More than conquerors

“So let us all take courage; not one of us is too weak to be made more than a conqueror.” (Amy Carmichael)

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It’s Monday, so I’m going to rely on my good friend, Amy Carmichael, this morning.  She’s always got something good to think about.  And this is a good word for a Monday:

Rom 8.37  More than conquerors.
James 1.2  Count it all joy . . . when you meet various trials.

Sometimes when we read the words of those who have been more than conquerors, we feel almost despondent.  “I shall never be like that,” we feel.  But they won through, step by step; by little acts of will, little denials of self, little inward victories, by faithfulness in very little things, they became what they are.  No one sees these little hidden steps, they only see the accomplishment; but even so, those small steps were taken.  There is no sudden triumph, no spiritual maturity that is the work of a moment.  So let us all take courage; not one of us is too weak to be made more than a conqueror.

As a “bonus” today, I’m adding another short homily to the “Talks” tab above, under “Other Talks.”  This one is by Fr. Ken McKenna, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales and a good friend of our community.  He is an excellent homilist, short and to the point.  He gave this homily this past Saturday on “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”  Some of his examples are more pertinent to us, but I thought you would all benefit from–and enjoy–his homily.  Click here. (It’s only 7 minutes long.)

Humility

“[Humility] is to have a place to hide/when all is hurricane outside.” (Jessica Powers)

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This Sunday’s poem is by Jessica Powers:

               Humility

Humility is to be still
under the weathers of God’s will.

It is to have no hurt surprise
when morning’s ruddy promise dies,

when wind and drought destroy, or sweet
spring rains apostatize in sleet,

or when the mind and month remark
a superfluity of dark.

It is to have no troubled care
for human weathers anywhere.

And yet it is to take the good
with the warm hands of gratitude.

Humility is to have place
deep in the secret of God’s face

where one can know, past all surmise,
that God’s great will alone is wise,

where one is loved, where one can trust
a strength not circumscribed by dust.

It is to have a place to hide
when all is hurricane outside.

                         Jessica Powers (1947; 1984)

“God’s heart so abounds in love . . .”

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From Francis de Sales–about how much God loves you:

God’s heart so abounds in love and his good is so great and infinite that all men may possess it while no one man thereby possesses less of it.  This infinite goodness can never be exhausted, even though it fill the spirits of the universe.  (Treatise on the Love of God, 10.14)

God pours his love in no less measure into one soul, even though he loves an infinity of others along with it, than if he loved that soul alone.  (ibid.)

The God of hope

“The God of Hope” hopes for us, even for us. (Amy Carmichael)

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I guess it’s obvious if you look at my “Category Cloud”–scroll down the sidebar on the right–that Amy Carmichael is indeed a present and favorite author of mine.  She has been consistently present in my life for many years.  When I pause to consider why, the reason is simply because reading her has always fostered great hope in me.  She helps me to be a witness to hope.  And so I quote her often in my blog in the hopes that she will also foster hope in you.

Rom 15:13 says: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Amy begins her reflections on this verse first by looking at some other verses in Scripture, verses that seem contradictory and surprising: In Lk 22.28,  Jesus says: You are those who have continued with me in my trials.   Yet, just a few hours later, he says: Could you not watch with me one hour?  And then (Mt 26.56): Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.
     Another set of conflicting verses:  In Jn 17.6, Jesus says to His Father: They have kept Your word.  Yet we know differently–as is so evident in Lk 22.24, describing their activity right after the institution of the Eucharist (!) (but who am I to judge?!): A dispute arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest.
     And so Amy wonders: How could Jesus say: They have kept Your word.

     How could He say it?  What does it mean to us?  Just this: Our Lord of Love, our blessed Lord Jesus, looks upon us with such loving eyes that He sees us as we are in our deepest, lowliest, holiest moments, in those hours when, like John, we lean upon His bosom, and He speaks to us, and we all but see His face.
     He knows, as no one else can know, how far we fall. “Not as though I had already attained”–He knows that; but “I press on”–He knows that, too.
     The love of the Father has the same golden quality of hope.  “The God of Hope” hopes for us, even for us.  He never loses hope.  He accepted the word of His beloved Son: “They have kept [intently observed] Thy word”, in spite of times when they had seemed most grievously to disregard it–when for example at our Lord’s own table they strove about the dreadful matter of pre-eminence.  The God of Hope saw what they wished to be, what they yet would be.  And He looks at us like that.  Is there not something in this that touches us to the quick?  How grieve a love like that?  And is there not encouragement, too, for the strengthening of our souls?
                   (Edges of His Ways, p. 145)

How long, O Lord?

Let us, in the middle of any difficult situations we may be, choose to put our trust not in the quality of our faith, but in God’s desire to deal bountifully with us.

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The verse, “How long, O Lord? Wilt thou forget me for ever?” in yesterday’s meditation by Amy Carmichael caught my heart, so I decided to do a little scripture study on the psalm from which it comes, Ps. 113.  I remember distinctly a time quite a few years ago when I was going through a very dark time in prayer.  Not only did God seem distant, I couldn’t even find Him.  I was on retreat at a Trappistine abbey, and I remember a prayer time there when I cried out to the Lord with very similar words to David’s: “Lord, have You forgotten me?”  I did not hear an answer, but, needless to say, there was grace to keep persevering in prayer.

Psalm 13 is short, only six verses.  The first four express the psalmist’s distress, both in his relationship with God, but also with the enemy.  These are verses that we all have, or will pray, someday.  But what struck me the most yesterday as I was pondering the psalm, were the last two verses:

But I have trusted in thy steadfast love;
     my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
     because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Anyone can pray the first four verses, but it takes faith, hope, and a great confidence in the Lord to pray those last two.  Listen to Derek Kidner’s comments on these two verses:

The I of verse 5 is emphatic (as in NEB, etc.: ‘But for my part, I . . .’), and so, to a lesser degree, is thy steadfast love.  However great the pressure, the choice is still his to make, not the enemy’s; and God’s covenant remains.  So the psalmist entrusts himself to this pledged love, and turns his attention not to the quality of his faith but to its object and its outcome, which he has every intention of enjoying.  The basic idea of the word translated dealt bountifully is completeness, which NEB interprets attractively as ‘granted all my desire’.  But RSV can hardly be bettered, since it leaves room for God’s giving to exceed man’s asking.  As for the past tense in which it is put, this springs evidently from David’s certainty that he will have such a song to offer, when he looks back at the whole way he has been led. (emphasis added)

Let us, in the middle of any difficult situations we may be, choose to put our trust not in the quality of our faith, but in His desire to deal bountifully with us.

The age-long minute

If you feel like Jesus may pass you by, have hope–He is coming to you.

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The title of this post comes from a meditation by Amy Carmichael on Ps 107.29-30: He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.  Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.  I have to say that my first thought after reading Then they were glad because they had quiet, were: “This verse must mean a lot to parents of toddlers and teenagers!”  Amy’s reflection was other–and deeper–than mine 🙂

jesus-walking-on-the-water“Then they were glad because they had quiet;” the words were music to me.  Then in reading the different stories of the Lord calming the sea, I found this: “He came to them . . . and meant to pass by them” [Mk 6.48].  The more literal the translation the more startling it is.  As I pondered the matter I saw that this “age-long minute” was part of the spiritual preparation of these men for a life that at that time was unimagined by them–a life of dauntless faith and witness in the absence of any manifestation of the power of the Lord; and it must be the same today.  Such minutes must be in our lives, unless our training is to be unlike that of ever saint and warrior who ever lived.  Our “minute” may seem endless–“How long wilt Thou forget me,” cried David out of the depths of his–but perhaps looking back we shall in such an experience a great and shining opportunity.  Words are spoken then that are spoken at no other time . . .  We have a chance to prove our glorious God, to prove that His joy is strength and that His peace passeth all understanding, and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge.
     And the “minute” always ends in one way, there is no other ending recorded anywhere: “But immediately he spoke to them, and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; have no fear” . . . and the wind ceased” [Mk 6.50].   
     “Then they were glad because they had quiet; and he brought them to their desired haven.”
                                                  (Edges of His Ways, pp. 143-44)

If you feel that you are in “an age-long minute”, have hope–He is coming to you and will bring you to your desired haven.

That little speck of good

Find that little speck of good in every person–including yourself.

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Rebbe Nachman of Breslov wrote this:

Know this: You should judge every person by his merits.  Even someone who seems to be completely wicked, you must search and find that little speck of good, for in that place, he is not wicked.  By this you will raise him up, and help him return to G-d.  And you must also do this for yourself, finding your own good points, one after the other, and raising yourself up.  This is how melodies are made, note after note.

Jesus, the Good Samaritan to us

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The gospel today (about the Good Samaritan) brought the picture below to mind.  It can be found on the cover of Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis’ commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel.  (See Books tab above.)  Good SamaritanThis is how the back of the book describes this picture:

The book’s cover portrays Christ as the Good Samaritan in an illumination taken from the mid sixth-century Syrian Codex Rossanensis. The fire of God’s mercy, poured out without reserve by the Father into the Heart of his incarnate Word, impels the Son’s eager gaze earthwards.  Christ Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, the living ‘image of the invisible God’ in whom ‘the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily’ (Colossians 1:15, 2:9), bends down his sun-like nimbus—the very splendor of his glory, inscribed with the cross of his suffering—in a full ninety-degree angle, to show the perfection of His descent among us.  The eternal Lord of the ages thus moves into position to nurse with divine tenderness the green body of decaying humanity, prostrate with festering wounds: ‘Through the tender mercy of our God, the Dawn from on high has visited us, to give knowledge of salvation to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death’ (Luke 2:78f).  For his part, the dazzling angel has found a new mode of praise: to stand by his Master, marveling and ministering as he holds the gold bowl of grace and compassion, awestruck at the depth of the Word’s condescension.  What even angelic hands cannot touch unveiled, that Christ lavishes with open gesture upon the flesh and soul of his beloved brother, sin-wounded man.

Sometimes I just sit and meditate on how I am that green man lying in the road and try to imagine Christ standing over me pouring out His mercy–that even the angels cannot touch–upon me.  Peguy says: “It was because a man lay on the road that  a Samaritan picked him up.  It is because we lay on the road that Christ picks us up . . .

Open

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This is a powerful Easter poem by Luci Shaw.  I know it’s not the Easter season, but I think it’s at times like these–as we’re moving into the physically darker seasons of fall and winter, and sometimes simultaneously darker emotional seasons for some of us–that we need to remember that we are always an Easter people.      

                  Open
             John 20:19, 26

Doubt padlocked one door and
Memory put her back to the other.
Still the damp draught seeped in, though
Fear chinked all the cracks and
Blindness boarded up the window.
In the darkness that was left
Defeat crouched, shivering,
In his cold corner.

Then Jesus came
(all the doors being shut)
and stood among them.

                              Luci Shaw

The Appearance of Christ at the Cenacle
The Appearance of Christ at the Cenacle (James Tissot)

In moments of weariness

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I find it comforting to know that Mary is always there as a mother for us to turn to:

della Robbia VisitationAnd in moments of weariness, raise your eyes to Mary, the Virgin who, forgetting herself, set out ‘with haste’ for the hills to reach her elderly cousin Elizabeth who was in need of help and assistance.  Let her be the inspiration of your daily dedication to duty; let her suggest to you the right words and opportune gestures at the bedside of the sick; let her comfort you in misunderstandings and failures, helping you always keep a smile on your face and a hope in your heart.  (John Paul II, Rome 1979)

Which reminds me of another wonderful quote, this time from Bernard:

O you, whoever you are, who feel that in the tidal wave of this world you are nearer to being tossed about among the squalls and gales than treading on dry land, if you do not want to founder in the tempest, do not avert your eyes from the brightness of this star. When the wind of temptation blows up within you, when you strike upon the rock of temptation, gaze up at this star, call out to Mary. Whether you are being tossed about by the waves of pride or ambition or slander or jealousy, gaze up at this star, call out to Mary. When rage or greed or fleshly desires are battering the skiff of your soul, gaze up at Mary. When the immensity of your sins weighs you down and you are bewildered by the loathsomeness of your conscience, when the terrifying thought of judgment appalls you and you begin to founder in the gulf of sadness and despair, think of Mary. In dangers, in hardships, in every doubt, think of Mary, call out to Mary. Keep her in your mouth, keep her in your heart. Follow the example of her life and you will obtain the favor of her prayer. Following her, you will never go astray. Asking her help, you will never despair. Keeping her in your thoughts, you will never wander away. With your hand in hers, you will never stumble. With her protecting you, you will not be afraid. With her leading you, you will never tire. Her kindness will see you through to the end.