FOLEY ON SPIRITUALITY
Prayers and Reflections
Let us always remember we are in the holy presence of God.
Lord Jesus Christ, we adore you, we bless you, we glorify you, we thank you for your great glory.
In the presence of your miraculous power on the Sea of Galilee, your apostle Peter, overwhelmed with confusion exclaimed, “Lord, depart from me, a sinful man.” Here in the presence of Eucharist, far more wonderful than any miracle in the manifestation it is of your divine power and goodness, we humbly acknowledge our great unworthiness.
We dare not say to you, “Depart from us,” because we realize the utter impossibility of our doing anything without you. Filled with sorrow because of the feebleness of our response to this outpouring of your love, we ask you to help our faith, help our hope, help our love. Above all, never permit us to be separated from you.
You have begun a good work in us. perfect it onto the day of your coming, that on that day we may be ready and worthy to receive the reward of those who have persevered to the end.
Holy Mary, our mother, keep us steadfast in service of your divine Son.
Holy Father, St. Paul of the Cross, give us your spirit, the grace of perseverance.
St. Gabriel, ask for us the grace of fidelity.
Holy Mary and all the saints, intercede for us with the Lord, that we may be may worthy of the promises of Christ who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.
--Fr. Theodore Foley, CP from Retreat Notes
Mary in Our Life
Our Blessed Lady is a powerful exemplar of holiness and the interior life. Never has there been a creature so wholly separated from evil and so perfectly united with God in love.
Though her Immaculate Conception made her immune from the internal struggle of senses versus spirit, she was a model of self denial. There was no curiosity to see the vanities of the world or to hear beyond what was necessary, no eagerness to waste time in idle talk. She accepted the poverty of Bethlehem, the simplicity of Nazareth, the hard, heartbreaking way of the cross as she shared the life of her Son. She was silent without and recollected within, attending the mysteries unfolding before her eyes, holding them in her heart.
We must live like her if we wish to be saints and do the work God gives us to do.
--Theodore Foley, CP taken from Papers
Examen for Religious
We are striving for holiness, a striving that will be in vain unless we practice a deep, constant, vigorous interior life.
To be holy requires two things. One is to separate from evil, the other is union with God.The ordinary religious lives habitually in the state of grace. However, in a soul in grace there are always present seeds of eternal death. These are wounds left in human nature by original sin. They are constant bad inclinations.
St. Paul was in the grace of God, but what did he say about his wounded self, hidden from human eyes because of his utter unworldliness and prodigious zeal?
“I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me pursue the law of sin that is in my members.”
The way to holiness imposes on those who would pursue it a lifelong struggle against a proneness to evil asserting itself now in the will in the form of pride, envy, jealousy, vanity; now in the appetite in the form of sensuality, irascibility and apathy. These inclinations are in the direction of evil. They are not of God and must be resisted each one in turn.
This is the imperative our Lord described as carrying the cross daily, which the Apostle called mortification and which the spiritual writers name self-denial, abnegation, purgation. By this the soul becomes distinguished for its moral purity.
The other activity leading to holiness is union with God. This is primarily a work of love for it is in love that the soul and God are made one. God is love and the one who abides in love, abides in God and God in him. This love is not emotional love, so unstable, so unpredictable in its coming and going. The love which is unitive is spiritual, the response of our will to God. It is realized in the generous, uncompromising conformity of our will with the divine will, whether at a given moment it be sweet or bitter, hard or easy. “He who keeps my word is the one who loves me.”
The saint, therefore, is the one who daily withdraws his will from movements of evil and merges it in the holy will of God.
It is impossible to become a saint unless we lead an interior life. This is evident from what the masters of Christian spirituality have understood by the expression an “interior life.” It is a life of continual union with God, sustained by a constant spirit of abnegation and recollection. This life goes on within us, hidden from human eyes, while outwardly we are occupied with our formal work– house work, writing, study. This inner life brings to fulfillment in us what the Apostle says, “You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. “ Dead means dead to sin. It come from a constant spirit of mortification which subdues the disordered inclinations that arise with us–to vanity, levity, self-pity, impetuosity, self indulgence. Thus the soul is purified of all that is not of God.
The other characteristic of the interior life is recollection, a frequent mindfulness of God’s presence. It is centered in that ineffable reality which is the consequence of being in grace– the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in us. Because recollection keeps us mindful of our divine Guests it fosters and facilitates love; it enables us to keep our intentions pure, thereby directing our external work to God and not to self and creatures; it makes us receptive to the impulses of the Holy Spirit which are given to us to show us and to help us love God in everything we do.
--Theodore Foley, CP taken from Papers