Honest Abe
To make you smile and give you hope:
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them. (Abraham Lincoln)
“for you loved them . . .”
This morning I opened my Liturgy of the Hours to the Office of Readings for today (Tuesday, Week II, Ordinary Time). The first psalm to be prayed is Psalm 44. In the American Liturgy of the Hours, before each psalm there are two subheadings. The first is a summary of the psalm. The second is a Scripture verse or a saying of the Fathers that situates the psalm in the context of its New Testament fulfillment in Christ. “… the Fathers of the Church saw the whole psalter as a prophecy of Christ and the Church and explained it in this sense…” (Bl. John Paul II). I try to make it a habit of pausing before I pray each psalm to reflect on the two subheadings, especially so I can pray them remembering how they are fulfilled in Christ.
The first subheading for Psalm 44 is “The misfortune of God’s people”. An apt summary. The psalm describes national disaster and a search for God in the midst of it. “Awake, O Lord, why do you sleep? Why do you hide your face from us and forget our oppression and our misery?”
From that first subheading to the second, I have drawn an arrow in my book. The reason is to draw my attention to the wonderful news that we have in Christ. The second subheading is this from Romans 8.37: “We triumph over all these things through him who loved us.” What a wonderful word!
Too much hope?
We can never have too much hope in God. He gives in the measure we ask. (St. Thérèse)
Open all your windows
Something from Amy Carmichael:
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.
Let us take time today to consider the love of God.
Some of us are tempted to fear about ourselves. What about tomorrow? Shall we be able to go on? Perfect love casts out fear. Love God and there will be no room for fear, for to love is to trust and if we trust we do not fear.
Some of us are tempted to fear the future. There again perfect love casts out fear. He who has led will lead. It quickens love and encourages faith to think of all that God has done. He has not brought us so far, to leave us now.
So let us open all our windows and our doors to the great love of God. Love is like light. It will flood our rooms if only we open to it. Let us take time today to open more fully than ever before to the blessed love of God.
On Corpus Christi, before the Blessed Sacrament
A powerful poem by Paul Thigpen
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 processions
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,
will You wait?
Mary words
“One of the reasons I do not write more is that there is always housework, cleaning, scrubbing, sewing, washing (right now it is cleaning fish), etc., to do. Just as she had to do these things, and probably never neglected them. But then, too, I can see her sittings seemingly idle beside a well on just such a day as this, just thanking Him, with each happy breath.” (Dorothy Day)
Friday: from the archives
(First posted February 24, 2010)
If
I have been reading quite a bit of the writings of Isobel Kuhn, a protestant missionary to China right before Communism took over. The excerpt below is from a book about a married couple and child who were trapped in China at the onset of Communism and not allowed to leave for quite awhile. Isobel focuses in on the question that can tempt us all at various times in our lives: “If only . . .” The woman she is writing about is the wife and mother in the family.
“If only that letter had not come, inviting us here.” What about the “if”? She got them [a tract she had on “If”] and read:
Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” [Jn 11.32b]” And He could have been there; He was not far away. He knew all about it, and He let him die. I think it was very hard for that woman . . . It is something God could have made different, if He had chosen, because He has all power; and He has allowed that “if” to be there.
I do not discount the “if” in your life. No matter what it is . . . Come to the Lord with your “if” and let Him say to you what He said to Martha. He met her “if” with His “if”! “Did I not tell you that IF you would believe you would see the glory of God” [Jn 11.40]” The glory of God is to come out of the “if” in your life. . .
Do not be thinking of your “if.” Make a power out of your “if” for God. . .
Do you know that light is to fall on your “if” some day? Then take in the possibilities and say, “Nothing has ever come to me, nothing has ever gone from me, that I shall be better for God by it . . .”
Face the “if” in your life and say, For this I have Jesus.
But there is nothing to be ashamed of if you experience those “ifs” plaguing you, as Isobel Kuhn goes on to write:
[O]ur Lord never scolded Martha for her “if”; nor Mary (who accompanied the same “if” with mute worship, prostrating herself at His feet), but with her, He wept. Wept at the sorrow which must accompany spiritual growth in our lives: for by suffering He also learned obedience. (Green Leaf in Drought, p. 36)
Now we know in part
Most of the time we walk around thinking we know what’s going on and forgetting that we only “know in part” (1 Cor 13.12), but every once in awhile God gives us a peek into what is really going on. Here is a delightful story of someone to whom that happened: “When You Get to Turn the Chair Around.” May it strengthen your hope for those days when you do know that you can’t understand and need to hold on in faith.
Throwing ourselves into His arms
I am thinking so much about this quote of St. Thérèse’s that I just have to repost this post from a couple of years ago–in case any of you missed it or if, like me, you need to be reminded of it:
This morning I was pondering my failings and starting to move to discouragement–as I am too often prone to do–when the Lord in His mercy brought to mind a section of a letter from St. Thérèse to Fr. Bellière in which she describes the ideal way for us to come to our heavenly Father when we realize our faults. Reading it always brings me great hope–and I hope it does the same for you:
I would like to try to make you understand by means of a very simple comparison how much Jesus loves even imperfect souls who confide in Him:
I picture a father who has two children, mischievous and disobedient, and when he comes to punish them, he sees one of them who trembles and gets away from him in terror, having, however, in the bottom of his heart the feeling that he deserves to be punished; and his brother, on the contrary, throws himself into his father’s arms, saying that he is sorry for having caused him any trouble, that he loves him, and to prove it he will be good from now on, and if this child asked his father to punish him with a kiss, I do not believe that the heart of the happy father could resist the filial confidence of his child, whose sincerity and love he knows. He realizes, however, that more than once his son will fall into the same faults, but he is prepared to pardon him always, if his son always takes him by the heart . . . . I say nothing to you about the first child, dear little Brother, you must know whether his father can love him as much and treat him with the same indulgence as the other . . . (LT 258)
I pray that you will have the confidence to take God by His heart today and boldly ask Him to punish you with a kiss.
Wise advice
A post from Ann Voskamp for all of you who are having “bad days”: “For the Days that Seem to be Going Bad.”
Witnesses to Hope 