Despite pop belief Satan is very quiet

There's not much left for him to do. Like people who cannot stop being self cutters, the people of the world have messed things up in so many thousands of ways, continually, that the big guy is laying low, and has been for years now. Even the jinn are not so busy because so many humans have in their arrogance "appointed" themselves to those roles. Humans have really pushed Satan out of a "job," ha, in their manic pursuit of disbelief, distortion and depravity. When people pray to St. Michael to guard them against the "snares of the devil," all St. Michael can do is raise his eyebrows (so to speak) as he sees Satan lying low and the only snares are those humans continue to set for themselves, snares that will cost them their lives, their health, their loved ones, their sanity and ultimately their salvation.

Spiritual direction: reverence for the Infant Jesus

I spent a little time this afternoon and evening printing some holy cards on my new little Canon Selphy printer. I've not had a working printer for a quite a long while so I've had a backlog of longing to have printed visual art, especially antique holy card art. Some of my favorites are those that depict the Infant Jesus. I have one of him sitting in his bed of straw, holding out his little hands, with a prayer. Another one shows infant angels opening the door of the tabernacle from which the Infant Jesus emerges. I love that one!

There used to be many holy cards depicting reverence for the Infant Jesus. The best known shrine images of the Infant Jesus are Infant Jesus of Prague and Niño de Atocha (honoring the apparition of the Infant Jesus who miraculously fed and gave water to starving prisoners in Spain). But for the most part until recently Christians had a very prayerful attentiveness and tenderness toward not just the grown man Jesus, but also for the Infant Jesus. The holy card art work by Catholics is one way to monitor and observe this attentiveness.

I've often mentioned that one of the things I am most fond of regarding the Qur'an is that it records the fact that the Infant Jesus could and did speak for himself. And the Gospel records how Jesus spoke for himself and taught at the Temple of Jerusalem as a child around the age of twelve.

Grown men carried Infant Jesus holy cards and venerated his memory. But today we have that overall deterioration of respect for life and love for infants so that not only is it hard to recall the memory of the divine Infant Jesus, human babies themselves are aborted, abused and devalued. Instead of a treasure many pre-born and born babies are an inconvenience and a punching bag, even being sexually assaulted in their own families.

It is pointless to argue which came first, the abuse of infants or the deterioration of the veneration of the Infant Jesus, since they are a coupling of part of the overall pattern of the coarsening and anti-life depressive and angry stance of the world as a whole. But I need to point this out since fewer and fewer people are old enough to remember the times I speak about in this blog and my postings.

People who are not overcome with wonder at the Infant Jesus are certainly not likely to be full with the rapt love that their own human infants deserve. I think Lent is an appropriate time to ponder this in addition to pondering the sacrifice of the grown Lord, Jesus Christ.

I wish to make another point. In apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is known that the most rarefied and delicate honor given by Mary to the holy person to whom she appeared was visions of the Infant Jesus, by himself, held by her or sometimes actually given to the holy person to hold. St. Anthony of Padua was so honored with actually being given the vision of the Infant Jesus to hold. The best gift that Mary can give a human is to share the love and veneration that she felt herself for the Holy Infant Jesus. Mary does not appear to be an oracle to future wealth and power, or to show off the wonder of heaven for those who merit eternal life in the presence of God. She always points to Jesus and always teaches how to see Jesus through her eyes, and perceive even a portion of the love she has through her God given fullness of grace. Mary was infused with the Holy Spirit, and that did not leave her upon the baby Jesus being birthed. Mary continued to be the human ark that had held the Infant Jesus. She continues to have perfect love, knowledge and understanding of how to love the Savior, and her perspective is so full and perfect that humans can only hope for a fraction of what she feels. But it is there for anyone with the open heart and comprehension to claim.

This is another way you can easily depict phony prophets who claim Marian apparitions. Mary never appears or speaks without an infusion of her fullness of pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ. Words that fakes pen to supposedly represent "messages" that they have receive from Mary fall like the rusty bits of metal that they are, since they are not infused with love of the Infant Jesus, which is Mary's true hallmark.

I'd like to see people include in their homes a depiction of the Infant Jesus year around, and not only during the Christmas holiday when the Nativity scene is displayed. It is for humans' own good since they cannot recover love for their own innocent children without recalling that it was as an Infant that Jesus entered and lived day to day within the physical world of earth. This is also a great help for those who suffer from spiritual aridity and/or a darkness of the soul. Many of the great saints pondered and loved the memory of the Infant Jesus and gained great refreshment. People are so power and message oriented nowadays and that is like choking on dirty dust. Reconnecting with the love of the Infant Jesus is like rediscovering the goodness of life and regaining refreshment and restoration of the soul (along with one's own humanity).

I hope this helps.

Spiritual director: Topic- aridity, dark night of soul

People continue to discuss the decades long, extensive spiritual aridity experienced by Mother Theresa of Calcutta as revealed in her recently published letters. I’ve blogged on this before, pointing out that prayer life and communion with God requires time and, yes, leisure, lest it be stifled by a one hundred percent absorption in the suffering of humanity. People say they want to be like Jesus, yet forget that he spent a rich amount of his time in prayer, teaching and ministry to those other than the most afflicted. Like compassion fatigue, experienced by social workers, law enforcement, rescue workers and so forth, one cannot and should not think they are able to be 100 percent immersed in the deepest suffering of humanity. A wise, loving and concerned spiritual director (as I am) would gently help such a person to explore their real motivations to relentlessly immerse in the most unmitigated suffering at the total expense of some of the spiritual compensations of the pleasure of life. It is almost like trying to “out do Jesus Christ at being Jesus Christ.” Even the great Prophets of old did not spend 100 percent of their time screaming at and cursing out the incredibly vile sinners of the day. They prophesied when ordered to by God, but also spent time being husbands, fathers and members of their community and enjoying the extent of life so much as the circumstances of the time allowed. I myself tire of what seems like the constant scolding I seem to be delivering in my blogs. While they take only a small percentage of my actual average day’s time, they take a vast amount of my spiritual resources, which could be spent teaching and preaching the love of the Lord and the attendant mysteries and joys. However, when there is exceptional risk of the direst consequences, as there are nowadays, after decades of people who should have known better who soft shoe the consequences of depravity and sin, then one finds oneself shouting quite a bit. So Mother Theresa was sucked into the quagmire of 100 percent immersion in the deepest suffering of humankind. As spiritual director to her I would have questioned why she felt that she was superhuman in that regard.

Today, though, I want to advise my readers about another reason for her spiritual aridity and indeed for the often quoted “dark nights of the soul” that certain saints documented. First, remember, that just because someone is a saint does not mean they never made a mistake and that their example is 100 percent accurate to follow. Christians who seek to be holy-and who seek a personal relationship with Jesus Christ-are vulnerable to a particular temptation. They frequently fall into the temptation of not only expecting an “answer” from Jesus (a sign, dialogue, or better yet, a miracle) but they fall into the temptation of trying to force or trigger a dialogue. Now I’m saying this kindly, but with concern because people do not realize they are doing this. Temptation is always a very subtle thing, and it is often wrapped in the garb of “good intentions” and “spirituality.” Everyone knows that the devil is the master of warping and twisting good intentions. But people are quite good at doing it all on their own, and it all comes back to that problem of pride instead of humility. For example, most Muslims I know would never dream of hoping to “hear” from Allah when they pray. It has become a peculiarly Christian temptation to expect a personal relationship and dialogue with Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Catholics seem to suffer from it because of their understandable joy in reading about the lives of saints who did receive communion of communication with the Lord. Evangelicals Protestants, Pentecostals, and certain denominations suffer from it when they have an expectation of dialogue based on acceptance of Jesus (and or the Holy Spirit) into their lives. Someone who is in your life talks to you, no, especially if you have dedicated your life to Jesus? So there is an unreasonable expectation by many Christians that they will have communication interaction with the Lord. They then miss where there is the true communion with God, which does not take the form they may expect. I think the passage from the Bible I have to most frequently remind people of is this one:

The He said [to Elijah], “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind was an earthquake: but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire: but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. .. Then the Lord said to him… (1 Kings 11-12, 15).

Even to Elijah the Lord spoke to him in “a still small voice.” Conversation, in general, cannot be had with the Lord, and it certainly cannot be cajoled or forced. Focusing on expectations of the grand certainty of messages from God causes one to miss the still small voice when it does occur. One expects being slain in the spirit, or a clear sign from God, or Jesus’ voice in one’s head or a miracle (wind, earthquake, or fire) and then misses the still small voice that is the authentic communion with the Lord.

And there is a worse risk than “just” missing out on perceiving the still small voice that is the authentic communion with the Lord. When one tries to force prayer fruitfulness and communion, one opens one’s soul in an unedited and unguarded way, by straining to contact “out there” with the Lord. And this is when the dark spiritual attacks take place. God is not “sending” or “allowing” the devil to torment or “purify through suffering” the saint. The saint has allowed entry by bad spirits into his or her soul by straining to receive an entitlement feeling communication with God. Everyone knows, for example, that playing with a device like an Ouija board allows unedited communication with one’s own dark tendencies and the thoughts of others. Saints and also plain good folk who too avidly seek a verifiable and on demand communication with God, are inadvertently reaching out in the same unedited and unprotected way as the Ouija board user risks. When one prays with an expectation tinged with desperation and some forcing/testing of God one opens the channel in one’s own soul that courts temptation of thought. This is why such holy people have had some incredibly depraved visions and temptations of sacrilege and desecration and called them “satanic attack” and “dark night of the soul.” All humans have that wiring, that problem with custody of the eyes, and custody of thoughts. That is the fallen, broken, woundedness of the human spirit. That is why Jesus taught people how to pray to God. Jesus taught the “Our Father” so that one would always have a perfect way to communicate to God. Jesus did not say you would get a response. When one prays in expectation of a response, one is opening up the channels to anything that is supernatural in feeling. One’s own human wiring and base temptations take a very supernatural feeling and form with very little effort, especially if one is tremendously stressed (either through self deprivation, scruples, excessive religiosity, or tremendous secular stress, such as Mother Theresa type of vocation). The last thing God wants is for wounded people to be in “on mode” all of the time for supernatural communication.

So I hope these further thoughts on this important topic serve as helpful spiritual direction. I’m concerned that there is too much Catholic spin out of a defensive posture without discerning the points I’ve made here. I’m hearing a little too much of “well, we should not be surprised that Mother Theresa had this spiritual aridity, since the saints told us this would happen and we should offer our suffering up to God.” Well, it is true that suffering can be offered up beneficially to God, but that is not the point. The point is that like a doctor with symptoms, rather than saying, “Oh yes, these saints had the same symptoms so it is all good” people should be saying, “Uh oh. Some saints really suffered from this and what might be the problem with what they were trying to do, and what we are trying to do today.” Shared symptoms are not a confirmation of correct action. It is a great tribute to saints and laity who persevere in faith through adversity, suffering, and spiritual aridity. But that does not mean that a good spiritual director should not diagnose the cause of the spiritual attack and alleviate it. The Catholic faith is not so weak that it must never admit that saints sometimes over did it and sometimes pushed too hard. That is why we have a structured set of prayers, such as the Our Father, the Rosary, the liturgy, and a wealth of prayer by the Early Fathers and saints to draw us in communion toward God; not to try to force God in conversation. It really is as simple as it was for Elijah who recognized the still small voice.