Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice! (Psalms 141:2)
Friends, I am going to take a brief hiatus from the internet. With school winding down, and my application process with the Augustinians intensifying, I want time both to concentrate on those things, but also in a special way to focus on prayer. Right now I am as close as I've ever been to entering the Order, and in the past each time I've gotten close I've suffered great spiritual attacks, and I've frequently been defeated in those battles. Thus at this time I wish to remain especially close to the Sacraments and to prayer. I hope to stay offline (except to check my e-mail, which is necessary for school) for about two weeks or so. During that time, I ask that you all please keep me in prayer. But also, I would like very much to pray for all of you. While I will not be receiving comments from the blog during this time, if anyone has anything for which they would like me to pray, or by all means if anyone just has something they would like to discuss, I encourage anyone to e-mail me at
augustinianheart@gmail.com.
Finally, I would like to begin my hiatus with a passage from Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation:
"The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else. It gives them a clarity of compassion that can find good in the most terrible criminals. It delivers them from the burden of judging others, condemning other men. It teaches them to bring the good out of others by compassion, mercy, and pardon. A man becomes a saint not by conviction that he is better than sinners but by the realization that he is one of them, and that all together need the mercy of God!"
May the grace and peace of Christ be with us all.