190- 'The World of Spiritual Life Opened Up For Me'

Testimony on Spiritual Life Teaching

By H.T.

My spiritual life was progressing quite happily. I had been blessed with a second conversion. Worldly things didn’t matter to me much anymore. Most of my attention was focused on our Lord. I sang (awfully made up) songs to our Lord and spoke to Him as though He was right by my side. I felt like I was walking on air most days. It was all going so well until a question popped into my mind.

Is this all?

Quite suddenly I saw myself standing on a vast plateau. It was a scary feeling. Where did I go from there? I felt a painful emptiness within me. I couldn’t sing anymore songs. Even the happiness had left me. I started to get worried because if this was it, how was this going to last me a lifetime? I suppose deep inside, I knew there had to be more! After all, if God is infinite then how can spiritual life be limited? The problem was I didn’t know how to find it. Or worse still I realised, what if I never found it?

When I asked a few religious, they didn’t understand what I was talking about and told me to keep praying. In the meantime, the questions would not stop nagging at me. I also struggled with the biggest fear that if that was all, whatever I already had with Christ would not be enough to sustain me. I needed more. I kept asking God, but nothing resulted. I talked a lot to God in my prayers. I offered Him my love, my life etc. I told Him how much He meant to me and how He must never let me get away from Him and so on. After so much talking for a long time, I felt one day that there wasn’t anything else I could say to Him that I hadn’t already said - so what else was needed? The only thing left to do was to stop talking, be still and quietly offered my heart (my love) to Him so He could read it all for Himself. My heart to His heart.

In fact, I started practising Prayer of the Heart without knowing what it was. I thought I was just being idle, down and disappointed so this quiet prayer wouldn’t be of much use. I still had no aim, no direction.

I read many books and even googled trying to search for more. I considered taking spiritual direction but I was hesitant about who to go to so I thought I should just wait. Another alternative I considered was to give up searching. Just be happy with what I had and that it would just have to go on like this for the rest of my life. Maybe I was expecting too much. Maybe I was living in fairyland. I was truly sad as I knew I would not have the strength to keep walking in His way without anything more to hope for ahead.

Then one day, God in His mercy answered my prayers through a friend who invited me to one of the Courses of the School of Mary. From the first few minutes into the class, I knew I had been led to the right place.There was indeed more and yes, it would certainly be enough to last me a lifetime and some. For the first time, I heard of Prayer of the Heart and had it explained to me. I learnt about the union with Christ and much more through the School of Mary and I knew that this is what I had been searching for. Finally, my questions were being answered - the world of spiritual life opened up for me. This finding has helped my spiritual life go forward. I was no longer aimless. I started practising being in the presence of God throughout the day everyday, I asked to hear well the Holy Spirit and to be in complete obedience to Him.

‘Where have You hidden Yourself,
And abandoned me in my groaning,
O my Beloved? You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me. I ran after You, crying;
but You were gone.’
(St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, I)*

I used to say that death would be a comfort to me because I wanted to be with God and see Him face to face. For many years, I longed for death. Nothing in this world was good enough to keep me here. Nothing could comfort me more than the idea of death bringing me to Him.  I do still look forward to going to Him but the difference is - I am no longer waiting.

Why wait till death?  Why wait so long?  To be in union with Christ whilst on earth - this is the good news He came to give us. Our Lord says, ‘the kingdom of heaven is amongst you.’ In union with Him, our whole self and our inner and outer world are transformed. After all, how can it be possible for one to have the king and not the kingdom? Nothing else matters. As St. Paul said ‘… it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.’ I pray even as my body goes to sleep at night for my soul and spirit to stay with the Holy Spirit in worship and adoration. Now I do not just want death; I am praying and asking for a worthy death and what worthier death is there than the one which resulted through a tremendous exchange of love with Him?  But let God’s will be done. I have also learnt one thing recently – true love does not make demands of the beloved. It allows the Beloved to give as He wants.

Looking back, my love for God was rather immature and selfish. I loved all the wonderful consolations He gave but I wasn’t always willing to say ‘God’s will be done’.  On certain matters, if someone told me that, I would get quite annoyed. What if His will didn't agree with mine?! Through the classes at the School of Mary and learning about Union With ChristI started to reflect on my previous proclamations of love and offering to Him. How sincere were they if I was not willing for all His will to be done in my life? How can I hope to have union with Christ if I wasn’t willing to give up myself? As I am still a coward, I always ask that He be gentle with me and not test me too much because I am only fragile, but at least I am now willing to say, ‘Do with me as You will’ and mean it.  May He continue to work on me. For the moment, I just have to close my eyes and trust that He won’t test me more than I can bear and even then, He will always be by my side. Besides, the reality is His will is always done anyway so if I work with Him, I am on the winning side!  One thing is certain, compliance with His will gives one an internal freedom that man alone can never achieve.

All Christians (from all denominations) talk about union with Christ and quote St. Paul.  For most (me too, until I attended the School of Mary), it is only about walking with Him. They lack an understanding to push it further, because true union with Christ is a lot deeper than that. Union with Christ is why there are saints and there aren’t saints. Since sanctification is what we are all called for, this is an absolute necessity for all Christians to understand.

An aimless spiritual life, in my experience, is one of the saddest things in life. Since our God is both Infinite and Love, the only way forward for a Christian is to make a conscious effort of continuous growth in our love for Him leading to union. There can be no stopping in infinity or in love because the moment we stop, we go backwards.

It makes me wonder now - if two years being stuck on the plateau was enough to make me suffer, then how hard it must be for those who are stuck perhaps for a lifetime - and maybe they don’t even realise it. Many go to church day in and day out accepting that that is all there is. What a shame it is, what a waste of a lifetime, to not know there exists a spiritual life so rich, so abundant and so generously offered by Christ. This life on earth is a precious gift from God for us to unite ourselves with Him, to become divine as He is divine. Had He not breathed life into me, I wouldn’t even exist to have any opportunity to unite myself with Him. How precious it is, therefore!

This Great Friend, who laid down His life for His friends, has not bought our salvation only for us to receive it after death. His love is so great that He offers us a union with Himself in the present so that we can live with Him in His kingdom even whilst we are on earth. An offer that would reduce all the things in this world to nothing by comparison. We only have to reach out to receive - that is if we know about it.

H.T.

You can read the book that presents the whole Spiritual Journey (Please click here)

* The icon above is taken from the Icon of St. John of the Cross made by the Carmelite nuns in Lebanon.

142: "Ensuring Steady Growth" Testimonies

After having attended the 4 Saturdays Course on "Ensuring Steady Growth" Carlos De Vera wrote the following text and he is happy to share it with us:

"To embrace 'Deeper Mystagogy'

Mystagogy

St Augustine in his Confessions famously observed in the beginning of that great work that "You arouse him to take joy in praising you, for you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." This statement alone to me sums up the situation of the faithful Catholic living in the world today. Having long had such "restlessness" and taken a number of courses with great teachers in university years ago on Catholic history and intellectual life, as well as having widely read contemporary authors on Catholic faith, I was craving a practical course that addressed the spiritual life, what it means, how to grow in it, and how to know I am making progress. All too easily, faithful Catholics "settle" for accepting a faith consisting of partaking of the sacraments, merely attending mass and being on the right side of the Ten Commandments, believing this is the extent of what Jesus meant when he said "I came so that you might have life and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).  Understandably, getting Catholics to regularly come to mass weekly or attend confession can already be an achievement in itself for clergy. But for those of us who already do that, yet remain "restless" and want to grow further in the "abundant life", there is little guidance on what to do next or what such growth looks like.

4th and 5th Mansions

The story of Catholicism for those who do not yet know Christ is not merely promoting a 2000 year old institution of dogma, doctrine, theology and liturgy, but also a Church that actively encourages the faithful to embrace a deeper mystagogy and the means for the new and current faithful to approach Mary and Jesus more spiritually and confidently.

As part of the New Evangelization sought in Vatican II, this should change.

Holiness is the goal of all the faithful, not just for those ordained or religious. Vatican II's Lumen gentium (40, 41) states that

all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love, and by this holiness a more human manner of life is fostered also in earthly society….The forms and tasks of life are many but holiness is one….Therefore all the faithful are invited and obliged to holiness and the perfection of their own state of life.

With the above in mind, this is why the course from the School of Mary on "Ensuring Steady Growth", answered a need in me providentially at just the right time and the lectures provided by Jean Khoury helped me pull together many disconnected strands on Catholic history, faith and the rich mystical experiences of the Church's great spiritual masters - a treasure of the Church that should be made more accessible to the faithful.

I thoroughly enjoyed the course and came away with three quite profound insights.

1. The notion of "triggering" the Grace of God in one's spiritual life through loving as Jesus loved and by engaging in certain spiritual practices done by the Church's spiritual masters

2. The experiences of the Church's spiritual masters (Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, etc.) are consistent with each other - they may be described, or different aspects emphasised, in different ways - but there is a reassuring consistency on what it means to grow in spiritual life as a Catholic regardless of the era.

3. God designed all human beings with the inner capacity to know Him, to be nourished by Him and to grow closer to Him and that such capacities are not reserved for those like Moses and the "burning bush" or those ordained or religious persons like monks or nuns. All Catholics, lay or ordained, are obliged to "wake themselves up" to such inner capacity (see Lumen Gentium above “obliged to holiness and the perfection of their own state of life”) through practices like lectio divina and Prayer of the Heart, encouraged by the experience and insights of the Church's spiritual masters.

I hope this particular course of the School of Mary is more widely promoted in the Church, at least in London; it answers the restlessness of the faithful and gives them the applicable tools and context by which to approach God in the "burning bush" of their lives and in the process open up God's graces so that, as Jesus promised, we “might have life and have it more abundantly". "

Carlos De Vera

The course on "Ensuring Steady Growth" was one of the best I have ever taken on Catholicism, thank you for the great lessons.

From the First Lesson:

Another person wrote:

"Thank you for the amazing Course which exceeded all my hopes and expectations. It has renewed my hope and commitment for the future.

There were so many practical points and such a depth of understanding imparted in concise and impactful presentation that it will be a source of inspiration for a very long time." (P.R.)

Please find here the Video of the First Lesson of the Course. If you are interested to watch the videos of the entire 4 days Course, please do contact us at SchoolofMaryLondon (at) gmail.com