Praying the Jesus Prayer

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Very true. St. Faustina, even St. Aphonsus in some respects and yes there is a slew of others. But there is truth to the dichotomies. I’m a philosopher by trade and I can tell you for a fact that western Catholicism is VERY rooted in the tradition of Scholasticism and reason. Granted, I don’t mean to knock our scholastics, I consider myself one and I always defer to St. Thomas on any philosophical matter, but it is very much a reason-based approach. The East is more experiential, meaning you live it first before writing it down. Again, the West-East dichotomy is superficial on some respects. Amazingly both traditions lead to the Same Truth but in different ways. It is astounding and breathtaking to see that the West will say what the East is saying and vice versa even though the approaches are seemingly totally different. It just goes to show that the Same Spirit is guiding both traditions to the Fullness of the Truth we have in our magnificent Faith.
 
I have a further question: do you think the Carmelite tradition going back to St. Elias and being originally from Mt. Carmel puts them somewhat in the Eastern camp? The order is so identified with Western Europe because of their great saints from England, France and Spain, but to me it seems a bit Eastern in its approach, or do I have that wrong?
 
I’ve read quite a bit of Carmelite spirituality, so much so that I’m requesting to become a third order myself, even as I undergo the Sui Juris change in Churches, and I would say that there is very much an Eastern undertow to Carmelite spirituality. The stark call to humility, allowing Grace to bring one to perfection in the Trinity (Theosis) etc. My favourite Carmelite is also my big sister in the Faith, of course it’s St. Therese for anyone wondering, but it comes out very much in St. Teresa of Avila. In her last mansion in the interior castle, I would basically call that the earthly experience of Theosis. She was caught up in the Divine Life of the Trinity Himself.
 
Yes, that confirms what I thought. It’s interesting that someone brought up Jansenism as a bad aspect of Western legalistic theology, and St. Therese of Lisieux’s teachings were very much a reaction against that type of thinking.
 
Yes, her teaching and the revelation of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary were the remedies to it. People had virtually stopped receiving Holy Communion and even Confession due to the idiotic idea that one had to be perfect to approach the Sacraments. Even the slightest imperfection were grounds for Jansenists to tell you not to receive Holy Communion. As an interesting side note, St. Therese had scruples before she was set free on Christmas day. But even afterwards, in the convent, she was plagued with depression and even some slightly suicidal thinking (granted she only had those thoughts in her agony) but the depression was rather consistent. St. Therese was a powerful young lady. She isn’t the pious church statue that looks tender and delicate. She seems “rosy” but that is hiding her inner strength and what a powerful lady she was. She had to go through a lot of trials, interior and exterior. She definitely experienced the dark night of both senses and soul.
 
Some guys I know would fall in love with her on the grounds that she was like a “girlfriend” they never had and it was just an infatuation in my opinion. She was no simple lady, but a powerhouse of Faith, willing to even be martyred interiorly for love of Jesus. I have a special manual of Carmelite prayers that has a lot of the prayers she composed and even I get nervous looking at these prayers. So much love and trust and abandon, for someone like me who has trust issues, Her spirituality is quite scary at times. So recklessly loving almost.
 
St. Therese was my mother’s patron saint and along with the Blessed Mother, one of her name saints. Mom was born a few months after St. Therese was canonized and so received the new saint’s name; I think my grandma may have invoked her during the pregnancy because my grandma had smallpox while pregnant with my mom. Anyway Mom had the old timey flowery version of St. Therese’s autobiography and when I got old enough I read it, and thought it was just so gushy and sentimental. My mother very insistently told me, “No, St. Theresa wasn’t like that AT ALL. You have her all wrong.” Mom was of course correct as we have all learned now that her autobiography was gussied up by her family, who added things and edited things to make her look more sweet and sentimental. I am left wondering how Mom knew that the real Therese was a much tougher cookie, as Mom wasn’t much of a reader so I know she wasn’t out researching the saint’s life and in fact I’m not sure if Mom ever even read all of the autobiography book, as she didn’t like to read. But somehow she knew just how St. Therese was. I can’t ask Mom how she knew because she’s been dead for a few years but I bet they had quite a private communication going on that I didn’t know about. After Mom died I decided to try to pray to St. Therese too and it was quite an experience. So now I have a special devotion to her as well.
 
Yeah the more recent scholarship on her published by the ICS has done a lot of work to give a full and real view of the Saint. Her Story of a Soul is still quite sentimental, but I actually learned through suffering in my own life the value of that sentimentality. I used to think it was weakling stuff, until I got to a point in life where I realized that behind the veil of sentimental words, She was actually raising a battle cry for us to Trust and Love God with no holds barred. And the sentimentality is humbling. A lot of high strung theologians in the Church who’ve done a lot of damage could learn from her humble writing style. Not every flower can be a rose, some must be daises, because God delights not in the monotony of a single garden of exact flowers, but in the experience of the different varieties, colours and fragrances of all his little flowers. Just this very rough paraphrase makes me weak at the knees about God even if I am a guy, if this is in fact God as He is, and He is in fact this God. He delights in the fragrance that is unique to me along with all my colours and even my rough stem edges because He planted me.
 
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I’d say you’re pretty spot on there, especially if you’re talking the Carmelite tradition post-John of the Cross. St. John of the Cross was himself heavily influenced by the Desert Fathers - who were themselves decidedly Eastern. He was a trained theologian, but had a preference for those who lived the tradition and then wrote/talked about it as opposed to those who were trained academically, but whose lives didn’t reflect the tradition. This is one of the areas where he and St. Teresa of Avila disagreed with one another. St. Teresa had a preference for spiritual directors who were trained as academic theologians, whereas St. John of the Cross preferred those who were experienced in the spiritual life. However, both agreed that in an ideal world you’d have someone who was both experienced and trained.
 
My guess would be that your mother probably struggled through much of the same stuff that St. Therese struggled through. Anyone who’s been through some of the things she went through recognizes the signs even in the midst of the flowery/sentimental words and smiling faces. I’m sure your mother is in good company with St. Therese in heaven now (and I pray my mother is there enjoying both their company).
 
Actually, it is worth remembering that Christ himself appeared to dispel the hyper-severity of Jansenism, to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.

“Behold the Heart that has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify to Its love; and in return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this Sacrament of Love. But what I feel most keenly is that it is hearts which are consecrated to Me that treat Me thus.”

Jesus Christ himself offered the cure for Jansenism- The image of the sacred heart, burning with love for humanity. This is anti-legalism. The Jansenists HATED the sacred heart and called those who devoted themselves to it “Cardio-latrists.” Heart worshippers.

Much of what is called legalism in the west by the east is simply caricature.
 
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