February 2002
Blue Journal
“So you’ve been hauled over the coals? Don’t follow the advice of pride and lose your temper. Think: how charitable they are toward me! The things they’ve left unsaid.” (Josemaria Escriva)
Category: Escriva, Jose Maria
a smile
“…a smile is often the best mortification.” (St. Josemaría Escrivá)
Solid interior mortification
“The appropriate word you left unsaid; the joke you didn’t tell; the cheerful smile for those who bother you; that silence when you’re unjustly accused; your kind conversation with people you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in those who live with you…this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.” (St. Josemaría Escrivá)
You are a zero
One of the Lenten quotes hanging on the walls in our convent:
“Cast away that despair produced by the realization of your weakness. It’s true: financially you are a zero, and socially another zero, and another in virtue, and another in talent . . . But to the left of these zeros is Christ . . . and what an immeasurable figure it turns out to be.” (St. Josemaría Escrivá)
1,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo
Mary words
“Mary most holy, Mother of God, passes unnoticed, just as one more among the women of her town. Learn from her how to live with ‘naturalness.'” (St. Josemaría Escrivá)
A Mary word
A “Mary word” for today, Saturday, her day:
All the sins of your life seem to be rising up against you. Don’t give up hope! On the contrary, call your holy mother Mary, with the faith and abandonment of a child. She will bring peace to your soul. ~St. Josemariá Escrivá
Lenten resolutions
As you prayerfully consider Lent, pay close attention to these two pieces of sage advice from St. Jose Maria Escriva:
Choose mortifications that don’t mortify others.
A smile is often the best mortification.
And I urge you again to look first to those things that impede your knowledge of God’s incredible love for you. Perhaps your Lenten resolution should simply be to stand vulnerable in prayer before His love for five minutes a day or to read a Scripture verse that encourages you in the hope of His love.
Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice, it consists in a disposition of heart which makes us humble and little in the eyes of God, conscious of our weakness but boldly confident in his goodness as Father. (Therese)
Witnesses to Hope 