Laurence Freeman on Simone Weil

  Dom Freeman's account of Simone Weil's conversion is seriously flawed in a number of aspects, but none more serious than his assertion that she refused baptism.  Diogenes Allen and Eric Springsted's  Spirit, Nature and Community  provides testimonial evidence that refutes this assertion.  You can read the first chapter entitled "The Baptism of Simone Weil" on the publisher's website. Eric O. Springsted's earlier work, Simone Weil and the suffering of love  published by Cowley corrects other aspects of Dom Freeman's account of Ms Weil's rich appreciation of faith and the love of God. The chapter on "The Love of God in Daily Life" is especially well worth reading.

Brennan Manning

After hearing Carey talk about reading  Brennan Manning's  Ragamuffin Gospel  I found this youtube video of Brennan Manning presenting his main idea at of conference in Philadelphia in 1999.  

Patheos.com has chosen Brennan Manning's latest book All is Grace  as it's book club selection, and published this rather personal review http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Blessed-Are-the-Poor-in-Spirit-Mark-Yaconelli-10-16-2011.html   I shared it with Sr. Clare who thought it was "quite impressive" so I thought I would share it with you. 

Laurence Freeman's Way

I thought that since we are reading Laurence Freeman's Jesus: the Teacher Within you might want to hear the introduction to his Bere Island Easter Retreat.

Other videos from this retreat can be found at http://www.wccm.org/category/category/laurence-freeman

A Oneness Created by a Giving of One's Self

Šĕmaʿ Yisĕrāʾel Ădōnāy Ĕlōhênû Ădōnāy eḥād.  Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one (Deuteronomy 6:4). The One, the Holy One, the object of this sacred text is the Creator of the entire  universe according to the story in Genesis.  When it  says that God made us in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:27) we had a share in that attribute, that oneness with God that was paradise.  It was fractured by sinfulness  only to be regained in that new covenant of  Jesus, the Christ.  This covenant is a consecrated, physical, "bodily" covenant.   Christ says, Take and eat,  this is my body, which will be given up for you and for all that sins might be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.  In receiving the body of Jesus into their bodies Christians pledge to give their bodies in chastity, poverty and obedience to the Church's spouse who is one with his Father.  This is the oneness spoken of in the Shema Israel.  We call the Church  "catholic" which denotes the universal oneness of God in the requited love of His kingdom within and among us. 

Further reflections on the body given

The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is a very bodily revelation. Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit over two millenia ago, is the revelation of God. In his words and what he did, and in his very bodily presence among us, Christ revealed God and God's will for us.  “For this I came into the world, to bear witness to the Truth,”   he told Pilot. 

Jesus, the revelation of God, is also, the kingdom of God -- our sharing in God's life. The effect of the revelation of God on those who live their faith in him, is to bring about the kingdom within them and among them-- a sharing in the very life of God (what Catholics have traditionally called "sanctifying grace") in the Mystical Body of Christ. This body conceived, as was the  physical body and soul of Christ of Nazareth, by the Holy Spirit -- IS  the kingdom of the God who shares his very life with those who give their life to him.  "Those who seek to save their life, will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake will have eternal life."

A Body Given Up For You

Two weeks ago my nephew lost a leg and a foot in Afghanistan.  He had wanted to serve people in a more substantial way than as a manager of a bar which had been his prior occupation. So he joined the Rangers and became a medic.  He learned to apply tourniquets, and to perform emergency tracheotomies, inject intravenous fluids to keep soldiers alive and get them off the battlefield and into a medical facility. To do this work he had to put himself in harms way. He  played a kind of "catcher in the rye".

This got me thinking.  We had just read over the last couple of months the gospel of Luke. Twice in that gospel Jesus says that those who seek to save their lives will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  And so I asked myself, “what does it mean to lose one’s life for His sake?”   In any case, we only have our bodies temporarily and parts of our bodies might be even more temporary.  But what does it mean, to lose one’s body for Him?  Did Chris, my nephew, loose his leg and foot for Him?   He put himself in harms way to provide an essential service to those in his unit who might become casualties of war.  He didn't want to become one himself.  

“This is my body which will be given up for you and for all that sins might be forgiven,” He said, before becoming a casualty of that spiritual war in which we are all combatants.  Love, that much over worked word,  love is about giving up one’s body,  not primarily in sex acts, but in the day to day service offered to those we care about. 

Struggling with the truth

Barbara Nicolosi, the founder of the Act One screenwriting program, has said that one of the primary storytelling principles they teach their students is, "It isn't telling people the truth that saves them; it's getting them to wrestle with the truth that saves them." It seems to me that  Luke (20:9-18) describes Jesus, the master storyteller,  doing just that with the chief priests,  the teachers of the law, and the elders who have come to interrogate him.  After telling the parable of the tenants, Jesus asks them, "What, then, will the owner of the vineyard do to the tenants?" It is a rhetorical question. He doesn't wait for them to answer. "He will come and kill those men, and turn the vineyard over to other tenants."
      When the people heard this, Luke tells us, they cried out, "Surely not!!  Jesus has them struggling with a profound truth embedded in the very scriptures these learned men have studied since their youth, in Psalm 118, but they were unable to discern its real meaning.  Jesus is grateful that his Father hides from the learned what is revealed to children.