Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved
I am the one whom Jesus loves.
Be as a child with God
An excellent description of our relationship with God:
A child has no dissimulation, no concealment. As soon as he is capable of deceit he is no longer a child. In like manner, nothing can equal the openness and candor of the spiritual child. He does not compose his exterior; his recollection has nothing constrained about it; his actions, his conversation, his manners, everything in him is simple and natural; when he says anything, he really thinks it; when he offers anything he wishes to give it; when he promises anything, he will keep his promise. He does not seek to appear different to what he really is, nor to hide his faults; he says what is good and what is evil of himself with the same simplicity, and he has no reserve whatever with those to whom he ought to disclose the state of his soul.
A child shows his love with artless innocence: everything in him expresses the feelings of his heart, and he is all the more touching and persuasive because there is nothing studied about him. It is the same with the spiritual child, when he wishes to show his love for God and his charity for his neighbor. He goes to God simply, without preparation; he says to God without set formulas or choice of words all that his loving heart suggests to him; he knows no other method of prayer than to keep himself in the presence of God, to look at God, to listen to him, to possess him, to tell him all the feelings with which grace inspires him, sometimes in words, but more often without speaking at all.
(Father Jean-Nicolas Grou)
My own heart
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins
“The heart can fold upon it”
Friday: from the archives
To the eye that sees, littlness reveals infitnitely more than vastness. God is known more truly by a little finite creature through the contemplation of a snowdrop than through the contemplation of the universe. Very soon the intellect staggers before immensity, it is used up exhausted, only the rare heart responds to it all. but the inward eye fills with light when it contemplates a little thing, the heart can fold upon it, and so the heart expands and the mind does not wither, but puts out petal upon lovely petal of thought. . . .
From the universe we learn that God is infinite, that we cannot compass him at all. From such things as insects, flies, little frogs, mice and flowers we learn that to us he is something else. He is Father, brother, child and friend!
If you ever had a little green tree frog and watched him puffing…
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Laying bricks
Friday: from the archives
We run two small homes for older adults who are no longer capable of living alone and who have limited support and no resources. We are only able to house 6-7 residents at one time. There are many more elderly who could use our help. We also do foster care for children in need. We have cared for 26 children since we began this endeavor in 1992. But there are millions of children around the world who are in great need.
“People say, ‘What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.'” (Servant of God Dorothy Day)
“The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if we don’t put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less.” (Bl Teresa of Calcutta)
So we just lay our bricks, take…
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All over everyday
God’s promises
On Corpus Christi
On Corpus Christi, Before the Blessed Sacrament
You languish in the darkness like
a criminal imprisoned
a sick man quarantined
an eccentric, babbling uncle, hid away.
Are they so afraid of You?
Are we so ashamed of You?
This is Your pageant day!
Where are Your holy calvacades?
Your solemn ranks of soldiers
with their Captain at their head?
Your festal, fair procession
winding through the curious crowds
who marvel at the sacred spectacle?
In the quiet I hear echoes
from the stones of ancient streets
crying out with praise to shame us
for our silence.
In the blackness I see faces
of a multitude of children
looking down the ages, wondering
to see so plain a feast.
For the glory due Your name,
how long, O Lord,
must You wait?
~Paul Thigpen
The top half of the picture
Friday: from the archives
A story we can all learn from from the then Cardinal Ratzinger:
The British doctor Sheila Cassidy (who in 1978 entered the Benedictine order) was imprisoned and tortured in Chile in 1975 for having given medical treatment to a revolutionary. Shortly after being tortured she was transferred to another cell, where she found a tattered Bible. She opened it, and the first thing she saw was a picture of a man prostrate under lightning, thunder and hail. Immediately she identified herself with this man, saw herself in him. Then she looked further and saw in the upper part of the picture a mighty hand, the hand of God, and the text from the eighth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, a text that comes straight from the center of Resurrection-faith: “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ” (8:39). And whereas at first it was the bottom half…
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Only four words
From my old friend, Amy Carmichael:
Mt 14.30-31 But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand, and caught him.
“And beginning to sink.” Only four words, but they bring us the certainty that we will never sink, for Peter never sank. It is like that word in Psalm 94.18, When I said, My foot slippeth–yes, in that very moment–Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.
Sometimes a single word may make all the difference to us, lifting us up, strengthening and refreshing us. Let us be careful not to miss these words of life, which come so suddenly, perhaps in the midst of the day’s work.
Samuel Rutherford wrote: “In your temptations, run to the promises: they may be our Lord’s branches hanging over the water, that our Lord’s silly, half-drowned children may take a grip of them.” And those boughs never break.
Witnesses to Hope 