The grace of weakness

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Lent is progressing.  Already some of you are feeling discouraged, like you’re not living up to what you intended to do for Lent. You know, it’s really okay to feel weak and helpless, to feel that you’re never making any progress.  In fact, that may be the best thing that ever happens to you.  Fr. Dajzer writes: “Your weakness, inability, and helplessness will become a crack through which the grace of faith will squeeze into your heart.”  Lent, as I’ve written before, is not really about getting “stronger”. Well, it is about getting stronger, but not in the world’s sense of the word.  Our strength is in our weakness.  “The might of God needs the weakness of man.”  Consider this from Fr. Dajzer:

God, getting closer to man, weakens him.  He does just the opposite of what we would expect.

You may believe that it is you who are approaching Him and that under those conditions you should become increasingly stronger and increasingly able to get along by yourself.  However, it is He who is coming closer to you and His approach makes you weaker, physically, mentally or spiritually.  He does this in order to dwell in you with His might, since it is your weakness that makes room for His might.  When you are weak, you cannot trust in yourself, you cannot believe in yourself and then the opportunity comes for you to turn to Him and to desire to rely on Him.  So often you shield yourself against this greatest grace, the grace of weakness, but St. Paul has already written: “for power is made perfect in weakness.  I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me . . . for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12.9-10).

When “a hundred or a million are suffering”

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Sorry for not posting in awhile.  God’s will was manifest in my life in unexpected events.  . .

In praying for the people in Japan, I was reminded of this pertinent perspective from Caryll Houselander:

It struck me last night that many people are increasing their fear by thinking in crowds, i.e. they think of hundreds and thousands suffering etc., whilst the fact is, God is thinking of each one of us separately, and when–say–a hundred or a million are suffering, it is God who has each one separately in His own hands and is Himself measuring what each one can take, and to each one He is giving His illimitable love.  This thought, though obvious, consoles me a lot . . .

Singing temptations away

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

How do you fight temptation?  As we journey through the desert of Lent, we are sure to face temptations.  Try this advice from Hannah Whitehall Smith, a nineteenth century write and evangelist:

Then my enemies will be turned back in the day when I call.  This I know, that God is for me. (Ps 56.9)

Do you know what the psalmist knew?  Do you know that God is for you, and that he will cause your enemies to turn back?  If you do, then go out to meet your temptations, singing a song of triumph as you go.  Meet your very next temptation in this way.  At its first approach, begin to give thanks for the victory.  Claim continually that you are more than conqueror through him who loves you, and refuse to be frightened off by any foe.  Shout the shout of faith with Joshua and Jehoshaphat and David and Paul.  I can assure you that when you shout, all your enemies will fall down dead before you.

Singing is such a splendid way of disarming the devil!  It feeds your soul and drives him away, as Amy Carmichael reminds us:

The reason why singing is such a splendid shield against the fiery darts of the devil is that it greatly helps us to forget him, and he cannot endure being forgotten.  He likes us to be occupied with him, what he is doing (our temptations), with his victories (our falls), with anything but our glorious Lord.  So sing.  Never be afraid of singing too much.  We are much more likely to sing too little.

“Where are you?”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved4 Comments

“See where he stands behind our wall.  He looks in at the window, he peers through the lattice.”  (Song of Songs 2.9)

This is the point of Lent: to open up to our Beloved who is looking in at us through the window.  Fr. Blaise Arminjon writes:  “For if God is love, there can only be in the final analysis a single sin: not to love, to refuse to open oneself to the waiting love.”  After Adam and Eve sinned, the first words of God to them were “Where are you?” (Gen 3.9)  God is all about relationship.  He experienced the loss of relationship with Adam and Eve.  His first words to them were not: “What did you do?” but “Where are you?”  And that is what Lent is supposed to be all about for us: our relationship with Him, not what we have done.  (If we concentrate on relationship, the other will fall in  line.) So listen to Him saying to you: “Where are you?”  Hear His desire to coax you out from wherever you may be hiding from Him.  Take a moment, even now, to gaze at Him gazing at you through the lattice and listen to what He speaks to your heart . . .

The best form of mortification

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

One other wonderful piece of advice to consider as you prepare for Lent:

Blosius, a great Benedictine mystic, says that the best form of mortification is to accept with all our heart, in spite of our repugnance, all that God sends or permits, good and evil, joy and suffering. (Dom Marion)

Worth reading through again, slowly.  This may be the hardest mortification you ever choose.

Lenten resolutions

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

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)

Lent is coming

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Lent is coming.  To be honest, my usual response to that thought is one of clutching inside.  I suspect that is not the best response, and every year I keep working at coming to more of an understanding of what perhaps God’s mind is on this season rather than my limited understanding or skewed understanding.  I, like most Catholics who grew up when I did, tend to approach Lent, I think, from the angle of what I need to give up for Lent. What I become convinced of more and more each year is that God’s priority for Lent is not that.  His priority is that we grow in our relationship with Him.  Period.  The only things worth giving up are those that impede our relationship with Him.  Read this by Fr. Peter John Cameron to start you thinking about perhaps a different Lenten approach:

Here’s what to give up this Lent: the doubt that goes, “I can never get closer to God because I’m too sinful, too flawed, too weak.”  This is a lethal attitude, for it based on the false presumption that we can possess something of our own–that does not come from God–by which we can please God.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Only what is from God can please God.  But as long as such error persists, we estrange ourselves from God.  Lent is not about lamenting our inadequacy.  Rather, it is a graced moment to receive from God what he is eager to give us so that we can live the friendship with him that he desires. . . .