SJC18 – Perseverance in Prayer – St. John of the Cross with Fr. Donald Haggerty

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St. John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation with Fr. Donald Haggerty – Discerning Hearts Podcast

Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts

21 episodes

8 months ago

Join Fr. Donald Haggerty and Kris McGregor discuss the depths of prayer as explored by St. John of the Cross, Mystical Doctor of the Church. Saint John of the Cross is the Church's premier teacher on contemplative prayer. Catholic tradition even calls him the Mystical Doctor. The sixteenth-century Carmelite priest not only wrote four massive treatises on the spiritual life, along with some of the finest poetry in the Spanish language, but also worked alongside Teresa of Ávila in renewing the Carmelite order. Thérèse of Lisieux claimed she found no other spiritual reading that could satisfy her soul like John of the Cross.

Yet the volume and intensity of Saint John's work can make his teachings seem daunting, even to trained theologians. Father Donald Haggerty, author of The Contemplative Hunger and Contemplative Enigmas, offers listeners a unique step-by-step introduction to the way of contemplation as Saint John understood it and taught it—a burning, transformative intimacy with the God who made us.

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SJC18 – Perseverance in Prayer – St. John of the Cross with Fr. Donald Haggerty – Discerning Hearts Podcast

St. John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation with Fr. Donald Haggerty – Discerning Hearts Podcast

25 minutes 18 seconds

2 years ago

SJC18 – Perseverance in Prayer – St. John of the Cross with Fr. Donald Haggerty – Discerning Hearts Podcast

SJC18 – Perseverance in Prayer – St. John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation with Fr. Donald Haggerty – Discerning Hearts Podcast
In this series Fr. Donald Haggerty and Kris McGregor discuss the depths of prayer as explored by St. John of the Cross, the Mystical Doctor of the Church.
An excerpt from St. John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation

What, then, of the feelings of love that may be experienced in prayer? Are they to be denied or mortified? Ignored or renounced? Saint John of the Cross writes that they should be treated simply as secondary factors in prayer, incidental in importance. The awareness of an inflamed undercurrent of love in the will is far more significant, because it is the deeper truth. Yet it may not be encountered in an experiential manner for its deeper truth. Nonetheless, in a receptive response to a longing for God deep within the soul, this reality of love is fostered. The mistaken approach, on the other hand, is to allow a search for feelings in prayer to dominate the exercise of prayer.
For many people, feelings can become a coveted item in prayer as well as a source of continual frustration and instability—a possessive need for a satisfaction that is somehow felt and then becomes the measure of prayer, a habit hard to relinquish. Feelings of love, delightful as they may be, ought to be only a means to recognizing the more inaccessible reality of love operating at hidden layers of depth in the will and in the soul. The greater truth takes place in the unseen “cavern” of the will as it undergoes a profound “soul desire” for God. There is in every contemplative life a need, at least for a time, to release the soul from the pursuit of feelings in order to embrace this deeper recognition. Love in the will, rather than any feeling, is the much deeper truth in prayer and in contemplation.
Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 275-276). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

For more episodes in this series visit Fr. Haggerty’s Discerning Hearts page here

You find the book on which this series is based here