At a Carmelite meeting last night we focussed on the theme of detachment. We were looking at Chapter 8 in The Way of Perfection. This chapter begins with a sentence of great wisdom: Teresa tells us ‘detachment, if it is practiced with perfection, includes everything’. If we ‘embrace the Creator’, she continues, God ‘will infuse the virtues’. So what we have to do is to direct our wills towards loving God and putting Him first, and He will do the rest. Lest this should appear too daunting – our wills being often so rebellious – she adds: ‘Doing little by little what we can, we will have hardly anything else to fight against; it is the Lord who in our defense takes up the battle …’. I find that ‘little by little’ so encouraging, it reminds me that spiritual warfare is a matter of slow advance, not huge overnight conquests. Dramatic conquests do happen sometimes to select individuals who are healed dramatically of afflictions like alcoholism or other addictions, and the testimony of those individuals can be very inspiring, but that is not the norm for most of us. We must have patience and not give up. In Teresa’s mind, perseverance (along with humility) is absolutely fundamental.
Intercessions:
Marie – cancer
Bernard – cancer, and wife Angela
Rosemarie – multiple afflictions
Agnes – sickness
Siena, Elara – infants with severe medical issues
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