From my brain to my heart

"Liberty is a detachment of the Christian heart from all things to follow the known will of God."

-- St. Francis de Sales, [source unknown -- EBB]

"[I]f you would progress a long way on this road and ascend to the [Spiritual] Mansions of your desire, the important thing is not to think much, but to love much; do, then, whatever most arouses you to love. ... [L]ove consists, not in the extent of our happiness, but in the firmness of our determination to try to please God in everything, and to endeavour, in all possible ways, not to offend Him, and to pray Him ever to advance the honour and glory of His Son and the growth of the Catholic Church. Those are the signs of love; do not imagine that the important thing is never to be thinking of anything else and that if your mind becomes slightly distracted all is lost. "

-- St. Teresa of Avila, one of my new favorite siblings, The Interior Castle, Fourth Mansion, chap. 1, 8

"I abandoned myself and forgot myself
Laying my face on my beloved;
All things ceased; I went out from myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies."

-- St. John of the Cross, another of my new favorite siblings, Ascent of Mount Carmel, stanza 66

As regular FCA readers probably know, I have a great interest in and love for the Jesuits.[1] Reading a collection of St. Ignatius's personal writings (recollections, letters, etc.) while I was in Europe, I have come to love Ignatius himself all the more as one of my dearest (celestial) spiritual fathers. Interestingly, I also have recently discovered a connection between the Jesuits and my patron saint, St. Francis de Sales, namely, that St. Francis was educated by Jesuits! (But of course!) This makes perfect sense (to me), as his Ignatian background carried over quite markedly into St. Francis's loving, heroic call to holiness for all walks of life. Add to these discoveries a study by Fr. François Charmot, SJ, Ignatius Loyola and Francis de Sales: Two Masters, One Spirituality (see also my Amazon Wish List), and I have gained insight into what my "own" spirituality is: practical, common-sensical, apostolic, driven by an interdisciplinary (if I may put it that way) pursuit of excellence, all with a heavy ballast of "sensual" (i.e., imaginative-meditative) biblical prayer and an unflinching existential taste for the often very "ordinary" efforts of holiness. In a word, I am an Ignatian-Salesian type of Christian ... I think. (Of course, from what little I know of the spirituality, I may just as easily add "Carmelite" to my spiritual make-up, since I've grown in the last few years to have quite a Carmelite taste for the paradoxical desolation, darkness, dryness and stillness of living the divine life.)

All these insights are but a few of the *numerous* changes and steps of growth God has wrought in me -- to my own great surprise! -- in the wake of World Youth Day. The quotes above are meant to capture some of where God is guiding me: from my brain (i.e., from my highly self-conceptualized Self), to my heart, to the smallness of Myself-in-God. As I continue to "shrink", please pray for me. Your support does, and will, add to the adventurous joy that is sanctification, "the ascent" of theosis. An increase in Eucharistic Adoration, worshipping in the Mass, and Cnofession have, of course, played an already remarkable role in this growth.

Onward!

[1] To any "Jesuitaphobes" out there, remember the next time you want to roll your eyes at "the latest Jesuit nonsense" that Mother Teresa's spiritual director was himself a Jesuit. ;)

Haiku: On getting ahead of yourself (version 2.0)

Despairing of hope,
the bound young caterpillar
wept in his cocoon.

Haiku: On getting ahead of yourself

"Oh, there's no hope here,"
said the young caterpillar,
in his new cocoon.

On how to "connect"

A friend of mine (an Evangelical to be exact), once told me a reason he thinks celibacy is a bad way of life for pastors: "They don't know how to relate to their people, who, most them, are married." I didn't think of it at the time, but I'd answer now that it's funny how Jesus, lacking a wife and all, was able to "connect" to his people so well.

I find this just so funny

And not the least because it's about my own uncle.

My uncle, my dad tells me, recently clocked in one minute early at his job. Spontaneously, like a bat from the ceiling, his supervisor swooped down the stairs to confront him. "Tony," he chided managerially, "be sure to clock out today at 2:29, not 2:30, okay?" My uncle looked at him, and then broke out in to laughter. Still laughing, he grabbed a pen from his pocket and meticulously wrote "2:29" on the palm of his hand. "Okay, yes, 2:29, sure thing." Happily, the supervisor was able to laugh about it too.

Simply hilarious.

War and Peace ... what is it good for, huh?

Insofar as history is the record of events awash in a sea of personages and insofar as biography is personages awash in a sea of historical events, _War and Peace_ is both. This is, I believe, why Tolstoy said the work possessed a singular, and singularly Russian, place in literature.

Now, let me state quite plainly that I am inveterately skeptical of "the great books" since literary fanfare can often be mere "pop hype" in a sophisticated guise. All the same, _War and Peace_ really is a *great* book. It is worth the effort -- the true effort -- to forge through its hundreds of pages, plot turns, character names and observations. The length of reading it is itself a vital dimension to "the _War and Peace_ experience". It becomes a part of your life for at least a few weeks -- and I spent six months on it. Its epic size adds an immersive texture to the book, as if you are synchronically entering and experiencing the story's progress. _Les Miserables_, another huge-but-worth-it book, has the same capacity for pressing itself into your life, but I find its otherwise compelling pathos is, unfortunately, sometimes tainted with operatic bathos[1], such that it simply doesn't have the same "existential traction" as _War and Peace_.

This "immersive traction" is noticeable in the reading of a good number of any "big book," but I think _War and Peace_ really is in a league of its own in terms of its holistic vision, in terms of its historical scope and narrative detail, in terms of its ability to draw you into its own world. Karamazov's _The Brothers Karamazov_ does, however, have a similar immersive grip as _War and Peace_, but at a psychological and spiritual, rather than a philosophical and historical, level of transformation. Yes, both books are lengthy and profound enough to *transform* you, albeit in different ways. _War and Peace_ enables you to see the world in a different way. _The Brothers Karamazov_ enables you to see yourself in a different way. (And if I may be a little cheeky, _Les Miserables_ enables you to see the Parisian sewer system in a whole new way!) The first two books' transformative power lies, I believe, in their fundamentally Christian worldview.[2] Tolstoy arrays all things historical, from war to peace, in the benign but mysterious eye of divine Providence, whereas Dostoyevsky arrays all things most deeply personal, from murder to mercy, from tears to laughter, in the benign but equally mysterious "infiltration" of the God Man, of the joyous light of the Divine Life, of Jesus Christ, into the otherwise gloomy, and all too somber fabric of humanity.

[1] Tellingly, it was made into a world-famous musical drama, which is the way most people think of "Les Mis" ("I saw it in *London*!") by far more than as a novel.

[2] In no way do I mean to disparage the transformative, and highly Christian, nature of _Les Miserables_. It's a great book, and I love it. But right now is Russian lit time. ;)