#10

August 9, 2001

As to my condition! The past couple of days I felt real lousy in the morning, but by ignoring the feeling and attacking the work on my desk as if I were feeling perfectly normal, lo and behold! those feelings disappeared and later I did feel normal again. If only I could get rid of my cough! After two separate attempts at treating the problem with medication, the thought occurred to me that it is the little knot of mucous or something in my throat that doesn't want to come up that is triggering all the coughing. Probably what I need is to have a throat specialist vacuum it out of my throat, and then there would no longer be a reason to cough. Well, it is a good thing I am not a doctor, I would probably come up with far-fetched theories about what is making a person sick and then attempt all kinds of "quack" remedies based upon my theories. Thank you Jesus, for calling me elsewhere, and sparing so many people!

*This letter was chosen to show his humor even on days of sickness and suffering. At this time he was not aware of the seriousness of his illness, that is, the brain tumor.

#11

August 4, 2001

...That's about it! I don't know what I did to make the italics kick in all of a sudden. [he was typing a group e-mail and was unfamiliar with the processor] Maybe subconsciously I want this to be an emphatic message. I do hope it is emphatic enough to help you all decide to keep me in your prayers daily. I am quite at peace during all of this. After all, nothing that happens in the course of nature or which is caused by created free agents, human or angelic, can possibly change God in the least. He remains infinitely GOOD, constantly OUR MOST LOVING FATHER, and capable of putting into effect the MOST WISE AND MERCIFUL plan He has for each and every one of us, His human children. I want exactly what YOU want for me, LORD. And what I ask for myself, I ask the same and better for everyone else, without exception!!

#12

February 1994

Before I get into the conference for this month, let me share with you some thoughts that spilled out of my fingertips as I was preparing a letter to thank benefactors for cards and gifts that reached me after I had already sent out my own Christmas remembrances. I called it my "Lenten" letter. The Holy Season of Lent passes more quickly for me every succeeding year. That was (I believe) because I seemed to get busier and busier each succeeding year. As you all are most certainly aware, the more things that claim our attention, the less time we seem to have available to address them. That would be fine, except that, during Lent, our busy-ness seems to keep us from formulating and carrying out a regimen of extra prayer and self-denial. (Perhaps I am speaking only of myself here). Then, when lent is over, we (maybe only I) tend to think: "Darn it! Another opportunity gone!"

Well, now that I am another year older (recently I celebrated the big Six-Seven), perhaps I had better reassess that characteristic response [of mine] to: "another Lent gone before I know it." Perhaps there is more to be considered! Perhaps, upon reconsideration, I should not feel that I've been delinquent again when it comes to participating fully in the Lenten Season! If that turns out to be the case, then I want to share the sense of relief it will give me with all of you similarly very busy people. As you all know very well, the purpose of the Lenten discipline (extra prayer, extra self-denial, more frequent reception of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, extra generosity, extra deeds of charity toward our neighbor) is to help us overcome our natural inclination to be concerned exclusively with our own personal interests and convenience.

The practices I just listed also help to purify the "interior eye", so that we can discern in exactly what areas and in what ways we need to overcome that natural inclination to be self-centered. Thus it is evident that the said practices are not an end in themselves, but are intended as a means to help us achieve the TRUE END AND GOAL of all religious and ascetical practices: to deepen and strengthen our participation in the very Life of God, which is Charity. As charity grows and becomes more pervasive in our lives, selfishness fades and eventually disappears. When Charity is the Root, Stem, Flower and Fruit of every aspect of our Being and Doing, we are living a "resurrected life".

SO! If our "busy-ness" is caused primarily (and hopefully solely) by our concern for others, even if that means little more than keeping in touch with them and making them aware of the affection and esteem in which we hold them, then that "busy-ness" IS NOT standing in the way of the purpose of Lent. Rather, it tends to show that our past Lenten seasons, when we DID manage to "get into the spirit" of Lent, have really borne fruit. And to insure that the fruit remains, let us take advantage of the power and influence which "charity" has over the Heart of God by making intercessory prayer our new and current way of sharing in the Lenten spirit. Doing and praying for others is already, of itself, the best form of self-denial.

#13

March 1994

Here we are getting close to the end of Lent and I find myself looking forward to the end of wintry weather more eagerly than I am to the Holy Solemnity of Easter. But I don't suppose I am alone in that, since this winter has been horrendous. I heard someone say recently that we have had 13 snow storms already this winter, and that was over two weeks ago. We've had at least two since.

With regard to desiring the end of wintry weather more than Easter, it never ceases to amaze me how facts that we experience with our senses so easily engender vivid feelings, emotions, and thinking back to the conferences thereon, natural passions. Experiences of matters of relatively slight importance in the overall scheme of things can trigger quite strong reactions. On the other hand, how rare it is that the really very important things in the overall scheme of things, the divinely revealed truths of our Faith, engender equally strong movements within our psyche. The reason, of course, is that divinely revealed truths and facts are apprehended only with the intellect, and then only by virtue of the supernatural power conferred by the Theological Virtue of Faith.

Where is this observation leading me? To make sense out of it all I think I must reflect further upon the importance of the Sense Memory and the Imagination in our human lives. More significantly, upon how vitally important they are in the beginning of our spiritual lives, that is, in our life of prayer, as we try to create strong bonds of love and commitment in our relationships with Our Lord, Our Lady and, above all, with the Three Persons in the Most Holy Trinity.

We can begin by remembering that "love" is a natural passion. It is engendered and "fed" by certain kinds of sense experiences and the [natural] understanding flowing from them. Understanding, that is, of the good, loveable qualities of the things and persons we experience. The stronger and more vivid those sense experiences, and the more frequently they are experienced, the more powerful and enduring is the consequent "natural love" that results.

The upshot, therefore, is: How make use of that fact of human experience to cause me "naturally" to grow in my supernatural love of God until it becomes very strong, very profound and very fervent? Well, the answer is: Use your sense memory and imagination! We can draw upon the memories of our own personal sense experiences and apply them, by means of the imagination, to the mysteries of Our Faith, that is, to the great events both in the Old and New Testament through which those same mysteries are made known to us. In particular, we can apply them to all those things that pertain to Jesus in His Humanity.

Use of the sense memory and the imagination is most necessary in the beginning of our journey toward union with God through prayer because then it is most necessary to have a means of counteracting the appeal of lesser, competing loves, which also come to us through sense experiences and the memories thereof. But as St. Teresa of Avila teaches quite clearly, we can never entirely or safely abandon the use of the memory and the imagination in our loving relationships with Jesus, no matter how advanced we may be in the stages of "contemplative" prayer.

How easily said! How difficult to take full advantage of this mechanism! In any event, since I WANT TO DESIRE AND LONG FOR Easter more ardently than the coming of spring weather, it behooves me to coax my sense memory and imagination into helping me do that. So, I will use them as piety and my existing love for Jesus prompts me, so that my love for Him becomes really intense and really pure. Once that has happened, I will not only want and desire vehemently to be UNITED with Jesus IN EVERY RESPECT, but I will also be profoundly affected by everything that happens to Him. I will be grievously hurt and saddened by knowledge of whatever inflicts injuries upon Him, and I will exultingly rejoice at all the things that bring Him joy. I will thus rejoice particularly in those things which bring Him Glory. As He Himself said at the Last Supper. "If you really loved me, you would rejoice that I am going back to My Father". Knowing, then, that the Resurrection of Jesus is one of those personal experiences of His that brings ineffable happiness and joy to Him in His Humanity, I will indeed, perhaps, earnestly long for the Feast of Easter with the most fitting and appropriate sentiment.

#14

October 1994

Today as I begin, it is the feast of Our Holy Mother, St. Teresa. It is also a gorgeous fall day. The sky is a very beautiful blue, characteristic of a dry, cool, unpolluted atmosphere. Would that our souls were as lightsome and transparently clear as this day!!

Hmm! What would Holy Mother say if someone were to say that very same thing to her, on such a beautfiul day as this? She would probably say: "Be faithful to prayer".

Well, there's no way of knowing whether she would actually use those very words in reply, but I am quite certain that the same idea would in some way be conveyed.

As you know, it is through fidelity to Prayer (a loving conversation with Him Whom we know loves us) that the Holy Spirit is able to commence, to continue, and to bring to completion the work of ridding the human soul of everything that obstructs and hinders the influx of transforming grace, indeed, of God Himself, into the Christian soul. ....

#15

November 1994

If we have been making good faith efforts to be faithful followers of Our Lord Jesus Christ, then we can have a firm hope of being numbered among the Holy Souls expiating in Purgatory when our own lives come to an end.

We may even find, to our surprise, if we have also tried to be very generous in following in the footsteps of Our Lord, seeking always to serve, rather than to be served, that we will be numbered among all the Saints not long after we have been called from this earthly life.

As you recall, the Gospel passage for the Mass on the Solemnity of All Saints is that which gives us the Beatitudes as found in the Fifth Chapter of St. Matthew.

The Church seems to be telling us, on All Saints Day, that those whose life experiences, while on this earth, placed them in the categories enumerated in those Beatitudes, are the very non-canonized Saints whose heavenly glory and eternal bliss the Feast was established to celebrate.

If that is so, then each and every faithful Christian has good reason to rejoice and take heart, because it seems that most such believers can really and truly identify with those same unnamed Saints. Most of them, surely, would have little difficulty finding reasons to believe that they also are "inhabitants" of one or more of those same "blessed" categories.

How can a faithful and dedicated Christian not consider himself among the Poor in Spirit? Haven't we learned from experience over and over again in the course of the years that all that we are and all that we have is a gift of God? Hasn't it been engraved deeply and vividly upon our understanding that possessing material resources, even resources of mind, heart and spirit, does not guarantee happiness and peace of soul? Is not Poverty of Spirit one side of the coin, of which the other side is spiritual Childhood? Is it not true in virtue of these that we look to Our Heavenly Father for EVERYTHING?

Our Lord says of both those who are Poor in Spirit and those who turn and become like little children that the Kingdom of God IS theirs. Therefore those who have these "blessed" qualities of soul don't even have to consider whether or not they are also in any other category of Blessed Souls, since the qualities of soul just mentioned do give a person possession of the Kingdom. After all we know full well that we don't die and go to Heaven; rather, we die and take our Heaven with us!!!

#16

February 1995

Now that the Holy Season of Lent is almost at our doorstep, it is time to start thinking about how to enter into the spirit of the penitential season. We know that we have to choose some kind of "meaningful" penitential practices and incorporate them into our lives (and try to keep others from noticing that we are mortifying ourselves), because otherwise we could not expect to benefit from the graces made available during Lent from the spiritual treasury of the Church, and which in turn prepare us to participate fruitfully in the blessings and graces of the Easter Season. But it is not always easy to come up with something really appropriate and suitable to our particular state of soul, or to where we find ourselves currently on our spiritual journey. Spiritual directors would have us note carefully what our principle sins and faults are, and then to choose a mortification that constitutes a direct attack upon them, and thus begin to root them out of our souls. But what if we have come to a point in our spiritual life where we have done as much as possible to "actively" purify our souls of our sins and faults? After all Our Holy Father St. John of the Cross teaches that we can do only so much by ourselves, even with the ordinary help of God's grace, so that eventually we have to surrender to God and so "passively" submit to a purification that He Himself arranges for us. Since His Infinite Power is at the service of His Infinite Love, both of which are at the service of His Infinite Mercy, He is quite capable of seeing to it that those "purifying experiences" are not wanting in our daily lives. We are all so different that it is practically impossible to do any more than give some general suggestions as to how to respond to those experiences when they arise. In fact, I can think of only one general guideline. And that has to do with our "druthers". It is simply this: Except in those instances where the commandments, the obligations of my state in life and "charity" clearly indicate God's will for me, the best way to let God purify me of all disorderly loves and affections is to let the "druthers" of others take precedence over my own, provided, of course, that those druthers are themselves not clearly contrary to God's will for me, and are basically 'good" or at least morally "neutral". A "druther", (short for "I'd rather") is always an expression of personal self- will. And if we can consistently sacrifice our personal self-will to those of another (within the parameters indicated), our "self-will" eventually dies. When that happens, we are "dead to self", and with that salutary death, Satan loses all power to deceive us or lead us astray. Since it is God's Providence that orchestrates the confluence [flowing together] of "druthers" to which we sacrifice our own, we can be quite sure that we are thus more and more surely uniting our will with the Divine Will. When the death I just spoke of does occur, finally, it means that our wills shall have been perfectly conformed to and united with the Will of God.

#17

May, 1995

,,,As I sit down to begin this month's conference I have been back in Peterborough just 19 days now. Thanks be to God, I was able to make the move as planned on April 19th, though I never dreamed I would be taking as many things with me as I did. I'm looking forward to the day when the only things I will feel obliged to bring with me when I am transferred (in addition to my clothes, my tooth-brush, my shaving gear and my comb) are my Breviary, Bible and Mass Kit. Now that would require heroic detachment. With us humans, of course, that heroism would be impossible. But with God, all things are possible.

*Editor's note. Aren't we lucky that he did not have that heroic detachment. He saved his writings for us!

#18

May, 1995

...Permit me, then to fill up the rest of this column with a few of the statements attributed to Jesus by certain victim souls of the early 1900's. The topic is ZEAL FOR SOULS:

[In order to convert a sinner] "You must put My Heart between the sinner and My Father. My Heart will appease His wrath and incline Divine compassion toward that soul."

"Unite all you do to My actions, whether you work or whether you rest. Unite your breathing to the beating of My Heart. How many souls you would be able to save that way."

"I love souls madly; they must not be lost... Oh help me in this undertaking of love."

"Oh how I thirst for souls - how I long for them to surrender themselves to me so that I may transform them; [how I long] for them to surrender their humanity to me so that I may work in the world! Why do you not hear my call? have I not exhausted every means to beg for your attention and your gratitude?"

"Do you understand that you have worked for the whole world when through generosity you triumph over the little miseries that spread a bad spirit among you: you have made Me triumph over my enemies: My kingdom descends among you."

"Remember that those who are vowed [or dedicated] to My service receive encouragement in the measure that they love souls. If you have a great love for souls, you will discover many consolations which will escape you if you have but little love for souls. This is the secret of barren and radiant lives. For the aim of the religious [or dedicated] life is 'God in souls'."

Yours in the United Hearts of Jesus & Mary,

..

#19

November 1995

...During the part of November that has just passed, we, here in New Hampshire have experienced high winds, heavy rain, and snow that is still on the ground. The high winds managed to blow off some of the roof tiles of the main building and took down power lines. We were without electricity for about 8 hours in the Retreat House, and for about six hours in our other buildings.

Thus far, November has had something about it that is ominous and foreboding. The readings at Mass on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary time reinforce that unpleasant feeling, since they speak to us about the "end times" which will precede the Second Coming of Jesus.

But we don't have to wait for the Liturgical Season of Advent to help lift our spiritis. We find that help in the thanksgiving Holiday and in the Feast of Christ the King, both of which fall during the last week of the month.

Thanksgiving originally started out as a Day to thank God for the blessings of the earth; really, for the bountiful harvest, which would sustain and nourish the lives of the Pilgrims throughout the following winter. But now that we no longer are an agrarian society, Thanksgiving Day seems more and more to have acquired an additional meaning: to thank God for the blessings of FAMILY. And rightly so, for it is precisely the FAMILY that gives us new life and enables us to look beyond the darkness and the shadows that afflict society to the promise of a bright future. Where there is life, there is hope. Deo Gratia indeed!

The Feast of Christ the King also helps us to lift our spirits out of the bleakness that November tends to bring with it. We are reminded that Jesus is the Lord of History. Particularly, we are reminded that His Kingdom is not of this world.

Jesus' Kingdom exists within the hearts of those who believe in Him as True God and True Man, and as Our Redeemer, Our Saviour, Our Emmanuel, as the Life of our souls. it is precisely these believers who prove that Jesus is King because the seemingly invincible powers of evil, of sin and of death have been unable to overcome the charity that has been poured out in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, these same evils are the occasions which evoke the response of healing compassion and other virtuous deeds on the part of those convinced Christians. The more grave the evil and suffering, the more clearly are revealed the heights of heroic love to which the citizens of Jesus' Kingdom have been able to rise.

Yours in the United Hearts of Jesus & Mary,

#20

December 1996

...When I was growing up and was reading the funny papers regularly, the cartoonists who did the comic strips invariably brought the subject of New Year's resolutions into their offerings on or about January 1st. That always was kind of a surprise to me, since, as a child, I hadn't ever been encouraged to examine my conduct of the year just ending. Thus it never entered my mind that I had acquired faults that needed to be eradicated, nor good qualities that I needed to strengthen. Either my parents and teachers were so indulgent toward me that they never criticized me nor stated their dissatisfaction with my conduct, or else I must have been a pretty good kid. But getting to know myself a bit better in later life, I am sure that the former of the two possibilities (or maybe a bit of both) was true.

I don't remember, though, noticing that the comic strip characters ever were made to base their resolutions upon the standards that were given to us just a week earlier at the celebration of the birth of Christ. At least not overtly. Surely many of those comic strip authors were good Christian people, and so the thought of taking Jesus as a model to be imitated when making New Year's resolutions must have been in the back of their minds, however vaguely... I seem to have convinced myself, my resolution for the year 1997 is to benefit the entire world by becoming childlike. By being childlike I will enable those people who love me (in spite of myself) to find great contentment in having me as a friend to love with Christian Charity. it's an ideal year to do so, since we will celebrate in 1997 the 100th anniversary of the Going to God of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the Apostle of Spiritual Childhood. Do not we ourselves find great joy in loving her childlike soul, having her as our dear Sister in Carmel, and friend?

Yours in JMJ,