More Challenges to Holy Peace; and Detachment by A Carthusian

The hermit, in the immensity of silence and rest, more distinctly detects the challenges to holy peace--that peace which the Lord bestowed now some ten weeks ago.

Yes, the comment has been made to the hermit that the peace is "for now", and that it might not last; but this from an active soul who does not comprehend that bestowed holy peace does not depart. However, it can be challenged, and if the peace-filled soul does not guard the rampart, the peace can be assaulted and seemingly diminished, with wounded, weakened effect. This is not God's doing, but by the negligence of a doubting or distracted soul.

Thus far, as has been written, the peace is challenged by the world, by the hermit's editing the novel for an "assignee" who struggles with vice. Not only was love required as the bulwark to restore the inner peace, but also love was required in action--in confronting the novelist with the unholiness of his characters, and that they must not be left in "Babylon", but must be fleshed out and delivered through words, into the "three conversions". To this, the hermit has finally convinced the writer to read Pere Garrigou-Lagrange's life-altering book, The Three Conversions of the Spiritual Life. It is all love--to pray, to act, to speak, to write in love. It is love that counters the challenges to holy peace.

Another challenge came, as was written, with the effort in being hospitable to a child; and this might be a challenge for the hermit to host any guests, for one must become selfless in doing so. It is expended effort, after all, of a physical nature, and when illness or other suffering is part of the hermit's existence, chronically so, the effort is all the more demanding. But what is of greatest need is the selflessness required, and of seeing the self as Christ making the effort, of Christ greeting and hosting the guest or guests. It is thus, Christ's suffering body getting up in the middle of the night to comfort a crying baby, Christ's virtue of patience being called to the front lines of a child's testiness, Christ's love of souls which smiles and greets guests and listens and encourages and challenges and does whatever necessary to uplift souls who come either in person or on the phone or over internet.

The hermit was waiting for yet another type of challenge to holy peace, and this was anticipated in human suffering. So a higher level of physical pain arrived in the hermit's body Saturday night, and the hermit burned as an immolation of fiery pain all night. The form of love required to endure was a loving submission to the pain, of being Christ lying on the cross (in a comfortable bed made not so comfortable by the physical suffering), of being Christ praying "Thy will be done" and "unto Thee, O God, I commend my spirit." Submission, surrender to God, yes, is an antidote to the challenges to holy peace.

But yet another challenge to holy peace came in a surprise package after Mass. The hermit always greets, as do others, the priest, and this with a handshake, for the priest has always shaken the hermit's hand and exchanged a few words, or the hermit has at times, if others not around, been able to ask a question or share some aspect of struggle in the hermit's spiritual life, and gain guidance in a quick exchange. This time, the hermit reached out the hand in gesture to shake the other's hand, and the priest kept his hand clenched in partial fist, tight up against the purple Advent robe or mantle. Not knowing how to respond, the hermit instinctively thrust out the hand once more, as if to say, "shake hands"--in confusion as to this uncertain non-response.

So the priest did, then, shake hands. And the brief exchange of words was met with affect of nervous stutter and laughter, and a drifting motion down the aisle, like a babbling brook awkwardly gliding away. It was odd, but the hermit dismissed it as an elderly woman appeared who needed a ride home on this night of an ice storm, requiring focused driving. But as the hermit and the woman (and her walker) slowly ambled the aisle to exit, the hermit noticed the priest quite calmly conversing with others.

During the night, perhaps every hour or so, the hermit was suffered to be shown in inner sight, a close-up of the priest's clenched hand, tight up against the purple Advent mantle, smooth-fleshed, skin-white, and immovable just above the waist.

The repetitive nature of this cropped version would not depart, and the hermit's holy peace was challenged in a different way. What did this mean? And then the hermit reflected upon the nervousness, the gliding away--the sense of rejection in such a subtle and otherwise insignificant exchange. But the Lord desired the hermit to ponder this, and to not forget, as the view was repeated over and over.

So the hermit did reflect, and the reflection was an annoyance to the hermit, for it seemed not peaceful. It required self-examination, and while the hermit considered possibilities, such as the priest not wanting to shake hands due to germs, the nervousness added to the scene, and the babbling repetition of what the hermit had said, or that it was just incidental.

Love, once more, is the required response. In charity, the hermit will think of the other's comfort zone and not intrude. Considering the cleric is the hermit's confessor, and the confessor is not available for confession regularly, considered that the message was intended by God to stir the hermit out of peace enough to speak the message.

Had the hermit become attached to this confessor? Yes, the hermit reflected that the confessor was the most beneficial the hermit had ever experienced, but in ways of virtues, particularly meekness. Also, the confessor exhibited the quiet and gentleness, the affect of the hermit's late father, and of the hermit's spiritual da, and these qualities are ones the hermit aspires to in equanimity of spirit, in smoothness and a kind of graceful calm: Unruffled by intrusions--intrusions into holy peace!

The Lord, however, desires holy indifference and spiritual detachment. The hermit thus concluded that in this case, the jabs at holy peace were helpful jabs in order to bring a fault to the fore. The antidote in love, then, includes self-correction--a charity to the soul.

The hermit concluded that the need for weekly confession is a good one; and the hermit would therefore go to whatever confessor (bar one who is sadly tainted with new age ideologies). If the regular confessor is available, fine. If not, fine. Challenges to inner peace can be due to impurities and imperfections within the soul itself--or just not doing quite what God desires in varying details that slither by the soul's exterior awareness.

Thus, it was a joy and restoration when the hermit happened to be reading last night from They Speak by Silences by A Carthusian--a selection on "True Detachment."

Too often people imagine that Christian detachment consists in loving nothing. This is terribly wrong. Never has there been a heart more loving than the heart of Jesus, and our hearts should be modelled on His. To love is the great, indeed the only, commandment. "This is the first commandment...thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart...and they neighbor." There you have the whole Gospel, the whole of God, Who is Love itself. Love yes, but an ordered love, which is a living and communicating force, capable of immolating everything that prevents it from giving itself.

And this immolation to Love of all that is not love is what we call detachment. Detachment, then, is the negative side of attachment (or love). It is detachment which 'sets in order' our loves....He has set in order charity in me. The God of Love, living in a soul, causes it to love all other beings, in so far as they participate in Him, Who is Being. The soul must love them as God loves them--that is to say, in the same way as God gives Himself to them. It is this gift of Infinite Being to a finite being that gives it life, and is the measure of our love. Our love, measured by God himself and by what we find of Him in His works, is an ordered love. This being so, there must be no attachments which are not in conformity with this rule. If the soul finds any such within itself, it does not suppress them, it disciplines them. This idea of order is at the root of everything. Detachment is the condition of order, just as order is the condition of love. And that is why it can be said that detachment is 'ordered love.'

The hermit must ponder these truths. The busy cleric, then must be approached in ordered love, as an assignment much as Pinnochio was an assignment of the Blue Fairy, in that Pinnochio was brought to actualization. Is this not the work of love in souls? But it must be not an attached work but one of ordered love, of giving life through love of the beingness in others that is in God. The hermit must learn to approach all souls as approaching Christ Who is in them.

Ordered love must approach softly, gently, in God's time, and with ordered perception of the other. Yes, this too is the way in which we must approach our own souls and to ensure the ordered protection of the loving, holy peace bestowed by God.

[Later, the hermit did practice this approach to the cleric, and even mentioned that the cleric probably did not notice the clenched hand and the hermit forcing a response. No, the cleric had not noticed, but the hermit was able to express what has been learned, and of how one must approach others as if approaching Christ. The Lord wants attention to be on Him, and only to see Him in others, and to treat Him through others, in charity.]