Talking With God E-Book

François Fénelon

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Paraclete Essentials
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 147

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

François Fénelon was a seventeenth-century French Catholic archbishop who rose to a position of influence in the court of Louis XIV. He became a wise mentor to members of the king's court, his writings preserved by the many people whom he counseled. These words have inspired Christians of all backgrounds for centuries with their frank honesty, spiritual wisdom, and unflinching response to truth.   This beautiful, accessible, contemporary English translation, introduces you to the essential Fénelon.   "All who seek fellowship with God amid the rush and racket of modern life will find that Fénelon's searching gentleness is a wonderful pick-me-up for the heart. This selection from his letters is pure gold." —Dr. J. I. Packer, author of Growing in Christ

Leseprobe

TALKING WITH GOD

FRANÇOIS FÉNELON

Foreword by Robert J. Edmonson, CJ

REVISED TRANSLATION

EDITED BY HAL M. HELMS AND ROBERT J. EDMONSON, CJ

PARACLETE PRESS

BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS

Talking with God

2009 First Printing

Copyright © 2009 by The Community of Jesus, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-55725-645-4

Scripture quotations designated NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations designated RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission.

Scripture quotations designated NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations designated KJV are from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations designated VULGATE are from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-, 1651-1715.

[Selections. English. 2009]

Talking with God / François Fénelon ; translated and edited by Hal M. Helms and Robert J. Edmonson.

    p. cm. — (Paraclete essentials)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

ISBN 978-1-55725-645-4

1. Spiritual life—Catholic Church. I. Helms, Hal McElwaine. II . Edmonson, Robert J. III . Title.

BX2350.3.F46A25 2009

248.4—dc22

2008052678

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete PressBrewster, Massachusettswww.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTERS

 1   How to Talk with God

 2   Desiring God’s Will

 3   True Prayer of the Heart

 4   Maintaining a Life of Prayer

 5   Choosing Companions Wisely

 6   The Practice of Humility

 7   Conforming to the Life of Jesus

 8   The Uses of Humiliation

 9   Bearing Our Faults Patiently

10   When Feelings Fail Us

11   When We Feel Abandoned by God

12   Living in the Present

13   Pure Love

14   The Refinements of Self-Love

15   Listening to God Rather than Self

16   The Miracle of Self-Denial

17   Bearing the Criticism of Others

18   Meeting Temptations

19   The Giver or the Gifts?

20   When Undergoing Great Weakness

21   The Interior Voice of the Spirit

22   Judge Cautiously

23   The Last Shall Be First

24   When Spiritually Disheartened

25   Dealing with Our Faults

26   Faithfulness in Small Things

27   Exactness and Freedom of Spirit

28   Dealing with Contradictory Feelings

29   Maintaining Faith Without Feelings

30   Undue Attachment to Feelings

31   The Proper Use of Crosses

32   Joy in Bearing the Cross

33   What God Orders Is Best

34   Keeping All Our Affections in God

35   Two Kinds of Love

36   Our Union in God

37   Bearing Suffering

38   Suffering Rightly

39   The Usefulness of Deprivations

40   The Value of Moderation

41   Regarding Prayer

42   Keeping a Spirit of Prayer

43   When Spiritual Emotions Fade

44   Dealing with Sickness and Grief

45   Bearing Spiritual Dryness

46   Using Time Wisely

47   Preserving Peace with Others

48   True Freedom

49   Dealing with a Haughty Spirit

50   Thinking of Death

51   The Cross as a Treasure

 

NOTES

FOREWORD

Do you find yourself longing for a two-way relationship with God? My own journey with the heavenly Father has taken me from hearing others talk about God, to listening to God, to talking to God myself, and eventually to begin opening my heart to an ongoing dialogue with God. Along the way, I have been challenged and encouraged by the writings of Fénelon.

Decades after first discovering the penetrating counsels of François Fénelon, I continue to discover how timeless is their guidance. My work as editor and translator of The Complete Fénelon required hundreds of hours poring over Fénelon’s letters, meditations on themes from Scripture, and studies on important days in the church year. In doing so, I once again marveled at the example Fénelon set in his own life.

While today we read about the lifestyles of the superrich and the growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor, we can only gasp at the grotesque extravagance of the seventeenth-century French court at Versailles under the Sun King, Louis XIV. Inconceivable opulence, accompanied by rampant immorality and abysmal ethics, amidst the grinding poverty of the masses, helped sow the seeds of the hatred toward aristocrats that would explode during the French Revolution.

And yet, in the midst of the self-indulgence of the French court, a small group of courtiers were attempting to put the Christian life into everyday practice. Many of them took as their spiritual counselor François Fénelon, the tutor to the king’s grandson and a cleric who devoted his life to bringing himself low before God. Fénelon’s letters of spiritual counsel to members of the court were gathered and have been treasured for centuries.

Fénelon’s unswerving faithfulness to God brought him into conflict with the king and led to his banishment to the northern diocese of Cambrai, where as archbishop he devoted himself to improving the lot of the clergy and the faithful. Letters asking for his counsel continued to flow to him, and his discerning replies helped feed an undercurrent of spiritual life that circulated through the court.

Fénelon’s letters asked no more of his correspondents than he required first of himself: unflinching acceptance of the divine Surgeon’s knife, as God touched unyielded places in his heart and brought them into conformity with God’s will. And God’s plan, Fénelon reminds us, is always good. Far from the concept of God solely as divine Judge, a sort of Zeus casting thunderbolts, Fénelon saw God as a loving Father who knows what we need before we ask him. “Dear God,” he wrote, “see my ingratitude, my inconstancy, my infidelity. Take my heart, for I do not know how to give it to you. Give me an inner distaste for external things; give me crosses necessary to bring me back under your yoke. Have mercy on me in spite of myself!”

This collection of Fénelon’s letters was compiled by the late Hal M. Helms, himself a seasoned pastor and counselor to many, and further modernized for this edition. The wisdom it contains is as current today as it was hundreds of years ago. In simple, direct language Fénelon asks us to talk with God, “with the simplicity and familiarity of a little child sitting on its mother’s knee.” I commend it to you. I urge you to read it unhurriedly, prayerfully, repeatedly. Let its timeless counsel penetrate your heart. As you do so, you will join millions of others before you who have found peace and strength for their journey through the childlike simplicity of talking with God.

—Robert J. Edmonson, CJ

INTRODUCTION

How does one “hear” God? The Bible speaks over and over again about listening and hearing his voice. The psalmist said, “Our God comes, he does not keep silence…. Hear, O my people, and I will speak.”1 Yet for the most part, do we expect to hear him speak to us?

Fénelon has been a trusted counselor for myriads of Christians for more than three centuries. He came to believe strongly that God is a living, active presence and voice in the Christian’s life. He did not hesitate to give the wisest word he knew to those who asked his advice. He was frank in sharing his own difficulties and struggles as life dealt him unexpected and difficult blows. But out of that crucible of suffering and misunderstanding, he listened for God’s word, God’s will, God’s message to him.

More often than not, God is speaking to us in the socalled circumstances of life. If we look at them on a merely human plane, we may become confused, discouraged, and totally disillusioned with life. Self-pity and accusation of others may be our daily bread. If we look at them as being part of God’s loving dealing with us, weaning us away from what is false, binding us more firmly to what is eternal, we begin to “hear” God’s word coming through these conditions.

This compilation of Fénelon’s letters and words of counsel can encourage us as it has generations before, to listen and hear the voice of the Good Shepherd.

FÉNELON’S TERMINOLOGY

Fénelon often uses words in a different way from their modern meaning. The following definitions will help the reader grasp Fénelon’s meanings:

Disintegration: losing our unity by breaking our lives into separate parts.

Mortification: the subjection and denial of bodily passions and appetites by abstinence.

Mortified: having an attitude or practice of mortification.

Recollection: the tranquility of mind that comes from quiet religious contemplation.

Recollected: being in a state of recollection.

Scruples: an excessive concern to be right in small details, particularly where religious restrictions or denials are concerned. We would probably call it a “legalistic” attitude today. Jesus referred to the Pharisees’ scruples when he spoke of washing the outside of the cup, while within was all manner of filth and uncleanness that they were overlooking. That is the kind of thing Fénelon is concerned with in those he is counseling.

Scrupulous: being excessively concerned to be right in small details.

TALKING WITH GOD

CHAPTER 1

How to Talk with God

Talk with God with the thoughts that your heart is full of. If you enjoy the presence of God, if you feel drawn to love him, tell him so. Such conscious fervor will make the time of prayer fly without exhausting you, for all you will have to do is to pour forth from your abundance and say what you feel.

But what, you ask, are you to do in times of dryness, inner resistance, and coldness? Do just the same thing. Say equally what is in your heart. Tell God that you no longer feel any love for him, that everything is a terrible blank to you, that he wearies you, that his presence does not even move you, that you long to leave him for the most trifling activity, and that you will not feel happy till you have left him and can turn to thinking about yourself. Tell him all the evil you know about yourself.

So how can we even ask what there is to talk to God about? The pity is that there is only too much! But when you tell him about your miseries, ask him to cure them. Say to him, “Dear God, see my ingratitude, my inconstancy, my infidelity. Take my heart, for I do not know how to give it to you. Give me an inner distaste for external things; give me crosses necessary to bring me back under your yoke. Have mercy on me in spite of myself!” In this way, either God’s mercies or your own miseries will always give you enough to talk to him about. The subject will never be exhausted!

In either of these two states I have described, tell him without hesitation everything that comes into your head, with the simplicity and familiarity of a little child sitting on its mother’s knee.

CHAPTER 2

Desiring God’s Will

Love desires that God would give us what we need and that he would have less regard to our frailty than to the purity of our intentions. Love even covers our trifling defects and purifies us like a consuming fire. “The Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will,” for “We do not know what we ought to pray for,”2 and in our ignorance, we frequently ask for things that would be detrimental. We would, for instance, like to have fervor of devotion, distinct emotions of joy, and perfections that others could see. But these would serve to nourish the life of self within us and develop a confidence in our own strength. Love, however, leads us on and abandons us, so to speak, to the operations of grace, putting us entirely at the disposal of God’s will. In this way it prepares us for all his secret designs.

Then we will have everything and yet nothing. What God gives is precisely what we should have desired to ask. For we will have whatever he wills, and only that. In this way, this state contains all prayer: it is a work of the heart that includes all its desire. The Spirit prays within us for those very things that the Spirit himself wills to give us. Even when we are occupied with outward things, when our thoughts are drawn off by what our duties or position may require, we still carry within us a constantly burning fire that is not, and cannot be put out. It nourishes a secret prayer and is like a lamp continually lighted before the throne of God. “I slept but my heart was awake.”3 “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.”4

CHAPTER 3

True Prayer of the Heart

True prayer is simply another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words, for our Father knows what we need before we ask him.5 True prayer is prayer of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire or long for, but to desire what God would have us desire. Those who ask, but not from the bottom of their hearts, are mistaken in thinking that they are praying. Even though they spend days in reciting prayers in meditation, or in forcing themselves in religious exercises, they do not truly pray even once if they really do not desire and yearn for the things they claim to be asking for.

Oh, how few there are who pray! How few there are who desire what is truly good! Crosses, external and internal humiliation, the renunciation of our own wills, the death of self, and the establishment of God’s throne upon the ruins of self-love––these are indeed good. If we do not desire these, we are not truly praying. To desire them seriously, soberly, constantly, and with reference to all the details of life, this is true prayer. Not to desire them, and yet to suppose we are praying, is an illusion like that of the wretched souls who delude themselves that they are happy. How distressing it is that so many souls, full of self and of an imaginary desire for perfection in the midst of hosts of willful disobediences, have never yet uttered this true prayer of the heart. It is in reference to this that St. Augustine says, One who loves little, prays little; one who loves much, prays much.

On the other hand, the heart in which the true love of God and true desire exist never ceases to pray. Love, hidden in the depths of the soul, prays without ceasing, even when the mind is drawn another way. God continually sees the desire that he has himself implanted in the soul. Though we may at times be unconscious of its existence, the heart is touched by it. Such a hidden desire in the soul ceaselessly draws God’s mercies. It is that Spirit who, according to St. Paul, helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us “with sighs too deep for words.”6

CHAPTER 4

Maintaining a Life of Prayer

Two main points of attention are necessary to maintain a constant spirit of prayer that unites us with God. We must continually seek to nurture it, and we must avoid everything that tends to make us lose it.

In order to nurture it, we should follow a regular course of reading. We must have appointed times of secret prayer and frequently recall our minds consciously to God during the day. We should make use of quiet days or retreats when we feel the need of them or when they are advised by those more experienced than we whose counsel we seek, and when our other responsibilities allow for them.

We should be very afraid of all things that have a tendency to make us lose this state of prayer and be very careful to avoid them. Therefore, we should avoid worldly activities and associates that turn our minds in the wrong direction, and the pleasures that excite the passions. We should avoid everything calculated to awaken the love of the world and the old inclinations that have caused us so much trouble.

There are many details that might apply in dealing with nurturing the spirit of prayer and avoiding anything that works against it. Because each individual case has features peculiar to itself, only general directions can be given here.

We should choose books that instruct us in our duty and in our faults. Such books, while they point to the greatness of God, teach us what our duty is to him and how very far we are from perfecting it. We should not seek emotional publications that melt and sentimentalize the heart. The tree must bear fruit. We can judge the life of the root only by the fruit it bears.7