Out to Us, In to Him

Thanks mate. Every now and then you hear an encouraging word that is tailored to your particular situation. Appreciate it for the reminder.

“ He must increase and I must decrease “

As we disappear, Self is buried so that only Jesus remains.

Wondered for years why believers were so caught up on fasting and self denial, doing all that hard penance.

Then I realised it was to make more and more space for Jesus.

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

I remember a story about Father Don Bosco who after coming home late at night after a long day ate a bowl of something left out he assumed for him. The next day people were complaining that the bowl of glue was empty. It was presumably horse hoof glue in those days. But to get to the stage where you couldn’t tell the difference between a bowl of food and bowl of glue, a kind of incredible indifference has been ingrained.

I remember a Cistercian monk was at a large Lunch that was put on. They very rarely to never leave the monastery, and a huge feast was in front of him. This was his rare opportunity to pile his plate with every nice item, compared to the very austere food they get at the monastery. Mum asked him him if she could make up a plate for him. He said “ I’ll just have a bite to eat “.

That stuck in my memory, I’d heard about these dudes, they live the hardest and most austere and strict rule. As a teenager I could pile a large plate for thirds and fourths and then head happily into a heavy desert of trifle and iced cream.
Here this monk was, who didn’t even help himself as he could have but left it to the ladies to determine his “bite to eat “.

This self denial thing leads to an indifference or detachment from anything in this world. If that monastery was a prison it would shut down for human rights violations. Yet the monks are more than happy, they are joyful even. They are seasoned in self denial and have a whole system of denial set up around them to help.

Thinking on it the other day, I saw the lottery had jackpotted to $120 million. What’s the first thing people do when they win Lotto? It seems obligatory to buy a bunch of jet skis and scream around on the water like an idiot with your friends. Then have a buffet on a luxury yacht with wine and cheer, and girls in bikinis.
A riot of self indulgence is expected of you, as if you are finally living life.

It all rings completely hollow, ego and self indulgence is supercharged and drowns out that gentle voice calling for us to deny ourselves and follow.

The world thinks that we are truly living life if we indulge ourselves, but the opposite is true as with many spiritual things, it is in denying ourselves that we live life to the full. And this is within any man’s ability.

Unfettered by ego, vices and attachments, we can flourish with the eternal adornments of the Virtues of Christ Jesus.

“ It is no longer I that lives, but Christ who lives in me “

Jesus can fully express in us and self no longer stands in His way.

 

That’s right, fellowship is followship, cos Jesus is with us.

“And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

We take up our Cross daily, these attachments to self the old man under Adam, and we crucify it until death. The old man must die daily as we stagger up to the summit. It’s a journey a good fight and race to the finish.

For this journey we need the daily bread from the Father which is Grace. Grace comes to us in every present moment of every day.

Grace is the light of Gods Love, in it we live and move and have our being. And by it we are saved.

Works done by man are nothing ( Babel ), but works done by Jesus in us have Eternal merit that endures forever producing fruit into Eternity. These are Jesus works and no works of Christ go out without producing endless fruit.

Do not mistake those works you do with Love as man’s works, Love is of God and is God expressed in time, these are not man’s works. So many misunderstand this. Don’t be prideful that you helped a dude out of Love, it was Jesus. Without Jesus you can’t do anything.

Love is bread to this starving world, and by Grace we receive it each day to give on in fellowship with others God sends us daily.

Jesus is with us right now in the present moment with all His Love and Grace so receive it in thanksgiving and spend it out with complete abandon on all He sends you today.
Let Jesus truly speak His Love and Life to others through you.

 

Sorry Net Chaplin, I don’t know if I’ve answered your question dude.

 

Thanks mate. I’m wondering if Paul when he said that he calloused his body so as to make it his Slave, what other mortifications he did.
Fasting is one we all know that the Apostles did, but we can see many types of mortifications among the early Church.

John the Baptist comes to mind as the herald of the Lord, but also the herald of self denial and mortification.
Camel hair clothes and living on vermin and rarely found wild honey. Bees would have imposed their mortifications each time. Rough clothes would have itched. The vermin would not have been appealing.
Talk about denying yourself. It headed in to extreme territory, especially living in the wild.

In more modern times we see firgures like John Vianney who cooked a small pot of potatoes once a week and he ate them throughout the week, even as they moulded and stank.

These dudes went well beyond just wearing humble clothes and eating plain foods. They denied themselves of every comfort.
In fact if John Vianney discovered a comfort in life, he would sacrifice that comfort.

So if The Spirit of God totally opposes self indulgence, we can see why these dudes were so keen on self denial the opposite of self indulgence.
They lived according to the Spirit, not the world or the flesh.

 

I kind of saw it like Paul was discipling his body by mortifications so as live the spiritual life. He gives the analogy of an athlete that imposes a hard regime of training on himself to achieve victory.
The physical self denial and subjugation of the body for gain in the spiritual.

The other thing was Paul denying himself a family and living a celibate life, travelling light for the sake of spreading the Gospel.
Elsewhere he exhorts people to “be as I am” , so that their time is not divided between God’s work and family obligations.

So a decision had been made on Paul’s part to deny himself that life for the sake of the Gospel.

Besides I couldn’t imagine Paul trying to comfort his crying wife and kids on the street through cell bars after a beating. Or diving into the surf rescuing his seven kids one at time after a shipwreck.
Could you image the Lampoonery.

“ This kind comes out only by prayer and fasting “

Here we can see a physical self denial effecting the spiritual.

Which fits with the old understanding that a demon attaches itself most firmly by a persons degree of self indulgence. The remedy was that it could be ejected by force of prayer and self denial, a solvent to scape the thing off.

And because we are both body and spirit, not body alone or spirit alone, what happens with one necessarily effects the other.

From my perspective dying to self means denying yourself by mortifications, to mortify from the Latin meaning death, to put to death self indulgence, ego, attachments of disordered desires and self will.

Its the first requirement Jesus puts on those who wish to follow after Him, self imposed denial.
Then the taking up of the Cross, which I think fits the daily circumstances that God has ordained for each persons life, with all its hardships. Which you eloquently alluded to.

I think these are tools that assist the spiritual.

Hence the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and the even harder Silence. I reckon a huge amount of spiritual and temporal problems can be solved by people shutting their pieholes, since words are such a weapon of harm.
Detachment from property, total reliance on God’s providence by poverty.
Chastity forgoing even a natural good in pursuit of a supernatural good.

This is making of our lives a living sacrifice, mastering the appetites of the flesh to live by the Spirit.

It can all be boiled down to “ Not my will be done, but yours “.

So the old man indulgences himself, but the new man in Christ denies himself to follow Christ daily.

“Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?”

And we can all remember Jesus reply to that.

There’s the spiritual rewards we receive in this life and the next.

 

So what are these rewards?

“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:5-8

I hate to bang on about John Vianney all the time, but I’ve been reading about him recently on some of these points.

A priest complained to John about the indifference of his parishioners.

He said “You have preached, you have prayed, but have you fasted? Have you taken the discipline (a self-imposed scourge)? Have you slept on the floor? So long as you have done none of these things, you have no right to complain.”

Virtue is attained through self denial, following Christ.

“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Another time John Vianney stated.

“My friend, the devil is not greatly afraid of the discipline and other instruments of penance. That which beats him is the curtailment of one’s food, drink and sleep. There is nothing the devil fears more, consequently, nothing is more pleasing to God. Oh! How often have I experienced it! Whilst I was alone—and I was alone during eight or nine years, and therefore quite free to yield to my attraction—it happened at times that I refrained from food for entire days. On those occasions, I obtained, both for myself and for others, whatsoever I asked of Almighty God.”

Fasting and self denial generally, seems to add real hydrolic power to prayer, because there is an element of sacrifice to it.

The same with Almsgiving, it’s a very particular thing. It’s not just giving something to a poor dude.
True Almsgiving is like a bloke that puts aside a little money for years to buy himself a Harley Davidson, but then forgoes it and gives the money to charity.

Just to give you an idea of John Vianneys extreme regime of self denial.

“However, he thirsted for mortifications as others thirst for pleasure, and he never had his fill of penance. He laid on himself the sacrifice never to enjoy the fragrance of a flower, never to taste fruit nor to drink, were it only a few drops of water, during the height of the summer heat. He would not brush away a fly that importuned him. When on his knees, he would not rest his elbows on the kneeling bench. He had made a law unto himself never to show any dislike, and to hide all natural repugnances. He mortified the most legitimate curiosity: thus he never expressed so much as a wish to see the railway which passed by Ars at a distance of a few kilometers, and which daily brought him so many visitors. During the whole of his priestly life, he never indulged in any light reading, not even that of a newspaper. The Annals of the Propagation of the Faith are the only periodical that he ever perused.”

John the Baptist was out on the extreme with self denial.

But John Vianney was granted the gift of reading Souls, he could tell a persons sins and life instantly. That’s why so many went to see him, many times in the confessional, he would tell people what their sins were and when they committed them. He prophecied future events to people and advised them about spiritually important events in their lives.

 

No, thank you dude, don’t often talk about these things, I hope I’m not the one doing the huge posts for you. It’s mostly the things rolling around in my head.

A lot of your posts don’t get any replies, don’t know why, there’s some real nuggets in there.
Are you formally trained in theology mate?