Something to Ponder

Got this today from the always wise and thought-provoking Michael D. O'Brien:

"When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth"

“In the course of the ages two great revolutions have shaken the earth; we call them the two Covenants. The first one caused people to pass from idol worship to the Law, and the second, from the Law to the Gospel. A third upheaval is predicted: that which will transport us from below to above, whereupon there will be no more movement or disturbance. Now these two Covenants both share one same characteristic..: neither of them suddenly caused an instantaneous transformation... They were not to force but to persuade us. For what is imposed by force does not last...

“The Old Testament manifested the Father clearly and the Son obscurely. The New Testament has revealed the Son and hinted at the divinity of the Spirit. Today the Spirit is alive in our midst and is making himself know more clearly. It would have been hazardous, so long as the Father's divinity was not recognized, to preach the Son openly, and so long as the Son's divinity was not acknowledged, to impose... the Holy Spirit. One might have feared that, like people who are surfeited or like those who stare at the sun with weak eyes, believers would have run the risk of losing what they had strength to bear. So the glory of the Trinity had to shine out in successive steps or, as David says, ‘from strength to strength’ (Ps 84[83],8) and progressively, from one degree of glory to another...

“I would like to add one further consideration: our Savior knew certain things that he considered his disciples would be unable to bear in spite of all the teaching they had already received. For the same reasons as I said above, he kept these things hidden. And he emphasized that when the Spirit came, he would teach them all things.”

~ Saint Gregory Nazianzen (330-390), 5th Theological Discourse.

Loving Our Neighbor

“Who is my “neighbor” in this new world? Does the danger exist that we may be less present to those whom we encounter in our everyday life? Is there a risk of being more distracted because our attention is fragmented and absorbed in a world “other” than the one in which we live? Do we have time to reflect critically on our choices and to foster human relationships which are truly deep and lasting? It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives.”

~ Pope Benedict XVI, 45th Communications Day

Thy Will Be Done...

Thanks to the lovely Elizabeth Foss for sharing this timely quote:

"How beautiful it is to behold a person destitute of all attachment, ready for any act of virtue or charity, gentle to all, indifferent as to any employment, serene in consolations and tribulations, and wholly content if only the will of God be done."

~ St. Francis De Sales

He's at it again!

You gotta love that C.S. Lewis...

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’"

~ C. S. Lewis

Lenten Musings

I love this one:

"What is the point of a retreat? I should put it like this--that God means to do something in and to your soul. It may be something quite little; almost certainly it will seem quite little. But then, of course, that little may be the thin end of a wedge. He wants to do a sort of tidying up, a sort of spring cleaning in your life. Perhaps He will open your eyes to some fault; perhaps He will begin to wean you away from some bad habit; some dangerous friendship, perhaps He will give you a glimpse of some way (you hadn't thought about before) in which, later on, He means you to serve Him."

~ Msgr. Ronald Knox

Welcoming Lent

"And Jesus rebuked him, and the devil went out of him, and the child was cured from that hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus secretly, and said: Why could not we cast him out? Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible to you. But this kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting."

~ Matthew 17:17-20

At spin class yesterday, the spin teacher had us start with our bikes set to a flat road. After a few hills, and resistance re-sets, she said to go back to the flat road--but to add two gears, and that would be our new flat road for the rest of the class.

Lent is like that, I think. Each year, Lent turns out to be such a powerful experience that by Easter I find that my faith is forever raised to a whole new level.

Two years ago, I went to Confession once a week during Lent, which was hard to schedule, but awesome and so worth it. Last year, I think I gave up Diet Coke (right?), and now I don't even need it at all (usually). This year, in addition to fasting from desserts, I'm not going to sleep later than 6a.m. on weekdays. This is something I've been struggling with for--well, forever, and it's quite apparent that I cannot do it on my own. No wonder St. Josemaria calls that moment of rising "the heroic moment;" it's certainly the hardest thing I try to do on most days! So this Lent I'm praying for God's help in a big way for this one.

Wishing you all a holy and blessed Lent!

Holiday Eating Tips

My favorite advice at this time of year:

1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls.

2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it's rare. In fact, it's even rarer than single-malt scotch. You can't find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an eggnog-aholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you think. It's Christmas!

3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it. Hello?

6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you're never going to see them again.

8. Same for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or, if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?

9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.

10. One final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention.

Reread tips, then start over. But hurry: January is just around the corner!

Unanswered Prayers

I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong;
I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve;
I asked for prosperity and God gave me a brain and brawn to work;
I asked for courage and God gave me dangers to overcome;
I asked for love and God gave me people to help;
I asked for favors and God gave me opportunities;
I received nothing I wanted;
I received everything I needed.

Guest Post

Welcoming C.S. Lewis to the blog today...

"Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thought to God when everything is going well with us. We 'have all we want' is a terrible saying when 'all' does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St. Augustine says somewhere, 'God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full--there's nowhere for Him to put it.' Or as a friend of mine said, 'We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.' Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interest but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

"We are perplexed to see misfortune falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people--on capable, hardworking mothers of families or diligent, thrifty little tradespeople, on those who have worked so hard, and so honestly, for their modest stock of happiness and new seem to be entering on the enjoyment of it with the fullest right...

"Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed; that all this must fall from them in the end, and that if they have not learned to know Him, they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover."

Happy Feast Day, St. John Chrysostom

"He became what we are, that we might become what He is."

~ St John Chrysostom, c. 400 A.D.

Universal Prayer

Just loving this tonight:

Lord, I believe in you: increase my faith.
I trust in you: strengthen my trust.
I love you: let me love you more and more.
I am sorry for my sins: deepen my sorrow.

I worship you as my first beginning,
I long for you as my last end,
I praise you as my constant helper,
And call on you as my loving protector.

Guide me by your wisdom,
Correct me with your justice,
Comfort me with your mercy,
Protect me with your power.

I offer you, Lord, my thoughts: to be fixed on you;
My words: to have you for their theme;
My actions: to reflect my love for you;
My sufferings: to be endured for your greater glory.

I want to do what you ask of me:
In the way you ask,
For as long as you ask,
Because you ask it.

Lord, enlighten my understanding,
Strengthen my will,
Purify my heart,
and make me holy.

Help me to repent of my past sins
And to resist temptation in the future.
Help me to rise above my human weaknesses
And to grow stronger as a Christian.

Let me love you, my Lord and my God,
And see myself as I really am:
A pilgrim in this world,
A Christian called to respect and love
All whose lives I touch,
Those under my authority,
My friends and my enemies.

Help me to conquer anger with gentleness,
Greed by generosity,
Apathy by fervor.
Help me to forget myself
And reach out toward others.

Make me prudent in planning,
Courageous in taking risks.
Make me patient in suffering, unassuming in prosperity.

Keep me, Lord, attentive at prayer,
Temperate in food and drink,
Diligent in my work,
Firm in my good intentions.

Let my conscience be clear,
My conduct without fault,
My speech blameless,
My life well-ordered.
Put me on guard against my human weaknesses.
Let me cherish your love for me,
Keep your law,
And come at last to your salvation.

Teach me to realize that this world is passing,
That my true future is the happiness of heaven,
That life on earth is short,
And the life to come eternal.

Help me to prepare for death
With a proper fear of judgment,
But a greater trust in your goodness.
Lead me safely through death
To the endless joy of heaven.

Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

~ Pope Clement XI, A.D. 1721

Good St. Anne

Happy Feast Day, St. Anne!

According to Christian and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne, (also Ann or Anna, from Hebrew Hannah, meaning "favor" or "grace") of David's house and line, was the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ. According to the apocryphal Gospel of James, Anne and her husband Joachim, after years of childlessness, were visited by an angel who told them that they would conceive a child. Anne promised to dedicate the child to God's service. More information about St. Anne is here and I was inspired by Elizabeth Foss' special devotion to St. Anne here.

This year St. Anne is special to me, too, because I realized that her feast day is on the same day that my own sweet grandmother died--July 26, 2002. It's hard to believe that eight years have already gone by since we lost my Grandmother. I still feel like I could pick up the phone and call her up, or that she's still there, down in Texas, ready to pull out something chocolate for us as we play cards around her kitchen table.

Five days after her death, my family held her funeral on a steamy day down by the Texas bayou. At almost the exact same time, my precious KLD was born miles away in Illinois, sweetly continuing the circle of life.

I pray that dear St. Anne, grandmother of Our Lord, can help to bless my own dear Grandmother and my KLD, who will turn eight on Saturday!

Solving World Hunger

"If the best current knowledge were employed, enough food to feed the our billion people could be grown in the southern half of Sudan! It is only the Western bias, the idea spread throughout the world that one must eat white grain and drink soda pop to be "civilized," that is responsible for the suffering of the millions of starving people in the world. It is a myth that there is not enough to go around, that there is no way the Earth can support its exploding population. The truth is that most of the world's food resources are controlled by a handful of greedy men, who deny people the right to grow food for themselves but try to sell them Western-produced junk instead. [Some experts] estimate that if all the arable land on earth were used properly and sowed with foods for human consumption, the Earth could support 60 billion people--almost fifteen times our current population! But it is true that there is no way we can feed the world population on Whoppers and Cheez-Wiz, let along nourish it."

~ Paul Stitt Fighting the Food Giants via Nourishing Traditions

Whispers from God

"God calls us gradually, from one level to the next. He attracts us in some mysterious way. We become aware of it after it is done. But it is often very simple: our conscience is stirred, or becomes uncomfortable, with very specific points of departure which deceive us because they are too unassuming, too close at hand. We do not believe that faith is already there, that it is calling us, and that, as the Epistle to the Romans says, God 'stirs up our jealousy.' In a discrete way he proposes something better, a surpassing of ourselves, within our conscience. For Abraham--and Abraham did not know what it meant - : to have a son; for Saint Peter: to become a fisher of men. But God remains disconcerting, so discrete is he. He arouses us, stirs us up, but we are always free to prefer something else and not pay attention."

~ Fr. Bernard Bro, O.P.

A Very Old Favorite

After all these years of loving this passage, I have it just about memorized. I pray that it may inspire all my relationships!

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

"All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

"This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."

--C. S. Lewis, From The Weight of Glory.

Remember This One?

After spending time with my dear extended family last week, I couldn't get this wonderful quote out of my mind. It's an oldie but such a good one, don't you think?

Love Them Anyway

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People need help, but may attack you if you try to help them.
Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you."
~ John 15:12

Like Fire in Fog

"You should not worry too much about adversities. The world is not as powerful as it seems to be; its strength is strictly limited... Know, my daughter, that if your soul is filled with the fire of My pure love, then all difficulties dissipate like fog before the sun's rays and dare not touch the soul. All adversaries are afraid to start a quarrel with such a soul, because they sense that it is stronger than the whole world."

~ The words of Jesus in St. Faustina's Diary

Beautiful!

An Old Favorite

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be?

"You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.

"As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

~ Marianne Williamson

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

"Soon we shall be in eternity and then we shall see how insignificant our worldly preoccupations were and how little it mattered whether some things got done or not; however, right now we rush about as if they were all-important. When we were little children how eagerly we used to gather pieces of broken tile, little sticks, and mud with which to build houses and other tiny buildings, and if someone knocked them over, how heartbroken we were and how we cried! But now we understand that these things really didn't amount to much. One day it will be like this for us in heaven when we shall see that some of the things we clung to on earth were only childish attachments.

"I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't care about these little games and trifling details of life, for God wants us to practice on them in this world; but I would like to see us not so strained and frantic in our concern about them. Let's play our childish games since we are children; but at the same time, let's not take them too seriously. And if someone wrecks our little houses or projects, let's not get too upset, because when night falls and we have to go indoors -- I'm speaking of our death -- all those little houses will be useless; we shall have to go into our Father's house. Do faithfully all the things you have to do, but be aware that what matters most is your salvation and the fulfillment of that salvation through true devotion."

~ St. Francis de Sales, 1608

Thanks to Jen for sharing this quote when I really needed it!