Last Retreat Archives

BTP-LR22 The “Last Retreat” Day 15 pt. 1 – Beginning to Pray with Dr. Anthony Lilles

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:29 — 26.1MB) | Embed

Beginning to Pray: “The Last Retreat – Day 15 ” pt 1 -“The Virgin kept all these things in her heart”

From “Last Retreat Day 15” found in The Complete Works vol 1:

40. After Jesus Christ, doubtless at the distance that there is between the Infinite and the finite, there is one who was also the great praise of glory of the Holy Trinity. She responded fully to the divine election of which the Apostle speaks: she was always “pure, immaculate, and without reproach” 241 in the eyes of the thrice-holy God. Her soul is so simple. Its movements are so profound that they cannot be detected. She seems to reproduce on earth the life which is that of the divine Being, the simple Being. And she is so transparent, so luminous that one would mistake her for the light, yet she is but the “mirror” of the Sun of Justice: “Speculum justitiae!” 242

“The Virgin kept all these things in her heart”: 243 her whole history can be summed up in these few words! It was within her heart that she lived, and at such a depth that no human eye can follow her. When I read in the Gospel “that Mary went in haste to the hill country of Judea” 244 to perform her loving service for her cousin Elizabeth, I imagine her passing by so beautiful, so calm and so majestic, so absorbed in recollection of the Word of God within her. Like Him, her prayer was always this: “Ecce, here I am!” Who? “The servant of the Lord,” 245 the lowliest of His creatures: she, His Mother! Her humility was so real for she was always forgetful, unaware, freed from self. And she could sing: “The Almighty has done great things for me, henceforth all peoples will call me blessed.” 246

This the text we are using to discuss “Heaven in Faith” you can find it here and order from the Carmelite Sisters

We would like to offer heartfelt thanks to
Miriam Gutierrez for providing for us “the voice” of Blessed Elizabeth for this series

For other episodes in the series visit the Discerning Hearts page for Dr. Anthony Lilles

Anthony Lilles, S.T.D. is an associate professor and the academic dean of Saint John’s Seminary in Camarillo as well as the academic advisor for Juan Diego House of Priestly Formation for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. For over twenty years he served the Church in Northern Colorado where he joined and eventually served as dean of the founding faculty of Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. Through the years, clergy, seminarians, religious and lay faithful have benefited from his lectures and retreat conferences on the Carmelite Doctors of the Church and the writings of Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity. After graduating from Franciscan University of Steubenville, he completed licentiate and doctoral studies in spiritual theology at the Angelicum in Rome. In 2012, he published Hidden Mountain, Secret Garden: a theological contemplation of prayer by Discerning Hearts. Married with two young adult children pursuing their careers and a teenager still at home, he has settled in family in Oxnard, California.

BTP-LR23 The “Last Retreat” Day 15 pt. 2 – Beginning to Pray with Dr. Anthony Lilles

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:57 — 21.9MB) | Embed

Beginning to Pray: “The Last Retreat – Day 15 ” pt 2 -“This Queen of virgins is also Queen of martyrs”

From “Last Retreat Day 15” found in The Complete Works vol 1:

41. This Queen of virgins is also Queen of martyrs; but again it was in her heart that the sword pierced, 247 for with her everything took place within! . . . Oh! How beautiful she is to contemplate during her long martyrdom, so serene, enveloped in a kind of majesty that radiates both strength and gentleness. . . . She learned from the Word Himself how those must suffer whom the Father has chosen as victims, those whom He has decided to associate with Himself in the great work of redemption, those whom He “has foreknown and predestined to be conformed to His Christ,” 248 crucified by love.

She is there at the foot of the Cross, standing, full of strength and courage, and here my Master says to me: “Ecce Mater tua.” 249 He gives her to me for my Mother. . . . And now that He has returned to the Father and has substituted me for Himself on the Cross so that “I may suffer in my body what is lacking in His passion for the sake of His body, which is the Church,” 250 the Blessed Virgin is again there to teach me to suffer as He did, to tell me, to make me hear those last songs of His soul which no one else but she, His Mother, could overhear.

When I shall have said my “consummatum est,” 251 it is again she, “Janua coeli,” 252 who will lead me into the heavenly courts, whispering to me these mysterious words: “Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi; in domun Domini ibimus!” 253

Complete-Works This the text we are using to discuss “Heaven in Faith” you can find it here and order from the Carmelite Sisters

We would like to offer heartfelt thanks to
Miriam Gutierrez for providing for us “the voice” of Blessed Elizabeth for this series

For other episodes in the series visit the Discerning Hearts page for Dr. Anthony Lilles

BTP-LR24 The “Last Retreat” Day 16 – Beginning to Pray with Dr. Anthony Lilles

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:36 — 58.6MB) | Embed

Beginning to Pray: “The Last Retreat – Day 16 ” pt 1 -“ My soul thirsts for the living God! ”

From “Last Retreat Day 16” found in The Complete Works vol 1:

42. “As the thirsty doe longs for the springs of fresh water, so my soul longs for You, O God! My soul thirsts for the living God! When will I appear before His face? . . .” 254

And yet, as “the sparrow has found a home,” and “the turtledove a nest in which she may lay her young,” 255 so Laudem Gloriae has found while waiting to be brought to the holy Jerusalem, “beata pacis visio” 256— her retreat, her beatitude, her anticipated Heaven in which she begins her life of eternity. “In God my soul is silent; my deliverance comes from Him. Yes, He is the rock in which I find salvation, my stronghold, I shall not be disturbed!” 257 This is the mystery my lyre sings of today! My Master has said to me as to Zacchaeus: “Hurry and come down, for I must stay in your house today. . . .” 258 Hurry and come down, but where? Into the innermost depths of my being: after having forsaken self, withdrawn from self been stripped of self in a word, without self.

This the text we are using to discuss “Heaven in Faith” you can find it here and order from the Carmelite Sisters

We would like to offer heartfelt thanks to
Miriam Gutierrez for providing for us “the voice” of Blessed Elizabeth for this series