I have always been interested in the unknown saints; those who quietly, without fanfare or any sort of self-advertisement, have followed the will of our Lord and showed their love for Him by doing what he has commanded us.
I call her an "unknown saint" because Saint Nicarete is one of those saints about whom we know little, but whose feast day appears on our calendar once every year. She did not leave any writings, there are no stories about her except the bare bones facts of her existence.
She was born in a fairly well-to-do family of Nicodemia then a part of Bithniya, which is now Turkey. Well known for her piety, she had originally traveled to the capital in order to take care of the poor with her medical skills.
I don't know when she shifted her focus to taking care of Chrysostom and supporting and following him, but it is easy to imagine that she became aware of his great saintliness sometime around the period during which she was attending to his medical needs.
Later, she followed him into his exile from the Imperial capital of Constantinople, at which time she suffered greatly along with his other followers.
I appreciate this saint's self-effacing example.
To humbly obey the will of the Lord, without inserting my own wishes into the mix, without believing in my own inclinations, but having faith in His alone, pertains to those spiritual disciplines that affect more of the surface aspects of my life.
There are various stages in the life of a contemplative living in the world, and this sort of life is, in some crucial ways, more difficult than that lived in an institutionally supported hermitage, convent or monastery.
My overall spiritual discipline is to "pray without ceasing." There are many different types and levels of prayer involved in being able to do that, ranging from the deep silence of contemplative prayer that harkens back to Christ's instruction that we are to go into our closet and pray in secret to our Lord, to the active, physical prayers in which I am following the Commandments given by Christ of how I am to function in relation to other humans.
In the deepest stage of contemplation, the household is shut down, phone ringer "off" and sign on the door. I keep my attention on The Lord in order to just be with Him.
Quietly sitting with God, his saints and angels, is a deep form of prayer in which no discursive thought is necessary. It would get in the way.
Slightly above that type would be the sort of prayer that involves the verbal prayers with which we are all familiar. Some of the prayers praise God, and many ask him for His Blessings, etc.
Some of this state can be carried into what I look upon, roughly, as a third stage of prayer in my "walking" life, as I perform the physical acts necessary to the functioning of the hermitage. This third state requires mostly rote physical work performed in silence, such as cooking, sweeping, and that sort of thing.
As we travel up the various stages of praying without ceasing, different parts of our brain are engaged, and the executive functioning is pulled into it. This is where Christ's instructions about how we relate to one another come into the mix, and this is where sin enters in, when we let it.
The monastic's mind is traveling up and down the rungs of this ladder all day, depending upon what is appropriate to the time of day and the schedule.
In order to get to the deepest form of prayer, we have to purify our thoughts and actions in the more superficial phases. The life of a contemplative person is a process of intentionally moving up and down through these various stages. In the more superficial stages, there are many helps that program the mind and heart and clear the way to travel down each rung of the Divine ladder.
I would love to spend all my time in deep contemplation, or at least floating around in a blissful state of heavenly consolations, but I am a human being, and there is work to do here in this world. I have talent and treasure with which I have been gifted and which I am expected to spend here, and it is during times of action in the world that I have to coordinate my movements with what The Lord's will is for me. This is where the verbal prayers come into the mix of spiritual practice.
Many times, when we talk about prayer, people routinely talk about praying FOR something in particular. We pray to various saints for intercession so that we may be healed of various illnesses, or have success in our ministries or our working lives. I am far less interested in these types of prayers, as I have begun to feel that The Lord knows what is best for me and knows what I need. I love praying to Him, but mostly in the contemplative form in which I spend time with Him.
I do not pretend to be empty of all desires or that I am without convictions about this or that controversy or lack opinions about possible solutions for problems that we all seem to realize exist in our world and sometimes even in our church. I have these trends of mind, of course. But every day I lay them at the feet of the Lord and tell Him of my willingness to abandon them. I say, "do as you will." As time goes on, I pray less and less for any particular thing for myself, and I foresee a time when I will not express any preference at all, trusting Him completely to supply every need.
This is the practice: I admit to Him my preferences, because honesty is required and I do have visions of how I believe my vocation, ministries and art projects would best transpire, and I pray for those things, but always specifically within the context of His will. I ask Him to please do for me whatever needs doing in order to bring about the overall dream, "but only if it is within Your Holy Will, my Lord."
This is reflected even in my expanded grace at meal times:
"Bless me, O Lord, and these thy gifts
that I am about to receive.
In Jesus' precious name I pray:
may no one go hungry today O Lord,
may all souls become sincerely converted to thee
and to thy Holy Catholic Church,
according to Thy Blessed will."
I present Him with my dreams. I tell Him that these are the things that I consider to be good and holy and it is these good and holy practices, services, and conditions that I hope He will help me to do or have, but if He does not want these things for me or if He wants other, better things for me, or even if He does not think I am worthy of aspiring to the goodness of these things, then I bow in obedience to Him in that.
I have my preferences and desires, but I am willing to dispense with them and be grateful for whatever else the Lord wants for me.
There are even some days when I start to pray for something, think better of it, and then tell Him, "never mind! Please just give me what you want me to have."
This is not to say that I do not advocate for anything and live a mute existence. No. I am not one of those silent people, though I DO spend most of my time in absolute silence throughout my hermit days, punctuated by good-natured chatter when the rare friend drops by.
I use today's saint as an example of someone who has the good sense to subsume their own talents and skills into the service of a greater person.
I have grown the habit of supporting the opinions of the experts: The Catechism, the Pope, The Bible, and the leading saints who point toward Christ, the Catechism, the Pope, the Bible.
When someone gets onto Facebook, for instance, and makes a claim on behalf of The Catholic Church that I know is not true, I will speak up and refer to the Catechism, preferably the exact numbered paragraph that speaks to it. There is way too much false information being bandied about, and I owe it to my church to at least offer the Truth to combat SOME of it.
More and more, I avoid issuing anything of my own opinion because, more and more, I realize that this is not my role. I am not the expert, the authority, the person with the most bona fides on any topic. I am human, however, and sometimes forget that my opinion is not required by anyone, and I have to backtrack and correct the record and delete the post. Keeping my attention on the "unknown saints" like St. .Nicarete, helps keep me in the appropriate attitude.
Today I thank Saint Nicarete for providing a lovely example of an intentionally humble attitude of an accomplished, intelligent woman who could easily have encouraged a retinue of admirers to follow and serve her, but instead chose to support a great saint who had come into her orbit.
God bless us all.
Silver Rose
