If We Knew...

Unlearning the World

'The true Christian is ever dying while he lives...

Day by day he unlearns the love of this world and the desire of its praise; he can bear to belong to the nameless family of God, and to seem to the world strange in it and out of place, for so he is.

And when Christ comes at last, blessed indeed will be his lot.  He has joined himself from the first to the conquering side; he has risked the present against the future, preferring the chance of eternity to the certainty of time...

His reward will be but beginning, when that of the children of this world is come to an end.'

Cardinal John Henry Newman

Painting: Julian Falat

This is a repost from our archives. It is linked to Reconciled to You and Theology is a Verb for 'It's Worth Revisiting Wednesday.'

The World For Which I Was Born

I was recently reminded of something a friend wrote to me some years ago. 'Sitting in a monastery of nuns,' this woman said in a letter, 'I knew I didn't belong in their life and yet I didn't belong out in the world either. The closer you get to His Heart, the farther you get from everything else, which is really as it should be... I felt that the problem with being in the world is that so often you are distracted from loving Him, which is all I want to do. When you are in the monastery, everything reminds you of Him no matter what chore you are presently doing. But His will is mine, so wherever He wants me is what I really want too. What I fear is taking Him for granted and becoming lukewarm.'

My friend's fear is one I know well. Taking Him for granted. Becoming lukewarm. How I wish I could say these things have never happened to me, but I cannot. Lukewarmness can seem normal, even cozy, and I sometimes find myself settling down in it and feeling right at home. Being distracted from things of God doesn't seem like such a problem then, when the world around feels eternal and entrancing and like it must be the forever-world-for-which-I-was-born.

But the truth is: the world around is not The-Forever-World-For-Which-I-Was-Born. 'God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in Heaven.' The Baltimore Catechism said it well.

'When you are in the monastery,' wrote my friend, 'everything reminds you of Him.' While monks or nuns enclosed inside walls are not yet in the Forever-World, they live twenty four hours a day inside a reflection of it. Their time is entirely spent on the pathway to Home. They wash dishes on that path. They do laundry on that path. They eat and sleep and garden and pray and laugh and sing on that path. They live in an entrance foyer to Heaven, and everything around reminds them of where they're headed and for Whom they were made.

As a laywoman in the world, I too am called to the pathway. But mine is not so clearly marked. I have no monastic schedules to keep me on the trail. I don't spend every moment of every day with a community of people all focusing in the same direction. If I listen to friends or co-workers or celebrities who don't know or accept why God made them, I can even lose sight of my own awareness of the truth.

Probably this is why some of us can feel more at home in a monastery than in the world.
Because really - we are.


(When I start to lose sight of my real pathway, I am helped by what several saints have had to say about this kind of thing.  A few of their exhortations can be found by clicking here.)


Painting: Jan van Helmont

But Then...

Am I Living in Denial?

Among my recently uncovered treasures from a friend, I found the following. It was written in 2000 and later edited a bit: 

I believe God is calling us to wake up and stop wasting any of the moments of His precious gift of life. We live in an anesthetized society, a society in deep denial of the fact that each of us was made to live according to the will of God.

All around us are people in a stupor, and we are affected by it - for how could we not be? Yet we are called to be like the saints gone before us: the ones who escaped from their societal denial and used their allotment of time for God.

As we enter a new millenium, we must walk in the footsteps of the saints. There is no more time to waste, no more time to walk with one foot in the world and one in the will of God. We must decide. 

A pretty serious call? You bet. If we're serious about following Christ, we are invited to follow in the footsteps of those who, in their own times, were not popular. Oh, the saints are admired now, when we read about them in books. They're well loved on days when we wear green and celebrate a bit of Irish blood in our veins. But the fact is, and we all know it, that the saints were never very popular in their own times. Why? Because they were those who worked to call their societies out of denial. 

As those who live in the world rather than in actual physical cloisters, we live in an atmosphere of denial. The great lie is that this earth and our time upon it is the only important thing, and that what we get out of life is all that really counts. 

How much of this have I bought into? 

What is the motivation behind the things I do with my minutes and hours?

Am I about loving God, serving others, working to increase the population of heaven?

Am I primarily pursuing my own comforts, interests, gains or status - perhaps telling myself that I'm not doing so even as I do so?

What is the focus of my life? 

If I knew that Our Lord was coming for me for me tomorrow, would this knowledge alter my activities today?

Perhaps it's time for me to talk with Christ about some of these things.

Through the Shadows

'It is impossible to look upon the Divinity and not to love it. However, 

here below we do not see it, but only have a glimpse of it 

through the shadows of faith, seeing as in a mirror.'

St. Francis de Sales

Painting by Rodolfo Amoedo (digitally altered)

Finally, That Country

'The present life is given to us only to earn eternal life. If we forget this, we tend to concentrate all our affections on the things of this world, where we are but birds of passage... Believe me, if we want to live as happy pilgrims, we must always have in our hearts the hope of finally reaching that country where we will settle down forever. But at the same time we must believe, and believe with all our hearts (this is a most sacred truth!) that God keeps a loving eye on us as we walk toward Him, and never lets anything happen to us that is not for our greater good.'

St. Francis de Sales

Eye Has Not Seen...

"Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)

It is Easter, and thoughts have turned toward heavenly things. Dark has been overcome by Light. Life has conquered death. Truth has shattered lies.

Looking around the world in which we live, however, we might be starting to wonder. We see so much darkness. Death appears to win more battles than we care to think about. Shoving truth aside, lies strut around proud and haughty and apparently triumphant. Just imagine there's no heaven, we were told in song forty years ago; imagine no hell. And that, it seems, is precisely what the world has been doing - imagining that this life is all there is.

I would like to spend the next few weeks looking through the grillwork, considering how various ideas do or do not line up with what is "on our grille."  I find the world's current view of eternity (for instance) quite obvious. It's hard to miss that view if we have read a newspaper lately, or turned on a TV.  The world, as a whole, appears to be imagining that there are no consequences whatsoever for the choices we make.

But what do Scripture and Church teaching have to say on the matter?

It is only through reading the Bible and authentic teachings of the Church that we shall ever find the "view through the grille."

"Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself." (Philippians 3:20-21)

"Blest are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of slander against you because of Me. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven." (Matthew 5:10-11)

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father Who is in heaven." Matthew 7:21

"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."  Matthew 10:28

"By virtue of our apostolic authority, we define the following: According to the general disposition of God the souls of all the saints... and other faithful who died after receiving Christ's holy Baptism... already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgement... have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels." (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1023)

"Let us never forget the sublime end of man, which is to be happy forever in a blessed eternity." (St. John Bosco)


Text not in quotes© 2015 Nancy Shuman. 
thecloisteredheart.org     

Painting: Louis Janmot, Poème de l'âme, in US public domain due to age {PD-US}

Unlearning Love of the World

'The true Christian is ever dying while he lives... he has no work but making his peace with God, and preparing for the judgement.... 

Day by day he unlearns the love of this world and the desire of its praise; he can bear to belong to the nameless family of God, and to seem to the world strange in it and out of place, for so he is.  

And when Christ comes at last, blessed indeed will be his lot.  He has joined himself from the first to the conquering side; he has risked the present against the future, preferring the chance of eternity to the certainty of time...

His reward will be but beginning, when that of the children of this world is come to an end.'

Cardinal John Henry Newman

Painting:  Anton Laupheimer Schreibender, Mönch; in US public domain due to age

Full of Eternity

'Time is full of eternity.  
As we use it, 
so shall we be. 
Every day 
has its opportunities, 
every hour
its offer of grace.'

Cardinal Henry Manning, 1883







Painting: Jaroslav Spillar Familie aus dem Chodenland, 1900, detail

You are invited to leave a comment in the 'Parlor'

O Truth, Fatherland of Exiles

Let a person "treat transitory things as passing, as necessary for the moment; let him cling to eternal things with an enduring desire.  Give me such a man, I say, and I will boldly call him wise, because he recognizes things for what they really are... I ask in tears, how long shall we scent and not taste, seeing our Homeland far off, not possessing it but sighing for it.  O Truth, fatherland of exiles, end of their exile!  I see you, but imprisoned in flesh, I may not enter.... Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church and our Lord, God be blessed forever." - St. Bernard of Clairvaux

St. Bernard, ora pro nobis

Painting: Wilhelm Bernatzik, Vision of St. Bernard