"God alone, nothing but love": a new conversation on Rafael in translation
Plus more book news, and a psalm to get us through the end times
The saints are very, very different from each other, but when you read especially mystics and people who had deep spiritual lives, the closer you get to the end, the more they all sound the same, which is: “God alone. Nothing but love.” And the saints are just many, many flavors of that one message, I think. x
Back in March, I was honored to be invited onto Sam Rocha’s Folk Phenomenology podcast to talk about my St. Rafael translation project. The episode finally dropped today, and it’s a snapshot of me in the absolute thick of it. (In fact, as you can probably hear in my manically enthusiastic voice, I had just finished my translation earlier that week when we recorded!) I had a blast revisiting this conversation. Take a listen here, and check out my thread of supplementary reading recommendations here.
In other St. Rafael news, I wanted to let you all know the exciting news that Cistercian Publications is developing a second book on our saint! In addition to my translation of the Collected Works, they are working on a shorter companion volume that studies St. Rafael’s spirituality from a theological and spiritual perspective. It will be co-authored by my translation collaborator, Sr. María Gonzalo, OCSO, and Fr. Mark O’Keefe, OSB, a theologian on faculty at St. Meinrad’s. He has written several books on St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross, so I am pretty stoked that St. Rafael has drawn the attention of a scholar who loves the Spanish mystical tradition. But I’m especially excited that this will be Sr. María’s first book. As many of you know, she is the St. Rafael expert par excellence, and she is the one who first invited me to work on this project. I learned everything I know about him from her, and I can’t wait for you all to be able to read her work and benefit from her wisdom as I have.
I look forward to when I can share preordering information for both books, but for now, please keep everyone who is working on them in your prayers. (This is my favorite prayer for those working in the media, including books!)
As I was thinking about what else to include in today’s newsletter, occasioned by the happy updates above, my mind went to an unexpected place. I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time praying the news lately. Whether it’s war or plague you have on the mind, or something else entirely, I suspect a lot of us feel this way. So I thought I might share a place I find hope in times like these: Rafael’s writings at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
Rafael and I have the same favorite psalm, it turns out. (That was one of the realizations that convinced me to take on the project, because honestly, what are the odds? That’s a God moment!) Here’s what he wrote about it on July 24, 1936, as he recounted hearing nearby gunshots from his room in the infirmary. If you need a prayer, read this aloud, and let it be yours.
The people of this world have gone mad . . . Why are they killing each other? I don’t understand it. But I can clearly see that what some want, others do not; what some have, others desire and want to take it from them; some say this, others say that, but everyone wants to be in charge . . . First, they disagree; then they argue; then they hate each other; and finally, they will kill each other . . . Behold, the law that the evil spirit has smuggled into the world, displacing the law of Christ: love one another.
I am so happy that I am a Trappist, and at something of a distance from the fight . . . not for selfish reasons, because I don’t mind suffering, much less dying. Rather, far from all that infighting, with a tranquil spirit, I can hear shouts of hatred and smell the gunfire, and then lift my eyes to heaven and truly exclaim David’s words: God is our refuge and strength. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts, but the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
The one who truly counts on God for everything possesses such joyful confidence in the midst of all the world’s disasters. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.
The soul stretches upon encountering these words of Psalm 46, upon which I have been meditating these past few days. It pains me to think that so many of my brothers and sisters, alienated from the truth, place their hopes in earthly goals, in passing prosperity, and in power that will not last. Blinded by pride, they don’t realize that God is the one moving them about, like puppets in His hands . . . They don’t stop to consider that surely everyone goes about like a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; they heap up, and do not know who will gather (Ps 39:6).
How great is God! And how small and wicked is humanity! How blind they are! There is so much madness in the world! He who sits in the heavens laughs (Ps 2:4). Terrifying words that make one tremble, and are not often meditated upon . . . God’s wrath is to be feared, and so too His rage. Someday it will shake the whole earth, on the day when we shall all be judged. But what one’s soul cannot understand, and what makes every fiber of one’s body tremble, is God’s “laugh” as He watches the nations conspire against Him.
“Enough! Acknowledge that I am God. I have dominion over the nations and all the earth.”1
Anyway, what can this poor Trappist do but silently lament how God’s creatures have forgotten Him, lift my heart up above all this misery, make Him my refuge and strength, and wait in hope?
Beatus vir, cujus est nomen Domini spes ejus.2
Rafael’s paraphrase of Ps 46:10: Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.
Happy are those who make the Lord their trust (Ps 40:4).