Woman at Prayer - 5, "Liberty"

From the booklet A Woman at Prayer by Rev. Conleth Overman.
Editors note:  Vicious Circle was a popular term (usually just shortened to V.C.) around 1960 when people were beginning to feel that their lives were getting out of control.  .  Today we just are used to it.

Today's "V.C."

A vicious circle can turn life into a tread-mill

A vicious circle can turn life into a tread-mill. Every age has its own peculiar "V. C."   We have ours. It goes something like this:

People have no taste for the spiritual because they are so attracted by material things. They would learn to love the spiritual if they would make a real attempt to live a more spiritual life; but to live a more spiritual life they must cease being so preoccupied with the material.

What can be done to break up this vicious circle? Until people actually "taste and see that the Lord is good" they will not be sufficiently motivated to reduce their preoccupation with material things. And the attraction of the senses, of earthly satisfactions, hold them back from giv­ing the spiritual a try. Perhaps education will break the circle; perhaps people will accept the word of authority and make a beginning. If we could dispel the enchantment which material things throw over the human spirit for just a little while so that the individual

 could turn to God and experience the "joy of the Lord", that would do the trick.

View for Vespers on my deck Wednesday

Strange Inversion 

Isn't it strange that creatures are allowed to crowd out the Creator? We get so involved with the trinkets that God has made and given us that we forget the loving Father from whom they come.

Isn't that like us moderns? We have one big purpose in life: to develop spiritually. Food is to keep us alive, houses to shelter us, clothes to protect and adorn us, recreation to keep us in good health - all this while we work out our destiny of becoming saints. But what happens? We act like children who, when given an all-day sucker, ignore the candy and start chewing the stick.

Inner Attraction 

Whatever good there is in creatures to make us want them has been put there by God. God is the source of being, and beauty, and goodness. If creatures, then, have the power of making us happy, their infinite Creator has an infinitely greater power of giving us joy. Thus it was that the Psalmist cried out: "0 taste and see that the Lord is good; happy is the man that trusts in him." (PS. 34. 8)   The Holy Trinity dwells in the soul of every justified person; when you are in the state of Sanctifying Grace the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are present to you in a special way.  Thomas Aquinas says that through the indwelling the Trinity is with you "to be enjoyed."

And what joy is not the infinite God able to impart to those that love Him!

My prayer corner

Why do not more of us enjoy the sweetness of our companionship with the three divine Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity? Because we are so seldom aware of their presence, because we so seldom turn inward to them, because our minds and hearts are fastened on a million trivialities. We are the slaves of creatures, and thus cannot enjoy the leisure of the children of God. Our greatest need, therefore, is

• simplicity in our liv­ing,
• self - denial in our pleasures,
• recollection throughout the day,
• and a spirit of detachment from material things. 

Only thus is liberty of spirit bought; only thus can we "taste and see that the Lord is good."