In the first place, it’s not about what we do, but about what He does.
“In the relationship with God our first act of love, one that must remain the basis for every act of love for him, is this: to believe that he loves us, and to let ourselves be loved in our poverty, just as we are, quite apart from any merits or virtues we may possess.” (Fr. Jacques Philippe)
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
~T.S. Eliot from “Ash Wednesday”
My people, what have I done to you?
Micah 6:3
And so the light runs laughing from the town,
Pulling the sun with him along the roads
That shed their muddy rivers as he goads
Each blade of grass the ice had flattened down.
At every empty bush he stops to fling
Handfuls of birds with green and yellow throats;
While even the hens, uncertain of their notes,
Stir rusty vowels in attempts to sing.
He daubs the chestnut-tips with sudden reds
And throws an olive blush on naked hills
That hoped, somehow, to keep themselves in white.
Who calls…
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What I’m reading right now . . . well, some of what I’m reading. 😉 Both are five star.
Today I was remembering a story that Fr. Timothy Gallagher tells. He speaks about a man who was having a difficult time deciding to exercise. He finally makes the decision. The first day he drives to the exercise place, but doesn’t go in. The second day, the same. He’s having trouble deciding to continue with his decision. As he tells this story, many people begin to laugh–probably because we all have been there. However, Fr. Gallagher surprises us by his view of this situation. He says, “This is holy ground. Here is a man who is trying to do the right thing. This is holy ground.”
A perspective that is well worth thinking about.
“In the lives of those who believe and pray, there are bleak winters of the spirit. We seem to go along well for a while in prayer and relationships and life generally, but from time to time we disintegrate. It is very painful. You may suspect that this will prove to be a creative disintegration, that God is re-creating you, putting you together in the likeness of his Son at a new and deeper level. Certainly this does happen: growth is not easy; there is a probably distressing period for the caterpillar on the way to butterflyhood. We are all participants in this experience from time to time, and a chrysalis needs sympathetic understanding, so we should be gentle and patient with ourselves, as with others. Nevertheless, they are hard to live through, these winters of the spirit. When you know yourself to be sterile, helpless, unable to deal creatively with your situation or change your own heart, you know your need for a Savior, and you know what Advent is. God brings us to these winters, these dreary times of deadness and emptiness of spirit, as truly as he brings winter after autumn, as a necessary step towards next spring. But while we are in them they feel like a real absence of God, or our absence from him. . . . .In the winters of your prayer, when there seems to be nothing but darkness and a situation of frozenness, hold on, wait for God. He will come.” (Maria Boulding)
I hope this provides encouragement for you. Know that I’m praying for you . . . all of you who “know what Advent is.”
During Advent, we meditate on the Second Coming of Christ as well as the first. In the book of Revelation, it says: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” I could not help but think of what Christ’s face will look like when we are presented to Him as His bride when I looked at these photos. May they be a meditation for you of the pure love of your Bridegroom: 24 grooms seeing their brides for the first time. So great is His love for you.
