Franciscan Quote of the Day

The health of our interior life rests upon our attentiveness. We need to be able to truly pay attention in order to hear the wordless voice of God that is continually drawing us into Oneness. To be attentive, we need to be awake and alert to the boundless grace of the present moment, the eternal now. Our lives have become so splintered, divided among so many responsibilities, so many demands upon our time, that most of us feel frazzled and fatigued. So much of modern technology, designed to make things easier for us, has in fact increased the things that tug for our attention. The internet, cell phones, lap-top computers, Blackberries, i-Pods, i-Pads, and the ever-expanding world of cable television all squeeze every ounce of stillness and silence out of life. Life has become a blur, a whirling dervish of enticements and anxieties. Entering into our interior life, where we can encounter the love and mercy of God, is becoming increasingly more difficult.

~Gerry Straub via his blog.

And so their lives are not spent in questioning, wishful thinking, contempt or sighs, but in the certainty that what they have is always the best.

~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

If we had faith, we would be grateful to all creatures, we would bless them and inwardly thank them for contributing, under God’s hand, so favorably to our perfection.

~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Likewise, souls who can recognize God in the most trivial, the most grievous and the most mortifying things that happen to them in their lives, honor everything equally with delight and rejoicing, and welcome with open arms what others dread and avoid.

~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

To discover God in the smallest and most ordinary things, as well as in the greatest, is to possess a rare and sublime faith. To find contentment in the present moment is to relish and adore the divine will in the succession of all the things to be done and suffered which make up the duty to the present moment.

~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment