It is important to encourage a
regular sacramental practice, depending on the
possibilities of each one (the Eucharist
and confession)(Gd
3)
Carthusian
Statutes
In the Sacrament of
Penance, God, the Father of mercies, through the Paschal
Mystery of his Son, reconciles us in the Spirit with
himself, with the Church and with ourselves. We
encourage all to have frequent recourse to this
sacrament; for, by it, that conversion of the heart
which is the basic aim of the monk becomes rooted in the
mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ. Carthusian
Statutes chapter 9
We frequently
celebrate the Liturgy of reconciliation; a perpetual
Easter of the Lord renewing our lives as sinners
seeking his face. In fact the quality of our life of
prayer depends on our making conscientious personal
use of the Sacrament of Penance.Carthusian
Statutes Chapter 21 no 14
About Quies:
One "cannot attain to this repose except at the cost of
stern battle; both by living austerely in fidelity to
the law of the cross, and willingly accepting the
tribulations by which God will try him as gold in the
furnace. In this way, having been cleansed in the night
of patience, and having been consoled and sustained by
assiduous meditation of the Scriptures, and having been
led by the Holy Spirit into the depths of his own soul,
he is now ready, not only to serve God, but even to
cleave to him in love".Carthusian
Statutes Chapter 3 no 2
Consuetudines
7.2 - Guigo I's instructions for Sundays: "above
all silence all week until Sunday morning
confessions".
Carthusian websites
"Contemplative life requires a continual conversion. Each
day anew a Carthusian monk tries to make himself transparent
for God, to give himself to God with open hands, and with a
mind free of worries and concerns. He thus keeps himself in
a state of spiritual virginity". CT -
Carthusian Spirituality
John Paul II who went to
confession weekly, said: "It would be an illusion to
seek after holiness, according to the vocation one has
received from God, without partaking frequently of this
sacrament of conversion and reconciliation. Those who go
to Confession frequently, and do so with the desire to
make progress, will notice the strides that they make in
their spiritual lives."
Those who discourage frequent confession "are
lying." Blessed John-Paul II
In
frequent
confession
we are renewed in
fervor,
strengthened
in
our resolutions, and
supported by divine encouragement
Saint John Bosco
"Whoever thinks a little
about his soul goes to confession once a month;
whoever wants to save his soul, but does not feel
too strongly about it, goes every fifteen days;
whoever wants to reach perfection, however, should
go every week." Saint John Bosco
The same result follows from the opinions of those who
assert that little importance should be given to the
frequent confession of venial sins. Far more important, they
say, is that general confession which the Spouse of Christ,
surrounded by her children in the Lord, makes each day by
the mouth of the priest as he approaches the altar of God.
As you well know, Venerable Brethren, it is true that venial
sins may be expiated in many ways which are to be highly
commended. But to ensure more rapid progress day by day in
the path of virtue, We will that the pious practice of
frequent confession, which was introduced into the Church by
the inspiration of the Holy spirit, should be earnestly
advocated. By it genuine self-knowledge is increased,
Christian humility grows, bad habits are corrected,
spiritual neglect and tepidity are resisted, the conscience
is purified, the will strengthened, a salutary self-control
is attained, and grace is increased in virtue of the
Sacrament itself. Let those, therefore, among the younger
clergy who make light of or lessen esteem for frequent
confession realize that what they are doing is alien to the
Spirit of Christ and disastrous for the Mystical Body of our
Savior. Mystici
Corporis
Christi, Encyclical of Pope Pius xii no 88
Adrienne
Von Speyr Confession
(google Books) - Hans Urs von Balthasar
calls this "one of her most central works". She discusses the
moral and practical aspects of the sacrament in great depth.
Some of the many areas covered include conversion, scruples,
contrition, spiritual direction, laxity, frequency of
confession, the confessions of religious and lay people, even
the confessions of saints. One of the most complete spiritual
treatises ever written on confession.
"We can walk as much as we want, we can build many
things, but if we do not profess Jesus Christ, things go
wrong. We may become a charitable NGO, but not the Church,
the Bride of the Lord. When we are not walking, we stop
moving. When we are not building on the stones, what
happens? The same thing that happens to children on the
beach when they build sandcastles: everything is swept
away, there is no solidity. When we do not profess Jesus
Christ, the saying of Leon Bloy
comes to mind: 'Anyone who does not pray to the Lord prays
to the devil.' When we do not profess Jesus Christ, we
profess the worldliness of the devil, a demonic
worldliness. ...The same Peter who professed Jesus Christ,
now says to him: You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God. I will follow you, but let us not speak of the Cross.
That has nothing to do with it. I will follow you on other
terms, but without the Cross. When we journey without the
Cross, when we build without the Cross, when we profess
Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the
Lord, we are worldly: we may be bishops, priests,
cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord." (Pope
Francis,
First Homily, March 14, 2013)
"Anyone
who practices this prayer (of the Heart)
and omits the language of repentance
deludes oneself; for this omission stirs
up sentimental love of God, which does
nothing other than increase in decadence."(I Brianchaninov, cited
in La Prière de Jésus, p.39)
Regular and frequent sacramental confession is the easy yoke
that will give you pure authentic contemplative rest : "Come
to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you
rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Mt
11,
28-30
The way to heal in depth the diseases of the soul which are
the disordered passions, lies in the spiritual order of
things, in the order of the grace of Jesus Christ. Herewith
isn't proposed to ignore nature and natural means, but one who
would plan to dwell only in the order of nature, will never
obtain more than the victory of one lust over another. In
other words, he will always remain ill in one or another area,
perfect health requiring a complete regeneration of our whole
being, a new birth, the communication of a truly new life,
which is that of Jesus Christ in us. It is Jesus alone who can
make of any man, be he the most miserable amongst the
miserables, a completely new man. The man in perfect spiritual
health is the man who completely renewed can say : "It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal.
2:20). Source : Philoxène de Mabboug, Homélies,
in Sources chrétiennes, éd. du Cerf, Paris 1956.
Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the
prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not
have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash
and be cleansed'!" 14 So he went down and dipped himself in
the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and
his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young
boy.2
Kings 5: 13-14
Our Lady asked us to convert, to fast, to do some penance,
to pray and go to confession and attend Holy Mass. These
are the main
messages of Our Lady of Medjugorje.
Benedict Baur's book, Frequent Confession is a
classic
In frequent Confession we have everything that will
guard us against tepidity. For one thing, frequent
Confession compels us to look into ourselves seriously to
see our sins and faults, to elicit an act of contrition
for them and formulate a purpose of amendment regarding
them. In other words, it makes us apply ourselves with
full deliberation and determination to improving our
lives.
Then, too, Confession is a sacrament and consequently,
through it the power of Christ himself works in us. His
greatest desire in this sacrament is to fill us with his
own hatred of sin and with his own zeal to glorify his
Father in all things, to be completely devoted to his
service and fully resigned to his holy will.
Finally, of considerable value is the direction we get
from our confessor, who in every Confession will urge us
anew and encourage us to continue along the way of virtue
with full fervor.
It is this conviction that makes the Church recommend so
strongly, indeed prescribe as an obligation, frequent or
weekly Confession for clerics and religious. Therefore let
us consider frequent Confession as something important and
holy. And let us endeavor always to make our Confessions
well indeed to try and make them better and better every
time.
Man is made in God's image and he is therefore called
upon to realize this image by moving freely towards his
goal. We can specifically say that the whole sense of human
life is in realizing this image through friendship with God.
And Saint Thomas Aquinas immediately shows that this
building of friendship has a very concrete place: community
and hence friendship with Jesus Christ. In him, God has
fully communicated with us humans. Thus it is a matter of
building friendship with God in a concrete way, as
friendship with Jesus Christ, who came to the world to make
us his friends. ...To love God with charity, we need an
ability which transcends our natural powers, which makes us,
so to speak, connatural with God, allowing us really to love
him and to be linked to him by friendship. ...there can only
be friendship when there is genuine mutuality in freedom:
mutuus amor, mutua inhaesio, genuinely with each other and
in each other. ...The great thing about St. Thomas' image of
God is that he sees God not only as the First Cause, but
also as so powerful and great as to be able to give his
creatures the power themselves to be causes and to be able
to act, not just passively reacting to the highest
principle, to the First Cause. Cardinal
Schönborn: “On Love and Friendship”
Confession - The Lord became man in order to show us the
living nature of the Triune God, and the demonstration of
this vitality is continued in the vitality of the Church
throughout all ages. The framework of the Church is there
for the sake of that living element extending throughout the
entire Church into the personal life of each member. This
activity manifests itself most clearly in the context of
confession, in personal participation in it and in the
mutual dependence of Church and believer. Just as the living
dialogue with the Father in the Holy Spirit by no means
prevents the Son from being full and perfect man, but rather
brings about precisely that perfection, so also a confessing
Christian is by no means a diminished person not yet come of
age; on the contrary he is one who has been given adult
responsibility. He is as personal and responsible and fully
human as the act into which he places himself in order to
receive absolution, is divine and ecclesiastically
institutional.Confession
Adrienne von Speyr p 98
God is not made great by the fact that his creatures are
kept small. His true greatness is shown not in the total
helplessness of his creatures, but in His enabling them
themselves to act as a cause. The scientific culture of
strongly Christian countries is related to this view of
creatures themselves having their effect. It could further
be demonstrated how the western understanding of
participation and democracy grew from this. The effects of
Christian humanism are particularly clear in the areas of
human dignity and human rights. The potential dangers of
this humanism emerge whenever the dependence of secondary
causes on the First Cause is denied, where the autonomy of
mankind and the world overlooks that it is dependent
creation, and claims an independence it does not actually
possess. St. Thomas's tractate on charity as friendship
explains
the paradox of freedom as a present
from God to mankind, a mutuality between the Eternal and
ourselves, a genuine friendship between HIM, the infinite,
and ourselves, his mortal creatures.Cardinal
Schönborn: “On Love and Friendship”
“Maximalian Kolbe reminds us that the creature most filled
with God himself was Mary who departed the least from God's
will."United to the Holy Spirit as his spouse she is one with
God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be predicated
of any other creature." It is for this reason that
the sacrament of reconciliation takes on a special poignancy and
a foundational presence in our progressive alignment with Jesus
through Mary. Pope Francis on Mercy Sunday (2013) spoke of
confession as the nodal point out of which faith blossoms
through mercy. Through confession we receive the Father's mercy
and in doing so become ourselves more merciful. "God is
waiting for you; he asks of you the courage to go to him; he
is waiting for you; he will take care of everything."
Serious
discernment,
if not severe, must be put in place for the admission of members
into the second degree. They must clearly know what they
undertake and what are their obligations (see 1.2.3.).
(Gd 7)
Members into the
"second degree" undertake the
narrow
path ofconversion of ways.
Conversion of ways cannot succeed
without the grace of God: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If
you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much
fruit; apart from me you can do nothing"John
15:5.
The obliged narrow
door (Bible
comment)
to grace is, in this Step 1: frequent and
regular sacramental confession;
once a week for members into the second
degree is recommended. In this extraordinary sacramental meeting
with Christ, we are re-created
in grace, we
are assisted divinely to completely uproot our sins, our
spiritual "pathos" (pathologies), we are richly
vested to learn and grow in what the monastic tradition
calls "apatheia" or "hesychia":
peace, perfect abandonmentto the only eternal
reality: the Will of God, in a deepening glimpse and taste of
peace, mysterious divine solitude and
silence, at the foot of the cross : "witness to a
mystery, whose riches they had indeed experienced, but
whose full penetration is reserved for heaven alone" Carthusian
Statutes, Prologue; in Saint Bruno's words: Quies.
Practicing then the following Quies steps,
will permit to nurture and mature this sacramental
re-creation in grace, to
the
plenitude of the love of Christ. 14 For this reason
I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family
in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray
that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you
with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in
love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s
holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high
and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know
this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be
filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than
all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is
at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for
ever and ever! Amen. Ephesians
3:
14-21
Sacramental confession is the most important
fundamental act, that renews man and forms a true
catholic, and permits to know who those are, who
belong truly to Christ. If we should collegially
not succeed in validating its frequent and regular
reception with gentle manners, we will need to dismiss
those candidates or eventual serving
members from "second degree" status and activities, who, out of respect,
could voluntarily also
revert to, or remain,
members of the simpler IFSB discussion
group; until, for them, Step 1 is
truly implemented in their life.
"The
night
ofyour mind will bethe sunof your soul"
Our Lord to Mother Yvonne Aimée de Malestroit
"One must learn how to obey before he can
command." Saint John Bosco
The guard of the cell (of the
heart), is the guard of sanctifying grace.
If it wasn’t for pretenses, and all made themselves known
for what they are, the root of evil would be removed from the
face of the earth, and all would be stripped of illusion.
Carthusian
Statutes 
