Another Visit with the Spiritual Da

The spiritual da and anam cara turned 88 on the Feast of St. Nicholas. The hermit visited him the day after, as the sisters (where he is chaplain) would not appreciate the hermit's intrusion on the day in which some of them might expect him to eat in the dining hall, with them.

So the hermit arrived, bearing a few edible gifts, and a consumable book by the Carthusians, When Silence Is Praise, as well as the writings on detachment, by A Carthusian.

We conversed for 3 1/2 hours on the matters of God and the soul. We spoke of detachment and ordered love and applied to possibilities in our own souls for testing and improving ordered love. We discussed deeply, placing the thoughts along side relevant Scripture, the concept of the soul, the genderless soul in nothingness, nesting within the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What did it mean and how is it done and what changes in view and reality evolve?

The da mentioned that many would not comprehend what is meant by "become" or "becoming", by one actually existing within the Sacred Heart--that some would think it is as the new age purports. But this is not new age, yet it is agreed that one must be very careful as to who one, if with anyone else, would describe this state of soul.

We likened it to the embryo who is not perfect but within the womb, nourished and all wastes purified by the mother, cells created by God by means of both mother and father, and of these but yet not these. The existence is symbiotic.

Now, it would seem that the embryo gains all from the mother, is totally dependent. Well, it is dependent; but the relationship is symbiotic because both the soul and Christ, the Sacred Heart, benefit from each other.

How does Christ benefit from the soul? From our very dependency, from our being one in Him, by our existence within in Heart. Nesting within His Heart, we learn to function in all aspects through, with and in Him. Besides, as a mother benefits from her baby in utero, Jesus is delighted with a soul secured in His Sacred Heart. Jesus benefits by our being His and His alone--such as we are!

It is hard to comprehend, all this. And yet after the hours of describing and discerning and laying it all out, even getting into the aspects of how a soul thus is cleansed and nourished in supernatural ways by His Blood, and when the Heart of Jesus became Sacred, at what point (when He was pierced), and that the Blood and Water carries significance to the soul nesting within His Heart, and on and on--the da asked another question.

"This seems all very, very good and true. Why have I not considered this before? Why have I not heard of this? Why has this not be explained or written?"

The hermit responded, "It probably has. Maybe we just never comprehended it before."

Yes, we felt that was surely it. And he wondered also why he had not considered the notion of the "genderless soul", for it made sense to him how it thus could be that a priest could then easily love Jesus, to also be a Bride of Christ. The gender of his maleness as the outercovering of his soul on this earth, no longer stood in the way, for it was by his genderless soul that he could be Christ's Bride.

"How will it be simple or easy to exist in the Sacred Heart?" he asked at one point in the discussion. Well, no matter when it is that the soul deeply comprehends that we ARE in the Sacred Heart, not perfect, but that Jesus DESIRES us to be in His Heart, and to view and experience and be taken in all manner from within His Heart, to what He views and experiences and where He goes, there then will be some effort involved on the part of the soul. But it is a pleasant--a beautiful and joyous and peaceful--effort! The soul is as a baby learning a new world, a new existence, and there may be some falls, but the baby does not mind and keeps striving. As in a child going to school for the first time or an adult beginning a new job, it might seem like more effort at first, but after a truly short while, the soul who comprehends its nesting within the Sacred Heart becomes accustomed to the relationship, the union, the seeing and sensing and experiencing all as Jesus does. It becomes, truly, first-nature--not second-nature. Our other-than-God experience is second-nature, for the soul is created to be united in God.

Yes, in this sense of St. Paul exclaiming that it is not he who lives but Christ living, the genderless soul in its nothingness, nesting in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is no longer itself but has turned into that Heart of all Beingness and Love.

Not perfect, but detached enough from all that is not God, in ordered love, so as to not be incongruous with Jesus' Heart. The growth continues, but the soul is not cast out as long as it continues the awareness and veritable acceptance that, yes, its genderless soul is in truth no longer outside but is inside the Sacred Heart. All else matters not, for the view, the breathless breathing, the very intellect and will, becomes one in Christo.