Every Day I Kill Isaac
Every day I get some idea of what is in myself, when I have to swallow my own ideas about chant, the interior life, solitude the Cistercian vocation, etc., etc. Every day I kill Isaac--my beautiful dream about a silent, solitary, well-ordered life of perfect contemplation and perfect monastic observance, with no intrusion from the world, no publicity, no best-selling books, just God and that nice, archaic little Carthusian cell!! I have to make that blind act of faith that God and our Lady are drawing me--per crucem--through the Cross--to something better, which I will probably never see this side of heaven.
At the beginning of May, I think: our Lady is coming gradually to be the whole of my interior life. The more I leave everything to her, the simpler everything becomes, and the easier I travel. And this morning I was reading marvelous things in Adam of Perseigne about Mary being "the way." She is that. Through her we come quickly to--everything.
At Mass I have hardly been able to think of anything but our Lady. Either that, or else I sink down into the depths where God is found alone. But to do that is to be occupied implicitly with her, for she is the way there. Yet I do not say I do all this easily--I am surrounded by distractions and yet drawn into this love of her in spite of them.
More and more I abandon anything of my own that might seem to be a "technique" of prayer and throw myself upon her mercy, leaving myself to be moved and guided by her, certain that she alone, by God's dispensation and decree, can help my helplessness.
May 1 and 5, 1949, II.307-8
Revelation 12.1:
ReplyDeleteA great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.