TRUE LOVE THAT NEVER ENDS

Transforming Suffering
An Interview with Basil Pennington
By Mary NurrieStearns

PT: This leads to my next question. I am again quoting your book. You say, "We need to separate ourselves from the enslavement of this world’s values. We have to be in the world, we cannot be of the world." How can we be in the world, but not of the world?

Pennington: It is taking the world in two different senses. We live in this world, this creation, but are not of this world, in the sense that we don’t accept the materialistic outlook and values. We are invited to see the world the way God sees it, as a wonderful evolving process which has been going on for millions of years. Evolution has reached a high level in us humans who can now, through Grace, be transformed to participate in the divine life. We are destined to pass beyond or transcend the materialistic world to enter into the divine level of being in life and love. The revelation of God through the scriptures reminds us, calls us to, and assures us of the help and the means we need to go beyond this material creation and enter fully into the divine reality.

PT: Talk about the four-stage process of lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio in Lectio Divina.

Pennington: In practice, sometimes we separate these phases, although more naturally this process takes place at the same time and in varying degrees, depending on what’s happening in the relationship at the moment. Lectio is primarily opening ourselves to let God speak to us, to be present to us in, through His inspired word. You can do Lectio with Nature too. God speaks to us through everything in Creation—the flowers, the wind, the beautiful child. You can do Lectio in a broad sense through everything, but His inspired word is the vehicle of His communication with us. He says: "I no longer call you servants but friends because I make known to you everything known to me." Lectio is meeting the Lord and letting Him speak to us and invite us into deeper relationship with Him, to realize our call and our destiny.

Meditatio, in the earlier Church tradition, is when we take and carry that word as a way of having the Lord as a presence, walking with us throughout the rest of the day, beginning in the session itself. This particular word speaks to us and we let it drill down into our hearts, into the powerful experience of the presence of God and the transforming call.

Oratio is translated as prayer. Here prayer means the complete response of giving oneself to God, trusting God, who has spoken to us through the Lectio. That word has become alive in Meditatio and our response is prayer, a trusting response to His word.

Contemplatio is when we rest together and nothing more needs to be said or even be thought of. It is being together with God. I learned contemplation when I was four years old, sitting with my grandparents on the porch. They sat there for hours saying nothing. I felt wonderful and I loved to sit with them. I realized later that they were with each other in love and that love embraced their little grandchild. I experienced the Contemplatio of love in that presence of my grandparents. So it’s coming just to sit with the Lord in that embrace of refreshing love. You can’t love what you don’t know, and Lectio is where you get to know that loving.
 

A MEDITATION ON
Consciousness Raising   

I think the best way to describe Our Interaction within you is that I raise your conscious awareness about what it is you are doing in your daily life.  When you are walking in accord with My Will for you, I flood you with My Peace.  I let you know within your being that I am most pleased with you.  I do not have to spell out how I do this. I know that you are aware of what I do to raise your consciousness that I love you and what you do. I also find ways to raise your awareness that I love you but that I am not happy with what you do when your actions are not in accord with My Will for you. That is the core of My Healing Love within you demonstrating its presence in your life.  That is Our Interactive Love teaching you how to change your actions so that what you do is more in accord with Our Will for you

Be still in My Presence. Walk away from your world. Cross over to Me spiritually. Focus on just being with Me mentally. Oh My friend! Enjoy this respite in My Sacred Space. Know that We create this place just for you. We invite you into Our Quiet Place. It is constructed in Love. It is filled with Our Blessings.

We enjoy your visits with Us as much as you do. We know your heart is Ours. We know your soul belongs to Us. We know your mind is Ours as well even though every now and then it likes to kick up a fuss. We enjoy your mental fusses. They enable us to cleanse you of erroneous thinking. We acknowledge that such cleansing causes you distress. However, We remind you of the motto of the long distance runner.

 "No pain. No gain."

We are not sadists. We are Eternal Realists. The pain you experience is caused by your reticence to let go of mistaken beliefs about Us, about Our Love and about Life in Love Eternal. We assure you that your struggles to be free of such thinking is well worth the effort.

Thus, be at Peace, My friend. We control your recovery from temporary by giving you gentle, incremental insights into Life in Love Eternal.

Pause

I stop you from writing. I stop readers from reading. I want the power of My Words to sink in. Thus, I repeat them. We control your recovery from temporary by giving you gentle, incremental insights into Life in Love Eternal. These words underscore what I do in the hearts, souls and minds of those who find their way to Our Sacred Space daily.

I pace your recovery from temporary. I sprinkle droplets of My Waters of Salvation into aspects of each person's recovery process. I need not do anything more. I send My Timeless Love across the boundary of time Into the very depths of the psyche of each friend. I touch each friend so deeply that they know in their hearts that what they experience internally is true.

Is this not what happens in you? Do I not describe the nature of your daily encounters with Me in your daily life in the world of man?

I come alive on an altar at Mass. I bring My Divine True Presence to rest in a piece of bread and in a cup of wine on this altar. Transubstantiation occurs. Timeless Love is physically present on this altar.

I call all who are in Love with Me to say the Our Father. I touch all here with My Peace spiritually and mentally. I ready all here to receive My True Presence physically.

I am truly the Lamb of God. I am The Resurrected Jesus. I come to bring My New Life to you physically. I draw you beyond time to My Timeless Love. Be in Communion with Me.

Pause

This is the Truth of your recovery process from the world of temporary. This is My Resurrected Life in Timeless Love lifting you out of yor world temporarily as My Physical True Presence in you gives you glimpses of Eternity physically. Thus, just be with Me, My friend. Know that you touch physically the True Love that will never end.

 Love,

 Jesus

 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MY LOVE

My friends! Taking a break from your life in the world of temporary is so beneficial to your well being in My Love. You close out temporary totally in your quest for closeness to Me in My Forever. You know what you do. You deliberately choose to go beyond the tip of your conceptual nose to the World of the Unknown where We interact in Timeless Love. This is a freely chosen action on your part. You disregard your intellectual impulses to chalk what you experience internally to flights of fancy promulgated by your overactive imagination.

You know you touch something more that gives a Peace that defies understanding. You know instinctively that there is nothing for you to fear. You accept as fact that I, Jesus the Messiah, draw you nearer to Me quietly, gently and internally. Indeed that is exactly what I do.

I save you from temporary in these few moments in your time that you spend with Me out of time. I cross you over to Me. I make the extraordinary seem so ordinary that I dispel all fear in you. I rule out insanity as an explanation of what you experience. Indeed I remove each human intellectual defense that your mind provides as an explanation of what occurs each time you encounter My True Presence in you.

My friends! What you experience in these few moments with Me in your time is quite real. I, Jesus the Messiah, provide you with a personal, intimate, internal encounter with the New Life I promise to bring to My friends. Then, almost as quicly as this encounter arises in you, It fades away. You are left with the ticking of the clock and the jingling of the bell that sounds the hour in your time. The encounter is gone. However its memory remains. It is imprinted on your heart. It leaves a burning desire for more and more of such encounters.

My friends! There will be more. I will give you as much of Me as your heart can endure. You will long for nothing more. That is My New Life. I resurrect you Peace meal!

It's no big deal for Me. I do this quite regularly in the hearts, souls and minds of My friends. It is My Eternal Joy to do so.

Love,

Jesus

Follow along one day at a time

Day Twenty Two

Day Twenty Three

Day Twenty Four

Day Twenty Five

Day Twenty Six

Day Twenty Seven

Day Twenty Eight

Week Two

Week Three

Week One

Each month I will present a book of meditations free
 for you to read.

Double click on

Book of the Month for this set of meditations.

I’ve started a newsletter page.

Double click on the Newsletter Page to read them.

Check Out Our Store.

There are Books of These Words.

They were written just for you.

Store

There are more Words of the Day on

Catholic New Evangelization net

Catholic New Evangelization com

 Click on these links if you wish to read more.

Who creates these sites?
Read

About Us

For visitors to the original Holy Spirit within Site you can link to these older sites on our links page.

Links

Return to Home to begin the reading for this month.