“When perfect love has driven out fear, or fear has been transformed into love, then everything that has been saved will be a unity growing together through the one and only Fullness, and everyone will be, in one another, a unity in the perfect Dove, the Holy Spirit."
- Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, 15 ("When perfect love . . ." Open your heart to
receive.) |
Col 1:9-14; Ps 98:2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6 Lk 5:1-11 While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God,
he was standing by the Lake of
Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he
asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
"Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch."
Simon said in reply,
"Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets."
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat
to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats
so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
"Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."
For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized
him
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men."
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.
Reflection on the Scriptures
(Today's Gospel). . . the story of Peter and his friends who are fishermen by
family, training and geographical location by the Sea of Galilee. These men know the work of gathering fish to sell and eat, but Jesus uses their gifts and training to invite them to a new work – if they will do it as God asks, in God’s time and God’s place. This particular will also includes the important work of reconciliation – Peter recognizes in the Love expressed by Jesus, that he is a sinful person. But Jesus not only brings Peter into the circle of his deep and personal love,
he applies his background and training of fishing to the work of the Father. From now on these men will serve as “fishers of human persons” by preaching the good news. By his witness, other persons discover God’s love and live according to God’s desire. These apostles were very successful at this work – even outside of time and place – because they did it for Jesus and the Father. The Spirit empowered them with this capacity. Ignatius tells us that doing the Father’s Will in our lives is the most important thing we can possibly do. We will be successful (according to God’s definition) if we seek the knowledge of God’s will both general and particular through prayer and gratitude for
God’s attention to us. I pray today that Paul’s words will challenge me to seek, and that Jesus’ invitation will continue to ring in my ear and my heart as I constantly rediscover what I am “for” in this world. Why was I
born? To do the Father’s Will. And so were you.
-by Eileen Burke-Sullivan
St. John of the Cross and the Beginning of Contemplation by James Arraj From St. John of the Cross and Dr. C. J. Jung, Part II, Chapter 3. Inner Growth Books, 1986.
St. John, although he asks for a complete and penetrating detachment from all that is not God Himself, does not consider it a work of human effort
alone. What is given up is replaced by something better. The giving up of temporal and worldly desires takes place under the advent of spiritual desires and experiences which more than make up for them, and later, the giving up of these spiritual desires is the prelude to the beginning of contemplation and is caused by the advent of this new experience.
This spiritual program leading to divine union is based on a number of premises which St. John derived from the scholastic philosophy he was trained in and applied to the life of prayer: "The cause of
this darkness is attributable to the fact that - as the scholastic philosophers say - the soul is like a tabula rasa (a clean slate) when God infuses it into the body, so that it would be ignorant without the knowledge it receives through its senses, because no knowledge is communicated to it from any other source. Accordingly, the presence of the soul in the body resembles the presence of a prisoner in a dark dungeon, who knows no more than what he manages to behold through the windows
of his prison and has nowhere else to turn if he sees nothing through them. For the soul, naturally speaking, possesses no means other than the senses (the windows of its prison) of perceiving what is communicated to it."(2) The
conclusion to this line of reasoning is that if a man denies what comes through his senses, his soul would be in darkness and empty, and though a man must sense, if he desires not to do so, he attains the same effect as if he did not sense at all. The reason why the mortification of desire is so important is that a disordered desire creates a likeness between the person and what he desires, "For love effects a likeness between the lover and the object loved."(3) If a person has inordinate desires for things other than God, he or she becomes made over in their likeness and cannot be made in the likeness of God. This dual affection cannot exist because two contraries cannot coexist in one person; darkness which
is affection set upon creatures and light which is God are contrary to each other. St. John's conclusion is that if a man becomes like the limited object of his desire, he cannot realize his potential to be transformed into the
likeness of the infinite God, for such transformation demands that the will of man be completely in accord with the will of God, and any voluntary imperfection is enough to create an obstacle to this transformation. This doctrine forms the general context to the beginning of contemplation and the rationale underlying the "dark night (the mortification of the appetites and the denial of pleasure in all things) for the attainment of the divine union with
God."(4)
|
|
