Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved
I am the one whom Jesus loves.
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.
Scattered by God
Friday: from the archives.
“Cresting a long hill we stopped a moment while Fry blew and stooped and clipped at the snow as though for browse. I let go of Davy to sit straight. I can’t describe what we saw. Here was the whole dizzying sky bowled up over us. We were inside the sky. It didn’t make the stars any closer, only clearer. They burned yellow and white, and some of them changed to blue or a cold green or orange–Sweede should’ve been there, she’d have had the words. She’d have known that orange to be volcanic or forgestruck or a pinprick between our blackened world and one the color of sunsets. I thought of God making it all, picking up handfuls of whatever material, iron and other stuff, rolling it in His fingers like nubby wheat. The picture I had was of God taking these rough pellets by the handful and casting…
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Where the pressure lies
Friday: from the archives. It’s always good to remember this quote.
I am reading a new biography of J. Hudson Taylor, It is not Death to Die. Taylor was a missionary to China in the early 20th century. In my estimation, he was one of the greatest Protestant missionaries to have ever lived, and, along with Amy Carmichael, has had a profound effect on my life. I always recommend reading his life. Yesterday as some of our Sisters were sharing about the stresses they’re encountering in life, I could not help but remember this quote from Taylor and would like to pass it along to the rest of you as well:
It does not matter, really, how great the pressure is. It only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord–then, the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast.
May whatever is pressing in on you this day…
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The altar’s light
“The foundations of the round world shake; but the altar’s light burns ever brighter.”
(Bl. John Henry Newman)
Only by the help of the Holy Spirit
Worth the watch:
In His hiddenness
Why does God seem to hide from us?
“‘. . . Then he also went, not publicly, but as it were in secret’ (Jn 7.10). This preference for hiddenness, for remaining unseen, seems to have been a definite impulse of Jesus, clearly depicted on a few occasions in the gospel. It appears he wanted to go unobserved during certain interludes, to pass shrouded through the crowds, inconspicuous and ordinary, even after he began his public life. Surely this desire to remain unrecognized cannot have been a capricious gesture. What is happening here, since in other places he is intent on revealing himself? Does it give hint of a divine attribute which we have not named properly, and yet of vital importance for knowing God’s relations with our soul? These occasions when he desired to remain concealed and unnoticed, are they showing us the shape and contour, as it were, of the only encounter with God at times available to us? Must we necessarily seek him in his hiddenness if we are to find him?” (Fr. Donald Haggerty, Contemplative Provocations)
Witnesses to Hope 