Dear friends of St. Rafael,
It’s graduation day! As promised, we’re celebrating with a little advice column. I asked you all for questions to pose to our friend in heaven, and I’m happy to provide some answers from his writings below. If you don’t see your question answered today, don’t worry—there will be more to come.
–Catherine, PhD, actually-officially-for-real-now
Dear St. Rafael: How can I have more courage to have difficult conversations with loved ones?
Dear friend,
Take this to heart: the Lord has put them there entirely so that you might have an occasion to practice the charity that He is asking of you, so that you might love Him by taking care of your loved ones . . . Everything that is happening around you—the Lord is doing all that for you, didn’t you know? Don’t put obstacles in His path, little sister! . . . Look up high, so you won’t get dizzy. If a chasm suddenly opens up underneath your feet, and the world starts falling apart, but your eyes are still fixed on God . . . then what’s it to you? . . . But if you look down into that chasm, you run the risk of getting dizzy . . . and falling in.
–St. Rafael
(#93, letter to María Osorio, December 27, 1935)
Dear St. Rafael: My roommate has long hair and doesn't clean out the drain when he's done showering. What do I do?
Dear friend,
Impatience is one of my greatest faults. Sometimes a brother, without realizing it, will work my nerves into such a state, especially by making certain noises, that if I let my nature take over I’d start screaming. But I came to La Trapa to mortify myself, and to suffer whatever the Lord wants to send my way. […] Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, grant me the grace to be docile. Amen. One of my greatest sorrows is finding myself embracing the cross of Jesus, but not loving it as I ought.
–St. Rafael
(#178, “The Greatest Penance is Community Life,” January 7, 1938)
Dear St. Rafael: Prayer doodling: yea or nay?
Dear friend,
Today, my prayer was at the tip of my pencil, which drew Christ, dead on the cross. […]
With God in my heart and a pencil in my hand . . . what more could I ask for? . . . How lovely it is to spend time drawing Jesus! I never thought a pencil and a simple piece of cardboard could bring me so much consolation . . . How good God is, that he still lets me enjoy one thing I brought with me from the world . . . my love for painting and drawing. […]
But if I take more time to think about it, it’s not the paintbrushes and colors that bring joy into the hours I spend working . . . It’s the work itself, the cross that I’m drawing, the cause of my joy . . . It’s seeing how my clumsy hands and these crude instruments combine to bring something forth from this rough cardboard . . . something I carry deep inside me . . . that figure, that wood, those nails.
Even so, I always end up saying, “No, that’s not it.” But it doesn’t matter. Neither I nor the greatest painter of all time could manage to depict that . . . nobody could.
In the meantime, nobody is stopping me from praying with the tip of my pencil, which, little by little, fills out this image of Christ dead on the cross with great tenderness.
–St. Rafael
(#155, “My Pencil,” January 22, 1937)
Dear St. Rafael: Is it ever to late to find/live one's vocation?
Dear friend,
I made a vow at prayer this morning. I made a vow to love Jesus always.
I have realized what my vocation is. I am not a religious . . . I am not a layman . . . I am nothing . . . Blessed be God, I am nothing but a soul in love with Christ. He wants nothing but my love, and He wants it detached from everything and everyone else.
Virgin Mary, help me keep my vow.
To love Jesus in everything, because of everything, always . . . Only love. A humble, generous, detached, mortified love, in silence . . . May my life be nothing but an act of love.
I can clearly see that it is not the will of God for me to make religious vows or follow the Rule of Saint Benedict in everything. Am I to want what God does not? […]
Does any of this keep me from loving Him? . . . No.
–St. Rafael
(#175, “My Vow,” January 1, 1938)
If you have questions for St. Rafael, keep ‘em coming in the comments or by replying to this email! More answers next week.