O my Mother, offer me to Jesus.
O my Mother, take my heart and hide it in the heart of Jesus.~ St. Bernadette Soubirous
Friday: from the archives
A bit of a balm for those who are fearful:
Jer 39.17: But I will deliver you on that day, says the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid.
What is the thing you most fear and most earnestly pray about, the thing that you most dread? If you love your Lord and yet know your own weakness, it is that something may happen to sweep you off your feet, or that your strength may be drained and you may yield and fall, and fail Him at the end. The lives of many are shadowed by this fear.
But take comfort. The God who knew the heart of His servant Ebed-melech knows our heart too. He knows who the men are (what the forces of trial are) of whom we are afraid. And He assures us and reassures us. The Bible is full of “Fear nots.” You shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. (Amy Carmichael)
Never. Lose. Hope.
Such a good thing to remember as we go about our daily lives. We are not alone, but surrounded by an invisible host.
A noisy crowd surrounds each one of us. Wherever we go this crowd goes with us. We are never alone. The voices of the crowd never go silent. No matter how loud we speak their voices are louder. Who is this noisy crowd? The angels of God.
“Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: ‘A procession of angels passes before each person, and the heralds go before them, saying, “Make way for the image of God!”’ (Devarim Rabbah, 4:4)
Having been created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27), every human being is an icon. Humanity was the first icon to be created. The angels surrounding us are in some way declaring that to honor the image, the human being, is to honor the Creator, the Holy One. We are the representative image of God on earth. What we do, say, or give to another we do, say, or…
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What is there to be afraid of?
Some thoughts from Catherine Doherty on fear:
When I was little, my father used to say that, if you were a real Christian, you would never be afraid of anything of anyone. For were you not, if you were in the state of grace, the temple of the Holy Trinity? And wasn’t the Blessed Mother there? For where the Trinity was, there Our Lady of the Trinity was sure to be. And naturally your patron saint would be within you too, as would your angel guardian. Furthermore, as a Christian you had the right and the duty, when in danger or need, to call on all the heavenly spirits for help, to call on anyone or everyone in the Church Triumphant which is all the people of God in heaven. So, living, walking, breathing in such a glorious company, how could you be afraid of anything but sin? Sin alone has the power to bring real death. It has to be feared with a great fear, but nothing else.
You shouldn’t fear illness or even death –both are precious gifts of the Lord! Sickness can make you into his likeness, even as all pain and sorrow does, and bring deep spiritual peace and understanding that cannot be reached any other way. And death? Death is Christ calling your soul for an eternal rendezvous of love. Oh, the joy of at long last being home, in the arms of the beloved!
I am reposting this post just in case some of you have not read it before. (It’s not too late to dig out some of those Christmas lights that you have packed away!) 😉
When I found out that St. Peter’s keeps their Christmas tree and crèche up in the square until February 2, I decided we would keep our crèche in the chapel and all our Christmas lights up until then as well. I always felt gypped that there were not 40 days to celebrate after Christmas as there are after Easter. Then I discovered that February 2, the Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas), is indeed 40 days after Christmas. So, to me, it makes total sense to keep those Christmas lights lit. If you drive past our house right now, you will still see our candle lights in the windows. I personally love clusters of little white lights. When we begin the Salve Regina at the end of night prayer, the guitarist dims all the lights in our chapel. During this season, that leaves only the Christmas lights and the sole candle lit before the icon of the Mother of God. Yet the…
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There came a greater man
Baptism of our Lord
with each step through jordan
the water parted wide
priests and ark stood on dry ground
where once was swelling tide
safe through its torrents we all passed
in canaan to abide
shamed and naked, in disgrace
our captors led us away
to settle us by exile streams
where foreign gods held sway
sadly, there we hung our harps
and could not sing or play
an odd prophet, desert worn
with thundering voice appeared
and stood again where waters flow
to call for all to hear
that we should take our place once more
in jordan’s midst with tears
and then there came a greater man
to pass through swelling tide
when waters broke a voice was heard
the heavens opened wide
and our new joshua arose
salvation to provide
“Chaplain Mike”
Mary words
“In the light of Mary, the Church sees in the face of women the reflection of a beauty which mirrors the loftiest sentiments of which the human heart is capable: the self-offering totality of love; the strength that is capable of bearing the greatest sorrows; limitless fidelity and tireless devotion to work; the ability to combine penetrating intuition with words of support and encouragement.” (Bl. John Paul II)
A word for the year
Do you have a word for this year yet? I think mine is going to be “heart”. It’s the word that keeps cropping up in my life since Christmas. Someone shared a saying from St. Francis de Sales, something like: whoever has the heart of a man has the whole man. It made me start thinking along various lines, such as: if God has my heart, He has all of me. The word is just jumping out at me wherever I see it.
Here’s a post from Ann Voskamp about her words for the year: Change the Prepositions in Your Life and You Change Your Life
What’s your word for this year?
I just came across this blog by an amazing man. If you want to read more by him, go to Unshakable Hope under “Blogroll.” Keep him and his family in your prayers.
In the years before I had ALS, I made and broke, usually quickly, more New Year resolutions than I care to remember. I became so bad at keeping my resolutions that I quit making them. But I began making resolutions again about 6 years ago and actually succeeded in keeping a few of them – resolutions like committing to follow a daily Bible reading program, which I’ve done several times and will do this year also. But following a daily Bible is more like a renewed commitment for me so it’s not one of the new resolutions I’m referring to in this post.
ALS has taken away a lot of the things I wanted to change about myself. Unfortunately it’s also taken away many of the things that I didn’t want to change. For example;
- I am fed through a feeding tube now so I no longer have to make…
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Witnesses to Hope 