Category: hope

Only four words

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

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.

Steadfast taper

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A poem by Luci Shaw:

       Steadfast Taper
Job 28:3

His candle shines upon my head.
He trims the wick and guards the falme
and though darkness creeps in close
the steadfast taper shines the same.

The flower of flame sways in the air.
Wind fingers snatch and try to snuff
the stalk his careful hands protect.
The light shines through.  It is enough.

His candle shines on me in love,
(protective circle in the gloom)
and through the dreadful night I know
that he is with me in the room.

Throughout the weary waiting time
the liquid flame shines thin and pure.
When tiredness dims my faith, I look
and see his light, and I am sure.

        ~Luci Shaw (Moving into Light, p. 106)

Yet the star of hope has risen

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

2009-10-03-the-morning-star-paradox“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 XI, Spes Salvi)

And this is our hope

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Agony

In the hour of darkness the moon had hid her face,
And all the world was sleeping, save one who wept.
He left the meager comfort of well-meaning friends,
Charging them, Watch; and into the garden crept,

And heard the lie of the world;
That the darkness here is a fell and final thing:
And flesh will crumble for aye in the valley of bones,
And tongues that are parched will never find voice to sing.

And this is our hope: that he whose sweat was blood,
As the heavy droplets fell and his spirits sank,
Lifted his eyes and murmured Thy will be done;
Lifted cracked lips to the Father’s cup; and drank.

~Joseph Prever

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Baseball and hope

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

If you’re a fan of baseball at all, you’ll appreciate this piece by Elizabeth Scalia:

It was 2003. Eight innings into yet-another nail-biter of a series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, there came a guttural wail from the stands at Fenway Park.

“For the love of God . . . ”

It was one lone voice; a man—whose sound was remarkably reminiscent of the late Chris Farley at his most passionately unhinged—was seated close enough to the announcer’s booth that his agony was picked up and broadcast in New York.

It was one lone voice; a man—whose sound was remarkably reminiscent of the late Chris Farley at his most passionately unhinged—was seated close enough to the announcer’s booth that his agony was picked up and broadcast in New York.

“For the love of God . . . ” he cried, again and again, as one Bosox batter after another swung and missed, and looming before him was a ninth inning full of Mariano Rivera at his peak.

Watching at home, my son and I heard a hated rival’s naked pain, and we hooted in what might be called cruel appreciation.

Baseball fans understand each other’s afflictions. We could laugh in that moment, because our team was winning, but we recognized all too well the sound of anguish emanating from Beantown; we had felt it enough, in the Bronx. When the umpire called “strike three” at the third out, the single voice dissolved into a bellow of incoherent angst and three hundred miles away we knew the man had slumped into his chair with his head in his hand, and his heart full of hate; not for the Yankees—that was a given—but for his own team, and for the game of baseball, itself, of which the late commissioner A. Bartlett Giammati once wrote, “it breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.”

The heartbreak is what makes it great, and the source of the heartbreak is the clutch—that period of time (and it can last for a moment or for years) when everything meaningful in your life fades into a peripheral nothingness until an outcome is known. In the clutch, love is balancing—one foot, en pointe—along a thin wire of hope, and still determining if, or when, the next foot might be safely employed.

Read the rest right here.

You are a zero

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

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

ln the middle of the tension

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“Every Christian life stands in the middle of that tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ which characterizes the present moment in the divine plan.  It stands between the wonders of the past and the glorious final consummation.  It is linked to the first by faith and to the second by hope.” (Mariano Magrassi)

I think statements like this one bring hope because we often feel like we are living in that “tension” and can wonder what is wrong with us.  So we should not be surprised if we find ourselves in that space, but live fully surrendered in the present moment of God’s divine plan.