JESUS CHRIST TO TERESA OF AVILA ON THE SUBJECT OF SUFFERING

This quote is actually an ‘instruction given by Christ Himself to His favoured daughter, St Teresa:

 Yesterday I emailed this quote, taken from a commentary on St John of the Cross, to a friend who's lost two sisters to cancer and a third to advanced Alzheimer's in the last three years. It's 'an instruction given by Christ Himself to His favoured daughter, St Teresa'::

 

Merit consists in working, suffering and loving. ... St Paul enjoyed heavenly visions but once, yet innumerable were his sufferings. My entire life was filled with sufferings, but once on Mr Tabor, I was filled with glory. Do you think that when My Mother held me in her arms that she experienced joy exclusive of suffering? From the moment of the prophecy of Simeon she was enlightened, not only knowing My sufferings but sharing them with Me. The great saints ... knew long periods without any spiritual consolation.  

Believe Me, daughter, it is to those most loved by My Father that He sends His greatest trials, for suffering and love are inseparable. How can I better show thee My love than by willing for thee what I have willed for Myself? Behold My wounds; no pain you will ever know will equal these.  

Thy sufferings help Me to weep for the perdition which materialistic souls are reaping for themselves. Here in patience and joyful acceptance of suffering wilt thou find thy reward. 

After such a revelation, need one wonder that St Teresa chose for her motto ‘To suffer or to die’?’

THE REASON WHY JOURNALISTS IGNORE NEGATIVE NEWS ON ABORTION (Letter to Dom Post, March 21)

Karl du Fresne (Does Kiwi complacency come from good humour or despair?) reckons the reason why journalists ignore the positive news for savers of a rise in mortgage rates is, most of them have mortgages. And I reckon the reason why journalists ignore the negative news – links to breast cancer, post-abortion syndrome, prematurity, infertility etc – for women having abortions could be, most journalists who are female, and/or their female friends and relations have had an abortion. They’ve stuck their heads in the sand and they’re not going to pull them out. 

Julia du Fresne

PREGNANT WOMEN CAN GET SURGERY WHICH CAUSES PAIN INSTEAD OF RELIEVING IT, IMMEDIATELY

How logical is it that Maree Drumm (No room on surgery wait list, March 18) and 170,000 others must pass a pain test to get on a waiting list for surgery to relieve their pain, when pregnant women normally not in any pain can get surgery which causes pain physically, psychologically - and fatally for their unborn child - immediately? 

Julia du Fresne

ANOTHER EXCHANGE WITH THE PARLIMENT PICNICKERS

Hahi Katorika 2:56pm Mar 13 Praise the Lord who spares the time for the poor.

2:56pm Mar 13

Thank you, Hahi. Praise the Lord, indeed.

Julia

I SUGGEST YOU STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW (comment on my post in Picnic at Parliment (sic))

Craig Malcolm Richardson commented on your post in Picnic at Parliment.

Craig Malcolm Richardson 7:24pm Mar 12 Julia Du Fresne Kynoch : So when Jesus asks you, when I was homeless, when I was naked, when I was hungry... are you going to interrupt him and say, " How bloody politically correct!" Family Life International is running the 40 Day Fast this Lent for abortion awareness Julia. So get involved with that and stop criticising people who are working for the common good in other areas. This initiative of Bishop John's is timely and prophetic. He is following the Pope's lead in challenging the oppressive greed of excessive capitalism. Bishop John more than you, probably witnesses the problems of poverty in New Zealand. I suggest you stick to what you know. We were told not to criticise in a reading for Mass recently.

AND MY REPLY:
 

               Thank you, Craig. I applaud your sentiments.  

               God bless 

               Julia

I'M SORRY, BUT I CAN'T SPARE THE TIME (My response to the Wgtn Catholic Archdiocesan Youth's invitation to join a picnic at Parliament)

Everyone's aware of inequality and poverty. The media cover these issues because they're politically correct. If you were raising awareness of the holocaust of aborted babies, which is discussed in the media about as much as the German press during the Third Reich discussed the Jewish holocaust, I'd be with you. But as things are, I'm sorry but I can't spare the time.

CHARLOTTE DAWSON WASN'T 'PRO-CHOICE', SHE WAS 'NO CHOICE' (Letter to the Dom Post, March 12)

Charlotte Dawson’s dead, but she won’t lie down. The media feeding frenzy continues, but what can we learn from it?

 

We’ve learned about her depression and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): her ‘battle with booze’, the ‘death threats and toxic Twitter brawls’, her suicide attempt, her feelings of betrayal. What the media still fail to mention is Charlotte’s own statement, in an interview in 2011, that her depression began with an abortion.

 

Like upwards of 80% of women who undergo abortion, Charlotte was not ‘pro-choice’ but ‘no-choice’: she felt coerced by her husband and his Olympian ambitions. Post-abortive women are 41 per cent more likely to suffer clinical depression and 65 per cent exhibit symptoms of PTSD. Addiction to alcohol is twice as likely to develop in women who’ve had an abortion. And Charlotte might well have been among the 33 per cent of post-abortive women who obsess about getting pregnant again - and who if they have other babies are much more likely to abuse or neglect them.

 

So, was her tragic death caused as the media would have us believe, by cyber-bullying? I don’t think so.

 

Julia du Fresne

I LIKE LENT. SORT OF.(First published in 'NZ Catholic', March 9)

Lent is here. O me miserum! No, seriously, I like Lent. Sort of.

It doesn’t help that here in the antipodes this liturgical season is opposed to its natural one, of autumn. These 40 days are graced for spring in the soul, for putting forth the fresh  leaves of new concepts of love, for opening up to warmer rays from the divine Sun.

Superpope Francis suggests imitating Christ who became poor to make us rich, adding, ‘No self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.’

Pardon me? Hurting’s not allowed. We’re not supposed to hurt others, although domestic violence, business bullies, cyber-bullies and abortions indicate more people are doing so than ever, and we mustn’t hurt ourselves either, although self-harm and suicide rates suggest the bandaid of self indulgence isn’t curing the necrotising fasciitis of secularism. Look where helping ourselves – to fast food and booze and a comfy sofa, for example, has got us. To endemic obesity, for a start.

Someone’s told me we shouldn’t fast without the guidance of a spiritual director - and who, she asked, was mine? ‘Fr Dubay,’ I said. I could have added ‘R I P’, but Thomas Dubay S M’s Fire Within is still my standby. Anyway, the requirement for all Christians to fast except the sick, elderly and very young surely means there aren’t enough spiritual directors to go round.

Our best guide in fasting is the Holy Spirit, sought and found in contemplative prayer, the fruit of which, says the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, is ‘high spiritual wisdom’. In Spiritual Letters, Abbot John Chapman calls it ‘mystical knowledge’, which ‘the saints regularly imply is to be … prayed for, aimed at by mortification and detachment’: as St Teresa remarks, ‘prayer and self indulgence do not go together’.

Like hurt, mortification and detachment get a bad press. So does humiliation. If I fast from coffee or wine, say, that’s scary. Specially when ‘im indoors knows, as he would, with Goody Two-Shoes sitting there glumly of an evening with a glass of water. Some might think I’m setting myself up for failure.  So what? Failure’s humiliating, but ‘the chosen (are tested) in the furnace of humiliation’ (Ecc 2, 5).

In accepting humiliations we get real. ‘Without me you can do nothing’ (Jn 15,5). That’s the reality, and we need to get a grip: ‘Only he who is humble is capable of really loving God and his neighbour’ (Fr Gabriel of S Mary Magdalen, OCD).

Contemplative prayer leads to fasting, which leads to almsgiving.  By sacrificing some luxury and giving its value to Caritas we’re enriched by Christ whom we resemble more closely, and by the Father who loves and befriends us to the degree that we resemble his Son.

 We’re investing in a celestial bank and what’s more, if we make our Lenten sacrifice wholeheartedly, we earn interest on our investment.

I guess Superpope knows a bargain when he sees one.

IT'S NOT THE BRAIN, ROSEMARY, IT'S THE SOUL (Letter to Dom Post, Feb 27)

I don’t live in a boarding house and on wet Sundays as well as dry I go to Mass, but I’d like to tell Rosemary McLeod (Those bullies ate Charlotte alive, Feb 27) it’s not the brain that determines what we really are, it’s the soul.

 

Julia du Fresne

DEBATING THE MERITS OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION (First published in 'NZ Catholic, Feb 23)

Two friends of mine at Christian Meditation, one Anglican, one Presbyterian, have asked could we meet to talk through my concerns with CM. As our conversation’s been delayed by holidays, please bear with me as I rehearse the evidence supporting my standpoint.

‘We must beware of error here, for the more closely we approximate to truth, the more we must be on guard against error.’ The Cloud of Unknowing, a seminal work often quoted by  CM’s John Main and Laurence Freeman, paradoxically contradicts their teaching, as do John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, Doctors of the Church. And although they mightn’t cut ice with my Protestant friends any more than with CM’s protagonists, when CM disagrees with the Magisterium I side with the latter.

‘The mantra’, says Ernest J Larkin, CM practitioner and Carmelite, ’silences the mind, emptying it of its contents.’ But Teresa says by trying to think of nothing ‘we shall end by driving ourselves silly’. John of the Cross advises that ‘contemplation is active while the soul is in idleness and unconcern.’ Benedictine Abbot John Chapman explains that chasing distractions detaches the will from God. Marist Thomas Dubay says, ‘The Buddhist has methods’ (identical to CM’s) ‘for voiding the mind, but we are not Buddhists. We are not producing a neutral state of awareness; we are receiving light and love from God, and there is a vast difference’.

’No one comes to contemplation,’ declares Bonaventure, another Doctor of the Church, ‘save through penetrating meditation, holy conversation and devout prayer.’ As Chapman attests, this is the way trodden by all the saints. It’s not a question of getting love, but of giving love, to God: ‘If anyone love me … we will come to him’ (Jn 14,23).

Contemplation isn’t to be had for the asking. Rare exceptions (Ss Paul, Augustine) prove the rule that it’s given by God only – according to Chapman – after ‘ good works, mortification … long hours of prayer (and) asceticism’. And in another argument which mightn’t weigh heavily with Protestants, the Cloud says contemplation’s not granted to ‘the apprentice … before they have cleansed their conscience of all their past sins, according to the ordinary rules of Holy Church’, and is only ‘for everyone who has truly and deliberately forsaken the world.’

All of which helps explain the phenomenon of CM. It looks like a short cut but the danger of short cuts is, they can lead travellers astray. Psychologists, including the Christian Carl Jung, warn of ambush: if energy ejected by the mantra disappears from the conscious mind it surfaces in the unconscious, with unfortunate results for the emotionally unstable.

Well then, how do we pray?  

As Chapman says, ‘The best kind of prayer is when we throw ourselves on God and stay contentedly before Him; worried, anxious, tired, listless but above all humbled and abandoned to his will, content with our discontent. If we can get ourselves accustomed to this attitude of soul, we have learned how to pray’.