ON RECOLLECTION AND DESIRE BY FRANCISCO DE OSUNA IN HIS TREATISE THE THIRD SPIRITUAL ALPHABET

Introduction

Francisco de Osuna lived during the early period of sixteenth-century, a period of religious renewal and reform that touched the lives not only of priests, friars and nuns, but also lay people in Spain. he was a Franciscan, in the Order of Friars Minor of the Regular Observance attracted to a simple, Christ-centered, inner spirituality practiced by St. Francis of Assisi. As an Observant Francisco emphasized in prayer the role of the will more than that of understanding, and encouraged a spontaneous and simple prayer of the heart. Francisco combined elements of Franciscan spirituality, the affective way of the heart, with the Augustinian philosophy of love. Osuna stands out as a vital intermediary in the development of Spanish Mysticism. His influence on Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross are indeed remarkable. As a prolific writer, Francisco in his seminal work the third Spiritual Alphabet clarifies the nature of false and true mysticism. In order to develop ones inner prayer life, he formulated maxims as a guide for meditation, which he arranged alphabetically.

1. The Spiritual Alphabet It was first published in 1527 in Toledo. Originally written in his native Spanish, the title Tercera parte del libro llamado Abecedario spiritual. To aid in developing a practice of meditation and contemplation. The Alphabet is full of spiritual wisdom and insights from a masterful prayer guide. He insisted on recollection as an inevitable means to obtain the objective. 1.2. Recollection

In his teaching on recollection Francisco was alert and keen to avoid the passive quietism that denied any role for reason. To support on the inner process it is necessary to have a rigorous intellectual reflection. He emphasizes that recollection is not only a gift received but something we do by ourselves. However, he says that the exercise of recollection, is not achieved by force but by skill. It is a process of prayer which ascends from the lower stages of recollection to higher or deeper ones. It is prayer: It includes vocal prayer, to the extent that mental concentration is employed: mental prayer, and, more importantly, passive prayer. Given the ideal of ones total life being lived out in conformity with God's will.
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Rrecollection is our constant alertness and receptivity to God, punctuated by moments of intense awareness of the divine, experiential union between creature and Creator and wisdom is poured into the soul without our understanding how and whence. For Osuna, becoming spiritually collected was best achieved through a process of prayer consisting of three major forms of prayer, from lowest to highest: 1. Vocal prayer (active) 2. Prayer of the heart (active) 3. Mental or spiritual prayer (passive) Disturbing thoughts can plague even the most experienced re-collector, hence, Osuna recommends disciplining the soul gently and lovingly. It consists of disciplining the interior faculty, memory. According to Osuna the faculty of memory
can be distorted and corrupted due to continually remembering hurts, it in turn stirs vengeance. Another cause for the disability is hidden attachment to the symbols of pleasure/security/esteem continual preoccupation with evil. (11:1:292-293). As a consequence spiritual recollection is distorted and blocked. Hence there comes the need for a therapeutic healing inside the memory that we have. For Osuna, this healing takes first of all through the way of Self forgetfulness.

1.2. Self-forgetfulness

The human capacity to recall and retain information that creates self-awareness takes place through the approach of self-forgetfulness. Openness to self-forgetfulness is initially nurtured by recalling and retaining the scriptural promises.

2. The Spiritual Transformation of Memory

Osuna reflects at length on the impact of spiritual recollection on the capacity to remember. Once one is purified by self-forgetfulness in his memory, a new law operates.

2.1. Memory That Both Retains and Creates

Memory is the place wherein the wisdom is stored. It is the ark of truth, the living book of man.

2.2. Memory That Holds the True and Essential Identity of the Self The idea for every single thing and the seminal reason for every possibility exists in his memory better than on a plan, so that even if something were to die in itself, it would not perish in God's memory where all things are recorded and comprehended in such a way that the angels can read as if from a perfect book what God wishes them to know. In that book alone the essence of individual people is found, and there they are immortal, participating in the immortality possessed only by God, to whom and through whom and in whom all things live.' (11:2.295)

2..3. Memory Needs to Be Trained

Osuna recommends that we train our memory through exercises of spiritual remembering, Some examples he gives are, recalling our religious commitment, recalling our baptism, recalling the passion of Christ, recalling the religious experience, and recalling the action of God in daily life (11: 2.295-8).

2.4. The Highest Purpose of Memory Is to stimulate Love

Osuna then suggests a deeper purpose for these practices of remembrance. Remembering increases desire for the presence of what is remembered.

2.5 Memory Transcending Recollection

Although the natural memory has been engaged and gathered into the process of recollection, the spiritual memory presupposes and transcends it.' Remembering presupposes recollection: the memory of God based on recollection is a spiritual resurrection.' 2.6. Memory A Way of Transformation of the Whole Person

The memory based on recollection raises him from death to life and vitalizing his innermost being and heart and eyes, so that he lives not for anything else but God because his memory is of naught else but God.' ( 11.3.301)

2.7. Memory Capable of Spiritual Knowledge

In a lofty way, we remember God as unlimited being, immeasurable kindness, beginning without beginning, end without end, fullness that leaves nothing empty, invincible power, knowing that ignores nothing.

2.8. Memory Strengthens the Will

'If we clearly remember something good, we usually desire it eagerly: thus the memory of some good moves our will to desire it. Call out to him with sighs so that the memory may serve the will, which is the power nearest to God and most intimately in communion with him.'

3. Recollection and Pure Desire Desire for God originate in the heart, however, the heart is secretly moved by one who can move it: by God, in whose hand it rests. Purer desires are unqualified by the sensual nature but a desire is infused or caused by pure love.

Conclusion Osuna insists that recollection in God can be attained only by detachment from the senses and that the perfection of the prayer of recollection consists in thinking of nothing in particular so that the soul can be completely absorbed in God. To comprehend God withdraw from created things.

ALFONSO MARIA DE 'Liguori (1696-1787 1. Biographical He was born in Marianella (near Naples), September 27, 1696, 1726 - priest "Evening Chapels"-It was poorly organized groups of lay people, artisans, traders, unemployed workers, who gathered in the evening at the "chapels", for catechism, devotions, prayers and penitential practices. all the baptized who have responsibility in faith and are called to a holy life

Founder

He knows, in Scala, the Ven. Celeste Crostarosa, then Visitandine (+1743), who in 1731 founded the Order of nuns of the SS.mo Redeemer.

The second achievement is the innovative foundation (in 1732) of a religious congregation dedicated to evangelization through popular missions in the countryside.

was founded the Congregation of the Redemptorists, with the approval of Pope Benedict XIV, "the SS. In 1762 he was elected bishop of S. Agata dei Goti Redeemer. (Benevento)

Characters

Spirituality

1. His apostolic concern and his pastoral experience pointed the realistically his asceticism. 2. God loves all the things he has created. God loves everyone and wants everyone to win eternal salvation. 3. All souls are called to perfection and holiness, the essence of the term and take root in the love of God 4. True love must have its manifestation in effective accession to the divine will, and in the exact fulfillment of its precepts.

5. 2. To get to the real and effective love of God the way most ordinary is the fear of God 6. Thus, the meditation of the eternal truths, must inspire a healthy fear

7. The feeling of fear, according to the Holy One, has no reason to be in itself, but in its supreme purpose and in its formative function of love.

8. The feeling of fear, according to the Holy One, has no reason to be in itself, but in its supreme purpose and in its formative function of love.

9. 3. Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Sacraments, the Saints are means, which should lead 10. The us Ghost is to the tireless the preacher of pure those love tender and of effective God devotions.

11. In this field he has no competitors among the modern masters of spirituality. 12. 4. A key point of the whole ascetic Alphonsus is prayer.

13. Prayer not only great means of salvation, but also an instrument of spiritual perfection. 14. It has been said that the doctrine of St. Alphonsus with regard to the prayer already belongs to the history of Christian thought and practice.

15. In two basic directions should get the message of St. Alphonsus than prayer. The first might be said to be oriented in the pastoral and apostolic, because prayer is the great means of salvation for
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all

Christians.

16. The formula: Who prays is saved, and he who does not pray is condemned. 17. Do not pray means to break the chain of thanks, lose trust in the Lord and failing to love. 18. At St. Alphonsus belongs the glory of having restored the practice of prayer in general, and meditation in particular, as an ordinary and popular current exercise of Christian piety. 19. "From this absolute need we have to pray, there is the need of mental or moral meditation." 20. In his spiritual life, mysticism occupies a very small space.

21. For him, holiness does not necessarily need extraordinary gifts of the mystical life, you may find the perfect union also active as an outcome of mental prayer in the Christian faithful of the town. 22. For him, holiness does not necessarily need extraordinary gifts of the mystical life, you may find the perfect union also active as an outcome of mental prayer in the Christian faithful of the town. 23. His doctrine in this respect, and almost always traditional, or rather, it is the greatest tradition reworked and heated breath of a strong personality.

SPIRITUALITY

'of

the

nineteenth

century

SPIRITUALITY Two lines of spiritual fate

'THE' all 'inside of the

Restoration Christian community

' itself:

an uncompromising opposition to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and in the movements of the French Revolution. This opposition can be summed up in the well-known formula of the Syllabus: 1800 ushers in the beginning of a new era. The new civilization is fundamentally anti-Christian and anti-religious proclamation. "The church is incompatible with modern civilization"; an attempt to recover from all of the new cultural currents than it appears

As a result, its growing propagation led to a new rhythm in the life of the Church and in the development of spirituality.

The radical transformation of the West, religious and political will begin with the French Revolution Other The Old Regime can be said now
6

(1789). revolutions gone in almost all Western nations.

Liberalism

as

philosophy

affects

every

aspect

of

life.

The different philosophical systems determine the progress of culture and modern science (relativism, positivism, rationalism, existentialism, fenomenologismo). We require both the liberal ideas of democracy, constitutionalism and parliamentarianism, both the secularization of the state and the usurpation of ecclesiastical property, leading to the gradual emancipation of the local churches by the state and the new configuration of the legal relationship between We can find in Church this period the and separation of state and State. church.

We are witnessing the ever-clearer separation between believers and non-believers, convinced Christians and followers of naturalism, conservative Christians and liberal Christians, right and left. In this regard, we can detect that within Catholicism two currents: The current restoration. Concerned about the privileges and temporal goods of the church. The current restoration has been able to promote religious orders already abolished and stepped up missions to the people calling it asceticism and piety. It has enhanced the traditional popular devotions that appeared inserted in the Christian mystery (Way of the Cross, devotions to the passion, the blood of Christ, the cross, to the hearts of Jesus and Mary). The Council reiterated that revolutionary explosion can be avoided, if the Christian community self-giving to charitable charitable. He made the condemnation of the new ideologies. 2. The current progressive, instead, look with some complacency prudent bourgeois civil autonomy and They want a the new spiritual socio-liberal. path.

His desire is to see a liturgy understandable and partecipabile by the faithful, clergy educated and distracted by political maneuvers, an opening social-democratic politics and the overcoming of the claims The of the temporal power of the Church. Restoration

The "restoration" of 1815 represented a starting point in the awakening of the Christian conscience towards They were soon a overcome the obstacles new coming from the political spirituality. upheaval.

The Christian life began to develop everywhere with renewed commitment, so as to be able to speak There of are two a lines true of rebirth. development:

on the one hand there is the "restoration" with a return to traditional religious events that had
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suffered. At the same time appear new sources and new expressions of spirituality inspired by the new conditions It is a time of spiritual life, of rich and varied spiritual life. practice. The restoration is not a time of speculation or its expressions in science or doctrine. In this environment dominated by practical concerns the determinants of spiritual restoration are as follows: the intensification of traditional practices of the Christian life with a renewed spirit; participation in the growing of the Catholic laity in all areas of church activity; the extraordinary flowering of religious life in new forms and more dynamic than in the past. All these forces renewed join the movement of reaction to provoke an authentic spiritual revival that had his moments of greatest splendor in the second half of the nineteenth century.

1.

Romanticism

and

spirituality

The Romanticism movement is a very complex and with many aspects of philosophical, political, artistic and cultural heritage. It is basically an artistic and cultural movement and then, according to religious order, but important for its universal diffusion. Born as a reaction against the Enlightenment and the Revolution that choked certain natural needs of man, such as religion, the link with the past, tradition, etc.. Romanticism proved the need of the religious phenomenon and consecrated as the classical era of the Christian faith, the Middle Ages. Romanticism committed to reconcile faith and culture, God and man, fully drawing on the philosophical and artistic heritage. Begin to manifest such a reaction towards the end of the eighteenth century and becomes consistent and universal during the first half of the s. XIX. The current literature is original of England, though it is stated culturally and religiously in Germany. The word romance seems to derive from the English, who spoke in 1765 Borwel the romantic aspect of Corsica, and then was translated into romanesque, romance and romantic. Romanticism is current artistic reaction against the Classicist style, current cultural and philosophical against rationalism; religious movement against the Enlightenment and its ideas. Romanticism is not a movement specifically Catholic, but generically religious. Initially does not have a proper expression, is an atmosphere, an attitude opposite to the arid and vulgar
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Enlightenment.

 In the religious takes shape when you begin to give prominent place to the mystery or mysterious in any form. The dominance of the subjective, intimate, personal and emotional of the objective and rational in life. Primacy of feeling and imagination over the canons of reason and science. The Romantic feels in the depths of spiritual reality-oriented, not to investigate the extent theological but rather to savor his inspiration in imaginative, emotional and aesthetic. He feels intimately prepared to receive the inspiration from the gospel, to live the feeling of adoration and atonement, to venerate the sovereignty of God in liturgical prayer, to situate themselves in an atmosphere of inner emotions. They are the most spiritual authors who speak of the heart. Romanticism has threatened to reduce spirituality to pity emotional and sentimental. The anxiety of full freedom of thought and expression in every field of life. In some ways it looks like liberalism taken to its extreme consequences, even if the doctrinal roots are very different. The importance of the singular values of nature, like the virginal aspect, rural, and the value of the mythical, mysterious and wonderful, honor, love, woman, etc.. L'ideale-religious need and looks like natural tendency of man, the glory of the past and why the basis of artistic inspiration, a bond of social unity and political reaction against the misery and decay. The value of tradition, both cultural and religious, as it corresponds to the social necessity; It is a need for continuity and at the same time link with the glorious past of culture and religion. B. a. Roots Oxford and Movement origin

o The situation of the Church in England began to change dramatically after the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution.

or begins then liberation of Catholics from a situation that has been the most oppressive that existed in the West since the sixteenth century. The steps that led to the so-called emancipation of Catholics are as follows:

or 1. Equality of Catholics and Anglicans in civil matters since 1823, thanks to the work of Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), the liberator of Ireland.

or 2. Statement of Catholic Bishops that infallibility and the primacy of the Pope in temporal matters is not Catholic dogma. As a result, the government pushed through by the two chambers in 1829 the emancipation
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of

Catholics.

or 3. Concession to the Catholic Church in Ireland to own real estate as the Anglican church. Early promoters or Religiously or the Oxford movement is the result of spiritual awakening that is produced through the Wesleys between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The great figures or promoting the revival since 1830 can change the situation and to infuse new vitality into the traditional Anglican Church.

Promoters The Oxford movement extends into almost natural form in the Catholic Church for two basic reasons: 1.for the close proximity of doctrine and attitudes between the two churches at that time. 2. Then for the fact that the best representatives of the movement were converted to Catholicism. The Catholic Church gets a very strong spirit on the part of converts who awakened spiritual consciousness and mystical in many environments. John Keble was considered by Newman himself as the initiator of the movement. Keble sought to embody in himself the ideal church and priesthood of the Anglican church. With the press and propagation of his famous Christian Year did nothing but sing these ideals and propose to his countrymen. The testimony of his small rural community and his personal zeal conquered the hearts of those first followers, as Froude and Newman. In preaching, he wanted to teach the Anglicanism of the XVI-XVII century, as a purified Catholicism by the return to the original sources. This vision went quite elementary deepening. So Hurrell Froude in his Remains proposes a very extensive restoration pastoral and religious to the Anglican church. Pusey made a synthesis of the ancient sources, medieval, then the Catholic reform. With the great John Henry Newman (1801-1892) we arrive at a perfect balance between the sources, the living reality and the actual situation of the Church in different moments of cultural history. Contributions-Institutions, Writers

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