Divine Hunger

Discussion in 'The mystical and Paranormal' started by padraig, Jan 25, 2016.

  1. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Round about bed time last night I was visited by a huge hunger for God. Like the kind we get sometimes when we miss mass for some reason. The very same hunger the psalmist of course talks about:


    • Psalm 42
      Longing for the Lord's presence in his Temple Let all who thirst come, let all who desire it drink from the life-giving water (Revelation 22:17).

    Like the deer that yearns
    for running streams,
    so my soul is yearning
    for you, my God.

    My soul is thirsting for God,
    the God of my life;
    when can I enter and see
    the face of God?

    My tears have become my bread,
    by night, by day,
    as I hear it said all the day long:
    Where is your God?

    These things will I remember
    as I pour out my soul:
    how I would lead the rejoicing crowd
    into the house of God,
    amid cries of gladness and thanksgiving,
    the throng wild with joy.

    Why are you cast down, my soul,
    why groan within me?
    Hope in God; I will praise him still,
    my savior and my God.

    My soul is cast down within me
    as I think of you,
    from the country of Jordan and Mount Hermon,
    from the Hill of Mizar.

    Deep is calling on deep,
    in the roar of waters;
    your torrents and all your waves
    swept over me.

    By day the Lord will send
    his loving kindness;
    by night I will sing to him,
    praise the God of my life.

    I will say to God, my rock:
    Why have you forgotten me?

    With cries that pierce me to the heart,
    my enemies revile me,
    saying to me all day long:
    Where is your God?

    Why are you cast down, my soul,
    why groan within me?
    Hope in God; I will praise him still,
    my savior and my God. Glory...

     
  2. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I think it is impossible in this life to be filled and satisfied with God for only in heaven with the Beatific Vision itself can our spiritual thirst be quenched. The more of the Waters of Life we are given the more we Thirst, the more that the Holy Spirit of God flies to make His home in our hearts the emptier the cavern He makes there to create rooms for is Beating Wings:
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  3. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I was thinking a few days ago on prayer ofa soul that had just died. About how very,very naked the soul is that passes from this life and stands in the light of Eternity. For the only thing that clothes it and gives the soul substance and strength and meaning is Love, for love are the only riches we can take over with us from this life to the next. Everything else is so much dust and nonsense and vanished to nothing in the fire of death.

    So when Mary the Immaculate Conception died , she who was pure love Incarnate she at once Ascended Body and Soul into Heaven. the Woman Clothed in the Gold of Love , in her heart a cavern prepared in her heart by her hunger for the Lord.

    'Blessed are those who hunger..for they shall be satisfied'.

    Psalm 45:9

    Your Throne is Forever
    8All Your garments are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; Out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made You glad. 9Kings' daughters are among Your noble ladies; At Your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir. 10Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear: Forget your people and your father's house;…

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  4. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Writers on Mysticism write of a Via Postiva and a Via Negativa, a postive and and a negative path to God.

    http://aleteia.org/2013/03/04/what-is-the-via-negativa/
    'In the Christian tradition, the via negativa refers to a way of speaking about God and his attributes. Because God is a being far beyond our capacity as human beings to comprehend, anything we can say of him is necessarily limited by our finite human understanding and his reality far surpasses our power of expression. The most true things we can say about him are by way negation—by saying what he is not rather than what he is. We therefore can come to know God better through meditating on how much greater he is than anything we can conceive.'

    In a way we can be like very small birds that fly very, very high , but no matter how far into the sky we go our hearts burst becasue we can never in this life land at the feet of God. The higher we fly the emptier the more hungry our hearts are.

    ‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ Jer 29:13

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    Last edited: Jan 25, 2016
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  5. padraig

    padraig Powers

    The Cherubim are the Scoend highest of the nine choirs of angels and are said to be the Throne or resting place of God.

    http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03646c.htm

    'In Psalm 17 the psalmist describes the sudden descent of Jehovah to rescue a soul in distress in the following words: "He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under His feet. He rode upon a cherub and flew upon the wings of the wind."'

    They have been described as the, 'Chariot of God' with images of them on and aorund The Ark of the Covenent.

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  6. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I think of the Cherubim when I think of the huner for God because they rmeind me of the fact that God is so unknowable. That anything we might say to describe Him falls so far short of the Truth. The Cherubim ,so t o speak carry Him as living Thrones so that we might at lest catch a glimpse of the Shekinah, the Glory of God as He passes by.

    Psalm 104:2
    O Lord, My God, You are Very Great
    1Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty, 2Covering Yourself with light as with a cloak, Stretching out heaven like a tent curtain. 3He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters; He makes the clouds His chariot; He walks upon the wings of the wind;…



    Ezekiel 1:4-28

    The Chariot of the Lord—God’s Throne
    4 I was watching a big storm come in from the north. It was a big cloud with a strong wind, and there was fire flashing from it. Light was shining out all around it. It looked like hot metal glowing in a fire. 5 Inside the cloud, there were four living beings that looked like people. 6 But each one of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight. Their feet looked like calves’ feet, and they sparkled like polished brass. 8 Under their wings were human arms. There were four living beings. Each living being had four faces and four wings. 9 The wings touched each other. The living beings did not turn when they moved. They went in the direction they were looking.


    10 Each living being had four faces. In the front they each had a man’s face. There was a lion’s face on the right side and a bull’s face on the left side. There was an eagle’s face on the back. 11 Their wings were spread out over them. With two of the wings each living being reached out to touch the one near it, and with the other two wings it covered its body. 12 Each living being went in the direction it was looking. They went wherever the spirit caused them to go, but they did not turn when they moved. 13 That is what the living beings looked like.

    Inside the area between the living beings, there was something that looked like burning coals of fire. This fire was like small torches that kept moving around among the living beings. The fire glowed brightly and lightning flashed from it. 14 The living beings ran back and forth—as fast as lightning.


    15-16 I was looking at the living beings when I noticed four wheels that touched the ground. There was one wheel by each living being. All the wheels looked the same. The wheels looked as if they were made from a clear, yellow jewel. They looked like there was a wheel inside a wheel. 17 They could turn to move in any direction. But the living beings did not turn when they moved.


    18 The rims of the wheels were tall and frightening. There were eyes all over the rims of all four wheels.


    19 The wheels always moved with the living beings. If the living beings went up into the air, the wheels went with them. 20 They went wherever the spirit wanted them to go, and the wheels went with them, because the power that moved the living being was in the wheels. 21 So if the living beings moved, the wheels moved. If the living beings stopped, the wheels stopped. If the wheels went into the air, the living beings went with them, because the spirit was in the wheels.


    22 There was an amazing thing over the heads of the living beings. It was like a bowl turned upside down, and the bowl was clear like crystal. 23 Under this bowl, each living being had wings reaching out to the one next to it. Two wings spread out one way and two wings spread out the other way, covering its body.


    24 Then I heard the wings. Every time the living beings moved, their wings made a very loud noise like a lot of water rushing by. They were loud like the Lord All-Powerful. They were as loud as an army or a crowd of people. When the living beings stopped moving, they put their wings down by their side.


    25 The living beings stopped moving and lowered their wings. Then there was another loud sound that came from above the bowl over their heads. 26 There was something that looked like a throne on top of the bowl. It was blue like sapphire. There was also something that looked like a man sitting on the throne. 27 I looked at him from his waist up. He looked like hot metal with fire all around him. I looked at him from his waist down. It looked like fire with a glow that was shining all around him. 28 The light shining around him was like a rainbow in a cloud. It was the Glory of the Lord. As soon as I saw that, I fell to the ground. I bowed with my face to the ground, and then I heard a voice speaking to me.


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  7. padraig

    padraig Powers

    The saints who walk in this Divine Darkness or the Via Negativa remind me so much of the Cherubim in that they are carriers in their own persons of the unknowability of God.

    The best example of this I can recall is St Therese of the Child Jesus who could almost be a Patron Saint of Atheists , s o very deep was the Darkness through which she trod in her short life.

    “But instead of letting me see any ray of hope, God afflicted me with a most grievous martyrdom which lasted for three days. It brought sharply home to me the bitter grief felt by the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph as they searched for the Child Jesus. I was alone in a desert waste — or rather, my soul was like a fragile skiff tossing without a pilot in a stormy sea. I knew that Jesus was there, asleep in my craft, but the night was too black for me to see Him. All was darkness. Not even a flash of lightning pierced the clouds. There’s nothing reassuring about lightning, but, at least, if the storm had burst, I should have been able to glimpse Jesus. But it was night, the dark night of the soul. Like Jesus during His Agony in the Garden, I felt myself abandoned and there was no help for me on earth or in heaven. God had abandoned me. Nature herself seemed to share my misery. The sun never shone once during those three days and the rain fell in torrents. I have noticed that, at all the important moments of my life, nature has mirrored my soul. When I wept the sky wept with me, and when I was happy the sun shone without a cloud in the sky.”
    John Beevers, The Autobiography of Saint Therese: The Story of a Soul

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  8. padraig

    padraig Powers

    This is one thing that really touches me about St Therese. I was looking at a really beautiful statue of her the other night in a Church. She seems so sweet and touching, almost like a little child. But you don't be long reading her life until you discover that she walked for most of her life in utter darkness, that she was in fact a very ,very great spiritual warrior.

    If we doubt this all we have to do is to look at soem of the photographs of her towards the latter part of her life. Her face, her eyes show such great depth of pain and suffering...

    ...but also I think of a huge inner strength and knowledge. Yes, she lies nailed to the Cross in the Darkness, but the Darkness has if you will become her light.

    She had become a saint. A Cherubim; a Throne for the Unknowable Darkness of God.

    God 's Chariot. His Cherubim.
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  9. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Alongside the Via Negativa in the Spritual Life Via Postiva or way of light in which God Affirms who He is. Seen so well in the appearance tof God to Moses on Mount Sinai and the burning bush.

     
  10. josephite

    josephite Powers

    How beautiful!

    St Therese pray for Padraig, the MoG forum and me.

    Thank you dearest little flower. Amen
     

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