La Transformación según Santa Teresa de Lisieux, parte 1

Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. presents Transformation in Christ Transformation according to Therese of Lisieux Fr. Thomas Keating, o.c.s.o. This morning's talk is a very difficult one to present, transformation in everyday life and as you know I drawing a lot on the teaching of St. Therese of Lisieux who's presumably celebrating her 100th anniversary of death this year. So I must ask you to put into brackets if you would, all your own ideas about transformation in daily life if you have any. And let me share with you what St. Therese understood the teaching of Jesus to be. I think we can say that St. Therese was one of the key figures in the recovery of the contemplative dimension of the gospel in our time. She had this extraordinary penetration into the simplicity and the essence and the quintessence of Jesus teaching that she then put into her life, some of us have a great insight into Jesus teaching but not as good a program for bringing it into daily life as she put into practice and thus was able to complete a very long course a spiritual journey normally takes 40 to 60 years before it blossoms, hopefully. But she did it in about nine years but she started young and so the first thing I want to speak up is to put the teaching of Jesus in the parables, just choose four of them and show how what an extraordinary insight and practice she had into those ending matic sayings that we call parables. Well the first one that we need to know for daily life, trying to penetrate Jesus teaching using Therese as a kind of a guide into this mysterious and unknown and astonishing territory. Well the first insight we have that things are changing for the people of his time if they want to pursue the transformation of the kingdom, is the parable of the publican and the Pharisee usually presented as an example of pride and humility but it has a further meaning once you grasp the context in which the hearers were listening to this story. Well you remember that the Pharisee was in the temple and he was praising more or less good deeds or at least acknowledging them to the Lord and this was not especially a prideful saying this was the normal prayers that the Pharisees offered in the precincts of the temple, I mean in other words it was not an expression of pride but the normal way that Pharisees prayed. So it was an expression of their social status as priests, as inspired, as holy men praying in a holy place. So it corresponds to the popular mind in which holiness was associated with the sacred precincts, sacred places, the temple, sacred times, feast days, Sunday Mass in our terms and maybe grace at meals if you're very devout, in any case the Pharisee is the symbol then of one who is inside and in that Palestinian culture, the various participants in it, paid a lot of attention to analyzing and carefully demarking who was inside and acceptable, who was outside and unacceptable. In our terms it's expressed in certain racial prejudices, ethnic prejudice and monta mentally expressed in the racial prejudices for instance that we've witnessed so tragically in Rwanda for instance. The other man was just a guy from the secular world and a little bit shoddy in his business arrangements and he frankly stood outside and said God be merciful to me as sinner. Well, he wasn't necessarily humble, he was just stating he was just doing what he was supposed to do in that social culture which is if he's gonna pray, stay outside, he's an outsider, he's not part of the holy elite of the temple. So there's a sharp distinction here between the sacred and how they behave and the ordinary person who is not in the sacred precincts of the temple, in other words, people who come from ordinary life. And so the conclusion of the parable was just unbelievable to those who were hearing it they hadn´t heard this before... Jesus said, "well, you know the publican went back to his home (the secular world) justified that is, all his sins are forgiven and his relationship with God is in great shape. And the Pharisee did not. So that means that there is no such thing as a sacred place insofar as you regard it as an essential for arriving at a particular transformation in Christ and that now Jesus teaching is the truly sacred place is where you are, it's daily life, its ordinary life and as we'll see little later, it's even in the corrupt forms of daily life. So this is a revolution in the whole idea of what holiness is, sacredness is, shrines are, churches are, there are places in which we're renewed where we're inspired, where we hear the word of God, where we may have mystical experiences, where you may do your centering prayer and have a lot of peace. But that isn't the place where the transformation takes place, what happens in daily life is the gouge of your power and depth of your prayer and of your of the inspiration that it offers. So the sacred place or prayer is a preparation or a place of refreshment a place of renewal for prayer. So you might say well what about monks? Why enter a monastery if my backyard is just as sacred as your cloister? Well a good point. So I wouldn't advise it unless you have other motives for entering the religious life or the monastery which indicate that that's the everyday life for you in other words your particular vocation but everyday life for most of you, I almost said us, but I guess it wouldn't be quite true except when I'm on the road. But ordinary daily life is now the place where transformation in Christ is worked out. So like the Pharisee you can be in the monastery in the sacred precincts and not be transformed and you can be in the world and be transformed, what's the difference? it's the it's the mysterious action of the kingdom which works not through external circumstances except as a accidental support system but which acts through a change in our attitudes. This is what transformation is, it's not going someplace, it's not going to a pilgrimage, it's not a special state of life,it's where you are and what you do with those circumstances, daily, everyday, ordinary circumstances, in those routines that bring back the same false, the same temptations, the same routines the sense of going nowhere. This is where the kingdom is most active and where you have to work with it. It's a kind of dialogue, it's a kind of exchange, it's a kind of sometimes a kind of battle, struggle with the Lord to figure out what are you saying in my daily life that is to transform me. Now this was one of Therese’s great insight that what she called the little way is precisely the circumstances of everyday life and what you do with them. The great advantage of centering prayer or something similar method of bringing us into frequent contact with God and especially into a listening disposition of his word and Scripture of her in a silent word within us during prayer, this is precisely to let go of our preconceptions and our over identification with the events of daily life in which they dominate our response rather than invite our response. We're dominated by our response when events and people and our emotional reactions to them are the center stage all day long of our attention, of our thoughts, how's the day going, how's the weather, why do people do this to me, am I gonna -- am I gonna lose my job, why are the children so misbehaving, what am I gonna do about mom and dad now that they're ready for a nursing home, what you do with that that is listen to what the Spirit is saying to you and to act out of divine love. Everything is a grace is one of Therese’s simpler sayings right to the point but terribly hard to grasp, how can everything be a grace. Well let's look at another parable that Therese seems to understand to the depth and that is the parable of the mustard seed. The mustard seed remember was something a man sowed in his garden and although it's the least of all seeds, it's the smallest proverbially. It grew into a tree and the birds of the air made their nest there. Well Jesus apparently didn't explain this parable and one of the fascinating things in the parables is that they have no bottom, they're almost bottomless in the richness of the meaning that they can have. So the meaning that I'm sharing with you today doesn't have to be yours, you may find out the meanings, fine, but at least consider this one since Sara's took it very much to heart, to understand it in the context of the time, you need to realize that the kingdom of God for the Israelites of that period had connotations of victory of a vindictive triumph over the Roman Empire which is oppressing the people for years and years and years. In other words these were people who were living under the under the boot of people of an alien nation that we're imposing alien values on them that disregarded the value of their religion and which kept them in oppressive circumstances, lack of freedom, the same circumstances coexist today in many places of the world. So the kingdom of God in the mythology that was developed a myth is something that poets and saints and prophets develop in order to help people deal with this mysterious question, how can we be the chosen people or especially loved by God or Christians if you like. And yet explain the fact that we're living in miserable circumstances are persecuted, have a hard time in daily life, values are being undermined and all those things. How can I believe in God's sovereignty that he's all-powerful and he does nothing to change the situation and this goes on for years, decades and perhaps a century or two. Well this is one great questions that faith is confronted with, how can things be so bad, and God be in charge of everything. Let's change it, oh why doesn't he change it, and you pound on the door with your petitions and it doesn't seem to be anybody home. So God seems to be ignoring his people his chosen people, his church whatever your ethnic, nationalistic or even religious preconceptions are. And this is the question the job asked in the Old Testaments long ago when he had personal difficulties with God. And so this is Jesus response really to that problem. He says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that a man sowed in his garden at which he wasn't supposed to do according to Jewish law because mustard seed was almost like a weed and it tended to confuse the other vegetables and tended to grow in among them so you couldn't distinguish it from certain weeds. So actually he did something illegal which makes the parable even more intriguing. So he Luke says it grew into a tree, this is contrary to all botanical expectation. And so the mustard seed then if it's like the kingdom of heaven has to grow into something triumphant, victorious and mighty if you're an oppressed person and have not absorbed this value of the gospel which is that the mustard seed of the kingdom of heaven, the grace which is given to a certain group of people, a country, nation, ethnic group, a church, isn't going to grow into a big tree, it isn't going to become the cedar of Lebanon which grew to about 300 feet high in which all the birds in the world could find a nest in if they wanted to. It wasn't a triumphant symbol that that the Israelites at the time had in mind of the Messiah coming, delivering Israel would be at the head of the nation's, every God would establish his sovereignty and peace wonderful but strictly mythology. It doesn't work that way. So Jesus says this in actual fact he almost certainly didn't say a tree, it was the Evangelist who said well it must be a tree. Actually the mustard seed becomes a bush, four feet high and maybe a few lost Birds can find some bedraggled nest in its shade. So if you think that the church or the kingdom or your nation or your ethnic group is going to be delivered by God with a magnificent addictive triumph and all the world is going to be converted to Christ or you're a Buddhist to Buddha or whatever, it ain’t going what the gospel is interested in is you, not what you can do but just plain you can add the rest you. And so St. Therese says holiness does not consist in this or that practice, any practice at all but in a disposition of heart notice the shift from externals to internals, but in the disposition of heart which is permanent, which remains always humble and little in God's arms but trusting to audacity in the father's goodness. That's what she means by the way of childhood, that's what Jesus meant by and as you become as little children, feigning a good family where you can really trust your parents and a child has to trust the parents who else and their fragility, physically and emotionally is simply enormous well we can see it so we respond in various ways but never enough, never enough because only unconditional love can bring a human being and especially a child into full emotional mental and spiritual wholeness or maturity.