Fencing Bear at Prayer

"On the last day of the novena of immediate preparation of the tabernacle (Psalm 45:5), which He was to sanctify by his coming, the Most High resolved to renew his wonders and multiply his tokens of love, repeating the favors and benefits which up to this day He had conferred upon the Princess Mary. But the Almighty chose to work in such a way, that in drawing forth from his infinite treasures his gifts of old, He always added thereto such as were new. All of these different kinds of wonders were appropriate to the end He had in view: lowering his Divinity to the human nature and raising a woman to the dignity of Mother of God. In descending to the lowliness of man's estate, God neither could, nor needed to change his essence: for, remaining immutable in Himself, He could unite his Person to our nature; but an earthly woman, in ascending to such an excellence that God should unite with Her and become man of her substance, apparently must traverse an infinite space and be r...

"The heavenly Princess, most holy Mary, had now attained such fullness of grace and beauty and the heart of God was so wounded by her tender affections and desires (Song of Songs 4:9), that He was so to say irresistibly drawn to begin his flight from the bosom of the eternal Father to the bridal-chamber of her virginal womb and end the long delay of more than five thousand years. Nevertheless, since this new wonder was to be executed in the plenitude of his wisdom and equity, the Lord arranged this event in such a way, that the Princess of the heavens Herself, being the worthy Mother of the incarnate Word, should at the same time be also the most powerful Mediatrix of his coming and the Redeemer of his people much more than Esther was of Israel (Esther 7-8). In the heart of most holy Mary burned the flame, which God himself had enkindled, and without intermission She prayed for the salvation of the human race. However, as yet the most humble Lady restrained Herself in modesty,...

"Great are the works of the Most High, for all of them were and are executed with the plenitude of knowledge and goodness, ordained in equity and number (Wisdom 11:21). None of them is faulty, useless or ineffectual, superfluous or vain; all are exquisite and magnificent, finished and executed according to the full measure of his holy will. Such He desired them to be, in order that He might be known and magnified in them. But in comparison to the mystery of the Incarnation, all the works of God ad extra , although they are in themselves great, stupendous and marvelous, more to be admired than comprehended, are only a small spark, issuing from the unfathomable abyss of the Divinity. This great sacrament of vesting Himself in a passible and mortal nature is pre-eminently the great work of his infinite power and wisdom and the one which immeasurably excels all the other works and wonders of his powerful arm. For in this mystery, not merely a spark of the Divinity, but that whol...

"While the Most High continued the proximate preparation of our heavenly Princess for the reception of the eternal Word in her virginal womb, She, on her part, persevered without intermission in her fervent sighs and prayers to hasten his coming into the world. When the night of the sixth of these days, which I have begun to describe, had arrived, and when She had previously been elevated by still more profound illuminations, She was again called and invited in spirit to the abstractive vision of the Divinity. Although this happened in the same manner as at other times, yet it was accompanied by more heavenly effects and by a more profound insight into the attributes of the Most High. She remained nine hours in this trance and issued from it at the third hour. Yet, although the high vision of the essence of God ceased at that hour, the most holy Mary continued to enjoy another kind of vision and prayer.... "Having seen God in this vision She was immediately shown the work...

"The fifth day of the novena, which the most blessed Trinity celebrated in the temple of most holy Mary, in order that the eternal Word might assume human shape in Her, had arrived.  Just as in the preceding days She was elevated to an abstractive vision of the Divinity, and, as the veil fell more and more from the secrets of the infinite wisdom, She discovered new mysteries also during this day.  For the preparations and enlightenments emitted ever stronger rays of light and divine graces, which flashed into her most holy soul and emptied the treasures of infinity into her faculties, assimilating and transforming the heavenly Lady more and more to a likeness of her God in order to make Her worthy of being his Mother.... "It is impossible to describe the hidden secrets, which most holy Mary then saw in the Lord; for She perceived in Him all the creatures of the past, present and the future, and the position of each one in creation, the good and bad actions and the final end...

"Still the favors and most exalted mysteries of the Most High toward our Queen and Lady in preparing Her for [the] approaching dignity of Motherhood continued.  The fourth day of this preparation had arrived and at the same hour She was again raised to the abstractive vision of the Divinity.  But this vision was accompanied by new effects of exalted enlightenments in this most pure Soul.  The divine power and wisdom has no bounds or limits; to his operations only our will, or the limitation of our created nature, offers resistance.  But in the will of most holy Mary the divine power found no hindrance, for all her works were executed with plenitude of holiness and entirely according to the pleasure of the Lord, drawing Him on, as He himself said, and wounding his heart with love (Song of Songs 4:9).  Only in so far as most holy Mary was a mere creature was the power of the divine arm limited; but within these limits it could act without bound or restriction, and...

"The right arm of the Most High, which threw open the doors of the Divinity to most holy Mary, continued to enrich and adorn at the expense of his infinite attributes this most pure spirit and virginal body which He had chosen as his tabernacle, as his temple, and as the holy city of his habitation.  And the heavenly Lady, engulfed in this vastness of the Divinity, winged her flight day by day farther away from earthly things, and transformed Herself more and more into a heavenly being, discovering ever new sacraments in the Most High.  For as He is the infinite Object of desire, although the appetite is satiated with that which is received, always more remains to be desired and understood.  Not all the hierarchies of the angels, nor all men together, have attained such preferment in blessings, mysteries and sacraments as this Princess attained, especially as regards those due to Her as Mother of the Creator. "On the third day of preparation at which I have now arrived,...

"On the second day, at the same hour of midnight, the Virgin Mary was visited in the same way as described in the last chapter .  The divine power raised Her up by the same elevations and illuminings to prepare Her for the visions of the Divinity.  He manifested Himself again in an abstractive manner as on the first day, and She was shown the works performed on the second day of the creation.  She learnt how and when God divided the waters (Genesis 1:6), some above and others below, establishing the firmament, and above it the crystal, known also as the watery heaven.  Her insight penetrated into the greatness, order, conditions, movements and all the other qualities and conditions of the heavens. "And in the most prudent Virgin this knowledge did not lay idle, nor remain sterile; for immediately the most clear light of the Divinity overflowed in Her, and inflamed and emblazoned Her with admiration, praise and love of the goodness and power of God.  Being tran...

"[In] order to put his desires into execution [the LORD] sought first to prepare the tabernacle or temple, whither He was to descend from the bosom of the eternal Father.  He resolved to furnish his beloved and chosen Mother with a clear knowledge of all his works ad extra , just as his Omnipotence had made them.  On the first day therefore [by an abstractive vision] He manifested to Her all that He had made on the first day of the creation of the world, as it is recorded in Genesis, and She perceived all with greater clearness and comprehension, than if She had been an eye-witness; for She knew them first as they are in God, and then as they are in themselves. "She perceived and understood, how the LORD in the beginning (Genesis 1:1, 5), created heaven and earth; in how far and in what way it was void, and how the darkness was over the face of the abyss; how the spirit of the LORD hovered over the waters and how, at the divine command, light was made, and what was its natu...

"In order to proceed with a dignity befitting Himself, God prepared most holy Mary in a singular manner during the nine days immediately preceding this mystery, and allowed the river of his Divinity to rush impetuously forth (Psalm 45:5) to inundate this City of God with its floods.  He communicated such great graces and gifts and favors, that I am struck dumb by the perception of what has been made known to me concerning this miracle, and my lowliness is filled with dread at even the mention of what I understood.  For the tongue, the pen, and all the faculties of a creature fall far below any possibility of revealing such incomprehensible sacraments.  Therefore I wish it to be understood, that all I say here is only an insignificant shadow of the smallest part of these wonders and ineffable prodigies, which are not at all to be encompassed by our limited words, but only by the power divine, which I do not possess." --Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God: The Incarn...

I wish that I felt comfortable writing more about God. I believe in Him (now, there's a loaded statement!), so why don't I? I've certainly read a lot about God or, rather, about what others have thought about God. And it's not like I don't have my own opinions. So why the silence? Why the fear? Pride, I suppose. I don't want to sound simple, and yet I know I do. I'm not a theologian, I don't seem to have that calling. How could anything that I say about God hold a candle to the great meditations of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, von Balthasar--to name only a few? I am, as Hildegard herself often protested, but an unlearned woman. Who am I to try to play with the big boys deciphering the mysteries of the divine? But nor am I, as a woman, interested in developing a peculiar "feminine" theology. In part, because I don't really think it is necessary. More important, because I think it would be wrong: God created human beings ma...

"A place of blood and terror is not the only place where God can be found, but it is the only kind of place where God can be born. For God can only be born in the context of God's wrath. The wrath of God is not some senile ghost throwing a tantrum in the sky: the wrath of God is the revelation to man of the hell that man has made of his life on this earth. When we speak of the death of Christ as appeasing or atoning for the wrath of the Father, we mean that the death of Christ on the cross makes it possible for man to see a few other things besides hell." --Northrop Frye, "The Leap in the Dark," in Northrop Frye on Religion , eds. Alvin A. Lee and Jean O'Grady (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 301.

So my sister sent me the link to this YouTube video, and I've been watching it on and off all day as I sat at my desk making lists of manuscripts. It's called " Strength in Poland ." [Although, as I've now learned, the men are actually from Hungary and their act is called "Golden Power."] If you haven't seen it yet, go look. Amazing, aren't they? The first time I watched them, I started feeling impatient. Why were they moving so SLOWLY? The next time I started to realize how truly amazing it was that they could stay so STILL, almost as if they weren't moving at all. The third (or maybe fourth) time I started watching the breath on the man who is doing the lifts (look at his stomach) and realized for all his stillness how very hard he is working. There is a good reason that the YouTube post has the title that it does: that opening lift must take enormous strength for how slowly they go; much more so than the equally impressive but rathe...