La Transformación según Santa Teresa de Lisieux, parte 1
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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.