The best laid plans of mice and men....
So much for my plans for the day -- ah well; tomorrow, God willing, is another one. Having some migraine problems lately -- can't really think straight today until it subsides, so here's the reflections; personal blatherings to be shared later......
I'm very grateful for our 24/7 Chapel. How comforting it is to know that regardless of what sort of schedule life might impose upon me, at any time, day or night, I can go pray in the Presence of our Lord. It is really a gift to have such a Chapel just around the corner.
Every experience is a stepping stone, but not the last say. No experience is our final dwelling place. Life's events are the circumstances through which we pass as we learn that we're made for something else. Then, hopefully, we reach for that greater potential and let the spirit within be our sight. Eventually we begin to experience life with new awareness. We start to see the beauty that surrounds us.
~Paula D'Arcy
-----------------------------------------------------------
In Plato's Meno, Anytus accuses Socrates of slander for suggesting that even great men like Thucydides could not instruct their sons in moral excellence. It is very difficult to speak of virtue and vice, and goodness and evil, without making judgments -- and sometimes concrete ones. and it is even more difficult to speak truthfully of such matters to those who are intent on trapping the speaker. Jesus finds himself in a similar predicament in his dialogue with his enemies. When he professes to be timeless before Abraham was born, they too issue threats, but with stones instead of words. So why not be silent in the face of opposition and hostility? Because sometimes the truth must be spoken and Truth must speak, even if such words lead to the passion and death of the Word. These words are intended for Jesus' enemies who could have embraced the cross instead of imposing it -- and for us who can know the deepest identity of Christ and the opposition this arouses. Like Jesus, we should expect that our detractors will twist our words, whether we simply speak the truth or confess the Truth. And also like him, we can take comfort that prayer -- our speech to our heavenly Father -- can be uttered freely, for he grasps our words and our deepest identity, and protects them with his love.
~Father Lawrence Donohoo, O.P.
---------------------------------------------------------------
What shocks Abraham so overwhelmingly...is not so much to hear god, in his fatherly love, commanding him to sacrifice his son. in the region of the land of Canaan, the sacrifice of firstborn sons to God was a well-known custom. Men felt they had no right to be fathers until they had acknowledged the primacy of the divine fatherhood by sacrificing their firstborn. It is a case of anxiously disfiguring God's face, such as we have seen began among men at the coming of sin...God wills to lead Abraham to the very limits of faith. Abraham obeys blindly, and we must remember that this is not the only time in history when God seems to destroy what he himself has built. it is to prevent us from insidiously appropriating things to ourselves that God goes so far as to take them away from us, only to give hem back to us in the end so that henceforth we may possess them as coming from his hand alone. We realize the gratuitousness of a gift only when it is taken away from us, or at least after it has very nearly escaped us entirely. How many people who have never been bedridden really understand what it is to walk? How many really appreciate the gift of sight who have never nearly lost it? How many of those who have never been confined in hospital or prison for long periods realize what it is to breathe in the pure fresh air with wondering delight? We possess God's gifts, knowing them truly the gifts of God, only when like Abraham we receive them a second time from his hands,having been ready to surrender them to him without seeing why, in blind faith stripped of all human understanding about the mystery of faithfulness that blind faith contains.
~Father Dominique Barthelemy, O.P.
I'm very grateful for our 24/7 Chapel. How comforting it is to know that regardless of what sort of schedule life might impose upon me, at any time, day or night, I can go pray in the Presence of our Lord. It is really a gift to have such a Chapel just around the corner.
Every experience is a stepping stone, but not the last say. No experience is our final dwelling place. Life's events are the circumstances through which we pass as we learn that we're made for something else. Then, hopefully, we reach for that greater potential and let the spirit within be our sight. Eventually we begin to experience life with new awareness. We start to see the beauty that surrounds us.
~Paula D'Arcy
-----------------------------------------------------------
In Plato's Meno, Anytus accuses Socrates of slander for suggesting that even great men like Thucydides could not instruct their sons in moral excellence. It is very difficult to speak of virtue and vice, and goodness and evil, without making judgments -- and sometimes concrete ones. and it is even more difficult to speak truthfully of such matters to those who are intent on trapping the speaker. Jesus finds himself in a similar predicament in his dialogue with his enemies. When he professes to be timeless before Abraham was born, they too issue threats, but with stones instead of words. So why not be silent in the face of opposition and hostility? Because sometimes the truth must be spoken and Truth must speak, even if such words lead to the passion and death of the Word. These words are intended for Jesus' enemies who could have embraced the cross instead of imposing it -- and for us who can know the deepest identity of Christ and the opposition this arouses. Like Jesus, we should expect that our detractors will twist our words, whether we simply speak the truth or confess the Truth. And also like him, we can take comfort that prayer -- our speech to our heavenly Father -- can be uttered freely, for he grasps our words and our deepest identity, and protects them with his love.
~Father Lawrence Donohoo, O.P.
---------------------------------------------------------------
What shocks Abraham so overwhelmingly...is not so much to hear god, in his fatherly love, commanding him to sacrifice his son. in the region of the land of Canaan, the sacrifice of firstborn sons to God was a well-known custom. Men felt they had no right to be fathers until they had acknowledged the primacy of the divine fatherhood by sacrificing their firstborn. It is a case of anxiously disfiguring God's face, such as we have seen began among men at the coming of sin...God wills to lead Abraham to the very limits of faith. Abraham obeys blindly, and we must remember that this is not the only time in history when God seems to destroy what he himself has built. it is to prevent us from insidiously appropriating things to ourselves that God goes so far as to take them away from us, only to give hem back to us in the end so that henceforth we may possess them as coming from his hand alone. We realize the gratuitousness of a gift only when it is taken away from us, or at least after it has very nearly escaped us entirely. How many people who have never been bedridden really understand what it is to walk? How many really appreciate the gift of sight who have never nearly lost it? How many of those who have never been confined in hospital or prison for long periods realize what it is to breathe in the pure fresh air with wondering delight? We possess God's gifts, knowing them truly the gifts of God, only when like Abraham we receive them a second time from his hands,having been ready to surrender them to him without seeing why, in blind faith stripped of all human understanding about the mystery of faithfulness that blind faith contains.
~Father Dominique Barthelemy, O.P.