Sat 4 Feb 2012
suffering
Thu 30 Jun 2011
It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future, and insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand.
~Andre Dubus, “A Father’s Story,” Selected Stories (via Country Contemplative)
Mon 2 May 2011
Therefore, God’s will is the sanctification of souls. Always and everywhere, this is the work that exclusively occupies Him. It is the purpose underlying all the occurrences, great and small, which agitate in different ways nations, families, and the lives of individuals. It explains why God wills that I should be sick today, contradicted, humbled, forgotten; why He has prepared this happy event for me, faced me with this difficulty, caused me to hurt my foot against this stone, exposed me to this temptation. It is His love for me, His desire of my happiness that regulates all His actions.
~Dom Vitalis Lehodey, O.C.R., Holy Abandonment
Fri 27 Aug 2010
Christ roams through our streets in the person of so many of the suffering poor, sick and dispossessed, and people thrown out of their miserable slums; Christ huddled under bridges, in the person of so many children who lack someone to call father, who have been deprived for many years without a mother’s kiss on their foreheads … Christ is without a home! Shouldn’t we want to give him one, those of us who have the joy of a comfortable home, plenty of good food, the means to educate and assure the future of our children? “What you do to the least of me, you do to me,” Jesus said.
Sat 21 Aug 2010
To have defects is not in itself bad. The only evil lies in making a truce with them, not struggling against them, thinking that they are part and parcel of our character or our nature. Making such a truce would lead to spiritual mediocrity. Our Lord does not want this to happen to those who follow Him.
~In Conversation with God, 4:358 via ALL: American Life League.
Sat 24 Jul 2010
What good am I if I’m like all the rest
If I just turn away, when I see how you’re dressed
If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry
What good am I?
What good am I if I know and don’t do
If I see and don’t say, if I look right through you
If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin’ sky
What good am I?
…
What good am I if I say foolish things
And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings
And I just turn my back while you silently die
What good am I?
~Bob Dylan, from “What Good Am I?“
Thu 10 Jun 2010
Know then, that God no sooner finds us resolved to attain solid virtue than He sends us trials of the severest kind. Convinced of His immense love for us and His fatherly solicitude for our spiritual advancement, we ought with gratitude to drink to the dregs of the chalice that He is pleased to offer us, confident that its beneficial character will be in proportion to its bitterness.
~Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat





