Lenten Retreat: Day 1, “Truth”

For Lent I am having a retreat with my patroness through reading Living the Truth in Love: A Retreat with Catherine of Siena by ElizabethA. Dreyer.  This is a book that goes through seven retreat days in the format of a retreat.  Dreyer’s book is part a series, each book in the series focusing on the writings of a particular holy person.  I was given Dreyer’s book as a gift by a Dominican sister for my perpetual profession as a Lay Dominican back in January.  You can read about that here.

 

Dreyer’s book is organized with an Introduction, a “Getting to Know our Director”—that is our spiritual director, St. Catherine of Siena—and a chapter for each retreat day.  A retreat day chapter is organized with an introduction of the day’s theme, an opening prayer, a spiritual “talk” (written, of course) on the theme as expounded on the holy person’s life and writings, a series of reflections in the form of bullet points, and a closing prayer.  I think this concept is brilliant.  I’m going to see how many of these retreat days I can share on my blog.  May each of these posts be a mini retreat for you.  Or get the book and have a full retreat for yourself.

 

Day 1 Retreat Theme: “I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6)

From the Introduction:

This retreat is an opportunity to pause and encounter the God who is Truth and reflect on what it means for each of us to love and live the truth.

We do know that the word truth had special meaning for Catherine of Siena.  Her affection for this term certainly stemmed from her affiliation with the Dominican order.  As a child growing up in Siena, she lived but a stone’s throw from the Dominican Church, San Domenico.

Catherine's choice to become a lay Dominican suggests she wanted to bring the word of truth to the broader world.

At the source of her passion for truth was the God she delighted in addressing as “Eternal Truth” or “First Gentle Truth.”

              (pp.21-2)

Opening Prayer:

O all-powerful God,

O boundless most gentle charity!

I see in you and know in my heart

that you are the way, the truth, and life

by which everyone must travel

who is destined to come to you—

the way, the truth, and life

which your unutterable love establishes and fashions

out of the true knowledge of the wisdom

of your only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

You are the eternal and incomprehensible God

who, when the human race was dead

because of our wretched weakness,

were moved only by love

and by merciful compassion

to send us this one,

our true God and Lord,

Christ Jesus your Son,

Clothed in our mortal flesh.

[The Prayers of Catherine of Siena, Ed. Suzanne Noffke, New York: Pualist Press, 1983, p.34]

 

Spiritual Talk:

Three quotes out of the retreat talk.

We can outline the various truths about God that have come down to us in the Scriptures and Tradition, but it is only when we have fallen in love with God that the truth of God really becomes visible—when we are in God and God is in us like the “fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish” [The Dialogue, Trans. Noffke, 1980, p. 55].  What followed from this love for Catherine was her will to know and follow truth more courageously.  (p. 27)

In The Dialogue, Catherine develops at great length the image of Christ as the bridge…In Catherine’s hands, the bridge becomes “a multivalent, allegorical parable for the doctrine of the Incarnation” (Benedict Ashley, “Guide to Catherine’s Dialogue,” Cross and Crown 29 (1977), p. 242).  Adam’s sin caused a separation between God and humanity that can only be bridged by the incarnate Truth, Jesus Christ.  (P. 27)

In The Dialogue, Catherine asks Christ why he wanted his side pierced when he was already dead.  Christ responds that there were many reasons, but the chief reason was that while his longing for longing for humankind was infinite, the actual deed of bearing pain was finite and could never show the depth of his love.  “This is why I wanted you to see the secret of my heart, wanted to show it to you opened up, so that you could see that I loved you more than finite suffering could show” (p. 138, The Dialogue, Trans. Suzzane Noffke, New York: Paulist Press)  (p.28)

We are finite beings, and even Catherine with her immense ability to love, can only love to a finite limit.  But the love that pours out of Christ’s heart is infinite, and He shows us with the pierced side.  Can we truly understand what infinite love is?  Here is an analogy.  Think of the heat and light pouring out of the sun.  Think on how much pours out, not just for the earth, but to flood the entire universe reaching the far ends of the solar system.  And just as we can see other suns from vast galaxies way, meaning that light is pouring out from that far out reaching us, the light of our poor little sun, a small star compared to others, also reaches far out to the distant nooks of the galaxy.  And that amount is just for a single moment.  The sun has been pouring out continuously since its creation billions of years ago.  All that light that reaches the far ends of the galaxy has been pouring out for billions of years.  Think of all that as love.  And yet that is not infinite.  It is still finite.  God’s love is infinite, pouring out for every single human being, indeed, for every single one of His creation, since the beginning of time.

 

For Reflection:

If God is “Truth,” how might this effect the way you pray?  The way you speak? The way you live?  (p. 30)

Closing Prayer:

To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

O my God, in thee I trust,

    let me not be put to shame;

    let not my enemies exult over me.

Yea, let none that wait for thee be put to shame;

    let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

 

Make me to know thy ways, O Lord;

    teach me thy paths.

Lead me in thy truth, and teach me,

    for thou art the God of my salvation;

    for thee I wait all the day long. 

(Ps 25:1-5)