Eyes of Faith
by Miriam Hogan, O.C.D.There is something in us that loves beautiful images. At a very early age we learn to respond to our mother’s face. One of the precious things I remember about my own mother was her holding a new baby close to herself and smiling. The infant (sometimes only a week old) would usually smile back.
Now, as we approach the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16), I am drawn once again to recall with gratitude and love the precious image of Jesus and Mary that we are given for our spiritual lives. Further, this year it seems even more appropriate than in the past to take the time to meditate on the innocence and tender love that is depicted between Jesus and His Mother.
This need to reconnect with spiritual innocence is especially necessary both because of the recent images concerning the torture of prisoners in Iraq and the news reports of sexual abuse in the Church. These powerful images of evil that are so often available in our daily news wound our hearts and leave their marks on our souls as individuals, as a Church and as a nation.
Given such bad images how do we refocus on the good and sacred in our lives and thus begin the healing process enabling us to better pray for others and ourselves?1
Here, I believe that our Carmelite tradition offers us tested and true guidance for spiritual growth in the midst of conflict and pain. One reason for this may be that it is a spirituality with a strong Scriptural basis. From their meditating on the Scriptures, especially concerning the passion and death and Resurrection of the Lord, the Carmelite writers direct us to spiritual growth in various ways. While all of the approaches have the same end, “union with God,” the Saints are free in using language or imagery to explain the way to achieve this union. Let us briefly consider three examples from their writings.
The Soul Continues To Seek
First, of all we have St. John of the Cross’s analogy of the Dark Night and his Spiritual Canticle. One point that I find especially comforting in the Canticle is that the soul continues to seek the face of the beloved even though one may not see God in what is happening around them. For example,
O spring like crystal!
If only, on your silvered-over face,
You would suddenly form
The eyes I have desired,
Which I bear sketched deep within my heart.2
.
Perhaps one of the reasons that we are so aware of the absence of good/God is that in our deepest center God is present and calling us to become ever more aware of this presence in our daily lives.
Secondly, in the same tradition, St. Thérèse assures us that the most excellent way to God is through love. Further, this love that sanctifies the Church is always within our reach no matter how weak or powerless we may feel. “O my Jesus! I love You! I love the Church, my Mother! I recall that ‘the smallest act of PURE LOVE is more value to her than all other works together.’” (Quoted from Story Of A Soul )
It is St. Teresa of Jesus, however, who most clearly explains the difference between the bodily eyes that we use to see everyday objects and the inner eyes of faith that guide our souls. It is with these eyes of faith that she asks us to gaze upon events in our personal/religious and social lives. It is through looking upon things with these eyes that we are gifted with a sense of God’s presence and peace.3
With Interior Eyes Of Faith
Finally, it is also with the interior eyes of faith that we best focus upon the image of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Such an image naturally and gently beckons us to recall the face of our own mother and gives us the grace and courage to smile interiorly no matter what other images may be reported in the news of our broken world. Simply put, as healthy and balanced human beings we need to experience and share the love first taught us by our mothers. Knowing also that as people of prayer,4 we are called upon to share in the redemption of our own times, we need the presence of our spiritual mother just as Christ in His Incarnation needed her smile.5 Now as we look to celebrate Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mary in the presence of Jesus her Son, and our brother, brings us home to gaze upon truth, beauty and peace.
________
1 For a wonderful web site on how deal with the psychological and spiritual stress and trauma caused by images of tragedy and war. Cf:http://prayerplace.port5.com/ This site was published by Sr. Elizabeth West, LCM shortly after 911.
2 St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle stanza 12
3St. Teresa, The Foundations . 29, 33 “Fix your eyes always on the ancestry from which we come, those holy prophets.”
4 See The Way of Perfection chapter 31 It is in this chapter that Teresa describes the supernatural prayer of quiet which is a free gift of God and one that we cannot achieve only by our own efforts.
5St. John of the Cross in the Romance 8:4 notes: “ And the Word lived incarnate in the womb of Mary. And He who had only a Father now had a Mother too,…”