December 2011
42 posts
8 tags
“Dear Lord, the Great Healer, I kneel before You, since every perfect gift must...”
– Prayer of the Missionaries of Charity which is said before leaving for apostolate
6 tags
A challenge for you today:
Spend at least 15 minutes reading and meditating upon the Psalms. Scripture is God’s Word to us and for us. Let it speak to your heart.
6 tags
5 tags
5 tags
2 tags
4 tags
7 tags
5 tags
5 tags
8 tags
Are you lukewarm?
“There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude. Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything. Those who do not love, hate. In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate. This is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable. Tepidity, in which the soul is neither “hot or cold” -neither frankly loves...
7 tags
6 tags
This... this is legit. more on BOOKS!
“Books can speak to us like God, like men or like the noise of the city we live in. They speak to us like God when they bring us light and peace and fill us with silence. They speak to us like God when we desire never to leave them. They speak to us like men when we desire to hear them again. They speak to us like the noise of the city when they hold us captive by a weariness that tells us...
6 tags
Thomas Merton speaks on one of my favorite...
“Reading gives God more glory when we get more out of it, when it is a more deeply vital act not only of our intelligence but of our whole personality, absorbed and refreshed in thought, meditation, prayer, or even in the contemplation of God.”
3 tags
To reach a goal
sacrifice is necessary.
7 tags
6 tags
11 tags
“God respects our freedom and the integrity of human nature. He allows us to grow...”
– A Carthusian
It's never too late to go back home.
6 tags
8 tags
I will never be able to comprehend how true these...
He must learn never to focus on himself but to be taken up in the movement of a divine love which has neither beginning nor end, neither goal nor source, neither limit nor shape. He must surrender to the breath of the Spirit, without knowing whence he comes nor whither he goes.
These few reflections give some idea of the increasingly disconcerting discoveries that await us when we allow ourselves...
8 tags
6 tags
“Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything...”
– St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
7 tags
“Here is acquired that eye,
by whose serene gaze the Spouse
is wounded with...”
– Statutes of the Carthusian Order 1.6.16
5 tags
The Monastic Church
“The monastic Church is the Church of the wilderness, the woman who has fled into the desert from the dragon that seeks to devour the infant Word.
She is the Church who, by her silence, nourishes and protects the seed of the Gospel that is sown by the Apostles in the hearts of the faithful.
She is the Church who, by her prayer, gains strength for the Apostles themselves, so often harassed...
8 tags
“What one finds in the [Carthusian] Charterhouse, then, is not a collection of...”
– Thomas Merton
7 tags
5 tags
“The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by...”
– Thomas Merton
5 tags
When something gets so hard you can't go on
When at every turn you are tempted to give up, when you begin think it’s not actually worth it anymore, when you start to rationalize and tell yourself that you can just do it later… remember who or what inspires you, and keep going.
don’t stop. don’t give up. don’t believe lies. know that it is worth it. and that you can do it.
you can.
7 tags
“Love is eternal, transcending time and space. Therefore, because it is a...”
– Michael Villanueva
8 tags
Take a minute to let this sink in. Please.
Interviewer: How can we find the mind of Christ?
Michael D. O’Brien: By seeking him earnestly and prayerfully, by letting go of our ideologies and our obsession with security and comfort, which all too often function as idols, consciously and subconsciously, that block grace and reject true vision. We must wake up—and part of this awakening will demand the self-honesty to see how far we have been indoctrinated by false concepts of man’s nature. Of particular concern to me is the way we in the West form our opinions and judgments about all things human and social, and how our perceptions of practically everything have been warped by materialism. We must understand that the sane and reasonable ground (where surely most of us want to be) can never be the precise mid-point on a horizontal line between two ideological or perceptual poles. Poles are always shifting. Cultural poles, with all their power to influence politics, are especially unreliable. And the poles in men's minds are more unstable than these. The true center is above. Right choices, right politics, healthy cultural life, will flow from that re-orientation to the hierarchical nature of the cosmos. May I say it again? — The true center is above.
5 tags
Suffering, Writing, and Jesus.
Interviewer: All yours novels contain experience of deep human suffering, but at the same time also contain messages of hope and love. Can you say something about that?
Michael D. O’Brien: Suffering puts us to a test. The most severe suffering tests everything within us. Then we choose. We choose either to turn inward to the darkness of despair, or we look up to the great wounded hands that reach down to embrace us. Mankind very much needs the living Jesus who longs for us to come to him, to open our hearts to him. He is love itself. But love never forces itself upon another. He invites.
5 tags
“Only love creates.”
– St. Maximilian Kolbe
3 tags
WatchI’m not exactly sure why, but I love this. Like, seriously… I do. :)
Especially towards the 2nd half… where Zimbardo is making absolutely no sense at all in his attempt to promote his book, “The Lucifer Effect”. The look on Colbert’s face while listening to his Zimbardo’s explanations -> priceless.
6 tags
“No man knows his own soul so well that he is invincible to the tactics of the...”
Sometimes the evil we encounter is so skillfully...
Father: Our adversary is subtle. He buries his arrows deep in men's hearts. So deep that they are almost invisible.
Elijah: What is the nature of these arrows?
Father: They strike where one's humanity is most weak.
7 tags
6 tags
“You breathed your fragrance on me;
I drew in breath and now I pant for you.
I...”
– St. Augustine
4 tags
It's hard
to find a balance of activity and contemplation. & even harder to maintain that balance.
6 tags
The Lord
gives us what we need, as we need it.
It’s the truth. Do you believe that?
3 tags
“Pray, hope and don’t worry…”
– Padre Pio 