what they were doing, ―Why?
0:36:18 Because every bottom created it serious, ―why would it make its way, ―because their readers ― spoke rude, ―but it was the elephant in the room?
0:36:30 ―And so the profound ―and mystical contemplative ―smiddageuality in the early church ―ivat them all Eagle-Yaaaa— ―but in Rome,†because it was the elephant in the room?
0:36:45 Y Yearóricting dastelādii itu yra diol a unuril t хun wane mk trop orteidant But he didn't do it on the early days because everybody knew it, the elephants in the room with contemplation.
0:37:23 And perhaps the first great writer to go in depth into the mystic way to describe contemplation.
0:37:38 …a St. Augustine, …a few wonderful passages in his work, …and then St. Gregory the Great, …and then St. Bernda Klervo, …read if you don't read their works.
0:37:56 …read some of their wonderful descriptions …of the contemplative life they are inspiring. They are most moving.
0:38:10 You could look, for instance, in this book, Western Mysticism. It was written by a Benedictine Abbott, Abbott of Downside Abbey, in England, over 100 years ago.
0:38:29 You can read, he's collected together those key mystical works 在椅子上是很正式,ziela naka, Monitor k positive, 叫歌 蔗 …it is this, that even the upper-tug downside are be famous for this classy work.
0:38:57 Do nothing about contemplation practically. He was a pure theoretician. N Broadway � he only that exposed on tim 😴 The Statezem�s why, 😃 because, like everybody else up to quietism They'd been worn off Contemplative prayer Mengome, Gregor MOMENTS is dangerous, don't touch it with a barge bowl Norte
0:39:26 reach H тو Pineラ Norte he was able to put this wonderful book together, he nevertheless admits, at the end of it, that, and let me now quote him, but he writes, …to prevent misconceptions, I say quite simply that I've never had any mystical experiences myself, never had anything that could be called
0:40:05 an experiental perception of God or hoispressence. Hartley, anybody had after quietism, was drummed out of Catholic spirituality.
0:40:20 There are a few exceptions, people like, for instance, people like, for instance, St. Margaret Mary, the Curedars, St. Teresa of Leisier, Padre Pio, but these were exceptions to the rule, – and there was seen as personifying what was called the extraordinary way for the few holy souls.
0:40:47 It isn't an extraordinary way for the few holy souls. It's for all of us who sac sincerity is our day and are led on through that sacri 립ation to come to know and to love our Lord Jesus Christ, to be taken up as Mary and the Apostles and St Paul's would fall and those early Christians were taken up into
0:41:12 his contemplative. Gaze upon the love of God to receive the fruits of contemplation. It's for all, And then he goes on to say something further.
0:41:27 whereas to work, well, it's pretty humble. But he's only putting into words what's so many writers if their had the same humility would say, after the condemnation of quietism.
0:41:42 After the contemplative life was taken out of Catholicism so I have personally been seen as an utter clarity oh he talks for the birds they say after his retreats, A wonderful, oh he's a nice speaker, very like this thing too!
0:41:59 Oh but he's. Is message just for the birds, It's not for us ordinary Catholic, us ordinary priests, us ordinary Catholics.
0:42:11 They have forgotten the profound mystical foundations of our faith. In that same epilogue 1.
0:42:28 The abbot goes on to write, 1. The first four mansions of Saint Teresa's interior castle will always be of practical use to those endeavoring to lead a spiritual life, but the last three mansions, the most important hall, many ways.
0:42:52 …but the most, but let me, sorry I'm getting mixed up here, but the last three mansions, along with the latest and the most mystical treatises of St.
0:43:06 John of the Cross, under host of other such writings would have to be classed in our libraries as outworn ideas of a bygone age, or best classified as religious power-trick.
0:43:31 Feel of frightening, antimiculous, why we have no leadership in the church down to the present day and yet again I say when you let me put it this way, take food away from our family, take food away, give them no food and you will see them dia and agonising death It is pitiful to see, I can't help seeing
0:43:58 those terrible bodies and concentration camps after the war slowly starved to death, it is frightening, it is abhorning, it is awful, what happens when you take food away from a family.
0:44:17 But take away love from a family, give them all the food you like …and you'll see them implode from the inside, gradually, gradually psychologically imploding.
0:44:34 Turning against each other, living for themselves, becoming porous to devilry. Ioも своje parentheses e risores, Uo'i osemio kringi se pake o saObnari me bumobe, che okem, ar потi covet diagnosed.
0:44:57 Venissimasw de galisobi, im no millennialsni, O io a na una pasteo par, האחWhat happened worked in the media.
0:45:13 С cherish my work and the media. And we got on well, and I liked them. And I just happened to mention that they were obviously in the mystic way.
0:45:23 They were not beginners. And the moment I mentioned that, the friendship ended. Nobody knows what you're talking about. The frightened.
0:45:35 The thing is, I hokey pokeyed. ― ― ― ― if you read other books after quietism, some great books like this for instance, some the the graces of interior prayer by Pula, which is, you know, for a non-practitioner, and he makes it sure, it makes it quite clear he is a non-practitioner, the way he can detail
0:46:10 a psychological experiences that a person under goes as they journey all in the mystic way, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant piece of scholarship yet.
0:46:23 He is an unpractitioner, a so many other books during this particular period. And as mystical theology is taken out, …and then moral theology gradually takes over, and the Catholicism from being a mystical teaching becomes predominantly a moral teaching.
0:46:48 They're teaching, it is the moral teaching of the gospels that predominate, but I'll come back to it yet again very shortly, …but you can't actually live the moral teaching of the Gospels, unless you experience the inner life of the Holy Spirit through mystical prayer.
0:47:08 You can't live that life. You will fail time and time again. And so gradually, as I've mentioned, Monsignia, Monsignia, Philip Hughes, his history of the Church, prid lose He died to say 13.
0:47:29 He says that the most misdivis feature of Choirtism was the suspicion that is through, on the contemplative life as a whole.
0:47:38 At the very moment, when more than at any other, the church needed the strength that only the life of contemplation can give, it was the tragedy of history.
0:47:55 ― ― ― ― ― Holi souls took often but the appearance of being no more than a divinely aided effort towards moral perfection.
0:48:16 Isn't it frightening? Isn't it frightening? The sad thing is that the vast majority of people listening to me speak, ca…get itikan me.
0:48:25 …Oh?… never really lived in a Catholics musicá society a mioldi si helpen in the early days of the church, scared a in those years that I mentioned Uh when speaking to um John Henry Western byänger row I When hight and bonded us together in Christ as one loving caring Catholic community all taken away
0:49:04 when love is taken away we fragment and if you don't know what I'm talking about look around you today we are fragmenting on a dramatic and tragic scale even those and I'm talking about even wan datata koni d'aposelaatika.
0:49:26 Nomelai boranitaka o Nomelai boranitaka Nomelai boranitaka, toraza wani o dina. At torazao o dina. Is this? The moralism that was taught in those years after quietism took since mystical theology had disappeared.
0:49:53 You were taught a strict moral teaching that nobody could actually live up to. Can you live up to the moral teaching that the gospel has Jesus did?
0:50:03 No you can'tם unless you experience the profound contemplation that He experienced como hoping that when youmen, you can't live all of Did we also look at what this …and that only comes through deepening, deepening, deepening our prayer life ends this course." Now, added to the gospel teaching, the gospel
0:50:56 virtues in this period, se Ÿ e da erun o O. O. 40' Le sages, le maurea cérare Were distinctly entde, were distinctly from the rest of humanity, that came not from the gospel, but came from the Greek, Roman world at the Renaissance.
0:51:24 After the Renaissance, an English Catholic priest, his name was John Colett, yak Athens seam st沒 cracksTER of course, in the he began, as was held out again through the narrow enjovem armais, and from there he saw dark in darkness behind you, as And让 him se atmospi.
0:51:47 It's and such he to see him rise Referenceliし, however, Dios prop б verwir fins and BAR bestot★ accomplishment. What was collective Had aure't the moral teaching of the Gospel and the moral teaching of the stoic side by side to produce the quintessential English gentlemen And that school became the model
0:52:19 for all the public schools and all the other grammar schools down to the present day …so that the English gentleman, therefore, is, in fact, a Greek Roman half stoic, he's a Christian stoic, but in that way, as an ideal.
0:52:43 You don't see him today wearing a toga and sandals. ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � as well as non-catholic schools.
0:53:22 You find, because I studied, I went to a grammar school and there we had, I studied and loved studying ancient history, loved it.
0:53:32 The great heroes of the past were my heroes too, and I wanted to emulate them. I wanted to imitate them.
0:53:39 I wanted to copy them. In fact, it was a bit of a problem with me, because I couldn't really, they didn't really fit together.
0:53:46 I mean the gospel virtues and the virtues of the Stoic, many of which were militaristic in their in their foundation.
0:53:57 And so when I went to try my vocation as a Franciscan, I found out that the Franciscan novice was also influenced by a Stoicism.
0:54:08 Realised it. J'agnésitch kmso options Until a little的 library. You find all the books were on, um, that moral teaching of the virtues.
0:54:18 And l'm novice mas pearls says…… love those virtues. And that's how you become like St Fr designers! And so i said about it… I set aside a mump, Every single month To acquire a different virtue So that by the time my parents c'est qu'il y a un petit peu de profession.
0:54:39 The earth's wild and errant son was no more. His shape and form was merely the cast for the new-mulled man within.
0:55:01 ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � – standons, the Greek virtues – – just the gospel, but we cannot possibly live them without the inner life of our Holy Spirit.
0:55:45 We encounter through prayer and who possesses us through contemplation. So half way through the Nevishut, I told you about it before when I was praying in the evening after Complan trying to journey on in darkness and one of my one of my one of my main temptations was to give up not only prayer but the
0:56:08 whole lot get out of the Nevishut go. I couldn't make myself holy as I thought I could. I'd utterly fail.
0:56:15 What's the point of staying? What's the point of it all? And then I Had a Damascus Road Experience, my personal Damascus Road Experience.
0:56:30 It came in the form of a book and I've got the actual book, I got it many years later, rescued it when I was visiting the division house many years later.
0:56:44 …it's actually a little prayer on the, by St. Peter of Alcantara, but at the back of it there's a, a little work called Pax Anime by a Franciscan John of Bonilla, or Bon Villa, and it was written in the year 1588.
0:57:00 1848, and it was hidden, squashed behind oh, phalanx of books on how to attain the virtues. And I opened this book, packs anime, and I read these words on the first page and they were my Damascus road experience.
0:57:26 And they were these With love, you may bring your heart to do whatsoever you please. The hardest things become easy and pleasant, but without love, you will find anything not only difficult but quite impossible.
0:57:50 That changed me. That was my Damascus road experience. …and it was when I was going through the darkest, darkest moments of the dark night.
0:58:06 …and it gave me strength and support because it made me realise without the love of God, without being united with the love of God, I could not receive the fruits of contemplation.
0:58:20 …and yet I was in utter darkness. I looked at the nature of the love of God in that darkness, because believed me when your journey and that darkness you received, the gifts of the hoe, that you receive the fruits of contemplation, they begin in the darkness, not in the light, they begin before the
0:58:42 light. Merely, when you begin to see for the first time, wisdom that you had never possessed before. And I receive this realization that the very essence of God's love is this.
0:58:58 God's love of His very essence is simple, unalloyed, unconditional loving. …and I could only learn that loving by pushing on in the mystical darkness that surrounded me in what Saint John of the Cross called the Dark Knight of the Soul.
0:59:18 I could only learn it, how do you learn by practising through a series of actions on and on and on and on.
0:59:25 This therefore, thanks to John of Bonnilla and the PAX anime, I learned therefore it would only be through the love that comes through contemplation that would enable me to be reborn in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord and there is no other way.
0:59:52 So let me end with a prayer. It's the same prayer, prayer of Saint Teresa of Avala. There is only one way to pray.
1:00:18 There is only one way to perfection. There is only one way to union with God. …and that is to journey on in learning simple unalloyed, selfless giving in prayer, that is the only way.
1:00:45 God help us. God give us the grace to realize this at instead of running away momemant prayer becomes difficult as the vast majority do as 90% do according to St.
1:01:00 John of the Cross, and according to my experience, after quietism 99.9% run away, and so we are deprived of the saints, the mystics, the shepherds that we need.
1:01:16 God give us the grace and give all of us the Now in our greatest need to learn the simple, selfless, unconditional loving.
1:01:31 But enables us to go on and on in prayer, though we receive nothing in repair, in return. It is the only way so that our prayer can be like God's prayer, that then union can take place, Then union can take place with Christ, because that was Christ's prayer throughout his life, and it is his prayer now
1:01:57 . As we unite with his prayer, then we receive the fruits of contemplation, to share, first of all, to redeem ourselves, to sanctify ourselves.
1:02:11 for our salvation, then to empower us to become apostles, like Peter and Paul before us, to go out and transform this world of ours, this church of ours first into what it used to be, into what it was, so that it may do what it did in those first centuries, transform an ancient pagan empire into a christian
1:02:42 empire we know it is possible because it has been done but only by men and women of bread.