The duty to be you

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One of the goals of the Christian life is to become more and more you, your true self.  I just posted last week about our desire to be loved for ourselves.  Here is another piece by a wonderful writer, Dr. Edward Mulholland, touching on the same theme.

Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor, has written an interesting piece in The New Yorker about technology. Advances in technology, it appears, don’t automatically signal advances in humanity.  He concludes noting that “The technology industry, which does so much to define us, has a duty to cater to our more complete selves rather than just our narrow interests.”  I was struck by the expression “our more complete selves.”

This past weekend a few hundred high school seniors came to Benedictine College to compete for the Presidential Scholarship.  They are an impressive group. Faced with a tough day of essays and interviews, the advice that I often given is “just be yourself.” But it struck me, as I heard myself saying this, that “being ourselves” is one of the most monumental challenges imaginable. It is, in fact, the purpose of our lives, and how we give glory to God.

You can read the rest here.

The “Little People”

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For the “Little People,” Before the Blessed Sacrament

Tiny round God,
weak and small, You could fit in my hand, yet
all the span of the universe cannot contain You
all the powers of the cosmos cannot resist You.
You have made Yourself like those
who are close to Your Heart.

I carry them here with me today:
the “little people
invisible to the mighty but not to the Almighty.
The world reckons them a zero:
without wealth, without power,
without name, without face,
without arms, without voice.

But You too, Lord, are a Zero,
a white, wheaten Cipher,
a Figure on whom
they have failed to reckon.

When You foes seek to multiply
You will invade their equation
and bring them to naught:
You will nullify their pride,
annihilate their power,
annul their schemes
of domination.
But those of lowly degree
You will stand beside
to magnify.

Tiny round God,
blessed are You
who gather the poor
into the ring of Your riches,
the empty
into the cup of Your fullness,
the weak
into the crown of Your might,
the sorrowing
into the circle of Your dance.
Blessed are You,
encompassing Your people
without beginning, without end,
in Your love.

~Paul Thigpen

“Each of us is a person”

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I haven’t reposted anything lately from Restoration, Madonna House’s monthly publication.  I was quite moved by this piece from their January issue.  Each of us has such a deep longing to be known for who we are.  Steve Heroux shares his perspective:

Each of Us Is a Person

by Steve Héroux.

A number of years ago, a friend of mine said that if Christ were not in me, it would not be worth his while loving me. What an interesting comment to offer a friend!

Of course one could hear this in a number of different ways. I suppose I could have answered with “thank you very much,” or entered into some sort of theological discussion about it all. But when it comes to being loved, somehow theological discussions don’t seem to cut it.

I couldn’t help but think that something very precious was lacking in his outlook, and I was deeply saddened. My gut reaction was: “Please do not make of me an object of your love for Jesus.”

Of course, it is likely that I misinterpreted his intentions and misunderstood what he was trying to say.

Nonetheless, making someone into an object of our love for God is not something impossible to do. And it is likely not much better than making an object out of a person for any other reason. Something very sad indeed.

I heard it said that here at the Marian Centre, we give people an opportunity to touch the poor and that that is a good thing to do! I must admit that I struggle with this as well, possibly for the same reasons.

I would not like to be a poor person going somewhere to give someone else a chance to touch me or serve me in order that he or she might get something out of it, out of me. Even if that something were noble feelings or a broadening of horizons or of the heart, or even perhaps conversion of heart—or worst of all—a good conscience.

I would feel like someone was taking advantage of my situation for their own “noble” gain. I simply want to be seen and treated as… well… me!

You can read the rest here.

Being willing

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For those days when you don’t feel any emotion in prayer and/or resist serving Him, but do so anyway:

“A very high degree of love of God is quite compatible with an absence of any feeling of emotion, and even with a feeling of distaste for the service of God.  We have only to remember our Lord’s prayer in the agony of Gethsemane to realize that.  In fact, if one is going to achieve the heights of the spiritual life, it is necessary to pass through a stage where one’s apparent spiritual activity is reduced to a dry act of willingness to conform one’s self to God’s Will in the darkness of a sheer decision to believe in God without light of any sort.” (Fr. M. Eugene Boylan)

Storytime

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Sr. Ann, the scheduled speaker for last night’s Witnesses to Hope, got stranded in New York due to a snowstorm, so Sr. Dorcee and Sr. Sarah teamed up to read out loud some of their favorite stories.  Get yourself a cup of tea, snuggle up, and let yourself be read to.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and hopefully you’ll be inspired.  Just click below.

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Seeing ourselves through the eyes of God

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Good to read again . . .

Sr. Dorcee, beloved's avatarWitnesses to Hope

Magnificat has added a monthly feature written by Heather King (Parched) commenting on a particular feast of the month.  I thought I would share an excerpt from her piece on the Presentation:

To present our experiences at the temple is to sacramentalize them.  To present our experiences is to recognize that all experience, from the smallest to the largest, has a supernatural dimension.  We offer our experiences on the altar of the fact that we are loved just as we are, and that everything that happens to us is an opportunity to draw closer to Christ.  We present ourselves at the temple because our lives, our work, our sacrifices are not ourown.

Before we present ourselves at the temple, we see ourselves through the eyes of the world.  After we present ourselves at the temple, we see ourselves through the eyes of God.

Outside of the temple, for…

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He gave me a cowboy

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A guest post today: (“You need some smile today.”)

It can happen so fast, the forgetting. I forget how to laugh, how to play. I forget who I truly am. I wake up not even needing the to do list I left on the counter the night before. It is etched in my mind and weighs on me like a mountain. There is so much that needs to be done. I simply cannot remember what is important anymore. The urgent has taken over the important. I blurt out questions to my husband as fast as they come into my mind. I begin to cry. I need help with this business thing I am trying to do.

Trying. To. Do.

I put in a load of laundry, make a few phone calls, and end up back in the kitchen thinking about that endless list when my phone chirps from my back pocket. It is a text from my husband. “You need some smile today. I’m going to saddle up Sam for you.” I didn’t even hear him leave the house. Glancing out the window, I can see him down at the barn tightening the girth around Sam’s fuzzy middle. A smile edges in slightly around my worried mouth. I exhale that breath I have been holding in all day.

Read the rest here.

ln the middle of the tension

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“Every Christian life stands in the middle of that tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ which characterizes the present moment in the divine plan.  It stands between the wonders of the past and the glorious final consummation.  It is linked to the first by faith and to the second by hope.” (Mariano Magrassi)

I think statements like this one bring hope because we often feel like we are living in that “tension” and can wonder what is wrong with us.  So we should not be surprised if we find ourselves in that space, but live fully surrendered in the present moment of God’s divine plan.

The answer to many prayers

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I was doing some study on Psalm 5 this morning and came across this comment by Amy Carmichael on verse 3:

“’And will look up’, will keep watch, like Habakkuk on his watch-tower.  Have you ever found that your Father has answered a forgotten prayer?  I have, and I always feel so ashamed; it is so rude to forget.  A ‘Prayer-and-Answer Notebook’ helps one to remember.  It is evidence, which even the devil cannot dispute, of traffic with Heaven.  It kindles love; ‘I love the Lord because He hath heard’ (Ps 116.1).  How often we have had cause to say that.  My first note-book turned up among some old papers lately.  To read the notes was like finding sprays of verbena between the leaves of a book; you know how astonishingly fragrant they can be.  There was one little sentence that belonged to a rainy Sunday morning when I was, I suppose, about ten, so that leaf was about sixty years old, but it might have been only just picked, for as I read the words I remembered every detail of that prayer and that answer.

“If any of you keep such a book do not forget that the answer to many prayers is ‘Wait’, or sometimes, ‘No, not that, but something else, which, when you see Me, you will know was a far better thing.’”