You want true peace? Three steps.

This is not groundbreaking to anyone else, but a couple of weeks ago, I had my own little epiphany.

To experience true peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding, one must do three things:



1) Forgive.  And I mean truly forgive, and I mean everyone.

2) Detach.  Detach from all earthly, creaturely things so as to attach to God.

3) Accept.  Accept all joys and sufferings as if they came to you from the Hand of God.



No, it is not easy, but yep, it is just that simple.

A perk of having a blog!

A while back I posted about the three stages of holiness, and I referenced "the book that changed my life," namely, The Ordinary Path to Holiness, by R. Thomas Richard.

Lo and behold, I received this wonderful email just a short time later! I thought I would share it with all of you:

Hello Leila,

I was very happy to come across your blog, and the encouraging review you gave of my book, The Ordinary Path to Holiness. Your surprise and delight -- deep delight -- in discovering the treasure of traditional Catholic spiritual theology reminded me so much of my own surprise, and joy, and gratitude when I first discovered that same wonderful gift! Like you, I was deeply blessed in the beautiful precision and profundity and penetrating expanse of Catholic doctrine -- but for a long time I thought that prayer, spirituality, was a different sort of thing entirely. When I was introduced to this treasure, and when I found the great spiritual wealth entrusted to our Church, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it, and I overflowed with joy.

I want to pass on to you a second and similar treasure that I found, that I was led to (or into) by the first. In my first book, as you know, there is a chapter on the Our Father, and a comparison with the Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila. After writing the Ordinary Path, I continued to ponder and to pray the Our Father, probing and seeking to understand how it could be "parallel" to her picture and experience of the spiritual life and indeed to the journey of prayer. The result of this exploration was my second book, The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father. I hope that you will read that second book -- I think it might be a help to you also.

I'd like also to invite you to visit my humble blog -- http://renewthechurch.wordpress.com/. That blog links to my larger website, www.renewthechurch.com, on which are pages for each of those two books.  The page on The Interior Liturgy gives a link to the EWTN store where that book can be purchased. I hope it can help you more deeply appreciate the surprising order and development of the spiritual life that is within that great prayer -- as I also was surprised and awed to discover it.

Blessings and grace to you and to your family.

Thomas Richard

Talk about a perk of the blog! To think that I would hear from the man whose book had such an impact on my life, well, I am so very grateful. I haven't yet read the second book, but I hope to be back here to talk about it when I do.

Part II.... File this under, "Why haven't I heard this before??"

Read Part I, here.



Well, I guess describing something as a "spiritual equivalent of a nuclear bomb" is setting the bar high! But I really do stand by that analogy. If you take what I am going to tell you and truly apply it, then a nuclear bomb will look like a water balloon in comparison. Because union with God is infinitely more powerful, exponentially more earth-shaking, than a nuclear bomb.

The book which changed my life is called The Ordinary Path to Holiness, by R. Thomas Richard. I have the original, regionally-published edition, which isn't professionally done and looks pretty cheesy. I used to wonder why something so amazing hadn't been published by a "real" publisher, and eventually it was! It now has a pretty cover and new typeset, and a foreword by Fr. Benedict Groeschel (who doesn't love him??!).

The "ordinary path to holiness" is just that. It's ordinary, meaning, it's the usual way that every soul must travel to get to God's Heart. Every one of us, no matter our vocation, is called to the highest form of prayer (infused contemplation/mysticism) and to spiritual marriage (consummation) with the Trinity. Please stop here and re-read that, slowly.

What this book did for me was to lay out a path that I could see, with a clear goal at the end and recognizable landmarks along the way. I am a linear, logical thinker, and I need things to be spelled out clearly. I had no idea that the spiritual life could be this way. I thought that while doctrine was concrete and linear, holiness was sort of nebulous and abstract, fluffy and wispy, like a cloud. I figured I would just pray throughout my life, read the Scriptures, be kind to others, and then holiness would just sort of "happen," in some sort of meandering, ill-defined way.

I was shocked and ecstatic to discover traditional Catholic spirituality. The author (a former Protestant pastor... ya gotta love those converts!!) synthesizes the works of several experts on the interior life and prayer (including saints who've walked the whole path!), and he makes it easy to understand the route our souls will take as we approach union with God.

A soul in mortal sin is not on the path. Once a soul gets on the path (i.e., is in a state of grace), he will travel through three stages of holiness: the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. These stages are not static and perfectly separated, yet they are identifiable and trustworthy as our guide to the interior life. I briefly described these stages in my latest Doctrinal Quiz Show, so check that out for a little more info.

The Ordinary Path to Holiness presents the order of the path. Oh, how I love order! To discover order in the spiritual life -- be still my heart! It now makes perfect sense to me that just as the body goes through normal stages of growth (childhood, adolescence, adulthood) so, too, does the soul.

The book layout goes like this: The author first explains the three stages of holiness, which are unknown to most Catholics. (By the way, you will never hear the parable of the sower in the same way again!).

In the next section, he shows us how a soul in each stage reads and responds to Scripture. An advanced soul encounters the Bible in a completely different way than a beginner. I knew after reading that section that I was definitely a beginner, ha!

Next, the author illustrates how the experience of prayer changes for the soul as it progresses through each stage. Can I just say, WOW????!!! You will crave holiness when you read what the Lord has in store for those who perfectly align their hearts to His.

Another section walks us through St. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, corresponding her seven mansions to the three stages of holiness. He also corresponds the sections of the Our Father with the three stages. Amazing stuff which just further illustrates the perfection of the Lord's Prayer.

Then, after a section on the sacraments, we are shown how the three stages of holiness are made manifest in the Holy Mass itself. All I could think of was how much I wanted to one day experience the Mass while in the unitive stage! Ahhhhh!!!

Finally, there is a section on holiness in suffering and dying. Again, wow....

When I finished the book, a whole new life opened up to me, and I couldn't wait to learn more, pray more, and love God more. A perfect follow-up book for me was Fire Within, by Fr. Thomas Dubay. While The Ordinary Path to Holiness changed my life, Fire Within just about set me over the edge. I couldn't believe the descriptions of the interior life of a soul that is in union with God. Talk about a romance!! Fr. Dubay focuses on works of the prayer masters, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. I think I walked around on a cloud for days after that one.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention Fr. Benedict Groeschel's Spiritual Passages (an old work of his... did you all know that he is a psychologist as well as a priest?) and Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's The Three Conversions of the Spiritual Life. Fr. Groeschel's work (subtitled "The Psychology of Spiritual Development") is a fascinating look into the psychology of the three stages, in simple terms that I could understand. No psycho-babble and lots of real life examples, too. As for Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, he is pretty much the acknowledged expert on the three stages, and some consider him the greatest theologian of the 20th century.

Okay, just writing about this stuff makes me want to recommit to my prayer life! If you really think about it, there is nothing -- truly nothing -- more important than the path one's soul will take to its eternal destiny. The fact that I can see it laid out before me in a simple but breathtaking road map form is the perfect way to draw me out of my head and into a full-on love affair with my Beloved, Who continues to wait while I dilly-dally in the first stage.... But more on that later.... Maybe I will make that Part III.

And since I guess this ended up as a Books in the Bubble, here it is:

*Update: Another book in this vein is Descending Fire: The Journal of a Soul Aflame, by Jean Petit. I can't leave that out, as it left me reeling, too, and exclaiming, "I want what that soul has!"

It changed my life... and blew my mind! Part I

Okay, so first let me tell you a little story....


About 15 years ago, I fell in love with my Catholic Faith. I had been a lukewarm Catholic before that point, and I was ready to jump ship for an evangelical Bible Church. 


Now, people are pulled toward God in different ways, i.e., they are attracted to God's beauty, God's unity, God's goodness, God's truth, etc. For me, the path to God came through truth. Truth is wildly attractive to me, and when I followed it, it led me to the fullness of Catholicism. Life suddenly made perfect, beautiful sense. 


It sounds weird, but I felt like I almost had an "infusion" of knowledge of the Faith. My friend Kim and I were asked by our priest to design and teach an RCIA program while still in our first year of studying Catholicism, and before Kim was even a Catholic. It was almost too easy. (I have since learned a little bit about different charisms, with which we have all been gifted. More on that in a future post.)


For about five years after my reversion, I had a deep love affair with God's truth. I was obsessed with doctrine. I read, I studied, I wrote, I taught, I spoke doctrine and apologetics. It was beyond exciting and perfectly fulfilling.... Until it suddenly became a teensy bit tedious.


So, after five years of teaching, I thought: Is this all I am supposed to do? It's incredibly beautiful, this Truth, but what now? I mean, I can defend Purgatory six ways to Sunday, from the biblical, historical and logical bases, but something is missing.


In the back of my mind, I knew that that "something" was a deeper prayer life, a more profound love relationship with the Lord, and a growth in personal holiness. 


The only problem? That part sounded so boring! Sure, I liked reading and teaching about the communion of saints, and I loved growing in knowledge about the Most Holy Trinity. But I didn't want to do the laborious stuff it would take to become a saint; and I was more interested in knowing about God than actually knowing God. Sad, right? But those of you who live more in your head than your heart will know what I mean.


Then one day, Kim told me about a book she read that had rocked her world. She'd heard about it from a fellow convert and friend of ours, who was also blown away by what it contained. When Kim described it to me, I was energized! I instinctively knew that the knowledge I would receive via this little book would break me out of my doctrinal malaise. 


That was an underestimation, as it turned out to be a watershed event in my life as a Christian. 


I discovered the spiritual equivalent of a nuclear bomb.


Continued here…




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Doctrinal Quiz Show! Spirituality Edition

Well, I've got yet another bar of holey soap burning a hole in my pocket. I need to unload it, so it must be time for a new episode of Doctrinal Quiz Show! This time, it's not about hard and fast doctrine, but more about the spiritual fruits of our Faith.


Here we go! 


{Cue nerve-wracking game show music, and read the following in pseudo-hushed tones...}


Traditional Catholic spirituality speaks of three stages of holiness through which a Christian must pass on his way to perfection. Name the three stages of holiness, and give a brief explanation or characteristic of each one.


Special Note to Contestants: A few months back I touched on this issue in the comments section of another blog. Any player attempting to access that information will be subject to the harshest penalties that I can mete out, which may include, but shall not be limited to, public blog humiliation, a banning of any future claim to a Grand Prize (yes, you may miss out on future bars of soap), and a non-binding requirement to place a "Scarlet C" icon on your homepage for one year as a form of mortification and penance.


What I am trying to say is.... please don't cheat?  :)


All right guys, you know you want the soap, so fight for it!!!