(no subject)
The crucial question is whether you should pray always and whether your prayer is necessary. In one's spiritual life, the stakes are all or nothing! If someone says that it's good to turn to God in prayer for a spare minute, or if he grants that a person with a problem does well to take refuge in prayer, he has as much as admitted that praying is on the margin of life and that it doesn't really matter.
Whenever you feel that a little prayer can't do any harm, you will find that it can't do much good either. Prayer is prayer only when we can say that without it, a man or woman could not live.
~Henri Nouwen
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Freedom is not merely doing whatever I want, for sometimes my wants are small and selfish. Freedom is better defined as "the chance to be better." The gift of freedom is given to us by God for one purpose only: in order that we may love. The better we are at loving, the freer we are, even if we are confined to a hospital bed or a prison cell.
None of us is completely free. Blessed are those who recognize how they are bound be fear, apathy, laziness, self-centeredness, addiction, pettiness, hardness of heart or some other kind of servitude. As St. John of the Cross reminds us, a bird tethered by a thin thread is just as unable to fly as one held by a steel cable.
~Sister Melannie Svoboda
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When John and Andrew as young men went searching for someone who could give them the answers their hearts yearned for, John the Baptizer pointed them to Jesus. And they immediately asked Jesus: "Where are you staying?" At the Last Supper, Jesus would finally tell John where he makes his home: "The Father and I will come to you and make our home in you." Today Jesus tells John and all those who believe in him: Make your home in my word. The words of Jesus are to so possess us that we actually dwell in them. We delight in them, we find our joy and our consolation in them. If this is the case, then we are truly his disciples. Then we know what the score really is. Then we are free from the false self that surrounds us. This is why each day we need to take some time to sit with Jesus and let him speak to us through his inspired Word.
M. Basil Pennington
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Shame, shame on our human pride, our self-complacency, our self-centeredness, when we see how good God has been to us, how many gifts and graces he has given us -- and not because he has to but because he wants to. Obtuse as we are, we seem not to see or feel this love so hot that, if we were made of stone, it would long ago have burst us open! Unhappy me! I can see no other reason except that the eye of our understanding is not focused on the tree of the cross. For there is revealed such warm love, such gently persuasive teaching filled with life-giving fruits, such generosity that he has torn open his very body, has shed his life's blood, and with that blood has baptized and bathed us. We can and should make us of that baptism every day with continual remembrance and great love.
~Saint Catherine of Siena
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Tried to carve out some time in my day for a longer post, however I ended up working so late that I didn't even get home in time for Benediction. It was a good day, though -- productive on many counts. I have tomorrow off, so definitely plan on chapel time, journal time, and hope to get many overdue chores completed. Until then -- sleep tight......
Whenever you feel that a little prayer can't do any harm, you will find that it can't do much good either. Prayer is prayer only when we can say that without it, a man or woman could not live.
~Henri Nouwen
-----------------------------------
Freedom is not merely doing whatever I want, for sometimes my wants are small and selfish. Freedom is better defined as "the chance to be better." The gift of freedom is given to us by God for one purpose only: in order that we may love. The better we are at loving, the freer we are, even if we are confined to a hospital bed or a prison cell.
None of us is completely free. Blessed are those who recognize how they are bound be fear, apathy, laziness, self-centeredness, addiction, pettiness, hardness of heart or some other kind of servitude. As St. John of the Cross reminds us, a bird tethered by a thin thread is just as unable to fly as one held by a steel cable.
~Sister Melannie Svoboda
-------------------------------------
When John and Andrew as young men went searching for someone who could give them the answers their hearts yearned for, John the Baptizer pointed them to Jesus. And they immediately asked Jesus: "Where are you staying?" At the Last Supper, Jesus would finally tell John where he makes his home: "The Father and I will come to you and make our home in you." Today Jesus tells John and all those who believe in him: Make your home in my word. The words of Jesus are to so possess us that we actually dwell in them. We delight in them, we find our joy and our consolation in them. If this is the case, then we are truly his disciples. Then we know what the score really is. Then we are free from the false self that surrounds us. This is why each day we need to take some time to sit with Jesus and let him speak to us through his inspired Word.
M. Basil Pennington
-------------------------------------
Shame, shame on our human pride, our self-complacency, our self-centeredness, when we see how good God has been to us, how many gifts and graces he has given us -- and not because he has to but because he wants to. Obtuse as we are, we seem not to see or feel this love so hot that, if we were made of stone, it would long ago have burst us open! Unhappy me! I can see no other reason except that the eye of our understanding is not focused on the tree of the cross. For there is revealed such warm love, such gently persuasive teaching filled with life-giving fruits, such generosity that he has torn open his very body, has shed his life's blood, and with that blood has baptized and bathed us. We can and should make us of that baptism every day with continual remembrance and great love.
~Saint Catherine of Siena
----------------------------------------
Tried to carve out some time in my day for a longer post, however I ended up working so late that I didn't even get home in time for Benediction. It was a good day, though -- productive on many counts. I have tomorrow off, so definitely plan on chapel time, journal time, and hope to get many overdue chores completed. Until then -- sleep tight......