From one of my best friends:
When I am incapable of praying, I want to keep telling Jesus that I love him. It’s not difficult, and it keeps the fire going. (Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face)
All it takes is a picture (4)
“Grace at 30,000 Feet”
Another delightful reflection by Fr. Pat McNulty of Madonna House, this time on the story of the rich man and Lazarus from yesterday’s Gospel. You can click here to read it.
“Not all gold”
A beautiful poem for this Sunday from a fellow blogger: “Not all gold”
The borders of God
I’ve been thinking about why I am so drawn to poetry and art, and I think my best answer is that they draw me to the borders of God. God is so un-understandable by us in our lowly humanity. John of the Cross points out that the intellect “reaches God more by not understanding than by understanding.” God has placed an insatiable desire in each of us for union with Him: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” Yet, we are limited in this life as to the satisfaction of that union. And so for myself, I find myself coming back again and again to true poetry, art, and music–true in the sense that it is directed towards God and not towards itself. It lifts my heart, it draws my spirit, towards the ineffable God who, as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing says so well: ”
Now you say, “How shall I proceed to think of God as he is in himself?” To this I can only reply, “I do not know.”
With this question you bring me into the very darkness and cloud of unknowing that I want you to enter. A man may know completely and ponder thoroughly every created thing and its works, yes, and God’s works, too, but not God himself. Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all I know, choosing rather to love him whom I cannot know. Though we cannot know him we can love him. By love he may be touched and embraced, never by thought. Of course, we do well at times to ponder God’s majesty or kindness for the insight these meditations may bring. But in the real contemplative work you must set all this aside and cover it with a cloud of forgetting. Then let your loving desire, gracious and devout, step bravely and joyfully beyond it and reach out to pierce the darkness above. Yes, beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with the dart of your loving desire and do not cease come what may.
Of course, God means for us to be able to move past all of the unknowns in our lives–the sufferings, the pains, the mysteries–or maybe I should say through all of them–to Him by pure love. Yet, at the same time, He gives us beauty–found in art, poetry, music, our children, nature, wherever–as a wonderful means of drawing to His borders. And sometimes we have to decide to make time for those things as well as all the other things in our lives.
Here are some 4-5 minute opportunities (although I’m well aware that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”). May at least one of them draw you to the borders of God.
For starters:
More to come . . .
The quickest way to the sun
The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise. (Jerry Sittser, quoted in Mary Beth Chapman, Choosing to See)
Go forward bravely
Do not get discouraged when you see yourself full of defects, but go to Jesus and Mary confidently, and humble yourself without becoming discouraged; then go forward bravely. (St. Mary Mazzarello)
Interruptions
A day or two ago one who was with me prayed like this, “Lord, help me to welcome interruptions, especially when the interruption seems less important than the work I am trying to do.” That prayer has often been mine. I expect many of you have felt the need of the loving grace of the Lord to help you to welcome interruptions, especially when they do not seem to matter nearly so much as what we are doing at the moment. Thinking of this, I found myself this early morning in Lk. 9.11. The people followed our Lord Jesus (He had wanted to be alone with His disciples just then), and He welcomed them.
It is so easy to be too preoccupied to be welcoming. May the love of our Lord Jesus, for whose sake and in whose service we are here, so overflow from us that it will be natural for us to do as He would and be welcoming.
(Amy Carmichael, Thou Givest . . . They Gather, p. 94)
Everything is grace.
“Everything is grace.” A phrase uttered by St. Thérèse when she was not able to receive the Eucharist when she was dying. I can’t say that that’s the first thing that comes to my mind when things go in a direction different than I would like–like they already are today. 🙂 Pray for me, Thérèse. Pray for us. May God’s grace meet us right where we are.
If we love God, we will understand that everything is grace, that Job’s sores were grace, that Job’s abandonment was grace, that even Jesus’ abandonment (‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?) was grace. Even the delay of grace is grace. Suffering is grace. The cross is grace. The grave is grace. . . . (Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, p. 144)
Paul Thigpen
I would like to introduce you to the poetry of Paul Thigpen. If you’re not familiar with his conversion story to Catholicism, you can read it here. He is a prolific writer in many genres. The poem below is from a number he has written on the Blessed Sacrament which I came across one day during a time of adoration. I was so taken by the slim volume that, I must confess, I ignored the “Do not remove from this chapel” in order to “borrow” it for a couple of days in order to copy a few.
Confession Before the Blessed Sacrament
Grain of God,
I was the stone that ground You.
Holocaust of heaven,
I was the flame that consumed You.
Lamb on the altar,
I was the knife across Your throat.
Crucified One,
I was the nail in your hand.Have mercy, Jesus.
Reshape this guilty soul to make
a stone in Your altar,
a flame in Your lamp,
a knife for Your bread,
a nail in Your table
where the world sits down
to feast.
Witnesses to Hope 