Work, work, work!

These last few days of work before Christmas are, sometimes, utter agony. Everyone around me is wishing me a Merry Christmas, and I feel like a scrouge, because I have to spend 20 of the next 52 hours in the office getting a ton of work done. This then, is keeping me inline:

You have recieved God's call to a specific way: it is to be at all the crossroads of the world, while remaining all the while, and as you carry out your professional work, in God.
--Jose Maria Escriva, #748, The Forge

It's not Christmas yet. These next few days will be the intense, expectant, hard-working days of Advent. And when I arrive home, I'll rejoice. But first: to work.

Quoted

"The Cardinal has a particular bond with the virgin martyrs. They are a sterling example to him of how he is to love Christ and the Church, while, at the same time, they intercede powerfully for him, so that he may be a sign to the faithful of our Lord’s ceaseless and immeasurable love, ”to the end,” to the very outpouring of His life for us, on Calvary, His Sacrifice made ever present for us in the Holy Eucharist."

--His Excellency Raymond Cardinal Burke, in his homily at his Mass of Thanksgiving (HT).

Getting Me Through My Thursday

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season
we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.
So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men…”
--Galatians 6:2, 9-10 (via MM)

Quote of the Day

The more secular the place, the more powerful the manifestation of His presence becomes. When you seek God inside a church, you have a greater expectation of His response. But when you seek Him in what seem like unlikely places, His presence is all the more amazing. You begin to not just experience God's presence simply confined to a church, or in your 10 minutes of prayer time, but walking with you step-by-step, each street you cross, each smile you encounter, each tender word you hear, enveloping you with His spirit.

--Maria

Waiting

"All of us belong to a crossed species, even our Lady. The foremost handmaid of the Lord wanted some details, some explanation of God's doings. "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord." But also: "How shall this be done? I know not man." And the angel's reply was hardly something to answer the human question satisfactorily. "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee." But who is the Holy Spirit? "And the Holy to be born of you shall be called the Son of God." These are scarcely explanations that would have elicited a reply of "Oh, I see." No, she did not see."

--Mother Mary Francis, in Come Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting

The Annunciation (1898), by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Happy Feast of St. Theresa of Avila

To have courage for whatever comes in life -- everything lies in that.

--St. Theresa of Avila

Words to Live By

"I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it."

-- Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman
(via Pope Benedict XVI's homily at the Beatification Mass)

St. Thomas More + Meg

Today is the feast of one of my very favorite saints and martyrs: St. Thomas More. I wanted to post today this letter to his daughter Meg, with whom he had a remarkable relationship. Meg's husband, Will Roper, ended up writing the first biography of More. This letter was written while More was in Prison

Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God's grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this His Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God.

By the merits of his bitter passion joined to mine and far surpassing in merit for me all that I can suffer myself, his bounteous goodness shall release me from the pains of purgatory and shall increase my reward in heaven besides.

I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.

And finally, Margaret, I know this well: that without my fault he will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, with good hope commit myself wholly to him. And if he permits me to perish for my faults, then I shall serve as praise for his justice. But in good faith, Meg, I trust that his tender pity shall keep my poor soul safe and make me commend his mercy.


And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let you mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.

C. S. Lewis is the Man

Love my forgive all infirmities and love still inspite of them, but love cannot cease to will their removal. --The Four Loves

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. --The Four Loves

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. --The Four Loves

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. --Mere Christianity

And finally (though I don't know the source):
You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Quote of the Day: St. Faustina

Love is a mystery that transforms everything it touches into things beautiful and pleasing to God. The love of God makes a soul free. She is like a queen; she knows no slavish compulsion; she sets about everything with great freedom of soul, because the love which dwells in her incites her to action. Everything that surrounds her makes her know that only God himself is worthy of her love. A soul in love with God and immersed in Him approaches her duties with the same dispositions as she does Holy Communion and carries out the simplest tasks with great care, under the loving gaze of God. She is not troubled if, after some time, something turns out to be less successful. She remains calm, because at the time of the action she had done what was in her power. When it happens that the living presence of God, which she enjoys almost constantly, leaves her, she then tries to continue living in lively faith. Her soul understands that there are periods of rest and periods of battle. Through her will, she is always with God. Her soul, like a knight, is well trained in battle; from afar it sees where the foe is hiding and is ready for battle. She knows she is not alone--God is her strength.
--St. Faustina (Icon written by Marek Czarnecki)

PS: Happy Birthday, dear Edith! So glad to spend this day with you!

Fly

A writer once said that angels can fly because they don't take themselves too seriously. Maybe we could also fly a bit if we didn't think we were so important.

--Pope Benedict XVI, in this 2006 interview.

Quote

Never think that geographical distance can ever separate souls whom God has united by the ties of His love. The children of the world are separated one from another because their hearts are in different places; but the children of God, having their hearts where their treasure is, and sharing only one treasure--which is the same God--are consequently always united and joined together.
--St. Francis de Sales

One Last Christmas Post

I have a couple dear friends who have recently lost their chance at adopting a baby (the mother decided to keep it). As a result, I have been having the hardest time writing them their Christmas card (I am soooo late, I know).

I know they've taken comfort in the coming of Christ, and the joy of the season, but I cannot exactly write to them saying: HURRAH! It's Christmas! The BEST time of the year. Nor can I offer condolences--it is not as if they baby had died.

As I was sitting down to finally write this card, I kept thinking about O Henry's beautiful short story The Gift of the Magi. It tells of Della and Jim, a newly married couple who are so poor that they sell their own most treasured possessions to buy something beautiful for the other. Della cuts off all her hair so that she can purchase a little chain for Jim's pocket watch. And Jim sells his pocket watch to buy tortoise shell combs for Della's hair.

O. Henry finishes the story saying this:

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

I'll be honest--I am not sure I can draw out exact parallels between my friend's loss, and Jim and Della's. And yet, I feel they share something in common. Jim and Della give all that they have and all that they are to each other--and therefore are "foolish children" and considered "unwise". But, in the logic and language of love (God's specifically, and ours, imperfectly) they are the wisest of all men.

So too my friends work and sacrifice and love, trying to build a family together. They were denied this chance (and have been before), and yet they continue to turn to each other and to Christ--ever devoted, ever foolish. They, too, are the magi.

Read the whole story here. Illustration found here.

A Child in Winter, by Caryll Houselander

Only LOVE is incarnate. Goodness is natural because the Divine Child, who submitted himself to the law of his Father's love, has made it so. Christ subjected himself to the law of the seed in the earth, to the law of rest and growth. he was "one of the children of the year," growing through rest, secret in his mother's womb, receiving the warmth of the sun through her, living the life of dependence, helplessness, littleness, darkness, and silence which, by a mystery of the Eternal Law, is the life of natural growth.

Hi life in the womb was measured, like those of all the other children of the year, by a certain destined number of cycles of darkness and light, by the rising and setting of the sun so many times, by the rise and ebb of so many tides, by a certain counted number of beats of his mother's heart.

Who can think of the mystery of the snowflake, its loveliness, both secret and manifest, its gentleness, the moving lightness of its touch, the humility of its coming, and not think of the birth of the Infant Christ?

--From A Child in Winter: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with Caryll Houselander

Do you ladies know of the great 20th century English mystic Caryll Houselander? You should. Her work is stunning, powerful, and I'd gladly say, some of the most important spiritual writing of the 20th century (yet few people know her). My mother always had a long line of her books, but I only recently cracked open A Child in Winter, a beautifully edited collection of meditations for Advent, Christmas, and the feasts within the octave of Christmas. Accessible yet profound, modern and timeless, I highly recommend her writings. (The meditation above was taken from her Christmas Morning meditation. Below is her meditation for todays feast of the Holy Innocents, one of my favorite of the year.)

Baptized in blood, those little children were among the first comers to heaven. Fittingly they, with their tinyKing, are the founders of the Kingdom of Children. We celebrate their feast with joy; it is the most lyrical in the year. They reach down their small hands of to comfort every father or mother bereaver of a child. They are the first who have proved that the Passion of Christ can be lived in a tiny span by little ones...The tears that dried on their faces two thousand years ago in Jerusalem had the redeeming power of Christ's tears today. Each one of those infants is the first Christ Child of the Incarnation, the first of the first generation to call the Mother of God blessed.

St. John of the Cross

St. John of the Cross is very perplexing to me. Very perplexing. But, today is his feast, and, since we do often speak of love, it seems like as good a time as any to post one of his poems, so that he may perplex (and inspire) us all:

Full of hope I climbed the day
while hunting the game of love,
and soared so high, high above
that I at last caught my prey.

In order to seize the game
-- the divine love in the sky --
I had to fly so high, high
I floated unseen and became
lost in that dangerous day;
and so my flight fell short of
height -- yet so high was my love
that I at last caught my prey.

Dazzled and stunned by light
as I rose nearer the sun,
my greatest conquest was won
in the very black of night.
Yet since love opened my way
I leapt dark, blindly above
and was so high, near my love,
that at last I caught my prey.

In this most exalted quest
the higher I began to soar
the lower I felt -- more sore
and broken and depressed.
I said: None can seize the prey!
and groveled so low, so low
that high, higher did I go,
and at last I caught my prey.

By strange reckoning I saw
a thousand flights in one flight;
for hope of heavenly light
is achieved by hoping now.
I hoped only for this way
and was right to wait for love,
and climbed so high, high above
that at last I caught my prey.

(Image Source)

Sex and Despair, by Josef Pieper

Wow. Read this. From Josef Pieper: An Anthology



*Update: This is the first time I've used GoogleBooks to embed a e-book into a blog post, so I notice that you can scroll through the entire anthology, which is amazing. But I meant simply to draw your attention to this brief essay "Sex and Despair." Also, I don't condone the use of e-books. Support Ignatius Press. Buy the book!

Augustine cont'd

I wanted to add a little note about my love for St. Augustine, which I developed as a graduate student. I took a class on the saint taught by an absolutely wonderful Augustinian priest and scholar who passed away long before his time last year. I know he left me and a dear friend of mine from the program with a deep thirst for more Augustine in the future.

A few things that have stayed with me are the fact that Fr. M said that Augustine believed that our family, extended family, and friends are the souls that God providentially puts in our lives so that we might help them get to heaven. It's an interesting way to look at family who we love (although don't always like). God has chosen them for us, even if we wouldn't choose them ourselves. I wish I had the citation of the work, but it was just a passing comment that stayed with me.

The other thing that I want to post is his famous acclamation of the Lord in Book X of The Confessions.

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and new,

late have I loved you!

Lo, you were within,

but I outside, seeking there for you,

and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong,

I, misshapen.

You were with me, but I was not with you.

They held me back far from you,

those things which would have no being

were they not in you.

You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;

you flared, blazed, banished my blindness

you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you;

I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst

you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

What a stunning masterpiece of a song of praise to the Lord who seeks each of our hearts with such fervor. Augustine reminds me that my deepest longings to be loved by someone here are already filled beyond measure by the One who seeks me endlessly. Late have I loved you...

The Fig Tree

Oh my, I loved today's readings for the Feast of St. Bartholomew (Who knew, Bartholomew and Nathanael are one in the same...)

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”

But Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.”

Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?”

Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”

Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

The sermon I heard today spoke of the cynicism of the world, which Nathanael embodies when he says "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"--a cynicism of failed hopes, of lost causes, and old sorrows. Philip's response is perfect: "Come and see." (Oh, I love Philip--that's the only thing you can say to a cynic. No logic will break him.)

In re-reading the passage I am struck by the surge of emotion with which Nathanael responds to Christ. Jesus simply says "I saw you under the fig tree," and this makes Nathanael believe. I wonder what Nathanael was doing under the fig tree. Was he despairing? Was he empty? Was he bargaining with God? Was he like Augustine in the garden, begging for an act of grace? Or was he just eating his lunch, resting, praying?

It is one of those details (like Jesus drawing in the dust before the adulterous woman) that makes the Gospel so real and present. Open question though it may be, it reminds me that God is with us in every moment, no matter how small.

(Fig and Knife, by Julian Merrow-Smith.)

The Fairy Tale Ending

"I never knew of any interference on the part of the wicked fairy that did not turn out a good thing in the end. What a good thing, for instance, it was that one princess should sleep for a hundred years! Was she not saved from all the plague of young men who were not worthy of her? And did she not come awake exactly at the right moment when the right prince kissed her? For my part, I cannot help wishing a good many girls would sleep till just the same fate overtook them. It would be happier for them, and more agreeable to their friends." --George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind

Sermon on Mary Magdalene

In our continued celebration of the Feast of St. Mary Magdalane (July 22nd), I want to share with you the full Sermon of Pope St. Gregory the Great, read ont eh feast of St. Mary Magdalene, in the Divine Office:

When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and did not find the Lord’s body, she thought it had been taken away and so informed the disciples. After they came and saw the tomb, they too believed what Mary had told them. The text then says: The disciples went back home, and it adds: but Mary wept and remained standing outside the tomb.

We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.

At first she sought but did not find, but when she persevered it happened that she found what she was looking for. When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires. Anyone who succeeds in attaining the truth has burned with such a great love. As David says: My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? And so also in the Song of Songs the Church says: I was wounded by love; and again: My soul is melted with love.

Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.

Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognised when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognise me as I recognise you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself. And so Mary, once addressed by name, recognises who is speaking. She immediately calls him rabboni, that is to say, teacher, because the one whom she sought outwardly was the one who inwardly taught her to keep on searching.

(Image Source)