A Sunday-poem for you:
And That Will Be Heaven
and that will be heaven
and that will be heaven
at last the first unclouded
seeingto stand like the sunflower
turned full face to the sun drenched
in light in the still centre
held while the circling planets
hum with an utter joy
seeing and knowing
at last in every particle
seen and known and not turning
away
never turning away
again~Evangeline Patterson
Friday from the archives
In Genesis 28, Jacob, after his dream of the ladder, says a very profound thing: “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” How many of us do not recognize that the Lord is in the very places of our lives. We wonder: “Where are You?” Or we shout: “Where are You?” And like Jacob, we fail to see that He is surely in this place.
In a marvelous little book, Into Your Hands, Father, Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen writes:
“There is not a single moment when God is not communicating himself to us. Most of what occurs in our lives seems to happen accidentally and at random. Now and then God reveals his presence. At times we see the thread and we thank him, but he is always there; everything speaks of him.” There is an unbroken continuity in God’s action. ‘He who keeps…
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At our Witnesses to Hope meeting this week, Sr. Dorcee spoke about the importance of seeing goodness and beauty in the other and gives tips about how to do that. If you would like to see or hear the talk, you can go here. A number of people asked her for this quote, so here it is:
To see that someone is good and to say so is a creative act–one of the great creative acts. There may be some few individuals who are inescapably evil, but they are few. Within almost all of us is something positive and unique, but which is all too easily injured, and which only grows when exposed to the sunlight of someone else’s recognition and praise. To see the good in others and let them see themselves in the mirror of our regard is to help someone grow to become the best they can be. ‘Greater,’ says the Talmud, ‘is one who causes others to do good than one who does good himself.’ To help others become what they can be is to give birth to creativity in someone else’s soul. This is done not by criticism or negativity but by searching out the good in others, and helping them to see it, recognize it, own it, and live it.
‘And God saw that it was good’–this too is part of the work of creation, the subtlest and most beautiful of all. When we recognize the goodness in someone, we do more than create it, we help it to become creative. This is what God does for us, and what He calls us to do for others. (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)
“I Shall Not Walk Alone”
When my legs no longer carry
and the warm wind chills my bones
I reach for Mother Mary
and I shall not walk alone
Hope is alive
while we’re apart
only tears
speak from my heart
break the chains
that hold us down
and we shall be
forever bound
When I’m tired and weary
and a long way from home
I reach for Mother Mary
and I shall not walk alone
I shall not walk alone
Beauty that
we left behind
how shall we
tomorrow find
Set aside
our weight in sin
so that we
can live again
When my legs no longer carry
and the warm wind chills my bones
I reach for Mother Mary
and I shall not walk alone
I shall not walk alone
Awake, thou wintry earth!
Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive.
He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
The answer of Christianity to that question is – yes.
Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.
Embracing the Christian doctrines of the incarnation and Cross brings profound consolation in the face of suffering.
The doctrine of the resurrection can instill us with a powerful hope.
It promises that we will get the life we most longed for,
but it will be an infinitely more glorious world
than if there had never been the need for bravery, endurance, sacrifice, or salvation.
~Pastor Tim Keller in Reason for…
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I love pondering the post-Resurrection appearances of Christ. I guess I feel in good company when those who had spent three solid years with Christ failed to recognize Him. It’s always a reminder to me of the need to sharpen our eyes of faith, to look for Him in His many disguises. In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus showing a sense of humor (in my opinion). He repeats advice that He had given them when He first met them: put the net down on the other side. How many times does that happen to us, that God comes to us in a familiar way? Let’s not miss His appearances to us in our every day life.
“Christ descended into ‘Hell’ and is therefore close to those cast into it, transforming their darkness into light. Suffering and torment is still terrible and well-nigh unbearable. Yet the star of hope has risen–the anchor of the heart reaches the very throne of God. Instead of evil becoming unleashed within man, the light shines victorious: suffering–without ceasing to be suffering–becomes, despite everything, a hymn of praise.” (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi)
She leads us in hoping against hope . . .
{This is a repost . . .]
Have you ever wondered why Saturday is traditionally observed as the day of Our Lady? A few years ago I was reading a book by John Saward (The Beauty of Holiness, the Holiness of Beauty), and, in a section about our Lady, he described Mary’s unfailing faith through the long, terrible day after Christ’s death when she alone kept faith in her Son. I had never before heard of this mariological foundation for Saturday being traditionally her day:
The yes [her continued yes to the Lord that began with her Annunciation yes] of Our Lady does not end on Good Friday and [Christ’s] yielding of the spirit . . . . The faith and love of Our Lady last into Holy Saturday. The dead body of the Son of God lies in the tomb, while His soul descends into Sheol, the…
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Witnesses to Hope 