“Only after the Last Judgment will Mary get any rest; from now until then, she is much too busy with her children.” (St. John Vianney)
Friday: from the archives
A good goal for Lent–a realizable one–could be to “Come away for awhile” with the Lord. The space of time might be only 3 minutes. Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley and 17 others, used to throw her apron up over her head in the middle of the kitchen as a sign to her children that she was praying. Remember that children pattern themselves on what they see their parents do. (Actions speak louder than words . . .) I read this post from Ann Voskamp this morning and thought it was not only a brilliant idea for children, but also for us who are called to be like a little child: “How to make and take a peace retreat”. Praying that you find a corner or a chair and three minutes today to come away with your Beloved.
Through the fire
“How very much we do not want to be poor”
Well worth pondering from Heather King:
My friend Tensie runs a free clinic for farm workers on the central coast of California. She once told me of a young Hispanic woman named Claudia who was dying of cancer; whose heart was broken at the thought of leaving her two-year-old daughter; whose patient endurance, love, and lack of self-pity were exceptional.
“In our culture,” Tensie observed, “we view suffering as an insult, a humiliation. The people I see at the clinic suffer terribly, but they don’t view it as an insult. They see it as inevitable, as natural almost. In a way, to follow Christ is to examine our relationship to suffering.”
Ash Wednesday marks the season in which we especially ponder our relationship to suffering. Praying, fasting, and giving alms are not arcane holdovers from a time when people more inured to suffering than we are found such practices easy. Fasting has always been hard. Fasting is a reflection of the fact that the more desperate we are, the more open we are to change. Fasting demands that the more keenly aware we are of our empty hands and our empty stomachs, the more likely we are to realize we need help. Fasting helps us to remember that we are all poor, and how very much we do not want to be poor.
I’ll do anything to keep from feeling “poor” myself, and as Lent approached last year, I thought: Those people who say fasting is just an ego-based endurance test are right. This year I’m going to fast in a way that effects some real good. I’m going to fast from criticizing people . . .
Ash Wednesday dawned, I waited to be transformed, and within an hour I was mentally nitpicking, criticizing, and judging any number of people. A few days later I badmouthed someone out loud, the day after that I nakedly passed on a bit of juicy gossip, and from there the whole enterprise rapidly went downhill. Nice try, but unh-unh. Prayer without fasting is a gesture. Mercy without fasting is a gesture. Fasting is not a gesture. Fasting is a consent to be consumed.
To be consume by the fire of our own sin leaves cold, dead ashes. To be consumed by the fire of Christ’s love is to have our delusions about ourselves consumed and to have our true selves left intact, like the burning-bush love that Claudia, who died at twenty-four, left behind for her daughter.
All through Lent a slow, underground fire burns, to burst into flame with the glory of the Resurrection on Easter morning. Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And oh, what hangs in the balance during that interval between the day of our births and the day of our deaths, when for a cosmic instant we, too–beggars all–are called to burst into flame.
(Reprinted with permission)
Mary words
“Mary is the one creature who unconditionally accepted her creatureliness with all its limitations and weaknesses, with the trust that the Lord, who has seen the humility of His servant, would accomplish great things in her soul.” (Alice von Hildebrand)
Friday: from the archives.
A painting or a song can be so powerful. The picture below can be found on the cover of the first volume of Fire of Mercy by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, a Trappist monk. I have been meditating on it this Lent. I know I have posted about this picture before, but can’t help sharing it with you again.
This 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…
View original post 210 more words
“Where are you?”
Last week we were talking about Lent at the dinner table, and one of the Sisters shared about how she was suddenly struck this year about how Lent is really primarily all about relationship, our relationship with God. That’s the point of the season: to restore us and strengthen us in our relationship with Him. It’s about a Person.
That reminded me of this article that I wrote that I shared with you last year. I think it’s worth a re-read. (At least, I’m going to re-read it. ;-))
“So . . . what are you giving up for Lent?” The best all-time answer I’ve ever heard to that question comes from Fr. John Peter Cameron, editor of Magnificat: “Here’s what to give up for Lent: the doubt that goes, ‘I can never get closer to God because I’m too sinful, too flawed, too weak.’” Lent really is not about giving up, but about receiving. Fr. John goes on to say: “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. . . .”
This approach requires a major change of attitude on most of our parts. We are so geared up for what we should do for God, when what is uppermost in the Lord’s mind is his desire to draw near to us, to give himself to us. If what we decide to give up would, in fact, encourage greater friendship with him, that would be one thing, but for many of us, we fall too readily into the following two categories. Either we succeed in doing what we’ve set out to do and just grow stronger in our pride and self-sufficiency, and in a real sense, further from God. Or we fail and grow less confident in God’s mercy. “How could I expect him to show me mercy after I fail to do one simple thing like giving up chocolate for Lent? I mean, how hard is that?”
Of course, I’m not saying that self-discipline isn’t important or that chocolate in someone’s life may not indeed be a stumbling block in his relationship with God, but for so many of us, the main obstacle we face is our lack of confidence in God’s goodness and his love for us. We hide from him, as Adam & Eve did after they sinned. We think that we can’t come to him unless we’ve got everything together. But notice God’s first words to them after their fall. They were not: “What have you done?!” but “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9) After listening to the serpent, Adam and Eve doubted his goodness rather than placing their trust in his unbounded mercy. Otherwise, they would have run to him like the prodigal son to his father. His first concern was the restoration of relationship with them.
St. Thérèse encourages us along these lines of trust: “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.” (emphasis added)
Again, I am not minimizing the seriousness of sin. What I am saying is that the first step, and the most important one, is dealing with mistrust in the goodness of God toward us.
So this Lent, you might reconsider what you should give up. Perhaps it should be mistrust or doubt of the Lord’s goodness towards you. Look at the obstacles in the way you think about your relationship with Him. Listen to the Father calling out to you: “Where are you?” If you’re hiding because of lack of confidence in His goodness, try just taking one small step toward Him. Come out from behind the bushes of doubt. Put aside the sin of mistrust and you might be surprised to see Him running toward you with arms wide open.
When you pass through the waters
Lenten Grace – Great Gaps
Hope to the hopeless . . .
Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.
They should remain open.
Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who also was and is his God.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Circular Letters in the Church Struggle”
No greater gap was torn
than when Christ was separated from the Father,
forsaken,
choosing suffering for his brothers and sisters
by paying with his life a ransom we could never satisfy,
so dead broke are we
and captive to our sin.
Only the Word can fill
what remains open and gaping,
until we accept the comfort of his grace
freely given.
Grace great enough
to fill every hole
bridge every gap
bring hope to the hopeless
and restore us wholly to our Father
who was and is our God.
Thy loving heart
Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what Thou art.
I am finding out the greatness
Of thy loving heart.
Thou hast bid me gaze upon Thee,
And Thy beauty fills my soul,
For by Thy transforming power,
Thou hast made me whole.
O, how great Thy loving kindness,
Vaster, broader than the sea!
O, how marvelous Thy goodness,
Lavished all on me!
Yes, I rest in Thee, Beloved,
Know what wealth of grace is Thine,
Know Thy certainty of promise,
And have made it mine.
Simply trusting Thee, Lord Jesus,
I behold Thee as Thou art.
And Thy love, so pure, so changeless,
Satisfies my heart.
Satisfies its deepest longings,
Meets, supplies its ev’ry need,
Compasses me round with blessings,
Thine is love indeed!
Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what Thou art.
I am finding out the greatness
Of Thy loving heart.
Witnesses to Hope 