VALLETTA, MALTA – JUNE 18, 2018: The masterpiece Oratory of St John Co-Cathedral with rich decors and altar icon depicting Beheading of St John the Baptist, on June 18 in Valletta.
Making an oratory of the heart…
The phrase “oratory of the heart” is not common parlance. I first encountered it in Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God,. and had to stop and think about the word oratory: Oratory is defined first as eloquence in public speaking and second as a place of prayer. Brother Lawrence refers to the second meaning.
It’s an arresting phrase, but when coupled with the image of the Oratory of St John Co-Cathedral it becomes wondrous. Imagine if our hearts could reflect the glory of God like this altar?
This is precisely what an unknown monk, Brother Lawrence, from the seventeenth century, invites us to do in The Practice of the Presence of God. Embedded in this second link is a free PDF. The book contains four ‘conversations’ between Brother Lawrence and an unknown writer who explains the simple secrets. Following the conversations are fifteen letters totalling twenty-two pages, which I read every few years. In the fourth letter, Brother Lawrence details the thirty-year practice of “one of our society”. In the narrative about his own experience, the monk provides a timeless template for living in the presence of God.
The first secret lies in willing His presence and in understanding that it’s not about us. It’s all about Him, Christ, His grace, and mercy. The anonymous conversationalist writes:
…that we might accustom ourselves to a continual conversation with Him, with freedom and in simplicity. That we need only to recognize GOD intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment, that we may beg His assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful, and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us, offering them to Him before we do them, and giving Him thanks when we have done.
That in this conversation with GOD, we are also employed in praising, adoring, and loving him incessantly, for His infinite goodness and perfection.
That, without being discouraged on account of our sins, we should pray for His grace with a perfect confidence, as relying upon the infinite merits of our LORD. That GOD never failed offering us His grace at each action; that he distinctly perceived it, and never failed of it, unless when his thoughts had wandered from a sense of GOD’s Presence, or he had forgot to ask His assistance.
That there needed neither art nor science for going to GOD, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but Him, or for His sake, and to love Him only.
It is not necessary for being with GOD to be always at church; we may make an oratory of our heart, wherein to retire from time to time, to converse with Him in meekness, humility, and love. Every one is capable of such familiar conversation with GOD, some more, some less: He knows what we can do. Let us begin then; perhaps He expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage. We have but little time to live;
When threats of the Third World War rage in the Middle East and the endless Ukrainian/Russian wars?
Or, closer to home, the thirteen people who drowned in San Antonio from the welcome rains ending our long drought? They were driving early Thursday morning when fast-rising flood waters carried their cars into a creek.
How do we keep our hearts free of all that is dark, violent, and terrifyingly random?
This painting is shocking. As soon as we recognize precisely what the artist, Franciscan Brother Mickey McGrath, has painted, we feel disquieted- even to the point of turning away, closing our eyes.
God of Our Fathers, let the ashes of the children incinerated in Auschwitz, the rivers of blood spilled at Babbi Yar or Majdanek, be a warning to mankind that hatred is destructive, violence is contagious, while man has an unlimited capacity to cruelty.
Almighty God, fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares . . . nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Amen.
Each of us ponders the whys of terror, hatred, and the spectacular violence of humans upon one another.
And how and why God permits them.
[The Book of Job is] the portrait of a spiritual journey from simple piety to the sudden painful awareness and eventual acceptance of the fact that inexplicable misfortune is the lot of man.
Moshe Greenberg‘s meditation on the Book of Job warrants our reading and time. Job, he writes, is you and me—”Pious people who, when confronted with an absurd disaster, refuse to lie to justify God.” Suffering results from sin was axiomatic of the ancient Jewish religion. But then we read about this entirely righteous man, Job, confronted with pain and loss so great that he begs never to have been born. Could Job, Greenberg asks, in his former prosperity, have understood the victim of a senseless tragedy who expresses a death wish?
“Through nature, God reveals Himself to Job as both purposive and nonpurposive, playful and uncanny, as evidenced by the monsters He created. To study nature is to perceive the complexity, the unity of contraries, in God’s attributes, and the inadequacy of human reason to explain His behavior, not the least in His dealings with man.
“For it may be inferred that in God’s dealings with man, this complexity is also present–a unity of opposites: reasonability, justice, playfulness, uncanniness (the latter appearing demonic in the short view). When Job recognizes in the God of nature, with His fullness of attributes, the very same God revealed in his own individual destiny, the tumult in his soul is stilled. He has fathomed the truth concerning God’s character: he is no longer tortured by a concept that fails to account for the phenomena, as did his former notion of God’s orderly working.”
Corpus Christi Sunday
Lo! the angel’s food is given To the pilgrim who has striven; see the children’s bread from heaven, which on dogs may not be spent.
Truth the ancient types fulfilling, Isaac bound, a victim willing, Paschal lamb, its lifeblood spilling, manna to the fathers sent.
Very bread, good shepherd, tend us, Jesu, of your love befriend us, You refresh us, you defend us, Your eternal goodness send us In the land of life to see.
You who all things can and know, Who on earth such food bestow, Grant us with your saints, though lowest, Where the heav’nly feast you show, Fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia.
