Dominican Saint - Tumblr Posts
Perfect Prayer
"Oh, how sweet & pleasant to that soul and to Me is holy prayer, made in the house of knowledge of self & of Me, opening the eye of the intellect to the light of faith and the affections to the abundance of My charity, which was made visible to you through My visible Only-begotten Son, who showed it to you with His blood!
...Perfect prayer is not attained to through many words, but through affection of desire, the soul raising herself to Me, with knowledge of herself & of My mercy, seasoned the one with the other. Thus she will exercise together mental & vocal prayer, for even as the active & contemplative life is one, so are they."
-Excerpt from St. Catherine of Siena's A Treatise on Prayer as part of her mystical Dialogues with God
Supreme & Eternal Fire, Abyss of Charity
=============================================== Then this soul, as if being inebriated, tormented, and on fire with love - her heart wounded with great bitterness - turned herself to the Supreme & Eternal Goodness, saying:
"Oh! Eternal God! Oh! Light above every other light, from whom issues all light! "Oh! Fire above every fire, Because thou art the only Fire who burnest without consuming, And consumest all sin & self-love found in the soul, Not afflicting her, but fattening her with insatiable love, And though the soul is filled she is not sated, but ever desires Thee, And the more of Thee she has, the more she seeks, And the more she desires, the more she finds & tastes of Thee - Supreme & Eternal Fire, Abyss of Charity. "Oh! Supreme & Eternal Good, Who has moved Thee, Infinite God, To illuminate me, Thy finite creature, With the light of Thy truth? "Thou, the same Fire of Love art the cause, Because it is always love which constrains & constrained Thee To create us in Thine image & likeness, And to do us mercy, Giving immeasurable & infinite graces to Thy rational creatures, Oh, Goodness above all goodness! "Thou alone art He who is Supreme Good, And nevertheless Thou gavest the Word, Thy Only-begotten Son. To converse with us filthy ones & filled with darkness. What was the cause of this? Love. Because Thou lovedst us before we were. "Oh, Good! Oh, Eternal Greatness! Thou madest thyself low & small To make man great. "On whichever side I turn, I find nothing but the abyss & fire of Thy charity" ===============================================
-St Catherine of Siena speaking to God in mystical ecstasy as recorded in A Treatise of Prayer of her Dialogues. Formatting is mine, added to make it easier to follow (hopefully)
St. Thomas Aquinas, Pray for Us
"Aristotle became the new God. His writings, inflated by misleading commentaries, were inadequate in themselves, while their excessive naturalism, together with some particularly serious blemishes, threatened to lead Christian thought astray... Even the teaching on God was endangered... God has no definite personality; there is no affirmation of providence, nor even of his freedom in creating. While he is admitted as the final cause, his efficient causality, if not openly denied, is at least made very doubtful.
Similarly, Aristotle makes the soul something above matter; it is "separate"; it comes to the body "from without," as it were "by the door." There is no certitude that it belongs to the individual, that it guarantees him a really spiritual and immortal life, that it makes him really responsible. He leaves it an open question whether morality is a mere whim, or corresponds to a divine order. Everything is vague and ambiguous enough to enable commentators ... to interpret it in a sinister sense.
People began to be known as Aristotelians ... and their Christianity was at a low ebb. Under the aegis of "the Philosopher" and his followers, they disputed the most fundamental & certain of the Catholic dogmas. The creation of the world in time, the divine government & Fatherhood, the individuality & immortality of the soul, free will, and moral responsibility gave place to an eternal world, an abstract God cut off from all communication with his creatures, a unique Intellect for all men, which alone was immortal, a strict determinism, physical & psychological, which rules out all responsible action. That was knowledge. The Christian faith, the basis of civilization & the mother of all learning, could not be openly attacked, but there was always this bias, which was later to call forth St. Thomas's most indignant protests.
There was only one thing to be done: to take over the new doctrines & restate them: to refine the gold. Instead of casting aside the finest of all human philosophies, out of a kind of cowardly prudence, was it not better for Catholics to adapt it to Christian thought, by interpreting, revising, completing it, and thereby to make it their own? That was what St. Thomas set out to do."
-A. G. Sertillanges OP, St. Thomas Aquinas - Scholar, Poet, Mystic, Saint