Seeking Nothingness or Emptiness
Being filled with God cannot happen by seeking emptiness. God made us uniquely and wonderfully, and he does not want us to return to Him empty. He wants us to be the beautiful, complete persons He created us to be. Then we will be perfect.
Deacon Michael was very kind, but sometimes he was not very tolerant. He was very sympathetic and people found it easy to confide in him, but he did not always take what they had to say well. Being a child of the sixties with its drug, free love, and alternate belief culture, he knew where things could be heading when people used certain phrases. And he was not impressed.
In this sermon he bring together his love of history, his knowledge of religions, his daily readings, and his great love for the six-thirty crazies. He always had a goal in mind, in his life and in his sermons. And that goal was always Jesus.
written by Laura Weston,widow of Deacon Michael
see Matthew 12: 43-45 and Luke 11:24-26
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:
One of the stupidest things you hear on a regular basis, or I hear on a regular basis, and unfortunately it seems to be mostly with women, but you're talking with someone, who is talking about a child or a husband or a relationship, a friend, all of these things, and you get on to the subject of religion, and they go, "Oh, he's not religious but he's spiritual."
That is stupid! That makes no sense whatsoever.
You walk around the world and go, "Oh, look at the trees! I'm feeling one with them." Back when I was younger we called that LSD.
That's not spirituality. Spirituality is something different. I'm just reading a book by Chesterton right now on Thomas Aquinas, so I'm a little more versed on this, spirituality in the Buddhist tradition, and other traditions, is an ultimate striving towardsnothingness.
They want nothingness. The abandonment of self completely, and the ultimate goal of their spirituality is nothingness.
That is not Christianity. We see this time and again in the readings today. "The mouth of the just murmurs wisdom," is the Responsorial psalm. Jesus talks about what is necessary in preparing yourselves. "Every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple." And in the reading from Paul to the Corinthians he says, "I preach Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."
That ultimately is the goal of Christian, of Catholic spirituality. It has a specific goal. That goal is Christ. That goal is putting Christ as the primacy of your life. And the question on the spirituality that John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, all these great people who were mystics, who were spiritual, that ultimately is their goal.
We have Padre Pio, for example, contemplating, and St. Francis of Assisi as well, contemplating the crucifixion of the Cross to the point that in their spirituality they get a stigmata.
But the focal point is Christ. And you go through the history of Christian spirituality and the ultimate is… Christ. To put yourselves in The Presence of and communicating with Christ. So when they came to the Carmelite Order, they start the Carmelite they basically give up everything that Christ is talking about here, to give up all their possessions. That will get them closer to Christ.
They start getting more things. Teresa of Avila and San Juan de la Cruz come in and say, "No, no, no, you need to get rid of all these things." In fact, in the springtime in Dallas, Texas, you should be barefoot when you come to the Communion service. We'll work on that later.
So again, the ultimate aim is spirituality. The question is, "How do you do it?" And that question is not simple. Spirituality not only is vague, it changes for you in your life.
And I talked about women having spirituality, or seeming to be able to do it better, and one of the reasons may be children. They so totally and completely love their child, they have a better grasp of what the Incarnation means.
There are other people who get great spirituality, that is, again, San Juan de la Cruz was put into a little bitty cell, miserable cell, no heating and air conditioning, no television, no nothing, he could barely sit down and they would only give him a piece of paper and a pen by smuggling it in. He wasn't even supposed to have that. But there was his spirituality.
Catherine of Sienna: that was not her spirituality. If you went to Catherine of Sienna and said, "I want you to contemplate God for the next twenty-four hours, we're going to put you in a cell that you can just shut off everything and put yourself in the presence of God, Catherine of Sienna would say, "You are absolutely out of your mind! I am an instrument of God and I have got to be constantly working as an instrument of God." "Doing" was a spirituality for her.
Each of us has his own kind of spirituality. I've articulated to you in a vague sense one of my greatest spiritualities, why I like to come to Mass. Beyond the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, being in the presence of God, I am in the presence of His children. I am in the presence of the people for whom He died. It is an exhilarating experience. It is a spiritual experience. I can close my eyes and, for example, see people from Parkland Hospital. It was an extremely spiritual experience because I see them as children of God and the wonder that they are, and through them, the wonder of God. That's one of my forms of spirituality.
The crucial thing is, as we see in these readings, and we see through the great mystics, and the great spiritual leaders of our Church, is, "Where are you going?" If you're going to be spiritual by going, "Oh, I get such a presence of something special every time I watch the Dallas Cowboys play football," forget it.
"I get so spiritual when I see my bank account shows that I have so much money, and I have all of these wonderful things." That's called mammon. That's a false God.
Spirituality is not to bring you somewhere where you shouldn't be. And the question is, that these readings answer, where should you be? How do I figure out how to be spiritual? Where should you be?
And again, my theory is that a woman who wants to be spiritual, one of the things that she thinks about with love is the feel of having a baby. Being with a baby, caring for a baby, nurturing a baby, can put them in the presence, their understanding of the Virgin Mary. But there are things in your lives that will bring you to a greater spirituality.
Margene, and I think I am correct, her great love for her husband is one of the gifts to her in a spiritual experience. Because he is still present in her life, and that presence brings her into the presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
So that, when we look at it, and someone says, "Well what are you? Are you religious or spiritual?" That's a false question because if you're spiritual without leading yourselves to God, you have nothing. If you have a religion that is simply a form that doesn't get you anywhere, without the spirituality that gets you to God, you have nothing. Because we are members of the Holy Catholic Church, and through the Holy Catholic Church, through the teachings of Christ, we are brought ever closer to God, to His Son. And as St. Paul articulates it time and time again, we are brought to Jesus Christ, and He, crucified. And when you are brought there, you know that you are in the presence of spirituality. You are in the presence of what God is calling you to be. It is to be with Him for all eternity in the presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He, crucified.
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