There are a lot of solar storms at the moment, but look at the stunning beauty produced by them: Solar Storms Trigger Northern Lights. The point being: think about what God can bring out of the storms in your life. Think about it.
The sturdiness of God
Found on a slip of paper stuck in my catechism:
The Hebrew word for faith (emúnah) derives from the stem emeth, faithfulness, one of God’s greatest attributes. God is merciful and faithful (hesed we’ emeth, Gen 24.27). We might as well say, tender and tough. For emeth evokes the image of a rock on which we can lean or build. God will not move; we can always count on him. Our faith is the act of leaning on the toughness or ‘sturdiness’ of God. The liturgical word ‘Amen’ has the same stem. To say ‘Amen’ is above all to believe; it is the act of affirming the sturdiness of God as it comes through to us from his Word or from the person of Jesus. The Apocalypse of John says of Jesus that he is at once amen and pistos–faithful (Rev. 3.14). He is faithful in two directions. It is his privilege boundlessly and, as it were, recklessly to lean against his Father, because he as no other may count on his Father’s power and ‘sturdiness.’ Similarly in his relation to us he becomes the eminently sturdy and powerful one against whom we on our part may lean just as recklessly and boundlessly. (André Louf, Tuning Into Grace)
Doing for others and sitting down on the green grass
From my friend, Amy Carmichael–before we get too busy for this day:
Mark 6.39 And He commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass.
Psalm 23.2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.
Those who do most in the day and who always have time for one thing more are those who know what it is to sit down on the green grass. It is not the bustling, chattery people who do most for others. It is those who know most of the quietness.
Before our Lord Jesus could feed the people, He had to make them sit down. Before He can feed us we too must sit down. David sat before the Lord; he was quiet before his God. Even if we have not a long time to spend in the morning with our God, much can be received in a very few minutes if only we are quiet. Sometimes it takes a little while to gather our scattered thoughts and quiet our soul. Even so, don’t hurry; make it sit down on the green grass.
Gather my thoughts, good Lord, they fitful roam,
Like children bent on foolish wandering,
Or vanity of fruitless wayfaring;
O call them home.
“The Grit on the Track”
A Sunday-poem from wonderful Luci Shaw:
The Grit on the Track
The ground is always there witnessing
how you walk. You need light to travel
a dark path, and you need to travel light.
Otherwise the shadow that turns out to be
a boulder or a root will trip you,
and your heavy pack will bear you down
into the hard anguish of gravel
that is more than your knees can bear.
Even roadside dust clings to your heels as if
God is in every crystal of sand.
Gravity and the possibility of falling
will keep you aware. In the twilight you
come home from walking the dog in the woods
with the walk still clinging to you–twigs
and the stain of berries on your soles.
Each clot of sludge from the forest floor
answers back–another footfall. This is all
my handwork, he is saying. Stay with this mud,
this humus. Every next mile you walk
will be a revelation.
“Strengthened by Faith”
It may happen that for a certain time a man is illumined and refreshed by God’s grace, and then this grace is withdrawn. This makes him inwardly confused and he starts to grumble; instead of seeking through steadfast prayer to recover his assurance of salvation, he loses patience and gives up. He is like a beggar who receives alms from the palace, and feels put out because he is not asked inside to dine with the king. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20.29). Blessed also are those who, when grace is withdrawn, find no consolation in themselves, but only continuing tribulation and thick darkness, and yet do not despair; but, strengthened by faith, they endure courageously, convinced that they do indeed see him who is invisible. (St. John of Karpathos)
The other book
The other book I’m reading at the moment that I would like to tell you about is 33 Days to Morning Glory, A Do-It-Yourself Retreat In Preparation for Marian Consecration. This is a book for those of you who feel an inclination to entrusting your life more to the Mother of God, but get bogged down and discouraged by books that outline long lists of prayers and readings in preparation for a consecration to Mary. In this book, Fr. Michael E. Gaitley leads the reader in 33 days of simple readings based on the writings of Louis deMontfort, Maximilian Kolbe, Mother Teresa, and Bl. John Paul II. This is very manageable, instructive, and inspiring. Fr. Gaitley, as in his previous book, Consoling the Heart of Jesus, reaches out to and writes for the simple souls out there. I am one of those, and I greatly appreciate this book. I think many of you would as well.
What I’m reading
I haven’t updated “What I’m reading” in way too long, but I’m now reading two books which I’d like to pass along.
The first is A Grace Disguised, how the soul grows through loss, by Jerry Sittser. As many of you know, I have gone through a lot of loss in my own life. Consequently I am cautious about recommending books about loss. I am only half way through Jerry’s book, but I can highly recommend what I’ve read so far. He lost his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter within minutes of a head on car crash caused by a drunk driver. Some excerpts:
“All people suffer loss. Being alive means suffering loss.”
“I question whether experiences of severe loss can be quantified and compared. Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances. All losses are bad, only bad in different ways. No two losses are ever the same. Each loss stands on its own and inflicts a unique kind of pain. What makes each loss so catastrophic is its devastating, cumulative, and irreversible nature.”
“Sudden and tragic loss leads to terrible darkness. It is as inescapable as nightmares during a high fever. The darkness comes, no matter how hard we try to hold it off. However threatening, we must face it, and we must face it alone.
“Darkness descended on me shortly after the accident . . . .”
“Loss forces us to see the dominant role our environment plays in determining our happiness. Loss strips us of the props we rely on for our well-being. It knocks us off our feet and puts us on our backs. In the experience of loss, we come to the end of ourselves.
“But coming to the end of ourselves, we can also come to the beginning of a vital relationship with God. Our failures can lead us to grace and to a profound spiritual awakening. This process occurs frequently with those who suffer loss. . . .”
I’ll talk about the second book tomorrow.
Our Lady = Laser Light
A Sunday poem about Our Lady:
Our Lady = Laser Light
Our Lady, Laser Beam, incredible creature held
in God’s omnipotent hand, for help of deviant, unwise man;
pure straight-line, steady, truth’s most leashed light,
love’s billions more than surface-sun concentrated fire,
sure, unwavering, non-fanning beam, heaven-homing radar-ray.
Coherent, clear, no unsimple spectrum spread,
but narrow one-wave-only burning arrow-jet
that in a single photon-packed burst of focused fire,
with a needle point annealing heals smallest rent in eyes;
light that lures dark-lurking cancers of the soul
to absorbent ruin, fuses lips of lesions and wide wounds
unites, not rough-stitching but with a mother’s gentle
hand and surgeon’s high finesse; and with no scarring pain
erases demon-traced tatoos that mar God – consecrate limbs.
Humble, immaculate beam borne by peasant Bernadettes;
yet fiery-potent force that light-explodes gloom-visaged
serpents of evil; slender, sensitive finger probing
for uncoined gold hid deep within us; mercifully wise
lens in whose clear scrutiny we see, multi-dimensional,
known and secret faces unparalleled path-finder ray
spearheading balanced tunnel through mountains of rock-doubt
and tightly-tangled fears, into the open valleys of whole air.
Final, lucent tool in God’s hand, cutting flawless-faceted
blue-brilliant Christ-diamonds, light sculptured souls of men,
Our Lady, Laser Light, inerrant, bright rod-road trajectory-less,
high-given guide-line, shortest-surest, pure light-fire path
flaming straight out, unfaltering, even to infinity …. to God.
Albert Joseph Hebert, S.M.
Mary, Our Blessed Lady
New York: Exposition Press, 1970.
Little lights in a darkened world
I have made it a tradition every January to refer you to a post of mine from a January past: “God loves to light little lights” I wrote it the year that I discovered that St. Peter’s keeps its creche up until February 2, which, I think, is a marvelous idea. Think about it for yourself!
“He lived in God’s favorite place.”
That title caught my eye as I was leafing through the November 2011 edition of Restoration (published by Madonna House). The article is a homily given by one priest at Madonna House at the funeral of another priest. He speaks of the deceased as often being in “the right place for the wrong reason.” A soul so abandoned to God that he didn’t always realize how God was using him. “That’s why he showed up in so many of our lives just when we needed him to be there. Whatever he was up to—whether it was fixing a door or a chair—it often turned out that the real reason he was there was that you were there, and you needed him.” You can read the homily here.
Witnesses to Hope 