Christmas Eve

‘O Wisdom’, ‘O Adonai and leader of Israel’, ‘O stock of Jesse’, ‘O key of David’, ‘O Rising Sun’, ‘O King whom all the nations desire’, ‘O Emmanuel’: ‘O come!’ - Come and save us, free all those in darkness, and do not delay.

What we do not see, we hope for

A treatise on the value of patience, by St Cyprian


       Patience is a precept for salvation given us by our Lord our teacher: Whoever endures to the end will be saved. And again: If you persevere in my word, you will truly be my disciples; you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
       Dear brethren, we must endure and persevere if we are to attain the truth and freedom we have been allowed to hope for; faith and hope are the very meaning of our being Christians, but if faith and hope are to bear their fruit, patience is necessary.
       We do not seek glory now, in the present, but we look for future glory, as Saint Paul instructs us when he says: By hope we were saved. Now hope which is seen is not hope; how can a man hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it in patience. Patient waiting is necessary if we are to be perfected in what we have begun to be, and if we are to receive from God what we hope for and believe.
       In another place the same Apostle instructs and teaches the just, and those active in good works, and those who store up for themselves treasures in heaven through the reward God gives them. They are to be patient also, for he says: Therefore while we have time, let us do good to all, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith. But let us not grow weary in doing good, for we shall reap our reward in due season.
       Paul warns us not to grow weary in good works through impatience, not to be distracted or overcome by temptations and so give up in the midst of our pilgrimage of praise and glory, and allow our past good deeds to count for nothing because what was begun falls short of completion.
       Finally the Apostle, speaking of charity, unites it with endurance and patience. Charity, he says, is always patient and kind; it is not jealous, is not boastful, is not given to anger, does not think evil, loves all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. He shows that charity can be steadfast and persevering because it has learned how to endure all things.
       And in another place he says: Bear with one another lovingly, striving to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. He shows that neither unity nor peace can be maintained unless the brethren cherish each other with mutual forbearance and preserve the bond of harmony by means of patience.

Let the word of the Lord come to us

A sermon by St Bernard

     We know that the coming of the Lord is threefold: the third coming is between the other two and it is not visible in the way they are. At his first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men, who saw him and hated him. At his last coming All flesh shall see the salvation of our God, and They shall look on him whom they have pierced. In the middle, the hidden coming, only the chosen see him, and they see him within themselves; and so their souls are saved. The first coming was in flesh and weakness, the middle coming is in spirit and power, and the final coming will be in glory and majesty.
     This middle coming is like a road that leads from the first coming to the last. At the first, Christ was our redemption; at the last, he will become manifest as our life; but in this middle way he is our rest and our consolation.
     If you think that I am inventing what I am saying about the middle coming, listen to the Lord himself: If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and the Father will love him, and we shall come to him. Elsewhere I have read: Whoever fears the Lord does good things. – but I think that what was said about whoever loves him was more important: that whoever loves him will keep his words. Where are these words to be kept? In the heart certainly, as the Prophet says I have hidden your sayings in my heart so that I do not sin against you. Keep the word of God in that way: Blessed are those who keep it. Let it penetrate deep into the core of your soul and then flow out again in your feelings and the way you behave; because if you feed your soul well it will grow and rejoice. Do not forget to eat your bread, or your heart will dry up. Remember, and your soul will grow fat and sleek.
     If you keep God’s word like this, there is no doubt that it will keep you, for the Son will come to you with the Father: the great Prophet will come, who will renew Jerusalem, and he is the one who makes all things new. For this is what this coming will do: just as we have been shaped in the earthly image, so will we be shaped in the heavenly image. Just as the old Adam was poured into the whole man and took possession of him, so in turn will our whole humanity be taken over by Christ, who created all things, has redeemed all things, and will glorify all things.

The season of Advent

A pastoral letter by St Charles Borromeo

Beloved, now is the acceptable time spoken of by the Spirit, the day of salvation, peace and reconciliation: the great season of Advent. This is the time eagerly awaited by the patriarchs and prophets, the time that holy Simeon rejoiced at last to see. This is the season that the Church has always celebrated with special solemnity. We too should always observe it with faith and love, offering praise and thanksgiving to the Father for the mercy and love he has shown us in this mystery. In his infinite love for us, though we were sinners, he sent his only Son to free us from the tyranny of Satan, to summon us to heaven, to welcome us into its innermost recesses, to show us truth itself, to train us in right conduct, to plant within us the seeds of virtue, to enrich us with the treasures of his grace, and to make us children of God and heirs of eternal life.

  Each year, as the Church recalls this mystery, she urges us to renew the memory of the great love God has shown us. This holy season teaches us that Christ’s coming was not only for the benefit of his contemporaries; his power has still to be communicated to us all. We shall share his power, if, through holy faith and the sacraments, we willingly accept the grace Christ earned for us, and live by that grace and in obedience to Christ.

  The Church asks us to understand that Christ, who came once in the flesh, is prepared to come again. When we remove all obstacles to his presence he will come, at any hour and moment, to dwell spiritually in our hearts, bringing with him the riches of his grace.

  In her concern for our salvation, our loving mother the Church uses this holy season to teach us through hymns, canticles and other forms of expression, of voice or ritual, used by the Holy Spirit. She shows us how grateful we should be for so great a blessing, and how to gain its benefit: our hearts should be as much prepared for the coming of Christ as if he were still to come into this world. The same lesson is given us for our imitation by the words and example of the holy men of the Old Testament.

St. Teresa of Avila

This was for an RCIA talk on Teresa of Avila and I thought I'd repost it because her writings are very moving.

We look to the saints as heroes and heroines of the Church, yet we’re not called to be another Mother Theresa, John Bosco, or Francis of Assisi.  You’re called by God to be you and fully you and to enter into an intimate relationship with God through the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The saints enter our lives so that we can learn from their successes, failures, and inspirations that they received from the one who loved them.  Many of them have stories and pasts that we can easily relate to and some others stories that inspire us to go beyond what we think our own limits are.  We seek the strength that they received from God and their companionship on our journey.  These saints are real people with real struggles and real success stories, because they knew in whom they should put their trust.

Let nothing disturb you,

Nothing dismay you.

All things are passing,

God never changes.

Patient endurance

Attains all things…

God alone suffices.

(Teresa’s Bookmark)

Teresa was born on March 28, 1515, in Avila, Spain “The City of Knights.”  The city was infused with the warrior spirit and stamped upon its citizens, and Teresa was not exempt from this attitude. 

“We ought to act as if we were at war – as, indeed, we are – and never relax until we have won the victory.” (Speaking of the spiritual life to her brother Lorenzo)

She was exceedingly beautiful and she knew it and even struggled at points with her vanity.  When she was 61, one of her friars, a former Italian artist, painted her portrait and her response to him was, “May God forgive you, Fray Juan, for you have made me look like a bleary-eyed old hag!”

She was a woman that longed to be loved passionately and in her own biography she speaks of how she flirted, danced, and fell in love in her teenage years.  She entered the convent when she was 20 and her passion towards relationships never really damped but they turned from frivolous love into a purer, more spiritual love.  Without knowing the love that dwelled in her relationships you’d find her correspondence with men scandalous even today, but she wasn’t completely free from occasionally becoming emotionally attached to these relationships.  For example she had a spiritual director for the last seven years of her life that was half her age that she teased about whether or not he loved her more than his own mother.

She was a powerhouse for prayer and focused in her spiritual masterpieces on the presence of God dwelling within us.  “I consider it impossible for us to pay so much attention to worldly things if we take the care to remember we have a Guest such as this within us, for we then see how lowly these things are next to what we possess within ourselves…You will laugh at me, perhaps, and say that what I’m explaining is very clear, and you’ll be right; for me though, it was obscure for sometime.  I understood well that I had a soul.  But what this soul deserved and who dwelt within it I did not understand because I had covered my eyes with the vanities of the world…If I had understood as I do now that in this little palace of my soul dwelt so great a King, I would not have left Him alone so often.  I would have remained with Him at times and striven more so as not to be so unclean.  But what a marvelous thing, that He would fill a thousand worlds and many more with His grandeur would enclose Himself in something so small!...Since He is Lord He is free to do what He wants, and since He loves us He adapts Himself to our size.” (Way of Perfection 28.10-11)

She began to reform the Carmelite Order when she was 45 with the help of St. John of the Cross, yet again another spiritual powerhouse.  The reform wasn’t an easy task and she faced stiff opposition during the Spanish Inquisition in front of which she was placed twice.  There were a few years in particular that the reform struggled greatly.  Teresa was exiled to a Castilian monastery and John of the Cross was imprisoned in Toledo.  The resistance to the reformation also included slanders of her spiritual director fathering a child with a loose-living woman he was ingenuously helping, there were people trying to intercept her correspondence during that time and she had come up with a series of pseudonyms for herself, those she was writing too, and even groups that she was referring too.  Ironically she referred to the Inquisitors as angels and the Grand Inquisitor as the Archangel.  Christ was Joseph and the Devil was a term that translates to Hoofy.  What got her through all of this persecution and suffering was a revelation years before during a period of great anxiety: “Do what lies in your power; surrender yourself to me, and do not be disturbed about anything.”

She was also a mystic, which speaks to the depth of her personal prayer and love for God.  This was something that developed over her life and she attributes her depth in prayer to the suffering that she endured.  “We suffer for love’s sake,” as she would say.  In some profound way, she came to experience that suffering makes us “ready” for God by hollowing us out and increasing our capacity for the divine.  Those who experience God deeply are those who have been prepared by trials.  She wrote to John of the Cross during his imprisonment “God’s treatment of His friends is terrible, though they have really nothing to complain of, as he did the same to His own Son.”

            “The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.  Perhaps we don’t know what love is.  I wouldn’t be very surprised because it doesn’t consist in great delight but in desiring with strong determination to please God in everything, in striving, insofar as possible, not to offend Him, and in asking Him for the advancement of the honor and glory of His Son.” (Interior Castle 4.1.7)

Excerpts from Teresa of Avila: Mystical Writings by Tessa Bielechki

Proper Attitude

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end nor do I know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I do believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you." ~ Thomas Merton

Be Satisfied with Me

Everyone longs to give themselves completely to someone,

To have a deep soul relationship with another,

To be loved thoroughly and exclusively.

But God, to a Christian, says,

"No, not until you are satisfied, fulfilled and content

With being loved by Me alone,

With giving yourself totally and unreservedly to Me,

With having an intensely personal and unique relationship

With Me alone.

Discovering that only in Me is your satisfaction to be found,

Will you be capable of the perfect human relationship

That I have planned for you.

You will never be united with another until you are united

With Me alone,

Exclusive of anyone or anything else,

Exclusive of any other desires or longings.

I want you to stop planning,

Stop wishing,

And allow Me to give you the most thrilling plan existing,

One that you cannot imagine.

Please allow Me to bring it to you.

You just keep watching Me, expecting the greatest things.

Keep experiencing the satisfaction that I Am.

Keep listening and learning the things I tell you.

You just wait.

That's all.

Don't be anxious.

Don't worry.

Don't look at the things you think you want;

You just keep looking off and away up to Me,

Or you'll miss what I want to show you.

And then when you are ready,

I'll surprise you with a love far more wonderful than any

You could dream of.

You see, until you are ready and until

The one I have for you is ready

(I am working even at this moment to have you both ready at the same time),

Until you are both satisfied exclusively with Me

And the life I prepared for you,

You won't be able to experience the love that

Exemplified your relationship with Me.

And this is the perfect love.

And dear one, I want you to have this most wonderful love,

I want you to see in the flesh a picture of your

Relationship with Me,

And to enjoy materially and concretely

The everlasting union of beauty, perfection and love

That I offer you with Myself.

Know that I love utterly.

I Am God.

Believe it and be satisfied.

~ St. Anthony of Padua

Wii Dance Party

The things you miss when you don't show up at a family party...

Triduum at George Mason

I can't begin to explain how well they do the Triduum at the CCM at George Mason and all the work that goes into getting it running so well, but I'll leave you with a treat of Father Peter singing just to get a small feel for it.

Poverty and Prayer

A passage from one of the books I'm reading for formation this month called 'Clowning in Rome' by Henri Nouwen.  Note: Intercessory prayer is when you pray for someone else.

There is a powerful connection between poverty and intercessory prayer. When we give up what sets us apart from others-not just property but also opinions, prejudices, judgments, and mental preoccupations-then we can allow friends as well as enemies to enter with us into our solitude and lift them up to God in the midst of the great encounter. In real solitude there is an unlimited space for others, because there we are empty and there we can see that, in fact, nobody stands over and against us. An enemy is only our enemy as long as we have something to defend. But when we have nothing to hold onto, nothing to protect, nothing to consider as exclusively ours, then nobody can be an enemy and then we can, in fact, recognize in the center of our solitude that all men and women are brothers and sisters, In solitude, we stand so naked and so vulnerable before God, and become so deeply aware of our total dependency on his love, that not only our friends but also those who kill, lie, torture, rape, and wage wars can become part of our flesh and blood. In solitude we are so totally poor that we can enter into solidarity with all human beings and allow our hearts to become the place of encounter not only with God, but, through God, with all human beings as well. And thus intercessory prayer is the prayer of self-emptying because it asks of us to give up all that divides us from others so that we can become those we pray for and let God touch them in us.

Lent

A talk that gave last year around this time for the CLC guys at St Mary of Sorrows that I wanted to type up since I had it scribbled down on a piece of paper.

Lent offers us 40 days to enter into the desert with Jesus to prepare ourselves for the coming of Easter. Not so much for the new clothes or the candy, but it's about focusing on the resurrection from death into life and understanding the greatness we were created for. Lent offers us the challenge to revisit our sinfulness and how that impacts our personal relationship with Christ from our end and allows us to reorient ourselves in that relationship. Jesus spent 40 days revisiting the disciples after his resurrection before they were sent forth to be missionaries for the world, so it makes since for us to spend sometime revisiting the person of Christ and refocus on how we're called to be leaven for the world. (Acts 1:3)

40 Days in the Bible

(Gen 7:12) For forty days and forty nights heavy rain poured down on the earth.
(Gen 8:6) At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch he had made in the ark

Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days (TWICE)
(Exo 24:18) But Moses passed into the midst of the cloud as he went up on the mountain; and there he stayed for forty days and forty nights.
(Exo 34:28-29) So Moses stayed there with the LORD for forty days and forty nights, without eating any food or drinking any water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.


Elijah strengthened by one angelic meal went forty days to Mount Horeb where the Lord passed by and he heard the voice of God
(1 Kings 19:8) He got up, ate and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.


Jonah warned the City of Nineveh they had 40 days to repent
(Jonah 3:4-7 and 10) Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day's walk announcing, "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed," (5) when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth. (6) When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes. (7) Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh, by decree of the king and his nobles: "Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. … (10) When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.


Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness
(Mat 4:1-2) Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. (2) He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry.

Fasting is a heavy theme associated with the 40 days throughout the bible.  As a tradition we fast on Ash Wednesday (today) and Good Friday as well as abstaining from meat on those two days and every Friday during Lent.  Other traditions that we hold to are increased Prayer, Almsgiving, and Repentance.  A few specific examples of those would be going to Confession during Lent, giving up something we like a lot (Fasting), praying for a friend or cause, praying the stations of the cross, and donating our treasure (time or money) to others as a way of giving Alms.  These traditions all come from our ancestry as it's recorded in the bible.

Eros Love

An interesting point on the unity of body and soul.

Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness. The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: “O Soul!” And Descartes would reply: “O Flesh!”.[3] Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature. Only thus is love —eros—able to mature and attain its authentic grandeur.


Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.

Encyclical Letter: Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) Benedict XVI

Testimony of Hope

One of the books Chip and I are currently reading is 'Testimony of Hope' by Archbishop Van Thuan.  The book is the complete text of a Spiritual Exercises retreat that he gave to the Roman Curia (Cardinals of the Catholic Church & the Pope).  It's a very excellent spiritual book that discusses hope in Christ on a very real and profound level with a flair of asian influence.  The book is also influenced strongly from his 13 years in prison by the Communist government in Vietnam.  A particularly inspiring point about the Christian witness of loving our enemies was when in isolation, five police took turns so that there were always two guarding him.  The leaders had told them, "We will replace you every two weeks with another group so that you will not be 'contaminated' by this dangerous bishop."  Afterward the leaders told them, "We've decided not to switch you anymore; otherwise the bishop will contaminate all of the police."

Short Bio

He was born in the Imperial capital of Huế, Vietnam. In 1941, Nguyễn Văn Thuận joined An Ninh Minor Seminary and was ordained a priest on June 11, 1953. After six years of further studies in Rome, he was appointed in 1959-1967 as a faculty member and rector of the Seminary of Nha Trang.

He was appointed Bishop of Nha Trang on 13 April 1967 and received episcopal consecration on 4 June 1967 at Huế at the hands of Angelo Palmas, Apostolic Delegate to Viêt Nam (and later, Nuncio to Colombia and to Canada), assisted by Bishops Philippe Nguyen Kim Dien, Apostolic Administrator, sede plena, of Huế, and Jean-Baptiste Urrutia, titular archbishop of Carpato.

On 24 April 1975, he was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Saigon. On 30 April, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army, and Nguyễn Văn Thuận, targeted for his faith as well as his family connection to Ngô Đình Diệm, was detained by the Communist Government of Vietnam in a reeducation camp for 13 years, 9 of them in solitary confinement.

While in prison, he smuggled out messages to his people on scraps of paper. These brief reflections, copied by hand and circulated within the Vietnamese community, have been printed in the book The Road of Hope. Another book, Prayers of Hope, contains his prayers written in prison. The bishop fashioned a tiny Bible out of scraps of paper. Sympathetic guards smuggled in a piece of wood and some wire from which he crafted a small crucifix.

Quotes:

"God knows how to write straight with crooked lines."

Speaking of his mother, Nguyễn Văn Thuận said, "When I was in prison, she was my great comfort. She said to all, 'Pray that my son will be faithful to the Church and remain where God wants him'."


“In our country there is a saying: ‘A day in prison is worth a thousand autumns of freedom.' I myself experienced this. While in prison, everyone waits for freedom, every day, every minute. We must live each day, each minute of our life as though it is the last.”

Recorded on the Feast of the Holy Rosary, October 7, 1976, in Phu-Khanh prison, during his solitary confinement: "I am happy here, in this cell, where white mushrooms are growing on my sleeping mat, because You are here with me, because You want me to live here with You. I have spoken much in my lifetime: now I speak no more. It's Your turn to speak to me, Jesus; I am listening to You"[5].

Ten Rules of Life of Nguyễn Văn Thuận

I will live the present moment to the fullest.
I will discern between God and God’s works.
I will hold firmly to one secret: prayer.
I will see in the Holy Eucharist my only power.
I will have only one wisdom: the science of the Cross.
I will remain faithful to my mission in the Church and for the Church as a witness of Jesus Christ.
I will seek the peace the world cannot give.
I will carry out a revolution by renewal in the Holy Spirit.
I will speak one language and wear one uniform: Charity.
I will have one very special love: The Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Present Moment

If I look at the future, I am full of fear,

but why go forward into the future?

Only the present moment is dear to me,

because perhaps the future will not lodge in my soul.

The past is not within my power

to change, correct, or add something.

Neither the wise nor the prophets were able to do this.

I trust therefor to God that which regards my past.

O present moment, you belong to me completely;

I desire to use you as much as it is within my power...

Therefore, trusting in your mercy,

I go forward in life as a child,

and everyday I offer to you my heart

enflamed with love for your greater glory.

~St. Faustina Kowalska

Reflection on “The Annunciation: Mary’s call”

Archbishop Sheen explained that there is a difficulty in relating our call to Mary’s call. You might even say the Annunciation is a mystery, and a joyful one at that.

“Mary was chosen by God to be His Mother and was even prepared for that honor by being preserved free from the primal sin that had infected all humanity. If she were so prepared, would she be free to accept or to reject, and would her answer be the full fruit of her free will? The answer is that her redemption was already completed but that she had not yet accepted or ratified it. It was, in a way, something like our dilemma. We are baptized as infants, and our bodies become temples of God, as our souls have been filled with infused virtues. We become not just creatures made by God but partakers in Divine nature. All this is done in Baptism before our freedom blossoms, the Church standing responsible for our spiritual birth as our parents did for our physical birth. Later on, however, we ratify that original endowment by the fee acts of our moral lives- by receiving the sacraments, by prayers, and by sacrifices.” ~ THE WORLD’S FIRST LOVE

A variation of a question that has been stuck in my head for quite a while now and one that perhaps most people encounter that are earnest about the longings of their heart, is this. How am I to know I’m being faithful in attempting to discern and truthfully follow God’s will for me in both my vocation and in my daily life?


More recently this question has been a part of discerning my big Vocation and comes up so often in prayer and thoughts throughout the day that I would like to have some peace of mind to it sometime soon, but I’ve come to know through some good advice that God’s preparation of my heart in this discernment is quite possibly as important as the answer itself. I tried a number of different things at the beginning of my commitment and even the year before my commitment to prepare myself and keep track of how I’m doing as well as taking time to write down points of reflection. The latest system is my note cards and I wanted to share a few of those with you tonight.

October 17, 2009
I need to be leaning on my brothers to be able to live out my commitment and receive the intimacy that I need. Too often I reject the love of my brothers in the ways in which they reach out. I seem to be expecting or demanding that for me to accept that love that it should come in certain ways that I prefer. Lord, please remove my heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh on fire with your love.

November 28, 2009
God is asking me to be faithful:
-Some days the temptation to be disobedient is strong
-Some days I can’t clear my thoughts and I’m angry
+Sometimes I spring out of bed and I’m excited and hopeful for the day to come
-Sometimes I let other people’s attitude/their anger/their frustration penetrate my serenity
+Sometimes I can really feel God’s presence when I put my pride aside
In all of these moments God is asking me to be faithful.

December 18, 2009
This year is for my relationship with God. For my heart to be formed and the garbage to be cleaned out. To step out bravely into the dark with the light of Christ as my Truth. To love and be loved as God intended. To hopefully see into the depths of my heart and make free choices for my future that will ultimately bring me joy and peace. To know and believe that my reward in heaven will be great if I bear all of my suffering in the name of Christ.

December 30, 2009
You are a jealous lover indeed. I try to push myself to what would be good for me but I know you haven’t yet lead me there, if you are to lead me there. You want me to be content with discernment to be able to truly submit to you in your will for me, in your time. You want it all; you want me to be fully alive in you, to be free.

I’ve had to take to the method of keeping these things and pondering them in my heart after the model of Mary. Patience, trust in the Lord, slowly becoming and falling in love with Jesus my Savior. Working to do my best to say yes in the small things so I will be prepared for the bigger moments where more things are on the line. Lord, please grant us the grace to wait for your counsel and never forget your works. Hearts that are confident in your majesty and interior freedom in line with mother Mary’s Fiat.