Inspirational writings from Benedictine Nuns
Sayings of Mother Mechtild of the Blessed Sacrament OSB
Christ in the Desert of the Most Holy Sacrament
We must flee from creatures, withdraw into solitude, and keep a profound silence, and, through these things, enter into the dispositions of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not necessary that we should go looking for Him in the deserts of Palestine, where once He withdrew and fasted for forty days. He is solitary in the desert of the Most Holy Sacrament: there He has taken upon Himself the sins of all men, becoming (for our sakes) the penitent of the Eternal Father.
Inward Emptiness
You must make in yourself a great emptiness of all that is not God, and apply yourself seriously to exclude anything that might be an obstacle to the descent of the divine Paraclete in your hearts.
The Nothing and the All
Let us labour energetically to make Jesus reign in our hearts, and to this end let us annihilate ourselves; it is the only way to make Him the possessor of our hearts.
We must flee from creatures, withdraw into solitude, and keep a profound silence, and, through these things, enter into the dispositions of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not necessary that we should go looking for Him in the deserts of Palestine, where once He withdrew and fasted for forty days. He is solitary in the desert of the Most Holy Sacrament: there He has taken upon Himself the sins of all men, becoming (for our sakes) the penitent of the Eternal Father.
Inward Emptiness
You must make in yourself a great emptiness of all that is not God, and apply yourself seriously to exclude anything that might be an obstacle to the descent of the divine Paraclete in your hearts.
The Nothing and the All
Let us labour energetically to make Jesus reign in our hearts, and to this end let us annihilate ourselves; it is the only way to make Him the possessor of our hearts.
Pious Fantasy
The interior life is not what one thinks or imagines. It consists not in having beautiful thoughts, nor in saying beautiful words, nor in remaining in a passive kind of prayer without applying one’s mind, as if one were in lofty heights. All of this is, more often than not, no more than fantasy.
The interior life is found in the solid practice of mortification, in the love of littleness and in total detachment from oneself and from creatures.
Death to Self in Little Things
If you are entering religious life to belong more to God, enter disposed at every moment to sacrifice. Providence will offer you very frequent occasions for this, without taking into account the things that will happen with the express purpose of putting you to the test. You will not be mortified in big things; the little things are more often the cause of our pain. At times a word will be harder for you to bear, not much is needed to make you suffer.
Expect Unexpected Things
Consider that God alone is, and that what He wants from a victim is that she should abandon herself to Him even to the the complete loss of herself. When we consecrate ourselves to God as victims, I assure you that we don’t know what we are doing: if it pleases the Lord to accept our sacrifice, something which will not fail to happen when the soul does this in His Spirit, the soul must resolve to accept unexpected things.
Pure Abandonment
All the nerve of the interior life is in this pure abandonment, which is neither seen, nor intuited, nor felt: it really is a state of death, in which one must resist in spite of nature and the cry of self-love.
Recourse to Mary Most Holy
One day, finding myself in great suffering and having no one to whom I could open my heart, I turned to the Holy Mother of God in these terms: “O Most Holy Virgin, have you brought me here to let me die? Would it not have been better to leave me in the world, given that here I do not find here the means to serve God with more holiness and purity? You see that I do not know to whom I ought to have recourse to teach me my duties, I have no one, and I know neither how to pray nor how to make mental prayer. Be for me, I pray you, a mother and a teacher. Teach me all that I must know.”
A Really Bad Monastic Day
Everything tires me, everything bothers me. The most inoffensive words irritate me, and I am finding it hard even to put up with myself. How can I do always the same thing, always at the same hour, in the same way, what enslavement!
Filled Full with Holiness and Love of Christ
Let me know You, O divine Jesus. Lift the veil of our shadows: let the torch of faith make me penetrate the holiness and the love contained in Your holy mysteries, and let my soul be penetrated by these to the point that no creature may be able to occupy it.
Mystical Death
It is necessary to lose all, this I see well, but my interior nature seeks to rest at least the tips of my feet so as to catch a breath. Oh, how rare it is, this total death! It is necessary to die and to be buried in Him who triumphs and is glorified in the death of His creatures. It is necessary that I die even to helpful things, to the light and to all that would be to me even the slightest support.
Eucharistic Prayer
They speak to me often of prayer, but I never hear anyone speak of the Most Holy Sacrament. Is there perhaps another mean to attain to God other than the Holy Eucharist? Is not the Holy Eucharist God Himself?
Pride
Pride is the source of all our faults and also of all our misfortunes.
Miraculously Poor in the Divine Eucharist
Jesus was poor in the virginal womb of His glorious Mother, poor in the manger, poor during the flight into Egypt, poor in the house of Joseph, poor and penitent in the desert, poor in His life of preaching, poor upon the Cross, poor in His death, and miraculously poor in the divine Eucharist. This extraordinary poverty gives to God, His Father, an infinite glory and causes Him to reign in a perfect manner. And this same kingdom of God is in us, but only one who is perfectly poor may come to know it. Those whose hearts are not pure will never possess it. It is revealed only to the poor and to little ones (cf. Matthew 11:25), who are no longer anything in themselves, and who are buried in littleness and in nothingness. When all things are so consumed in the soul, then does Jesus rise up, like a splendid sun in the heaven of the soul -- that heaven is the innermost place of the spirit and of its substance -- and there He shines, filling its interior with glory, with joy, with love, and with ineffable blessings.
The interior life is not what one thinks or imagines. It consists not in having beautiful thoughts, nor in saying beautiful words, nor in remaining in a passive kind of prayer without applying one’s mind, as if one were in lofty heights. All of this is, more often than not, no more than fantasy.
The interior life is found in the solid practice of mortification, in the love of littleness and in total detachment from oneself and from creatures.
Death to Self in Little Things
If you are entering religious life to belong more to God, enter disposed at every moment to sacrifice. Providence will offer you very frequent occasions for this, without taking into account the things that will happen with the express purpose of putting you to the test. You will not be mortified in big things; the little things are more often the cause of our pain. At times a word will be harder for you to bear, not much is needed to make you suffer.
Expect Unexpected Things
Consider that God alone is, and that what He wants from a victim is that she should abandon herself to Him even to the the complete loss of herself. When we consecrate ourselves to God as victims, I assure you that we don’t know what we are doing: if it pleases the Lord to accept our sacrifice, something which will not fail to happen when the soul does this in His Spirit, the soul must resolve to accept unexpected things.
Pure Abandonment
All the nerve of the interior life is in this pure abandonment, which is neither seen, nor intuited, nor felt: it really is a state of death, in which one must resist in spite of nature and the cry of self-love.
Recourse to Mary Most Holy
One day, finding myself in great suffering and having no one to whom I could open my heart, I turned to the Holy Mother of God in these terms: “O Most Holy Virgin, have you brought me here to let me die? Would it not have been better to leave me in the world, given that here I do not find here the means to serve God with more holiness and purity? You see that I do not know to whom I ought to have recourse to teach me my duties, I have no one, and I know neither how to pray nor how to make mental prayer. Be for me, I pray you, a mother and a teacher. Teach me all that I must know.”
A Really Bad Monastic Day
Everything tires me, everything bothers me. The most inoffensive words irritate me, and I am finding it hard even to put up with myself. How can I do always the same thing, always at the same hour, in the same way, what enslavement!
Filled Full with Holiness and Love of Christ
Let me know You, O divine Jesus. Lift the veil of our shadows: let the torch of faith make me penetrate the holiness and the love contained in Your holy mysteries, and let my soul be penetrated by these to the point that no creature may be able to occupy it.
Mystical Death
It is necessary to lose all, this I see well, but my interior nature seeks to rest at least the tips of my feet so as to catch a breath. Oh, how rare it is, this total death! It is necessary to die and to be buried in Him who triumphs and is glorified in the death of His creatures. It is necessary that I die even to helpful things, to the light and to all that would be to me even the slightest support.
Eucharistic Prayer
They speak to me often of prayer, but I never hear anyone speak of the Most Holy Sacrament. Is there perhaps another mean to attain to God other than the Holy Eucharist? Is not the Holy Eucharist God Himself?
Pride
Pride is the source of all our faults and also of all our misfortunes.
Miraculously Poor in the Divine Eucharist
Jesus was poor in the virginal womb of His glorious Mother, poor in the manger, poor during the flight into Egypt, poor in the house of Joseph, poor and penitent in the desert, poor in His life of preaching, poor upon the Cross, poor in His death, and miraculously poor in the divine Eucharist. This extraordinary poverty gives to God, His Father, an infinite glory and causes Him to reign in a perfect manner. And this same kingdom of God is in us, but only one who is perfectly poor may come to know it. Those whose hearts are not pure will never possess it. It is revealed only to the poor and to little ones (cf. Matthew 11:25), who are no longer anything in themselves, and who are buried in littleness and in nothingness. When all things are so consumed in the soul, then does Jesus rise up, like a splendid sun in the heaven of the soul -- that heaven is the innermost place of the spirit and of its substance -- and there He shines, filling its interior with glory, with joy, with love, and with ineffable blessings.
from Dame Gertrude More OSB
"The Divine Office is such a heavenly thing that in it we find whatsoever we can desire: for sometimes in it we address ourselves to Thee for help and pardon for our sins; and sometimes Thou speakest to us, so that it pierceth and woundeth with desire of Thee the very bottom of our souls; and sometimes Thou teachest a soul to understand more in it of the knowledge of Thee and of herself than ever could have been by all the teaching in the world showed to a soul in five hundred years; for Thy words are works."
from Sr Nazarena of Jesus OSB Cam.
When I found myself in my recluse cell, after the nuns had withdrawn and the door was closed. I realised with certainty that at last I was in my place, the place willed by God for me. In the course of so many years, I have never felt the temptation to leave reclusion, not even once! I have always felt joy and thanksgiving for this place God chose for me. No sacrifice has been too costly. Hidden forever with the Father, the Spirit, Jesus, and the Madonna, who has been such a great help to me for all these years, I live solely in peace. The silent solitude has lost nothing of its first enchantment, nor of the attraction of eternal newness. It is God who vivifies it. Here I am, I live in it like a fish in a lake created on purpose for it.
