Poustinia

When I went to the Little Brothers of Jesus after the Archdiocesan celebration, I found a book that I long to read. Thank God I have a copy of Poustinia by Catherine Doherty.

The chapter "Poustinia in The Marketplace" was mentioned in the Pillars Manual of the Intercessors of the Lamb. Since then, I was looking for more information about Poustinias. You might have read in my "About Me" page that I am very interested in desert spirituality and I thank God that the Little Brothers allowed me to borrow the book. Now I am spending my time reading it. I finished the first two chapters today and I am taking my time "digesting" the words of Catherine Doherty.

"Silence is always the act of listening," says the Servant of God. I have never thought of this before! Now I understand why it's wrong for us Catholics to go to Buddhists' meditation practices, or the occult things which is very popular in the Philippines unfortunately. For Catholics, mental prayer is not just staying still to achieve a certain state of soul, but staying still and knowing the Lord (Ps 46:10)! Prayer is a dialogue, not a monologue, or worse, without-a-logue.

The words "To go into the poustinia means to listen to God" really hit me right into the heart. There's a great difference between spending silence for God and for others and spending silence just for oneself. The latter is out of greed and sloth while the first one is made of love.

Now a story comes to my mind. It's comparing the souls of the saints and of  the damned. The souls have no joints at their elbows. This became a great problem at hell because they can't place their spoons into their mouth. Imagine the food being thrown all over the lake of fire! Now in heaven, since they, too, cannot put the spoons into their mouth, they feed each other. Of course this is just a little "story" but I am sure that in heaven we won't be needing foods to satisfy our bodies. I think this story (I wonder if I should call this a story) seems to make a connection with the preceding paragraph. It's all about reaching to your neighbors through prayer and solitude.

Another special quote from the book: "A silent heart is a loving heart, and a loving heart is a hospice to the world."

I pray that the world would leave all its unnecessary noise, and turn to God. Amen.