Cor Simplex Crea in Me, Deus

As the day draws nearer that I will get to enter the cloister walls to live, often I find myself asking myself, "why?" Why has God chosen to call me to this life? Why have I decided to follow? Why, despite all the sacrifices it entails and all the suffering my decision has sparked, do I find a well of peace within my heart? Why does my whole being rejoice with a feeling very close to relief at the prospect of soon entering formation to be a Passionist nun?

To the first question, I will never know the answer. God alone, may His name be praised, knows why He has called this fallen, weak, and fickle young blunderer into such an intimacy with Him. I would say that there is some mistake, that I must be wrong...except that every time I dare to entertain those thoughts, something very obvious happens to reconfirm His will and His call. He is not to be argued with!

The answer to the second "why" is always the same: I decide to follow Him because, well, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." The bigger question, really, is why on earth I took so many years to hear the question...and then so many more years to assent.

Whence comes the peace amidst the storm, and the relief in looking toward the future? I am convinced that it must be a matter of the heart. Right now my heart is very complex, divided into many rooms and fortified battlements and alleys leading in many and sundry directions. I have many loves, both ordered and disordered, that abide therein. It is rather like a medieval Italian fortress-city: beautiful, but also chaotic, crowded, convoluted, messy, and made of stone. But my heart, unlike the Italian city, was not made to be all of these things. It yearns not for chaos but for order, so that it can embrace and love more fully all the goods that come its way.

One of the most beautiful -- and most challenging -- facets of convent life, at least that I have noticed, is its ability to foster a simplicity of heart. Nearly every time I speak with a sister who has lived her vocation for many years, I am struck by how unified her love is, indeed, how wholly she is God's. She has become simple, not so much in her mind or actions -- for nuns have sharp wits and manifold pursuits, just like the rest of us! -- but certainly in her being and in her heart. You see, the very life and rhythm of the convent is ordered toward inward and outward simplicity. Every word and action there is deliberate and meaningful, and the silence fosters an awareness of self as does no other place that I've encountered. One realizes very quickly, in such an environment so singly pointed toward God, one's own dividedness.

I yearn to be undivided. I yearn to be perfectly ordered toward God who is Love, so that I can have the freedom to love everyone even more than I already do...but without feeling torn and pulled in opposite directions by my loves. And so I look toward the beginning of my formation with relief, knowing that I am about to enter the purifying fires of love...namely, poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Cor simplex crea in me, Deus.
An undivided heart create in me, o God.

Congratulations, Sister Rose Marie!

I know I usually only post once a week, and I've written *three* posts already this week, but this news is too good to have to wait any longer! It seemed like Sponsa Christi would never get around to posting the news on the Passionists' blog, but she finally has, and it is my great pleasure to proclaim the news on QM:

We have a new novice!

Click on over to In the Shadow of His Wings and check out the wonderful post on Postulant Shannon's vestition in the holy habit and her new name: Sister Rose Marie of the Merciful Heart of Jesus. Deo Gratias!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled silence...

...to bring you this awesome addition to the Vatican Webpage:

The Virtual Scavi Tour!

*curtsey to Argent for the find!

Year for Priests

I was traveling on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, and therefore missed my opportunity to mark (on the blog) the opening of the Year for Priests that our holy father has proclaimed. Instead, I united myself in prayer with all of my priestly brothers that day in a particular way, and I rejoiced that I will have the privilege of entering religious life during this year. Dear Fathers, whoever you are that read this post, let this be a thank you and a thank God for your vocations. My life, poor as it is, is offered for you.

Pope Benedict quotes St. John Vianney near the beginning of last week's letter to priests: "The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus”, the Cure of Ars would often say. The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.

Can you sense the majesty of that statement? The dignity that all priests have, by the very nature of their ordination? The gravitas of the priesthood, not by any human contrivance, but by its very being? The love of the heart of Jesus.

When I think if the heart of Jesus, immediately I see in my mind's eye a Man hanging from a Cross, with a flood pouring from His pierced side. His precious, sacred heart overflowing with love, pouring out His life for love of us, that we might live and love in return.

And then I see that river of life flowing from His heart into a chalice, offered upon an altar as a living sacrifice of love, eternally poured out, eternally offered up, eternally drawing all His children into the communion of love that is the blessed Trinity Himself.

I see the joy that wells up from that chalice of life in each one of us who come to the altar. I see the love into which we are drawn, which bursts out of us into the world. I see the body of Christ knit together into one, constantly sustained and renewed by the river of life that flows from that pierced heart beating at its very core.

Fathers, you dwell in that pierced heart. You are not only His friends, but His mouth, and His hands, and His feet in this world. You pour out His same, lifegiving love in the sacraments, and by your very lives you give to the whole world a witness of the greatest gift we have ever known.

Fathers, I thank you for your fiat.
I thank you for your fidelity.
I thank you for the times when you are exhilarated with God's love.
I thank you for the times when you are pierced and dying with God's love.
I thank you for striving always to be what must sometimes seem impossible: an alter Christus.
I thank you.

What little I can give in return, I do: my prayers, my penance, my own love, my own attempts at fidelity to Christ. God bless and keep you in His grace! May He draw you ever more fully into the depths of His pierced heart.

Annus Sacerdotalis: The official website put together by the Holy See's Congregation for the Clergy. Check it out!

A Face-Off

I had a small epiphany recently, in the middle of typing an email to a dear friend. He had expressed his continued concern and prayers for me and my family, and I found myself responding thusly:

"Sometimes, though, I want to turn around and face down the devil who is trying so hard to sway me from my vocation, and to say to him, Back off from my family, punk! You have had your say, you have torn my own heart, but you shall come no farther! You shall not make my loved ones your tools, and in the process, break their own hearts and lives! In doing so, you will never win -- you will only serve to set heaven even more firmly against you than it already is, if that were possible. Begone, fool, and plague us no more with your anemic and ill-begotten pretenses of love!"

And somewhere in the middle of typing that paragraph, the idea changed from being a hypothetical to a reality. For, indeed, what is stopping me from doing exactly that? It is what needs to be done!

It finally hit me: What we are going through is certainly a real and bitter suffering, but it is larger than that. It is a battleground. The enemy knows my intention is to follow God and His loving will, and he knows that I am being drawn into a consecrated life of prayer and penance for the sake of God's priests. He hates every bit of that. He wants to stop me. And he knows my weaknesses so well that for years he has been launching his bitterest attacks on my family. He knows that if I am to be swayed, it is through them whom I love so dearly. And until now, I have allowed him to maneuver me into a defensive seige, acting as though he has the keener weapons and the stronger ground, trying as best I can to sheild and defend my wounded loved ones from the creeping death of starvation and disease that he has planted even within our walls.

But no! Why should I crouch beneath his feeble blows? Why should I dread his lying words of pain and loss and bitter resentment? I have the weapons in this war! I have the strength and the stamina not only to repel but to rout his fiercest onslaughts! "Stand and fight, you two-faced coward! No longer do I hide with my back turned behind these walls. No longer will I watch helplessly as you ravage my family. No! If you want them, come and claim them -- but you will have to get through me first, and I weild the weapons of grace and virtue and sacrament and love.

"Yes! I weild love. What do you have, o fallen angel? What do you know of love? You whisper lying words about it to my family -- I hear you! -- and you poison their minds and hearts with your pretense. Do you think that you will win me with lies? Love is stronger than death, as you know very well, and did you think I would believe that it cannot hold up over mere distance? Love has defeated sin, and it does again and again and again, and do you really think that it will not prevail over misunderstandings and prejudices? Fool! I have no time for your empty words!

"Oh, and before you turn toward my family again, seeking their ruin since you cannot gain mine, look around. You see, we have come out of our walled fortress, my army and I. You are no longer on offense, oh no. Quail before our banner! Flee in the face of our strength! I dare you to try to level the hosts of heaven, I challenge you to land one blow upon the victorious Lamb! We all stand between you and these precious souls. Begone, and weep your bitter tears of defeat on some other field."

If Satan wants a fight, a fight he will get. QM is no longer going to cower and whimper in anguish! Oh, no! Christ didn't stand by and wring His hands as the people He loved suffered. He took the blows first, for them, and thus gave meaning and redemption to their pain...and then He rendered it lifegiving.

Come, Lord Jesus!

Once again, I say "amen."

This is one of my favorite songs from the "Christian" genre, and it also very aptly describes the dynamic in the Q household these days.

"I was sure by now, God, you would have reached down and wiped our tears away, stepped in and saved the day. But once again, I say 'amen,' and it's still raining...."

Pray for us! Lord, have mercy!

At the Core of the Universe

One of the most prevailing images in my prayer over the past decade has been that of being curled up at the foot of the Cross, embracing its wood in loving adoration. Below is a passage from the book Dear and Glorious Physician, Taylor Caldwell's beautiful novel of the life of St. Luke the Evangelist, in which passage I first found this image. I was 15, and ever since I read it, I have wanted to spend my life just so.

The setting is a temple in the house of the Magi, about two years after the birth of Christ.

Then in the center of the room was the strangest thing of all, not an altar, but something that struck a quick fear to the soul of the boy. On a wide central platform of three low white steps of marble stood the great symbol of the most infamous thing in the world, the symbol of the vilest criminality and death. It was a huge Cross, seemingly made of transparent alabaster, and it towered almost to the flat ceiling of smooth stone. Lucanus’ fear changed to awe and amazement. The Cross soared alone, and there was nothing in the temple but its simple and dreadful majesty, and no sound but absolute silence.

The light pulsed and waned, and the Cross waited. But Lucanus stood for a long time looking at it, his heart beating loudly in his ears. A few times, a very few times, he had seen a crucified man on one of the hills near Antioch, and he had been moved to tears and a nameless anger. And then he had seen the golden cross in Keptah’s hand on the night of the Star, over two years ago. He had almost forgotten.

Timidly, walking slowly so as not to disturb this sanctified silence, and not to quicken the ebbing and flowing radiance, he approached the Cross, and stood at the foot of the glistening shallow stairs looking up at it. Its mighty arms stretched far above him. It had a waiting and unearthly quality, cool and expectant. Its body was fixed and powerful, yet airy as light. It appeared less than stone now, to the boy, but something sentient and eternal, immovable in its vastness, carved in grandeur.

Lucanus stood and looked at it, and could not turn aside. There was nothing in him now but an unnamable anticipation. His throat throbbed. Without his volition his knees bent, and he knelt on the first step and clasped his hands, never looking away from the Cross. It loomed over him, and he felt some awful prescience in it, and yet it was as if the arms hovered over him protectingly. Now the light in the temple quickened, like the reflection of the moon on wide wings.

There were no thoughts in Lucanus, no awareness of flesh, only a deep wonderment and something like joy touched with grief. He knelt for a long time, his blue gaze lifted high to the Cross, his hands clasped.

He did not know at what moment the Cross began to brighten, and at what moment the Cross itself began to ripple with pale rosy shadows. It was as if his soul became aware of it long before his conscious mind, and so he was not alarmed. He was also dreamily aware of an unseen Presence, which was one with the Cross, one with the light, and one with himself. The Presence was like a shaft of deeper luminosity, and full of enormous masculine tenderness. Lucanus said aloud through pale lips, “The Unknown God.”

[…] He was filled with ecstasy, as if visions had opened before him, magnificent, yet dolorous with supernatural sorrow beyond the comprehension of men.

The flickerings on the Cross became deeper in hue and more intense, so that the white walls, floor, and ceiling paled like clouds, and were as tenuous. Slowly, moment by moment, the rosy and unquiet hue resembled the flowing shadows of blood, welling, falling, and drifting from the arms down the whole enormous body of the Cross. The pearly luminousness that flowed through the temple moved swifter, as if ethereal presences were gathering in greater concentration. The boy was conscious of no fear, only of growing wonderment and love so profound that his body could hardly contain it. The scarlet reflections from the Cross glimmered on his face, his white tunic, his clasped hands, and in his eyes, and on his bent knees.

Slowly, drawn as if by a spell, he stood up and mounted the shallow steps and stood on the level with the Cross. It was a tree of intermingling red and white, palpitating with a force unknown to him. He dared to put out his hand and touch it; it was cool to his touch, and yet it vibrated slightly. All at once he was overcome with a passion beyond rapture; he felt himself drawn into the very heart of the Cross. His legs weakened under him, and he slipped to the platform and wound his arms about the shaft and leaned his cheek against it, and without the slightest conscious knowledge his whole body trembled with adoration and the deepest peace he had ever known. He closed his eyes; he was at the core of the universe.