Franciscan Quote of the Day

Migration is not an easy or a pleasant thing for a tiny bird to face. It must turn deliberately from solid land, from food, shelter, a certain measure of security, and fly across an ocean unfriendly to its life, destitute of everything it needs. We make much of the heroism and endurance of our airmen and explorers. Perhaps some day men will rival the adventurous hope of the willow wren and the chiff-chaff; an ounce and a half of living courage, launching out with amazing confidence to a prospect of storms, hardship, exhaustion—perhaps starvation and death. Careful minds would hardly think the risk was worth taking. But the tiny bird, before conditions force it—not driven by fear, but drawn by Hope—commits itself with perfect confidence to that infinite ocean of air; where all familiar landmarks will vanish, and if its strength fails it must be lost. And the bird’s hope is justified. There is summer at the other end of the perilous journey. The scrap of valiant life obeys a true instinct, when it launches itself on the air. It is urged from within towards a goal it can attain; and may reckon the suffering of the moment not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed.

~ Evelyn Underhill, The House of the Soul, via Shirt of Flame

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

~ Thomas Merton, via OH……….. FRANCESCO.

We are here to serve each other. Humanity’s grotesque pride and individualism has turned the idea of serving into something negative, when in fact it’s the whole point of all our life and all our relationships. In the end, the only things that truly matter are those things we do for others.

~ Thomas L. McDonald, “In Sickness and in More Sickness”

It was my first introduction to the application of the Gospel to something besides myself. The first understanding that as a collective group, we’re complicit in people’s sufferings because of the decisions that our government’s making with our approval, our blessing almost, even if we don’t know it. We really sort of have to be more responsible to know what the government’s doing in our name.

~Dennis Apel in an interview with Heather King posted on her blog Shirt of Flame

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

~C.S. Lewis via Little Portion Hermitage

Here’s how you know your life in Christ is bearing fruit:

In spite of your own suffering, loneliness, and pain, you’re welcoming. You’re warm. You’re kind (or you’re at least shooting for those things, and not just toward the people who can “do” something for you, but everyone). You’re in immediate, intimate contact with a few active drunks, someone who’s headed into or has just emerged from a psych ward, an incarcerated felon or two, several porn addicts, a young girl who’s pregnant out of wedlock, several women who have had abortions and are in silent, excruciating mourning, at least one stripper, several people in desperately unhappy marriages, about to be evicted from their apartments, or dying, a minimum-wage worker or two, at least three people who are certifiably insane, at least one U.S. Army chaplain and one peace activist (even better if they’re both priests and the latter is in solitary confinement in a federal prison), several homeless people (the more the better) and a whole TON of gay people, transgender folks, and sex and love addicts of all stripes…

If that’s not part of your circle–in my case, that IS my circle–you’re not getting out enough. If you aren’t sharing your struggles and heart with that circle, at the very least in prayer, something is wrong. Because those are the people Christ hung out with. Because “those people” are us: the people, the only people, suffering, struggling humans. Because if we’re going to be inviting people to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience, we sure as hell better be inviting each other into our homes, our tables, our hemorrhaging, conflicted hearts.

If you’re afraid all that is going to “lower your standards,” you’re very much mistaken. There’s no lower standard than self-righteous fear.

Heather King, Shirt of Flame, The Homily I’d Give if I were a Priest

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, there is his work.

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, via OH……….. FRANCESCO

The same Peter who professed Jesus Christ, now says to him: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. I will follow you, but let us not speak of the Cross. That has nothing to do with it. I will follow you on other terms, but without the Cross. When we journey without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, when we profess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord, we are worldly: we may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord.

~The Holy Father Pope Francis,  Homily, Thursday, 14 March 2013

Unless there is a Good Friday in our lives we die to this world, we shall not live to the next; unless there is the crown of thorns, there will never be the halo of light; unless there is the cross, there will never be an empty tomb; unless we lose our life, we shall not find it; unless we are crucified with Christ, we shall never rise with Christ. Such is the plan, and on our choice depends eternal issues.

~Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, via St. Francis of Assisi – Poverello.

No one can really embrace the Christian asceticism mapped out in the New Testament unless he [or she] has some idea of the positive, constructive function of self-denial. The Holy Spirit never asks us to renounce anything without offering us something much higher and much more perfect in return … The function of self-denial is to lead to a positive increase of spiritual energy and life. The Christian dies, not merely in order to die but in order to live. And when he [or she] takes up his cross to follow Christ, the Christian realizes, or at least believes, that he is not going to die to anything but death. The Cross is the sign of Christ’s victory over death. The Cross is the sign of life. It is the trellis upon which grows the Mystical Vine whose life is infinite joy and whose branches we are. If we want to share the life of that Vine, we must grow on the same trellis and must suffer the same pruning.

~ Thomas Merton, via Dating God

The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery; that it has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.

~Flannery O’Connor, The Church and the Fiction Writer, via The Integrated Catholic Life

No, no I never expected that there is a short-cut that bypasses the drudgery of human experience. I don’t want one, I want to drink to the chalice of my Lord. In my case (and isn’t this the common, ordinary state?) how non-glamorous, how ignoble this chalice! What does it amount to me with me? A sense of inner fragility and faintness which taps, knocks at the wall of my body too. I seem unable to face up to any pressure. I feel faced with an immense ‘trial’ utterly beyond myself, and yet when I look, where is the trial? What have I to suffer compared to so many people? I have good health, am surrounded with love, have everything I need, and yet life itself seems more than I can bear—the unutterable loneliness and emptiness, the mystery and obscurity. Yesterday, I heard of a poor woman enduring humiliating helplessness for ten years, and now, faced with new symptoms, her splendid spirit is breaking and she can take no more. Just one of millions similarly suffering from seemingly unbearable afflictions. And what relation has my life to hers? By comparison I have nothing to suffer. It is my hope that this ‘suffering’ of mine which is nameless, which really has no right to be called suffering, this inner ‘dissolution’ should be a way through which Jesus comes to others in grief and pain. I feel overwhelmed with everything: with the beauty of the world, with its terrible pain, with its evil and ugliness, the devilish brutality of man to man–with the word of God so mighty and so obscure. I could weep my eyes out with–I don’t know what! Oh, how fragile I am, without achievement; no human victory, no human beauty, only that which is he, who experienced in all its raw bitterness the human condition.

~Carmelite Ruth Burrows quoting a friend named Petra in Guidelines for Mystical Prayer via Heather King’s fantastic blog Shirt of Flame.

Christians should know better than most that we are not in ultimate control of our lives, and therefore be better at flourishing in situations which call for us to give up the illusion of control.  But are we?  Living in a culture which celebrates self-actualization above almost everything else makes this a very difficult counter-cultural practice. Indeed, I count myself among the Christians who need to get better at trusting in God and giving up the illusion of control.

~Charles Camosy, The Allure of Choice and Control: From Pete Carroll, to Defensive Medicine, to the NRA | Catholic Moral Theology

If the poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough. It is because we are not instruments of love in the hands of God. We do not recognize Christ when once again He appears to us in the hungry man, the lonely woman, in the child who is looking for a place to get warm.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta via Chris Dickson

To dare to believe that we are truly loved, not for anything we have accomplished, earned, produced, learned, achieved, or sacrificed for, but simply for existing is a reality that can hardly be borne. We want that love more than anything; we search for that love all our lives. Yet we’re somehow not able, not equipped to see it, perhaps, except by prolonged, sustained suffering—and uniting our suffering to Christ’s. Thérèse did seem to be able to experience herself as fully loved—because she loved so much herself—and in the end that was perhaps her greatest gift: to God, to us.

~Heather King, Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.

It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered domination over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.

And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.

~Mother Teresa’s Letter to the US Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade (1994) via Shameless Popery: Why March for Life?.

It is up to us to expose the lies.  To speak the truth to power.  Again as Isaiah says, “For Zion’s sake, I will not be silent.  For Jerusalem’s sake, I will not be quiet until her victory shines forth like a burning torch.”  Just as St. Peter and Paul and the early Apostles refused to be silenced by the opposition of powerful government or an oppressive culture, we must never be silent either.  It is up to us to stand against the culture of death and to rebuild a culture of life.  No matter what the price.

~Wayne Topp quoting his pastor’s Sunday homily - The Inauguration and the March for Life: A Message for America | Catholic Lane.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

~Martin Luther King, Jr.  (hat tip to Elaine Althouse Potts)

The late, great John Cardinal OConnor of New York once told a suffering woman, “Christ could have saved the world by His miracles, but He chose to save the world by His suffering.”

~Leila Miller, Little Catholic Bubble.

“When I came to you,” writes St. Paul to the Corinthians, “I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Stay a while. Do not hurry by the cross on your way to Easter joy, for we know the risen Lord only through Christ and him crucified. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity. The only joy to be trusted is the joy on the far side of a broken heart; the only life to be trusted is the life on the far side of death. Stay a while, with Christ and him crucified.

~Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon