Skills for the Contemplative Disciple (Part I of III)

Skills for the Contemplative Disciple (Part I of III)

In my last discussion on stages of spiritual growth, there was some confusion and even controversy. I am sorry that, in my passion, I contributed to that. I respect the work “Forming Intentional Disciples” and want to invite you to consider some additional ideas.
–Mary Gannon Kaufmann

Lorrenne, an 85-year-old friend and area evangelist, who I run into every morning at 6 AM in the adoration chapel, was thumbing through the book she wrote about her family’s experiences of God. With her beautifully coiffured white hair and twinkle in her hazel eyes she said, “You know I have a family member who has always disliked me. Maybe she’s jealous of the closeness I had with my brother. For example, one day she invited me over to her house and proceeded to tell me how much she disliked each of my kids. When she finished blasting my family, I shut my mouth that had dropped open in disbelief and hurried to my car. It was like that over and over throughout the years. When she would come to my mind, I would try to capture that thought and release it to God, or I would stew in resentment. I prayed for her, whether I felt like it or not; and whenever we pray for our enemies, she always came to mind, that is until one day recently, I saw that my heart was changed. Last weekend I caught a glimpse of her sitting alone in the pew at Mass and an amazing thought came over me. I was aghast when I thought, ‘She really is beautiful!’ I was loving her way above what I could muster myself from my own human acts. God was showing me that my life was a journey and that He had honored my simple human choices to try to love and lead me to deeper communion and relationship with Him.”

Lorrenne’s experience reveals to us, and our parishes, that disciples grow when they receive guidance to cultivate holiness in the ordinary circumstances of life. When we grow in contemplative connection with God, we grow in holiness ourselves and become captivating evangelists of others, for they experience the love of Jesus through us.

In Renewing the Renewal: A Firestorm in the Catholic Church, Renée Alda Marazon says “that growth can only happen if parishes agree to be transformed into schools of spiritual growth, development and learning with the goals for holiness, prayer and communion with each other.”[i] To accomplish this ourselves and in our parishes, Alda describes that “each of us will need continual reminders of how love thinks, how love speaks, how love acts, as evidenced by the life of Jesus, the Master lover.”[ii] We have to share our stories, like Lorrenne, sometimes stories of working with our own shortcomings, and the power of transformation that comes from our simple human choices or intentions to love, made over again. We have to be “moved beyond [ourselves] into greater depths of divine love…which results in an inward transformation of wholeness and integration and an outward life of holiness, a life of increasing love of God and neighbor.”[iii]

We need good models, holy witnesses for this, and to see that, when we actively cultivate the spiritual life of prayer, it is not only for our own growth in holiness. Others benefit, for we become “instrumental in the holy transformation of God’s people, transformation that always results in missioned action in the world.”[iv] Take the lives of contemplatives, Saint John of the Cross and Venerable Concepción Cabrera, whose writings we will explore in the next posts. Their relationship with God wrought “their inward transformation that resulted in an outward life of extraordinary impact on the world.”[v] St. John of the Cross reformed the Carmelite order and founded the Discalced Carmelites, while Venerable Concepción started the Five Works of the Cross which included two lay associations, an order of cloistered religious, an order of priests and a fraternity for priestly formation. In baptism, we each receive a similar summons for contemplative union with God, the “acorn of faith” that Father Garrigou-Lagrange, O. P. asserted can grow into a great oak tree in each of us if we grow in union with God.

To bring our lives of faith to completion while we more fully realize our humanity in the process, as disciples, we have to understand how to encounter the living and utterly transcendent God. In the next post, we will explore the process of contemplative growth, the “Seasons of the Soul” according to Venerable Concepción, an awareness that can spark evangelizing holiness. When we understand the “seasons of growth” we can better persevere in prayer and address our human foibles in the light of grace.

Contemplative disciples, which can include each of us if we learn to cultivate an active life of prayer, are called to pray and reach God from the borders of their humanness, to love others when we don’t know how we can, like Lorrenne.   As the late Father Ignacio Navarro Alfaro, M.Sp.S., a biographer of Venerable Concepción, wrote in Conchita’s Spiritual Journey: The Great Stages, “Only a greater love is able to surpass our human limits and achieve continued heroism.”[vi] “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13), the necessary formation for today’s disciple.

Lorrenne Mulherin’s
“A Servant’s Prayer”

Jesus, My Jesus…How marvelous your ways…Far more splendid than my mind can envision.
What an honor to be chosen by you.
A lowly child I am, but empowered by the Holy Spirit to fulfill the great hope to which you have called me.
I give myself totally to you, Lord. Take my imperfect heart and make it perfect. Peel away the hardness.
Close the doors I have opened to the temptations of this world.
Gently remove the roots of painful memories, sins, doubts and fears.
Discard anything that separates me from you.
Lord, fill the emptiness with the light of your love that I might be a beacon calling the lost back to you.
To love as you love…
To serve as you serve…
To heal as you heal…
To forgive as you forgive…
always mindful of my nothingness while doing great and marvelous things in your name and for your glory.
This I pray, Jesus, in your name.
Amen.

August 12, 1985

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[i] Alda Marazon, Renée, Renewing the Renewal: A Firestorm in the Catholic Church, Renée Alda Marazon, MAPS for Life: Perrysburg, Ohio, 2004, p. 72.

[ii] Ibid, 80.

[iii] Heath, Elaine, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2008, p. 16.

[iv] Ibid, 15.

[v] Ibid, 15.

[vi] Navarro Alfaro, Ignacio, M.Sp.S., Conchita’s Spiritual Journey: The Great Stages, St Pauls, Staten Island, NY, 2010, p.xii.

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Art/Photography:  Lorrenne Mulherin and Venerable Concepción Cabrera de Armida both used with permission.  Detail from Landscape with Christ and his Disciples on the Road to Emmaus, Jan Wildens, 1640s, PD-US; St. John of the Cross, Francisco de Zurbarán, 1656, PD-US; Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P. (France 1877 – Rome 1964), Lex.mercurio, [Dominicans: 1877 births] 1900, PD-old; all Wikimedia Commons.