Lessons from Our Lord’s Agony

Painting by Giovanni Bellini

From Words of Encouragement, 1934

Notes of Instructions delivered by Rev. Daniel Considine, S.J.

To some of us will come at times some taste of that horrible perplexity Our Lord had in the Garden of Olives. At times it will seem almost impossible to do what we know God wants us to do.

There was a moment when Our Lord seemed to waver and balance as to whether He would go on with His Passion. It must cost us something, if we mean to do something memorable for God. That is the time of the greatest anguish of mind, when we are balancing the question. Thereafter came that complete calm which Our Lord never lost during His Passion, save in that moment of His dereliction on the Cross.

The Faults and Shortcomings of Others that Threaten to Rob Our Peace

This is from the small, but excellent book Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart by Father Jacques Phillipe. Our priest made this book available to all of us a few years ago and I am very grateful as it is an excellent meditation on how important peace of heart is in the spiritual life. It is full of practical advice on how to avoid the pitfalls and work toward keeping that most necessary quality of peace in our hearts!

From Father Philippe:

I stated that disquietude, in the face of some evil that threatens or overcomes our own person or those who are dear to us, is the most frequent reason why we lose our interior peace.

And the response: confident abandonment into the Hands of God, Who delivers us from all evil, or Who, if He allows it, gives us the strength to endure it and makes it turn to our advantage.

Positive Happiness – Achieving Peace of Heart

A little heavier read today…but excellent!

Painting by Edmund Blair Leighton

by Father Narciso Irala, S.J.

You can have a happiness and joy which is not external and vain but interior, true and well-founded, one which fills your heart with satisfaction.

This happiness has four aspects and comes to us through many channels:

Aesthetic pleasure by which we receive within us the beauty of the external world through conscious sensations, when we contemplate the beauties of nature or of the arts, and especially when we do this in the light and warmth of an ideal.

The Royal Way of Love

From Searching for and Maintaining Peace, Fr. Jacques Philippe

All things considered, this manner of going forward, based on peace, liberty, confident abandonment to God, quiet acceptance of our shortcomings and even of our failures, why is this the way to counsel? Why is it more correct than seeking the will of God, which is done with preoccupation, scruples and a tense and restless desire for perfection?

Because the only true perfection is that of love and, in the first way of proceeding, there is more true love of God than in the second. Saint Faustina said: “When I do not know what to do, I question love, for love is the best counselor!”

Availability/Time – Spiritual Tidbits

“A Family Grouping” by James Hayllar

From Interior Freedom by Fr. Jacques Philippe

Availability to Other People

Availability is fundamental in our relations with others. In every encounter with someone else, however long or short, we should make him feel we’re one hundred percent there for him at that moment, with nothing else to do except be with him and do whatever needs doing for him. Good manners, yes, but also real, heartfelt availability.

What Should We Do When We Have Sinned?

from Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe

From all that we have just said, there flows a rule of conduct that is very important to keep in mind when we should happen to commit a fault. We certainly must feel sorry for having sinned, ask God for pardon, humbly beg Him to accord us the grace not to offend Him again in this way, and resolve to go to confession at an opportune moment.

Without making ourselves sad or discouraged, we should recover our peace as quickly as possible thanks to graces from on high, and resume our normal spiritual life as if nothing had happened. The more quickly we recover our peace, the better it will be! We make much more progress in this way than by becoming irritated with ourselves!

A very important, concrete example is the following: When we commit some fault or other, under the assault of a trial that seizes us, we are often tempted to grow slack in our prayer life, to not spend, for example, our usual time in silent meditation. And we manage to find good justification for this: “How can I who have just fallen into sin, who have offended the Lord, how can I present myself before Him in this state?”

And we need sometimes several days before we can resume our normal habits of prayer. But this is a grave error; this is nothing but false humility inspired by the devil. We must above all not change our habits of prayer.

Quite the contrary. Where will we find healing for our faults if not close to Jesus? Our sins are a very poor pretext for distancing ourselves from Him, because the more we sin, the more we have a right precisely to approach Him who says: The healthy are not in need of a doctor – the sick are…Indeed I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Matthew 9:12-13).

If we wait until we are saints to have a regular life of prayer, we could wait a long time. On the contrary, it is in accepting to appear before the Lord in our state of sin that we will receive healing and will be transformed, little by little, into saints.

There is an important illusion that must be exposed: we would like to present ourselves before the Lord only when we art presentable, well-groomed and content with ourselves! In effect, we would like to bypass the need for mercy. But what is the nature of this pseudo-sanctity to which we sometimes aspire unconsciously and which would result in our thinking that we no longer have need of God?

True sanctity is, on the contrary, to increasingly recognize how much we absolutely depend upon His mercy!

To conclude, let us cite a last passage from The Spiritual Combat that recaptures everything we have said and indicates to us the path we should take when we have committed some kind of fault. It is entitled, “What one must do when one receives a wound in spiritual battle!”

When you feel wounded, that is to say, when you feel that you have committed some fault, whether it be from pure weakness or with reflection and malice, do not distress yourself too much over that; do not allow yourself to become chagrined and irritated; but address yourself immediately to God and tell Him, with humble confidence: “It is now, oh, my God, that I can see what I am. For what can one expect from a weak and blind creature like me but wrongdoing and failure?” Stop yourself there and imagine a sharp pain because of your fault.

Then, without becoming troubled, turn all of your anger against the passions that dominate you, principally against those that were the cause of your sin.

Lord, you will say, I could have committed a much worse crime if by your infinite goodness you had not saved me.

Afterwards, render a thousand thanks to the Father of Mercies; love Him more than ever, seeing that, far from resenting the hurt you just caused Him, He still extends His hand to you, for fear that you will fall again into a similar mess.

Finally, full of confidence, tell Him: “Show me, oh, my God, that which you are; help a humiliated sinner to feel your divine mercy; forgive me all my offenses; do not permit me to separate or distance myself from You, however little; fortify me with Your grace, so that I may never offend You again.”

After that, don’t try to determine whether God has pardoned you or not. That would be to upset yourself uselessly. It is a waste of time. It stems from pride and the illusions of the devil who, by disquieting your spirit, seeks to harm and torment you.

Rather, abandon yourself to His divine mercy and continue your exercises with your usual tranquility as if you had hardly committed any fault. Even should you have offended God several times in a single day, never lose confidence in Him, practice what I tell you, the second, the third and the last time as the first….

This way of combating the devil is the one that he fears the most because he knows that it pleases God very much and it always throws him into a great confusion, seeing himself overcome by the very person he was able to conquer so easily in other encounters.

So, if a fault that you may unfortunately have committed causes you to be troubled and discouraged, the first thing that you should do is to try to recover your peace of soul and your confidence in God…

To finish this point, we would like to add a remark: It is true that it is dangerous to do wrong and we must do everything we can to avoid doing wrong. But let us recognize that, given the way we are made, it would be dangerous for us to do only good!

In effect, marked by original sin, we have a deeply rooted tendency toward pride that makes it difficult for us, and even impossible, to do good without appropriating a little of it for ourselves, without attributing it, at least in part, to our abilities, our merits or our sanctity! If the Lord did not permit us, from time to time, to do wrong, to acquire some imperfection, we would be in great danger!

We would quickly fall into presumptuousness and contempt of others. We would forget that everything comes freely from God.

And nothing precludes true love more than this pride. In order to protect us from this great evil, the Lord sometimes allows a lesser evil which consists in committing some kind of fault, and we should thank Him for that, because without this safety net we would be in great danger of being lost!

Thank God for those people in your life that He has given you. Make time for them. Life passes quickly and we need to show our loved ones that they are our priority. -Finer Femininity www.finerfem.com

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It’s In the Attitude….

Tags

catholic, peace

A little story…Hubby was filling up his truck one day, it was early and cold and he was off to work….a job that was hard and required much physical labor.

A priest (and friend) was at the gas station also. He said hello to my husband and then asked him how he was?

Vincent answered, “Fantastic!”

The dear priest said to him, “That’s nice. Why are you fantastic?”

Vincent’s answer “Well, because I am alive, I have my health, I have many blessings, it is a beautiful day and I am a Roman Catholic!”

The priest smiled, “Yes, if you look at it that way….”

We are in control of our own thoughts, reactions and attitudes, as Fr. Philippe points out in the following story….

A story from Interior Freedom by Fr. Jacques Philippe:

A witness for our times: Etty Hillesum

I want to cite briefly a  recent testimony to interior freedom, one both very different from and very close to St. Thérèse’s. It moved me deeply. It is the testimony of Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who died at Auschwitz in November 1943, and whose diary was published in 1981.

Her “story of a soul” unfolded in the Netherlands at a time when the Nazis’ persecution of Jews was intensifying.

When Etty began to write her journal, her moral life was far from edifying. She was emotionally vulnerable, had no fixed moral guidelines, and had had several lovers. She was, however, driven by a powerful craving for the truth about herself.

Thanks to a friend of hers, a psychologist and also a Jew, she discovered (without ever becoming explicitly Christian) some of the values that lie at the heart of Christianity: prayer, the presence of God within herself, and the evangelical invitation to abandon herself trustingly to Providence.

Before she was finally deported to Auschwitz, while a prisoner in a Dutch transit camp, she showed a faith in God, courage in suffering, and a devotion to neighbor that demonstrated the reality of her spirituality despite the dark areas in her life.

It is astonishing to read how this young woman devoted herself to living by the Gospel values she was discovering little by little. Just when all her exterior freedoms were being progressively taken away, she discovered within herself a happiness and interior freedom that no one could steal from her from then on.

There is a very significant passage in her spiritual experience:

This morning I cycled along the Station Quay enjoying the broad sweep of the sky at the edge of the city, breathing in the fresh, unrationed air. And everywhere signs barring Jews from the paths and the open country. But above the one narrow path still left to us stretches the sky, intact.

They can’t do anything to us, they really can’t. They can harass us, they can rob us of our material goods, of our freedom of movement, but we ourselves forfeit our greatest assets by our misguided compliance. By our feelings of being persecuted, humiliated, oppressed. By our own hatred. By our swagger, which hides our fear.

We may of course be sad and depressed by what has been done to us; that is only human and understandable. However, our greatest injury is one we inflict upon ourselves.

I find life beautiful, and I feel free. The sky within me is as wide as the one stretching above my head. I believe in God and I believe in man, and I say so without embarrassment.

Life is hard, but that is no bad thing. If one starts by taking one’s own importance seriously, the rest follows.

It is not morbid individualism to work on oneself. True peace will come only when every individual finds peace within himself; when we have all vanquished and transformed our hatred for our fellow human beings of whatever race—even into love one day, although perhaps that is asking too much.

It is, however, the only solution. I am a happy person and I hold life dear indeed, in this year of Our Lord 1942, the umpteenth year of the war.

Interior freedom: Freedom to believe, hope, and love

The life experiences of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and Etty Hillesum indicate the next point we need to consider. True freedom, the sovereign liberty of Christians, resides in the possibility of believing, hoping, and loving in all circumstances, thanks to the assistance of the Holy Spirit who “helps us in our weakness.”

Nobody can ever prevent us. “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, not angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

No circumstance in the world can ever prevent us from believing in God, from placing all our trust in Him, from loving Him with our whole heart, or from loving our neighbor.

Faith, hope, and charity are absolutely free, because if they are rooted in us deeply enough, they are able to draw strength from whatever opposes them!

If someone sought to prevent us from believing by persecuting us, we always would retain the option of forgiving our enemies and transforming the situation of oppression into one of greater love.

If someone tried to silence our faith by killing us, our deaths would be the best possible proclamation of our faith! Love, and only love, can overcome evil by good and draw good out of evil.

Growth in faith, hope, and love is the only pathway to freedom.

The mother is the real homemaker. It is in her hands, that the tender life is laid for its first impressions. In all its education and culture, she has the main part. Her spirit makes the home atmosphere. The law of God makes the father the head of the household, and devolves upon him as such—the responsibility for the up building of his house, the training of his children, the care of all the sacred interests of his family. -J.R. Miller

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How to Overcome Fear

Fr. Irala’s Achieving Peace of Heart has been one of our favorite books through the years. Here is an excerpt on practical ways to overcome fear….

From Achieving Peace of Heart by Fr. Narciso Irala

Fear is the emotion most difficult to control because often we do not know what we fear or why we are afraid, as in cases of anxiety, phobias, or groundless fears.

The motive is often unconscious or may be transferred from its real cause to some accompanying circumstance. Or we may be unconsciously repressing some natural reaction which might humiliate us, we think, if seen.

Instead, we give it expression in “symbolic” fears which we recognize as groundless, but which we do not know how to control.

In such cases a deeper exploration of the subconscious is indicated, an investigation of the abnormality and the circumstances which first accompanied it. Discovering these, we may more easily control a transferred fear.

If the fear is conscious, we may take the following steps to conquer it:

1.Before all else, act. Fear already tends to inhibit our activities. So we must not assist it by remaining inactive but, on the contrary, conquer it by acting.

A North Pole explorer owes his rescue to such a procedure. Lost on the endless ice, he could not find his camp. Instead of worrying about it, he began to heap up piles of snow and ice at regular intervals. These helped him to make calculations through which he eventually rediscovered his camp.

2.Make them concrete. We must illuminate those dark caverns. Answer these questions in writing and in detail: “Just what am I afraid of? And why?”When fear or anxiety is made concrete and viewed objectively, it is destroyed.

3.Reason about them. “What probabilities are there that this [the thing I fear] will really happen? And even if it does happen, will it really be as disastrous as I fear?”

4.Face up to them. “Even supposing that this happens, what then? So what? Are there not others who have gone through similar crises? Haven’t they gone on living and become happy? And even if I have to die, so what? Then can’t I begin to be happier in eternity?” When we imagine the worst possible natural evil that could happen to us and sincerely accept it and so find a human or divine solution for it, we shall be victorious over exaggerated fear.

5.Avoid the exciting factors, or rather the alarming ideas which these stimuli arouse in us. Distract your attention from them by means of concentrating it upon conscious sensations or by deliberately following out a favorite train of thought or, even better,-

6.Deliberately affirm contrary judgments, e.g., “There is no special danger. The probability that this will happen is very small. Even if it does happen, the disadvantage would be insignificant, or at least there would come with it several advantages which would far counterbalance it.”

7.Deliberately foster contrary feelings, e.g., of courage, or security. This is done by the same means by which fear betrayed us, i.e., by intense acts of courage, by vivid remembrances of peaceful moments or places, by actually saying something with a tone of courage or security in the voice.

8.Associate this reliving of past peaceful moments with the circumstances which had been producing anxiety in you. Imagine that you are in control of the situation and that you are speaking in a masterful tone of voice.

In a Brazilian seminary I met a stammerer who was afraid that he would be unable to go on to the priesthood because of this defect. Face to face with the Rector of the seminary he could not speak two consecutive words. The same thing would happen when with certain of his companions and in certain classes.

On the contrary he spoke well whenever he had learned something by memory. Hence it was the feeling of anxiety which was inhibiting his vocal muscles. He was afraid that the Rector would declare him unsuitable for the priesthood.

But I helped him to remove this fear by showing him that he could cure himself if he would implant the contrary feelings in his sub-conscious by the means indicated above. And so I had him link these feelings to the experience which had terrified him most.

I had him imagine and then actually say, “I am going to see Father Rector . . . I greet him . . . And all is serene. I am completely at peace and am master of the situation.”

At first he spoke the last phrase with the same descriptive tone as the first. But I had him repeat it after me with a tone of security. On doing it with all the courage and force of which he was capable, I felt that he was transformed.

Three days later the Rector came to thank me for the good done to his seminarians, and he particularly mentioned that the stammerer had been cured.

9.In cases of muscular constriction. By this I mean a latent state of insecurity or anxiety due to strong and prolonged tension in the intercostal muscles. This prevents the quiet easy expansion of the chest which is normal when we are secure or in good spirits.

Instead, we would then tend to assume a posture characteristic of timidity or depression. But, since there appear to be no mental or emotional causes of fear, we should try to loosen these muscles by adequate gymnastic exercises, a more correct posture, or massage.

10.Assume the opposite facial expression: not the wide open, staring eyes which are a sign of fear, but rather a look that is secure and, mild.

Keep the voice deep and firm; let it rely on the outgoing air current and not on forcing the throat muscles. Maintain a respiration that is deeper or slower. To do this, instead of concentrating on expanding the lungs, try to expand the nasal passages and keep them well opened.

The great St. Bernard wrote in his rule that whenever the monastic bell rang, the monks were to drop what they were doing and go to whatever they were being called to.

In our homes, our monastic bell is all the many things beckoning at us throughout the day…the diapers to be changed, the dishes that need doing, the laundry that needs to be done, etc.

We respond to these things right away, even though we many not want to, remembering that these duties are the very things that will make us holy.
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God Can Draw Good Even From our Faults

from Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe

We must not view our own faults too tragically because God is able to draw good from them.

Little Therese of the Child Jesus loved greatly this phrase of St. John of the Cross: “Love is able to profit from everything, the good as well as the bad that It finds in me, and to transform it into Itself.”
Our confidence in God must go at least that far: to believe that He is good enough to draw good from everything, including our faults and our infidelities.

When he cites the phrase of St. Paul, Everything works together for the good of those who love God, Saint Augustine adds: Etiam piccata – “even sins”!
Of course, we must struggle energetically against sin and correct our imperfections. God vomits the tepid, and nothing cools love quite like resigning oneself to mediocrity (this resignation is, by the way, a lack of confidence in God and his ability to sanctify us!)

When we have been the cause of some evil, we must also try to rectify it to the extent that this is possible. But we must not distress ourselves excessively regarding our faults because God, once we return to Him with a contrite heart, is able to cause good to spring forth, if only to make us to grow in humility and to teach us to have a little less confidence in our own strength and a little more in Him alone.

So great is the mercy of the Lord that He uses our faults to our advantage! Ruysbroek, a Flemish mystic of the Middle Ages, has these words: “The Lord, in His clemency, wanted to turn our sins against themselves and in our favor; He found a way to render them useful, to convert them in our hands into instruments of salvation. This should in no way diminish our fear of sinning, nor our pain at having sinned. Rather, our sins have become for us a source of humility.”

Let us add also that they can just as well become a source of tenderness and mercy toward others. I, who fall so easily, how can I permit myself to judge my brother? How can I not be merciful toward him, as the Lord has been towards me?

Accordingly, after committing a fault of whatever kind, rather than withdrawing into ourselves indefinitely in discouragement and dwelling on the memory, we must immediately return to God with confidence and even thank Him for the good that His mercy will be able to draw out of this fault!

We must know that one of the weapons that the devil uses most commonly to prevent souls from advancing toward God is precisely to try to make them lose their peace and discourage them by the sight of their faults.

It is necessary that we know how to distinguish true repentance and a true desire to correct our faults, which is always gentle, peaceful, trustful, from a false repentance, from that remorse that troubles, discourages and paralyzes.

Not all of the reproaches that come to our conscience are inspired by the Holy Spirit! Some of them come from our pride or the devil and we must learn to discern them.

Peace is an essential criterion in the discernment of spirits. The feelings that come from the Spirit of God can be very powerful and profound, nonetheless, they are always peaceful.

Let us listen again to Scupoli:
To preserve our hearts in perfect tranquility, it is still necessary to ignore some interior feelings of remorse which seem to come from God because they are reproaches that our conscience makes to us regarding true faults, but which come, in effect, from the evil spirit as can be judged by what ensues.

If the twinges of conscience serve to make us more humble, if they render us more fervent in the practice of good works, if they do not diminish the trust that one must have in divine mercy, we must accept them with thanksgiving, as favors from heaven.

But if they trouble us, if they dishearten us, if they render us lazy, timid, slow to perform our duties, we must believe that these are the suggestions of the enemy and do things in a normal way, not deigning to listen to them.

Let us understand this: For the person of goodwill, that which is serious in sin is not so much the fault in itself as the despondency into which it places him.

He who falls but immediately gets up has not lost much. He has rather gained in humility and in the experience of mercy.

He who remains sad and defeated loses much more. The sign of spiritual progress is not so much never falling as it is being able to lift oneself up quickly after one falls.

TO AN ALTAR BOY

To be Christ’s page at the altar,
To serve Him freely there.
Where even the Angels falter,
Bowed low in reverent prayer.

To touch the throne most holy,
To hand the gifts for the feast,
To see Him meekly, lowly,
Descend at the word of the priest.

To hear man’s poor petition,
To sound the silver bell,
When He in sweet submission,
Comes down with us to dwell.

No grander mission surely
Could Saints or men enjoy;
No heart should love more purely,
Than yours my altar boy.

God bless you, lad, forever,
And keep you in His care,
And Guard you that you never
Belie the robes you wear.

For white bespeaks untainted
A heart both tried and true;
And red tolls love the sainted
The holy martyrs knew.

Throughout life, then, endeavor
God’s graces to employ;
And be in heart forever
A holy altar boy.

by St. John Berchmans,
Patron Saint of Altar Boys

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The Lord is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want

Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart
One of the most beautiful expressions in the Bible of confidence and abandonment into the Hands of God is Psalm 23:

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

In verdant pastures He gives me repose.

Beside restful waters He leads me;

He refreshes my soul.

He guides me in right paths,

For His name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of death,

I fear no evil; for You are at my side

With Your rod and Your staff

That give me courage.

You spread a table before me

In the sight of my foes;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup overflows.

Only goodness and kindness follow me,

All the days of my life

And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD

Forever and ever!

We would like to come back for a few moments to this affirmation of the Bible, which is ultimately surprising, that God leaves us wanting for nothing.

This will serve to unmask a temptation, sometimes subtle, which is very common in the Christian life, one into which many fall and which greatly impedes spiritual progress.

It concerns precisely the temptation to believe that, in this situation which is ours (personal, family, etc.), we lack something essential and that because of this, our progress, and the possibility of blossoming spiritually, is denied us.

For example, I lack good health, therefore I am unable to pray as I believe it is indispensable to do. Or my immediate family prevents me from organizing my spiritual activities as I wish. Or, again, I don’t have the qualities, the strength, the virtue, the gifts that I believe necessary in order to accomplish something beautiful for God, according to the plan of the Christian life.

I am not satisfied with my life, with my person, with my circumstances and I live constantly with the feeling that as long as things are such, it will be impossible for me to live truly and intensely. I feel underprivileged compared to others and I carry in me the constant nostalgia of another life, more privileged, where, finally, I could do things that are worthwhile.

I have the feeling, according to Rimbaud’s expression, that “the real life is elsewhere,” elsewhere than in the life that is mine. And that the latter is not a real life, that it doesn’t offer me the conditions for real spiritual growth because of certain sufferances or limitations.

I am concentrated on the negatives in my situation, on that which I lack in order to be happy. This renders me unhappy, envious and discouraged and I am unable to go forward. The real life is elsewhere, I tell myself, and I simply forget to live.

Often times it would take so little for everything to be different and for me to progress with giant steps: a different outlook, a view of my situation which is one of confidence and hope (based on the certitude that I will lack nothing.) And then doors would open to me of  unhoped-for possibilities for spiritual growth.

We often live with this illusion. With the impression that all would go better, we would like things around us to change, that the circumstances would change. But this is often an error. It is not the exterior circumstances that must change; it is above all our hearts that must change.

They must be purified of their withdrawal into themselves, of their sadness, of their lack of hope: Happy are the pure in heart; they shall see God (Matthew 5:8). Happy are those whose hearts are purified by faith and hope, who bring to their lives a view animated by the certitude that, beyond appearances to the contrary, God is present, providing for their essential needs and that they lack nothing.

If they have that faith, they will indeed see God: they will experience that presence of God which will accompany them and guide them. They will see that many of the circumstances that they thought negative and damaging to their spiritual life are, in fact, in God’s pedagogy, powerful means for helping them to progress and grow.

St. John of the Cross says that “it is very often the case that just when the soul believes itself lost that it gains and profits most.” This is very true.

Our minds are sometimes so clouded over by that which is not going well, by that which (according to our own particular criteria!) should be different in our situations, that we forget the positive.

Moreover, we are unable to profit from any aspect of our situations, even the aspects that only appear to be negative, in order for us to draw closer to God, to grow in faith, love and humility.

That which we lack is, above all, the conviction that “the love of God turns to profit all that He finds in me, the good as well as the bad” (St. Therese of the Child Jesus, inspired by St. John of the Cross). However many imperfections we may have, rather than lament them and try to rid ourselves of them at any price, they could be splendid opportunities to make progress – in humility as well as in confidence in God and His mercy-and thus in saintliness.

The fundamental problem is that we employ too much of our own criteria as to what is and what is not good and we don’t have enough confidence in the Wisdom and Power of God.

We don’t believe that He is capable of utilizing everything for our good and that never, under any circumstance, would He leave us lacking in the essentials – that is to say, lacking anything that would permit us to love more.

Because, to grow or to enrich one’s spiritual life is to learn to love. Many of the circumstances that I consider damaging could, in fact, be for me, if I had more faith, precious opportunities to love more: to be more patient, more humble, more gentle, more merciful and to abandon myself more into the Hands of God.

Let us then be convinced of this and it will be for us a source of immense strength: God may allow me to occasionally lack money, health, abilities and virtues, but He will never leave me in want of Himself, of His assistance and His mercy or of anything that would allow me to grow unceasingly ever closer to him, to love Him, to love Him more intensely, to better love my neighbor and to achieve holiness.

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“The study of Religion should be a regular part of the curriculum and taught just as thoroughly as Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and other subjects.

The child gains a deep and reverent understanding of the principles of his faith, and practicing his religion becomes second nature to him.

Parents who believe that Sunday School instruction is adequate for a religious education would protest vigorously if their child were instructed only one hour each week in geography, history or some other subject of considerably less importance in the long view.” -Fr. George Kelly, Catholic Family Handbook https://amzn.to/2ovgHpU (afflink)

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