Sadness, Light and Peace, Quadrupani

My favorite chapter from one of my favorite books!

Light and Peace: Instructions for Devout Souls to Dispel Their Doubts

It is a dangerous error to seek recollection in sadness: it is the spirit of God that produces recollection; sadness is the work of the spirit of darkness.

Do not forget the rule given by Saint Francis de Sales for the discernment of spirits: any thought that troubles and disquiets us cannot come from the God of peace, who makes his dwelling-place only in peaceful souls.

“Yes, my daughter, I now tell you in writing what I before said to you in person, always be as happy as you can in well-doing, for it gives a double value to good works to be well done and to be done cheerfully. And when I say, rejoice in well-doing, I do not mean that if you happen to commit some fault you should on that account abandon yourself to sadness.

For God’s sake, no; for that would be to add defect to defect. But I mean that you should persevere in the wish to do well, that you return to it the moment you realize you have deviated from it, and that by means of this fidelity you live happily in the Lord…. May God be ever in our heart, my daughter…. Live joyfully and be generous, for this is the will of God, whom we love and to whose service we are consecrated.”—Saint Francis de Sales.

It is wrong to deny one’s self all diversion. The mind becomes fatigued and depressed by remaining always concentrated in itself and thus more easily falls a prey to sadness. Saint Thomas says explicitly that one may incur sin by refusing all innocent amusement. Every excess, no matter what its  nature, is contrary to order and consequently to virtue.

Recreations and amusements are to the life of the soul what seasoning is to our corporal food. Food that is too highly seasoned quickly becomes injurious and sometimes fatal in its effects; that which is not seasoned at all soon becomes unendurable because of its insipidity and unpalatableness.

As to the amount of diversion it is right to take, no absolute measure can be given: the rule is that each person should have as much as is necessary for him. This quantity varies according to the bent of the mind, the nature of the habitual occupations, and the greater or less predisposition to sadness one observes in his disposition.

When you find your heart growing sad, divert yourself without a moment’s delay; make a visit, enter into conversation with those around you, read some amusing book, take a walk, sing, do something, it matters not what, provided you close the door of your heart against this terrible enemy. As the sound of a trumpet gives the signal for a combat, so sad thoughts apprise the devil that a favorable moment has come for him to attack us.

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October – Month of the Holy Rosary…

The Ascension 

“Men of Galilee, why stand here looking heavenwards?“

The apostles stood on Olivet, eyes wide open, their gaze turned heavenward, their hearts beating hard. Jesus had just vanished from their sight above the silvery cloud that shimmered in the radiance of His glory. He had come to earth as a helpless Child; now He was returning to His Father’s house as the world’s Redeemer.

The little group on Olivet stood in silent, joyful prayer, their hearts ascending with Him. Heaven was reflected in their eyes – until an Angel’s chiding words brought them hurriedly down to earth.

Nothing succeeds like failure. Christ’s cross was the price of His glorious Ascension. That is why the angel sent the apostles back to the city – to suffer for Christ.

A lesson for me!

Painting by John Singleton Copley, 1775

“We often live with this illusion. With the impression that all would go better, we would like the 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.” –Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching For and Maintaining Peace

A BOOK REVIEW

The Family that Overtook Christ

Our family LOVES this book! All of us who are “of age” have read it, and more than once. It is a love story. A love story of one special family’s undying devotion to Christ.

The family story of St. Bernard will inspire you! It is written with an easy-to-read style and once you start, you won’t want to set it down. 🙂

Do you want to get your teenage children to read a great book? Hand them this one!

Review:

“He was called the man of his age, the voice of his century. His influence towered above that of his contemporaries, and his sanctity moved God himself.

Men flocked to him–some in wonder, others in curiosity, but all drawn by the magnetism of his spiritual gianthood. Bernard of Clairvaux–who or what fashioned him to be suitable for his role of counseling Popes, healing schisms, battling errors and filling the world with holy religious and profound spiritual doctrine?

Undoubtedly, Bernard is the product of God’s grace. But it is hard to say whether this grace is more evident in Bernard himself or in the extraordinary family in which God chose to situate this dynamic personality.

This book is the fascinating account of a family that took seriously the challenge to follow Christ… and to overtake Him. With warmth and realism, Venerable Tescelin, Blesseds Alice, Guy, Gerard, Humbeline, Andrew, Bartholomew, Nivard and St. Bernard step off these pages with the engaging naturalness that atttacks imitation.

Here is a book that makes centuries disappear, as each member of this unique family becomes an inspiration in our own quest of overtaking Christ.”

Father Raymond wrote many extraordinary books and these are some we especially like:

Three Religious Rebels: The Forefathers of the Trappists

Man Who Got Even With God

Burnt Out Incense (The saga of Citeaux. American Epoch)

Two of my very favorite books!

LIGHT AND PEACE is a handbook for getting to Heaven a short and practical course in proper Christian living that covers all the important aspects of our religious duties. By far, the most telling feature of this little book is its immense common sense and good advice. LIGHT AND PEACE shows that perfecting one’s self is not a complicated task, but one which requires good, practical thinking and a knowledge of the task at hand in short, Light on the path which is what this book is. Thereafter, the result of one s knowing where he is going spiritually and how best to achieve this end is Peace, that peace which Our Lord promised and which the world cannot give.

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We live in an age characterized by agitation and lack of peace. This tendency manifests itself in our spiritual as well as our secular life. In our search for God and holiness, in our service to our neighbor, a kind of restlessness and anxiety take the place of the confidence and peace which ought to be ours. What must we do to overcome the moments of fear and distress which assail us? How can we learn to place all our confidence in God and abandon ourselves into his loving care? This is what is taught in this simple, yet profound little treatise on peace of head. Taking concrete examples from our everyday life, the author invites us to respond in a Gospel fashion to the upsetting situations we must all confront. Since peace of heart is a pure gift of God, it is something we should seek, pursue and ask him for without cease. This book is here to help us in that pursuit.
Fall candles….

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Our Best Friends, The Angels – Maria Von Trapp, Fr. Paul O’Sullivan

 The spiritual world is very alive, very real!! Let’s not forget these angels and the role they have in our lives!

From Around the Year With the Trapp Family by Maria Von Trapp

THE ANGELS

Long before our little children learn to know Peter Rabbit, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Winnie the Pooh, they must be made familiar with their most faithful companion–their best friend, their guardian angel.

The beauty of telling stories to little ones lies in their ready acceptance.

They believe that their guardian angel is around all the time, day and night, and they will talk to him, greeting him in the morning, discussing things with him during the day, thanking him in the evening.

When children grow up with a strong sense of a spiritual power at their service, instituted by God for the very special and sole purpose of being their very own helper and protector, such children need never be afraid, need never suffer from the modern ailment of insecurity.

It is up to us mothers to bring about this early and very personal friendship with their guardian angel. The feast of the Holy Guardian Angel on October 2nd should be a big event in our nurseries.

Once children are familiar with the world of the angels they will eagerly listen to other “angel stories” such as the one about the great hero Michael (whose feast day is September 29th) and his battle with his brother-angel Lucifer, who refused to serve God and had to be thrown out of heaven into the abyss where there is “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

A beautiful story is the one about the Archangel Raphael (feast day, October 24th), who was the friend and companion of young Tobias. Johannes Brahms set a lovely song about St. Raphael to music; we always sing it on that day.

And as we tell the children about the good angels, we shall also have to mention the bad ones who turned into devils. If the highest of them,

Satan himself, dared to tempt Our Lord, who are we to think that it “can’t happen to us” or that such stories belong to the Middle Ages and do not apply to modern times?

What St. Peter says to all of us we must tell to the little ones as well “Watch and pray, for the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.”

From An Easy Way to Become a Saint, Fr. Paul O’Sullivan

OUR ANGEL GUARDIAN

One of the most marvelous dispensations of God’s Providence is the fact that He has given to each one of us a special Angel to watch over us.

At the moment of our birth God calls one of His glorious Princes, one of His mighty Angels, and bids this Angel guard and guide, defend and protect us. From that moment, this mighty Angel gives us all his loving care. He never leaves us, night or day. His duty after loving God is to love us. He devotes all his intelligence, all his strength, all his care to shield us from hurt and harm.

We can form no idea of the evils and dangers he saves us from, the countless great favors he has done us and is doing us every day. Not content to use all his own power to help us, he is constantly praying for us to God.

Reading the story of St. Raphael in the Sacred Scriptures, we marvel at the infinite goodness of God in sending this great Angel to accompany the young Tobias on his long journey. The Angel proved to be a trusty friend.

He not only accompanied him on his journey, protecting him from every danger, but he also obtained for him a most happy marriage and abundant wealth. He brought him home safely, to the delight of his parents, who were anxiously awaiting his return.

As a final gift, he cured Tobias’s old father, who had been blind. Before leaving the now happy family, he revealed himself to them as one of the seven great Angels who stand before the throne of God and bade them bless and thank the Good God who had sent him to them.

This is certainly one of the most consoling and wonderful stories in the Bible, revealing to us the infinite sweetness and goodness of God. Yet each one of us has a glorious Prince of Heaven with us, not for weeks or months but for all the long years of our lives, loving us most affectionately, defending us from countless evils and snatching us from dangers that we do not even see.

This dear Angel came to us at the moment of our birth and has been with us ever since. He will console us in Purgatory if we go there and will then accompany us to Heaven, where he will be with us forever and forever.

We marvel when reading this story of Raphael, but it is a much greater marvel that we have a glorious Angel ever at our sides and yet know and love him so little. Have we ever even thanked God for this astounding proof of His goodness?

The culpable neglect of our dear Angel is one of the most lamentable and shameful faults of our life.

From All About the Angels by Fr. Paul O’Sullivan

WHY IGNORE OUR BEST FRIENDS?

“Make friends with the Angels” is the advice which the great Pope, St. Leo, gives every Christian and it is advice that everyone should follow.

If we make friends with the Angels —and nothing is easier— we shall receive innumerable and great favors which otherwise we shall never obtain.

Our Angel friends, too, will shield and protect us from countless dangers, evils, sickness and accidents which, without their help, we could not possibly avoid.

In a word, these all-powerful and loving protectors will secure for us a degree of happiness that, without their assistance, we could not hope for in this vale of tears! Another reason we should make friends with the Angels is that they are our dearest and best friends. A good friend, a friend who is able and always ready to help us, a friend to whom we can have recourse in all our troubles and sorrows, is one of the greatest blessings God can give us.

Our human hearts thirst for love and sympathy. Among men we rarely or never find such a friend, but this is not so with the Angels. They are most desirous to be our friends and they love us with all the intensity of their angelic natures.

Since they are all-powerful and generous, we can have the fullest confidence in their help and friendship.

The one friendship on this Earth that gives us any idea of the love of the Angels is the affection of a mother. This is the purest, the most generous, the strongest of all human loves.

The mother loves her children with unbounded affection. God has placed in the mother’s heart an instinct of love so great that it almost borders on the supernatural. She forgets herself and thinks only of her children. She works for them, sacrifices herself for them, and gives them her all.

If one of them should fall sick or be plunged into some great sorrow, to that one she devotes a more special gentleness and a more loving care.

We sometimes see a frail woman watch by the bedside of her sick child— eating little, resting little, consumed with a poignant anxiety —for ten, twenty or even thirty days, never complaining, and never faltering. When these days of anguish and bitterness are past, this almost superhuman effort, these long, weary vigils,’ seem to have cost her nothing. The mother’s love sustained her.

Yet, strong men who lose their sleep for two or three consecutive nights complain that they find it hard to work the following day.

If a poor frail mother— she may be young or old, rich or poor, full of weaknesses and imperfections— can rise to such a height of love and abnegation as this, what may we not expect from God’s Angels, who have no defects, no imperfections and who love us with all the mighty power of their glorious angelic natures?

The teaching of the Church about the Angels is most beautiful and consoling, but unfortunately many Christians have scant knowledge of the great world of the Angels. They know little about these blessed Spirits, love them little and seldom pray to them. Worst of all, they do not realize their presence.

They show no confidence in them, and they do not call on them for help when dangers and difficulties press around.

As a result they forfeit a thousand blessings that they might easily enjoy and fall victim to a thousand accidents that they might easily have avoided.

HOW COMES IT THAT THE ANGELS ARE SO LITTLE KNOWN AND SO LITTLE LOVED?

Simply because many, whose duty it is to teach this most important doctrine are gravely negligent in fulfilling their obligation.

First of all, Christian Mothers should instill deeply into the minds of their children a clear, vivid and abiding sense of the presence of their dear Angels.

It is not sufficient to give them vague, hazy, insufficient notions of these Blessed Spirits, nor is it enough to teach them to say a short prayer at morning and at night to their Angel Guardians.

They should devote much time and much attention to this all-important subject.

Children must be taught constantly from their tenderest years to have a real love and friendship for their Angels, to have boundless confidence in them. They must be accustomed to feel and realize the personal presence of their Angels, to call on them in all their fears and troubles.

How much better this would be than that the children should have their heads filled with foolish fear of ghosts and hobgoblins as so frequently happens.

Mothers who impress on their children this great lesson confer on them inestimable blessings during all the long years of their lives.

On the other hand, if they neglect this duty or make light of it, they do a great wrong to their dear ones for they deprive them of the best and most powerful friends.

Catechists, too, and teachers of the young in schools, colleges and convents are frequently remiss in teaching those in their charge all about the blessed Angels. The minds of their pupils are developing, and the teaching of the mothers in the home, no matter how good it might have been, must be perfected and developed.

Professors of older students, boys and girls, are perhaps greater offenders. They rarely mention the subject of the Angels in their classes.

Why? Do not the Angels exist? Are they not our best friends? Is there not much to be said about them?

Priests of course can do much to remedy the neglect of parents and teachers by preaching at times on the Angels, by wise counsels in the confessional and by exhorting the faithful to read books on the Angels. Priests who do so receive most striking graces.

We need to awaken in our hearts a real love and friendship for the Holy Angels, an abiding confidence in them, and above all to realize and feel vividly the presence of these loving Spirits ever by our sides.

 

A coloring page for your children:

The Scourging

Christ shrank from pain, but he did not refuse it. Late morning saw him flung against a praetorium pillar, while the hired man of Rome, giant barbarians with a muscle and moral sense of wild beasts, wore themselves out whipping and lashing Jesus near to death.
Every thump of the iron-weighted cords tore fresh fed rents in his flesh. Jesus, who the night before had turned wine to blood, now shed that blood like wine poured out.

His body is the chalice of his spilt-out blood, the cup He no longer asks his Father to remove.

When we ask God to relieve our sufferings, He sometimes answers our prayers with more wisdom by letting them continue. To accept pain as Jesus did, is to sanctify it – and myself.

“God has thus put into the hand of the parents at their own hearthstone, a power greater than that which kings and queens wield, and which must issue in either the weal or the woe of their children. It would surely seem to be worth while to make any sacrifice of personal comfort or pleasure—to transmit a legacy of holy memories which shall be through all the years, like a host of pure angels hovering over those we love, to guard and guide them.” J.R. Miller

Lovely Religious Pendants!

These graceful Vintaj necklaces can be worn every day as a reminder of your devotion. Get it blessed and you can use it also as a sacramental. Available here.

Now that the weather is cooling, it is a good time to steep some tea, cuddle up to the fire and grab a good book. Visit My Book List for some good reading recommendations….

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My Little Story About the Rosary….

Happy Feast of the Holy Rosary! Here is my little story of the Rosary…..

I’m a slow learner.

Sometimes it just takes me a long time to “get” some things.

At the tender age of twenty, the Rosary and the Consecration to Our Lady (St. Louis de Montfort style) was what set my feet on solid ground in a world that spun around me with all sorts of “answers” to life’s problems. And I wanted answers.

My friends were leaving the Catholic Church that was rocked by liberalism and they were going to greener pastures. It was all beckoning to me. The Catholic Church I attended didn’t seem to hold out any answers. I had attended a Catholic School and went to Mass every Sunday all my growing up years. I was involved in youth groups and church choirs. And yet I didn’t know about the True Presence until I was almost 20 years old! There was an emptiness…. but I didn’t know what the problem was.

Then something happened. I went to a few classes on St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary. I didn’t like them but I stepped out in faith and began by saying a decade of the rosary each day (while my thoughts traveled to those naysayers saying  “repetition of words are useless…dumb”….they also said…”IDOLATRY…you can’t pray to Mary”) but I persevered…..And then I consecrated myself to Our Lady…(once again, the horrible doubts and misgivings…) I did it anyway. It was not very comfortable.

I met hubby. We began our courtship and our marriage with the rosary…daily. It was a commitment. It wasn’t wonderful…or beautiful…. It was a commitment.

We had children. Many children. We said the rosary. So often, it seemed fruitless. Life was so distracted, so wrought with the everyday little crosses and duties…but it was a commitment and we stuck to it.

I knew it was a good thing. I knew Our Lady asked for the Family Rosary at Fatima:“I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue to always pray the Rosary every day.” I believed. I was committed. Hubby was always committed. 🙂

I see now the fruits. I look around at a very crazy world and thank God through tears for what He has given to us…through no merit of our own.

I know that we could have really messed up. We were two people coming from very different backgrounds….both very strong-willed. We made our mistakes…..but we had the Rosary. And we stuck with it, day in and day out, year after year.

A family that prays together, stays together. I know that is not everything. If we have an open heart, the Rosary gives us the graces to make the necessary changes as we need them.

The Daily Family Rosary. Steady, Constant. Amid the crosses of daily life with many children, the misunderstandings between husband and wife, the financial burdens…we had the rosary.

When the kids got hurt or sick, when I was very ill, when hubby was in the hospital and we had no money to pay, through tragedies, accidents and fires, when I didn’t understand why God was letting things happen to us…. we were saying the Rosary.

Steady and constant, we prayed it every day, amid slouching kids, tired husband, cranky, pregnant wife.

Thank God for that Rosary. I know my life is not done yet. We still have children at home, children who can….and will….make a lot of mistakes. But for the record, they all (married ones, too) put their Faith first, amid their own struggles. They say the daily Rosary and it will be what holds them together through thick and thin.

If you have troubles, say the Rosary. If, amid your noisy and boisterous family, you are suffering loneliness, say the Rosary. Do you have fears and worries? Say the Rosary. Are your rosaries dry and distracted?…Keep saying it.

Truly, who knows better than Our Lady, Our Mother, our humanness, our failings, how small we are, how distracted we are. She will help. Persevere. Don’t give up.

It is just now that I am beginning more to understand the beauty, the mystery, the  deep, interior, spiritual growth that can take place through the Rosary. Like I said, I am a slow learner.

I am glad that God is very, very patient.

He has given us a very special gift. Don’t take it for granted and don’t go a day without saying it!

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The Annunciation “Hail, Full of Grace”

Another day had begun in the little home of Nazareth – a quiet, cool March day. Mary would spend it as she had spent countless others, quietly working about the house.

An ordinary girl, Mary, as the world judges; ordinary like the rest of the villagers, like Joseph…

Suddenly an angel was by her side: “Hail, full of grace!“

An ordinary person would be rather disturbed by such a visitor, and by such a greeting. And Mary was! “She was troubled at his word.“

The angel had implied that Mary loved God with all her heart, soul, mind, strength; that she loved God enough to become His Mother.
Loving God wholeheartedly – like Mary, I was created to do just that – and being “ordinary“ puts no barriers in my way!

“It is difficult for a child to be better than his home environment or for a nation to be superior to the level of its home life. In fulfilling its double purpose – the generation and formation of children – the home becomes a little world in itself, self-sufficient even in its youngest years. It is vital that you, as a mother or father, make of your home a training ground in character-building for your children, who will inherit the world’s problems. Home is a place in which the young grow in harmony with all that is good and noble, where hardship, happiness, and work are shared.” – Father Lawrence G. Lovasik

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Advent Package Special! The Catholic Mother’s Traditional Advent Journal & Celine’s Advent

 Available here.

Available individually here.

Details

The Catholic Mother’s Traditional Advent Journal:
Advent is such a special season! And you are about to make it more meaningful than you ever have!
This Advent journal is for busy moms who need a little help making this season special within the home. It will help you stay on track and be consistent with the customs you have decided to incorporate within your four walls.
I have broken it down into bite-sized tidbits that, when laid out for you, will be easy to accomplish. As you check each item off you will get a sense of fulfillment knowing you are getting done what is truly important in this expectant season! The other things will get done….but first things first!
At midnight, on Christmas Eve, when Baby Jesus arrives, you and your family will look back upon your Advent and sigh with satisfaction, knowing you truly have celebrated with the Church, that you have put your best foot forward in making this a spiritual, enchanting, holy time for all!
The first few pages of this book will have a run-down of the special Advent customs and activities that will be on your checklist each day. They are simple, they are doable.
I hope this Advent is more special than ever as we walk hand-in-hand making the Liturgy come alive in our homes!

Celine’s Advent:
Take a walk through Advent as Celine and her family prepare for the coming of the Baby Jesus at Christmas! You will enjoy celebrating the beauty of the season with Celine as she helps her mom with the special traditions and activities that make the liturgy come alive in their home! Her “peanut gallery” consists of a mouse named Percy and some charming and delightful Christmas Angels! They are sure to capture your heart!

 

Sav

Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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Our Lady of the Rosary, Pray for Us!

October is the month of the Holy Rosary, tomorrow is the feast day (October 7th).

In these perilous times we need to be reminded of this awesome, powerful weapon….the Rosary!

The following is from the best Daily Meditation Work ever Compiled,

 Divine Intimacy

Today’s feast is a manifestation of gratitude for the great victories won by the Christian people through the power of Mary’s Rosary; it is also the most beautiful and authoritative testimony of the value of this prayer.

The Hail Mary, continuously repeated, should express the attitude of a soul who is striving to approach the Blessed Virgin, hastening toward her in order to be captivated by her and given insight into the divine mysteries.

“Ave Maria!” the lips say, and heart murmurs : “Teach me, O Mary, to know and love Jesus as you knew and loved Him.” Saying the Rosary in this way requires recollection.

St. Teresa of Jesus says that “before beginning to recite the Rosary, let the soul think of whom it is going to address, and who it is that is speaking, that it may speak to Him with due respect” (cf. Way, 22).

The Saint, with her keen wit, laughs at those people “who are so fond of repeating a large number of vocal prayers in a great hurry, as though they were anxious to finish their task of repeating them daily” (ibid., 31).

Rosaries recited in this way cannot really nourish our interior life; they will bring little fruit to the soul and little glory to Mary.

On the other hand, if recited with a real spirit of devotion, the Rosary becomes an effective means of cultivating devotion to Mary and of bringing us into intimacy with Our Lady and her Divine Son.

COLLOQUY

“O Mary, just as there is no saint who loves God more than you love Him, so we neither have, nor could we have, after God, anyone who loves us more than you, our most loving Mother. If it were possible to bring together the love of all mothers for their children, of all wives for their husbands, of all the saints and angels for those who have devotion to them, it would not equal the love you have for one single soul, and, therefore, for my soul too.

“O Mary, since you love me, make me resemble you. You have all power to change hearts: take my heart, then, and transform it. Make me a saint, make me your worthy child.

“Let others ask for what they will: health, riches, worldly advantages; I come to ask you, O Mary, for those things which you yourself desire for me and which are very dear to your heart. You, who were so humble, obtain for me humility and a love for contempt.

You, so patient in the sorrows of this life, obtain for me patience in adversity. You who were filled with love for God, obtain for me the gift of pure, holy love. You were all charity toward your neighbor; obtain for me charity toward all, and especially toward those who are opposed to me.

O Mary, you who are the holiest of all creatures, make me holy. You lack neither love nor power; you can and you will obtain everything for me. Only my failure to have recourse to you and my want of confidence in your aid can prevent me from receiving your favors” (St. Alphonsus).

Let us make a home that is warm and welcoming, comfortable and freeing-a place where we can express the beauty of our Faith and nurture relationships with people we love. Let us build a home that reflects our personalities and renews our souls. Today, do something special to show your loved ones you care. Put a tablecloth on the table, light a candle, bake a cake, buy some flowers to grace your table….It doesn’t have to be huge….just something to lighten the burdens of the day and to bring a smile to those who cross your threshold.

Are you blessed by this site? Consider donating today. Our benefactors are remembered in our daily, family rosaries….
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Sermon on the Battle of Lepanto with events leading up to the battle, who was in the Holy League’s fleet, & why we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Victory aka Our Lady of the Rosary. The great victory over the Muslim Turks…..

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“Despite My Littleness…” – St. Therese, the Little Flower

Happy Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux!

by Father Jacques Philippe, The Way of Trust and Love – A Retreat Guided by St. Therese of Lisieux

Thérèse wanted to be a saint not out of ambition or vainglory, but in order to love God as much as he can be loved. That is completely in accordance with the Gospel.

She also very much wanted to be useful to the Church, and she felt that the only way she could do that was by aiming for holiness with all her strength.

But … alas, I have always realized, when I compared myself to the saints, that there is between them and me the same difference as exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the heavens, and the obscure grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by.

Thérèse very soon realized that what she wanted was impossible. Despite all her good will and her ardent desires, she was quickly brought face-to-face with her limitations and had the feeling that her desire for holiness was inaccessible, unrealizable. She felt as though there were the same distance between that ideal of holiness and what she could actually do as between a high mountain and a grain of sand.

It should be said that at the time she lived, at the end of the nineteenth century, people still tended to identify the idea of sainthood with the kind of exceptional perfection that involved heroic enterprises, extraordinary graces, etc.

Thérèse felt an insuperable distance between that model and what she was in her everyday life. Her words should be taken very seriously. She was faced with a real difficulty and unquestionably went through a real inner crisis. The temptation in that kind of situation is discouragement: I’ll never get there!

How did Thérèse react? She goes on:

Instead of getting discouraged, I said to myself: “God could not inspire us with desires that were unrealizable, so despite my littleness I can aspire to holiness.”

Here is a very beautiful aspect of Thérèse’s spiritual personality: her great simplicity, her trust in God. If God has put this desire in me—and I’ve had it for years, that’s why I entered Carmel—then it must be realizable. The desire has always been with me. It can’t be an illusion, because God is just in all his ways.

We are looking at one of the paradoxes of Thérèse’s life: on the one hand, great psychological weaknesses and great sufferings; but despite this, on the other hand, always great desires.

Lest we idealize Thérèse, recall what she was like at almost fourteen, before the healing grace that came to her at Christmas 1886.

She was a very intelligent little girl, but she had not followed a normal school life because she could not adapt to the school run by Benedictine sisters to which she had been sent. She was hypersensitive, very dependent on others, and had an enormous need for gratitude.

When she had done some little act of service, such as watering the flowers, and no one thanked her, it was a full-scale drama for her. If by chance she had hurt someone she loved, she cried about it, and then, as she says, “cried for having cried.” “I was so oversensitive that I was unbearable.”

She was “enclosed in a narrow circle that she could not get out of.”

Yet at the same time she had a very deep life of prayer and a true desire for holiness. It took the grace of Christmas 1886 to sort out this tangle, so to speak. I shall say a little about it here, and invite you to read the passage where she describes it.

Briefly, then, after Communion at Midnight Mass, our Lord inspired Thérèse to make an act of courage to overcome her hypersensitivity. The youngest of the Martin girls, she was still treated rather like a child: at Christmas, there were gifts left for her by the fireplace, and so on.

Their father, Mr. Martin, despite his affection for his youngest child, was beginning to be a little tired of all this. The comment escaped him, “This is the last time, luckily!”

Thérèse heard this and it hurt her terribly; she was tempted, as usual, to cry like a child, which would have spoilt the whole family’s Christmas.

She tells how she received a grace at that moment which can be understood as follows. It was as if God made her understand, “That’s it, finished.”

She received a sort of intuition, like a call from the Holy Spirit: “No, Thérèse, that childishness is over, you can’t let yourself go and spoil Christmas for the others!” That is not exactly what the text says, but I think that’s what it means.

So she made an act of courage: she acted as though nothing had happened, looked as joyful and happy as she could, unwrapped her presents with laughter and thanks, and, astonishingly, was cured from that moment on.

She herself says she recovered the strength of mind she had lost at the age of four when her mother died, an event that traumatized her and lay at the root of all her emotional fragility.

After that, she was able to enter Carmel and embark on her wonderful, courageous way of life, undertaking a “giant’s race,” as she puts it.

I am telling you this to help you understand something:

It may happen that God works a deep cure in us through totally insignificant events. Sometimes we are called by God to come out of ourselves, to take several steps forward, to become more adult and free.

We turn round and round inside ourselves, enclosed in our immaturity, complaints, lamentations, and dependencies, until suddenly a day of grace arrives, a gift from God, who nevertheless also calls upon our freedom.

We have a choice to make, for it is at the same time a cure and a conversion: our freedom has to opt for an act of courage.

Making an act of courage even over some very small thing, which is what God is asking of us, can open the gate to in-depth cures, to a new freedom granted us by God.

We all need cures in order to become more adult in the faith, to be courageous in waging the battle that we must wage in the Church today. To be a Christian in this day and age is not easy.

We will receive the courage and strength it requires if we can say yes to what God asks of us.

So let’s put this question to God: “What is the ‘yes’ you are asking me for today? The little act of courage and trust you’re calling me to make today?” What is the little conversion, the door that opens to let in the Holy Spirit? For if we make it, God’s grace will visit us and touch us in the depths of our being.

I am convinced that many of us will receive new strength from God. The door through which this strength enters us is the “yes” we say to our Lord to something he asks of us—something perhaps very small, perhaps rather more important, according as he gives us to understand.

“At a certain moment when going to confession to a Capuchin father, St. Therese came to understand that it was just the opposite: her “defects did not displease God” and her littleness attracted God’s love, just as a father is moved by the weakness of his children and loves them still more as soon as he sees their good will and sincere love.” -Fr. Jacques Philippe,The Way of Trust and Love, http://amzn.to/2fpXVzl Painting by Millie Childers

Happy Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux! Dear Little Flower, pray for us!

Follow this link for instructions on how to make the Sacrifice Beads, invented by St. Therese!

A coloring page for your little people….

 

A conference by Bishop Fulton Sheen:

Miracles of the Little Flower:

A little reminder of the devotion of Divine Mercy along with the teaching of the little flower on having trust in Our Lord.

Saints Louis & Zelie Graceful Religious Pendant and Earring Set…Wire-Wrapped, Handcrafted

Available here.

St. Zelie Graceful Religious Pendant and Earring Set…Wire-Wrapped, Handcrafted

Available here.

 

• Warm up with this delicious assortment of autumn inspired teas
• Perfect gift for the tea lover in your life
• Made with 100% natural ingredients
• Blended in the USA with natural ingredients from around the world.

• Part of Harney and Sons Historic Royal Palace line
• Each tin contains 30 sachets
• A sweet and spicy black tea

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Penance – Light and Peace, Quadrupani

A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humble heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Ps. L., 19.)

According to the teaching of St. Thomas there are three ways of doing penance, namely, fasting, prayer, and alms-deeds—either corporal or spiritual.

Therefore you must not suppose you are prevented from doing penance when not allowed to subject your body to severe fasts and painful mortifications.

The other two penitential works, prayer and alms-giving, can in this case take the place of corporal austerities in the fulfillment of the Christian duty of penance.

Observe also that it is not in accordance with the spirit of the laws of God and of his Church, which prescribe fasting, to injure your health thereby, nor to hinder the accomplishment of the duties of your state of life.

Labor, sickness, disappointments, reverse of fortune, dryness in prayer, all these when accepted with resignation are penitential works, such, too, as are the more agreeable to God from their being so distasteful to ourselves.

All virtues may be divided into two great classes, active and passive. The characteristic of the active virtues is to do good, of the passive, to endure evil.

Now the virtues of the second class are more meritorious and less perilous. In the active virtues nature can have a large share, and a dangerous self-complacency, or satisfaction in their effects, may easily glide into them.

This danger is less to be feared in the practice of the passive virtues, especially when the sufferings are not of our own choosing but come to us direct from the hand of God.

St. Jerome teaches that when the devil cannot turn a soul away from the love of virtue, he tries to urge it to excessive mortification, in order that it may thus become exhausted and lose the vigor indispensable to its spiritual progress. Numbers of devout people have fallen into this snare.

“I charge you,” says St. Francis de Sales, “to preserve your health carefully, for God exacts this of you, and to husband your strength so as to employ it in His service.

It is even better to save more than the requisite amount of strength than to reduce it too much, for we can always lessen it at will, whereas, once lost, it is no easy matter to regain it.”

Therefore give your body the nourishment it needs to maintain its strength and health.

5. We learn from Cassian and St. Thomas that in a celebrated conference held by the holy Abbot St. Anthony with the most learned religious of Egypt, it was decided that of all virtues moderation is the most useful, as it guards and preserves all the others.

It is owing to the lack of this essential moderation in their devotional exercises and mortifications that many persons whilst seeking holiness find only ill health.

As a consequence they eventually abandon the path of perfection, judging it impracticable because they have attempted to walk in it bound with fetters.

St. Augustine makes the following apt comparison, which you can look upon as a good rule in this matter: “The body is a poor invalid confided to the charity of the soul, the soul being commissioned to give it such assistance as it requires.

Hunger, thirst, fatigue, are its habitual ailments; let the soul then charitably apply to them the needful remedies, provided these be always within the bounds of moderation and prudence.” He who acts in this way fulfills a duty of obedience to his Creator.

From these various opinions it is easy to see how false are certain maxims met with in some ascetical works: for example, that it is of small consequence if one should shorten his life by ten or fifteen years in order to save his soul.

If this were true, a much surer way would be to secure a still speedier death, and see to what that would lead.

No: it is not permissible in ordinary practice to impose upon ourselves arbitrarily any kind of mortification that would directly tend to shorten life.

“To kill one’s self with a single blow,” says St. Jerome, “or to kill one’s self little by little—I make but slight distinction between these two crimes.”

Life, health and strength are blessings that have been given us in trust, and we cannot lawfully dispose of them as though they belonged to us absolutely.

The example of those saints who practiced extraordinary penances deserves our sincere admiration, but it is not in these exterior acts that we should try to imitate them; to do this would necessitate being as holy as they were.

Duplicate their miracles also, then, if you can. “If we had to copy the saints in everything they did,” says St. Frances de Chantal, “it would be necessary to spend our life in a horrible cave like St. John Climachus, or on top of a pillar as St. Simon Stylites did, to live several weeks without other nourishment than the Holy Eucharist like St. Catharine of Sienna, or to eat but a single ounce of food each day as St. Aloysius did.”

Aspirations to imitate the saints in what is extraordinary are the effect of secret pride and not of genuine virtue.

The French translator of these Instructions had a conversation in Rome with the learned and pious Jesuit, Rev. Father Rozaven, on this subject.

Speaking of the extraordinary fasts and mortifications of St. Ignatius, Father Rozaven said: “Do not let us confound cause and effect. It is not because he did these things that Ignatius became a saint: on the contrary, it is because he was already a saint that it was possible and permissible for him to do them.”

In truth every act that exceeds human strength is an act of presumption unless it be the result of a special inspiration, and the Church approves it only if she recognizes this divine impulse which alone can authorize a deviation from the general rule.

It is owing to such an exception that she venerates among those who suffered for the faith Saint Theodora, Saint Pomposa, Saint Flora and Saint Denys, notwithstanding the fact that they violated the law which forbids any one to seek martyrdom.

The same spirit influenced her in sanctioning the voluntary death of Sampson and of Saint Appolonia, who might be called pious suicides were it allowable to connect two such contradictory words.—Read Chap. XXIII, Part III. of the Introduction to a Devout Life.

Only in Heaven will we understand what a divine marvel the Holy Mass is. No matter how much effort we apply and no matter how holy and inspired we are, we can only stammer if we would explain this Divine Work, which surpasses men and angels. -Fr. Stefano Manelli, Jesus Our Eucharistic Love http://amzn.to/2uUTT8C (afflink)

S

In With God in Russia, Ciszek reflects on his daily life as a prisoner, the labor he endured while working in the mines and on construction gangs, his unwavering faith in God, and his firm devotion to his vows and vocation. Enduring brutal conditions, Ciszek risked his life to offer spiritual guidance to fellow prisoners who could easily have exposed him for their own gains. He chronicles these experiences with grace, humility, and candor, from his secret work leading mass and hearing confessions within the prison grounds, to his participation in a major gulag uprising, to his own “resurrection”—his eventual release in a prisoner exchange in October 1963 which astonished all who had feared he was dead.

Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him…..

Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer–a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experience, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.

He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God–even in their darkest hour. As the author asks, “What can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will?”
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Lukewarmness – Searching For and Maintaining Peace of Heart

This is inspiring and very encouraging! 🙂

from Searching for and Maintaining Peace

A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart

by Father Jacques Philippe

Don’t Let Your Apparent Lukewarmness Upset You

Don’t allow yourself to become disheartened or discouraged if it appears that you are making no progress, if you are fainthearted and lukewarm, if you should see that you are still subject to natural affections, thoughts of pride and sad feelings.

Simply strive to forget all these things and turn your mind toward God, standing before Him in the quiet and continuous desire that He make of you and in you His holy pleasure. Aim only at forgetting yourself and at walking before Him in the midst of your poverty, without ever looking at yourself…

As long as you are concerned with the capriciousness of nature, you will be busy with yourself and, as long as you are busy with yourself, you will not make much progress on the way to perfection.

These capricious movements will stop only when you hold them in contempt and forget them. Besides, I assure you that they are of no importance nor of any consequence, don’t pay any attention to them, only look at God and this with a pure and simple faith.

Don’t Worry About Your Falls

Always forget the past and never worry about your falls, many as they may be. So long as you get back on your feet, no harm will have been done; whereas, a great deal of harm will occur if you lose heart of if you berate yourself too much for your failures. Do everything with the greatest possible calm and serenity and out of the greatest, purest and holiest love of Jesus and Mary.

Patience

One of the principal obstacles one encounters on the way to perfection is the precipitous and impatient desire to progress and to possess those virtues that we feel we don’t have.

On the contrary, the true means of solidly advancing, and with giant steps, is to be patient and to calm and pacify these anxieties….Don’t get ahead of your guide for fear of getting lost and straying from the path that He indicates, because if you do, instead of arriving safe and sound, you will fall into a pit.

Your guide is the Holy Spirit. By your struggles and worries, by your anxiety and haste, you overtake Him with the pretense of moving more quickly. And then what happens? You stray from the path and find yourself on terrain that is harder and rougher and, far from advancing, you go backwards; at a minimum, you waste your time.

Let the Spirit of God Act

When it pleased God to create the universe, He worked with nothing, and look at the beautiful things He made! In the same way, if He wants to work in us to accomplish things infinitely beyond all the natural beauties which came from His hands, He doesn’t need our becoming so agitated to help Him…

Rather, let Him work by Himself; He likes to work with nothingness. Let us stay peacefully and quietly before Him and simply follow the changes that He produces…

.Let us then keep our souls at peace and our spiritual forces at rest before Him, while awaiting every motion and sign of life from Him alone. And let us endeavor not to move, will or live, except in God and through the Spirit of God. It is necessary to forget oneself and continually direct one’s soul toward God and leave it calmly and peacefully before Him.

Words of St. Paul: Don’t be anxious; instead, give thanks in all your prayers and petitions and make your requests known to God, and God’s peace which is beyond all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7), Illustration by Heather Stillufsen

Do you need some good reading suggestions? Visit My Book List…

 

• Warm up with this delicious assortment of autumn inspired teas
• Perfect gift for the tea lover in your life
• Made with 100% natural ingredients
• Blended in the USA with natural ingredients from around the world.

 

• Part of Harney and Sons Historic Royal Palace line
• Each tin contains 30 sachets
• A sweet and spicy black tea

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.

Secret Of Happiness – Father Lasance

Painting by Susan Rios

 

From Holiness and Happiness by Fr. Lasance

Conformity to the will of God is the secret of happiness even here upon earth. Outside it there is only unhappiness.

When we receive all things as being sent by Providence, and when we live in a state of entire abandonment to all that this adorable Providence wills, we never meet with any vexations.

As we have no other will and no other desire but the will of God, and see this most amiable will in all that happens to us, we have always all that we will and all that we desire.

Imitating the example set us by the holy king David, we joyously give our hand to the good pleasure of God, Who leads us from one action to another, from a second to a third, and thus our whole life passes sweetly, joyously, holily.

No accident has power to disturb or trouble us, because we know that all comes from God, and that His will, which is a thousand times amiable, presides over all.

This thought changes sufferings and troubles into joy, bitterness into sweetness; and things that plunge other souls into desolation, console the soul which is united to the good pleasure of God.

Hence there is in it a tranquility and a peace which nothing can ruffle, a constant serenity, a calmness in acting and speaking which proves how truly the Apostle and the sage had spoken when they said, the Apostle in affirming that “To them that love God all things work together unto good” (Rom. viii. 28), and the sage in declaring that “Whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not make him sad” (Prov. xii. 21).

He may be tried by God, as was the holy man Job, but, like him, he will say to God: Thou triest me in a manner which ravishes me (Job x. 16) ; and neither his interior peace will be troubled nor his exterior allow a word or a gesture of sadness, of anger, or of impatience to escape it, and it may be said of him, as of Tobias, “He repined not, because the evil had befallen him” (Tob. ii. 13).

Every man, says St. Augustine, desires happiness, but all do not seek it where it is to be found. We seek it elsewhere than in the good pleasure of God, and from that time we condemn ourselves to an unhappy life.

We find nothing but deceptions in the things, the persons, or the places to which we attach ourselves. because everything changes here below. Even if all were not to change, we ourselves change, and what gave us pleasure yesterday, displeases us today.

Israel liked the manna at the beginning, and thought it had a marvelous taste; but a little while afterward it was disgusted with it. It was glad to be delivered from the tyranny of Pharaoh, but a little while afterward it wearied of the liberty of the desert, and wanted to return to Egypt.

Now, with these variations of taste, how could it be possible not to be unhappy. He who seeks contentment in himself, says St. Augustine, shall be afflicted; he alone is always happy who puts his joy in God alone, because God is always the same.

Filled with this truth, a holy Religious, a witness to the extremes of joy and sorrow, and to the variations of temper in which men allow themselves to indulge, according to the variety of the things to which they attach themselves, exclaimed: “As for me, nothing can take away my joy, because nothing can take from me Jesus Christ, Who is all my happiness”; and St. Augustine addressed God in these beautiful words: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, 0 Lord, and our hearts are restless, until they rest in Thee.”

Let us resolve:

(1) To attach ourselves solely to the good pleasure of God, to cherish it in all events, whether they be joyful or sorrowful, and never to allow ourselves to be troubled by anything, whatever.

(2) To place our whole joy in being led in all things by the divine will, like a child by the hand of its mother. Our spiritual nosegay will be the words of the Psalmist: “Thou hast held me by my right hand, 0 Lord, and by Thy will Thou hast conducted me” (Ps. lxxii. 24).

To Catholics marriage is a sacrament, symbolizing beautifully in the love of husband and wife the tenderness with which Christ regarded His spouse, the Church. While to others marriage may become a mere civil contract as prosaic as the making of a will or the taking of a partner into one’s grocery business, to Catholics it is a holy thing, a contract that Christ has transformed into a channel of untold grace for mankind. The Catholic Church believes firmly in the possibilities of so sacred an institution. -Fr. Daniel A. Lord, 1950’s

Who are you going to love? Things? or God? When is enough, enough? Sermon on having too much stuff & what to do about it….

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Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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Loving Our Neighbor as Ourselves

from Light and Peace, Quadrupani

1. Our divine Lord has said that His disciples should be known by their love one for another. This Christian virtue of charity makes us love our neighbor in God, the creature for the sake of the Creator. Love of God, love of our neighbor,—these virtues are two branches springing from the same trunk and having but one and the same root.

2. Assist your brethren in their needs whenever you can. However, you should always be careful to consult the laws of prudence in this matter and to be guided by your means and position. Supply by a desire to do good for the material aid you are unable to give.

3. When your neighbor offends you he does not cease on that account to be the creature and the image of God; therefore the Christian motive you have for loving him still exists. He is not, perhaps, worthy of pardon, but has not our Savior Jesus Christ, who so often has forgiven you much more grievous offenses, merited it for him?

4. Observe, however, that we can scarcely avoid feeling some repugnance for those who have offended us, but to feel and to consent are two distinct and widely different things, as we have already said. When Religion commands us to love our enemies, the commandment is addressed to the superior portion of the soul, the will, not to the inferior portion in which reside the carnal affections that follow the natural inclinations.

In a word, when we speak of charity the question is not of that human friendship which we feel for those who are naturally pleasing to us, a sentiment wherein we seek merely our own satisfaction and which therefore has nothing in common with charity.

“Charity makes us love God above all things; and our neighbor as ourselves with a love not sensual, not natural, not interested, but pure, strong and unwavering, and having its foundation in God…. A person is extremely sweet and agreeable and I love her tenderly: or, she loves me well and does much to oblige me, and on that account I love her in return. Who does not see that this affection is according to the senses and the flesh?

For animals that have no soul but only a body and senses, love those who are good and gentle and kind to them. Then there is another person who is brusque and uncivil, but apart from this is really devout and even desirous of becoming gentler and more courteous: consequently, not for any gratification she affords me, or for any self-interested motive whatever, but solely for the good pleasure of God, I talk to her, aid her, love her. This is the virtue of charity indeed, for nature has no share in it.”—Saint Francis de Sales.

The literal and exact fulfillment of the evangelical precept is often found impracticable. How, we say, is it possible to have for all men indiscriminately that extreme sensibility we feel for everything that touches us individually, that constant solicitude for our spiritual or temporal interests, that delicacy of feeling that we reserve for ourselves and for certain objects specially dear to us?

—And yet it is literally au pied de la lettre, that our Lord’s precept should be observed. What then is to be done? An answer will be found in the following passage from Fénelon, and we shall see that it is not a question of exaggerating the love of one’s neighbor, but of moderating self-love, and thus making both the one and the other alike subordinate to the love of God:

“To love our neighbor as ourselves does not mean that we should have for him that intense feeling of affection that we have for ourselves, but simply that we wish for him, and from the motive of charity, what we wish for ourselves. Pure and genuine love, love having for its sole end the object beloved, should be reserved for God alone, and to bestow it elsewhere is a violation of a divine right.”

5. But although it is forbidden us to show hatred or to entertain it voluntarily against the wicked and those who have offended us, this is not meant to prevent us from defending ourselves or taking such precautions against them as prudence suggests.

Christian charity obliges and disposes us to love our enemies and to be good to them when there is occasion to do so; but it should not carry us so far as to protect the wicked, nor leave us without defense against their aggressiveness. It allows us to be vigilant in guarding against their encroachments, and to take precautions against their machinations.

6. Always be ready and willing to excuse the faults of your neighbor, and never put an unfavorable interpretation upon his actions. The same action, says Saint Francis de Sales, may be looked upon under many different aspects: a charitable person will ever suppose the best, an uncharitable one will just as certainly choose the worst.

“Do not weigh so carefully the sayings and doings of others, but let your thought of them be simple and good, kindly and affectionate. You should not exact of your neighbor greater perfection than of yourself, nor be surprised at the diversity of imperfections; for an imperfection is not more an imperfection from the fact that it is extravagant and peculiar.”

7. It is very difficult for a good Christian to become really guilty of rash judgment, in the true sense of the word,—which is that, without just reasons or sufficient grounds he forms and pronounces in his own mind in a positive manner a condemnation of his neighbor. The grave sin of rash judgment is frequently confounded with suspicion or even simple distrust, which may be justifiable on much slighter grounds.

8. Suspicion is permissible when it has for its aim measures of just prudence; charity forbids gratuitously malevolent thoughts, but not vigilance and precaution.

9. Suspicion is not only permissible, but it is at times an important duty for those who are charged with the direction and guardianship of others. Thus it is a positive obligation for a father in regard to his children, and for a master in regard to his servants, whenever there is occasion to correct some vice they know exists, or to prevent some fault they have reasonable cause to fear.

10. As to simple mistrust, which should not be confused with suspicion, it is only an involuntary and purely passive condition, to which we may be more or less inclined by our natural disposition without our free-will being at all involved. Mistrust, suspicion, rash judgment are then three distinct and very different things, and we should be careful not to confound them.

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“We often live with this illusion. With the impression that all would go better, we would like the 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.” -Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching For and Maintaining Peace, http://amzn.to/2oqVOv8 (afflink)

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Joyful Service!

Joy! It is such an important ingredient when raising a family! There will be something (terribly) missing and your children may be tempted to jump ship….if there is no joy. Why would they want what you have….your religion, your way of life…..if you don’t have joy? It’s something worth praying for and striving for! Father Considine may help us today!

Rev. Daniel Considine, S.J., 1950’s

St. Paul says, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice.'( 1 Phil. iv. 4.).

If we want to serve God, joy should be not only an element; it should be the staple of our life.

Our difficulties are so great, our enemies so many, that unless we are supported by joy, we shan’t do what God wants us to do. It is a point of great consequence.

There is a sort of impression that in the service of God there ought to be a certain sobriety, an earnestness-yes, sadness, which makes the distinction between the service of the world, and the service of God; and that those who serve God must expect more tribulation and uneasiness of mind. Entirely false.

St. Paul, speaking under the dictation of the Holy Spirit, says, ‘Rejoice, again I say, rejoice.’ If we think the ideal of a religious person is to be sad, it is quite wrong; it is the direct opposite to the truth.

We are never so much fitted to cope with the difficulties of the spiritual life as when we are in joy. Often, when difficulties are to follow, God strengthens souls by an extra dose of joy. He expands the heart, and fills us with more faith and hope and love, and so makes us ready to overcome our enemies.

Read carefully the Acts of the Apostles: no one can read them without being struck by the spirit of buoyancy and exaltation that fills and pervades them; one might almost call it high spirits.

The Apostles carried their lives in their hands; they were scourged, and came forth from their severe flogging full of joy, rejoicing they were found worthy to suffer for Our Lord. We certainly then can’t be doing wrong in making our lives lives of joy.

This matter bears on our daily life. Is this our view? We are so apt to think others have so much to make their lives happy. ‘They ought to rejoice.’ The question remains: does God mean ME to rejoice in Him? Don’t evade the difficulty by saying, ‘Oh, it’s some sort of spiritual joy which I don’t understand: ordinary joy I can’t feel.’

‘What is meant if not real joy, real happiness, and if you don’t feel the service of God produces this, there is something wrong with you.

It is a very common error-that God sends us trials for their own sake. Looking on pain and trouble as good things is not a sound view. It does us harm by making us think God takes pleasure in seeing us suffer.

The greatest possible happiness to be got out of life is in the service of God. God doesn’t like to see us cry, even though it is good for us. It pains God for me to suffer pain- that is a lovable and TRUE view of God. To think of the Passion as God heaping torments on His Son is Jansenist.

Taking our lives as they are, and being happy in them, is a true way to perfection.

Very few crosses are DIRECTLY sent by God. God permits them, but they come from someone, or something else, or from ourselves- being disappointed in something we had aimed at. We should cut down our estimate of what God really sends us very considerably.

What does He want of me? He wants you to take your life as it is, bearing your trials and disappointments as quietly as you can. Empty lamenting over things not being as they ought to be, must be eschewed.

The way to make things better is not to be doleful, but happy and cheerful. ‘Your joy no man shall take from you . . .’ (I John xvi. 22).

Our life is as it is: in that I am to find the material for serving God. Supposing even my trials are my own fault really-the results of my own actions staring me in the face.

If I can’t put it to rights, let me be sorry for what is wrong and go on cheerfully. Start afresh. The service of God is from hour to hour and from day to day. If things are going contrary, it is a pity to be thinking we have great crosses and trials, and bemoaning ourselves: the way to do work for God is to be full of happiness. . . . No heart was ever so tender as the Heart of Our Lord; He couldn’t see a person weep without wanting to stop their tears.

Then how am I to account for my life being so full of misery?-Is it all as I think? If the fault is in me, it is hard to put it all on God.

You don’t think your temper, for instance, comes down straight from God? God respects our free will. Should we like to be milksops in God’s service? One of Our Lord’s favored servants prayed to Him to take away certain faults of temper in her Superior. ‘Not at all,’ Our Lord answered her, ‘they are very good for you, and for her too. She is so sorry for them. I love her all the more.’

We need not be dissatisfied because we have no special trial; bearing with our wretched bodies and souls is the staple of our service to God. ‘Traffic till I come.’ (Luke xix.13). Bear the cross and all your difficulties well – don’t make much of them.

We ought to be ashamed to run like children with a hurt finger for sympathy and consolation in every little trouble. God loves His own as the apple of His eye. Bear all then in love and patience for His sake.

We must get out of our heads the idea that we can only be religious by being miserable. If you will think of God as difficult and unapproachable, – if you are afraid of Him, and think He is high and haughty, and far away from you, you won’t love Him.

One of the ruses of the devil, whenever we fall short of the highest standard, is to tell us: ‘You art not one of those chosen souls who are called to love God.’

You must think of Him as one who knows our poor craven natures. He knows it all seems flat and monotonous, and that you feel weary of well-doing. It will all pass: Our Lord hasn’t abandoned you.

Hold on – it will all come right again. When we are unfaithful, to believe that Our Lord will give us up, that is utterly false. We can never love Our Lord as we should, if we think He remembers things against us. Remember the way He behaved towards His Apostles.

No one likes to be taken for granted. In any human relationship a little sign of appreciation goes a long way. Life does not have to be a hard pull uphill all the time. To know that someone, especially the one we love, values our efforts sends us off with our heads in the clouds. The wife who is wise enough to show her husband appreciation for all his efforts will keep his heart fixed upon her. – The Wife Desired, Fr. Leo Kinsella http://amzn.to/2rtUpb9 (afflink)

“This is a unique book of Catholic devotions for young children. There is nothing routine and formal about these stories. They are interesting, full of warmth and dipped right out of life.

These anecdotes will help children know about God, as each one unfolds a truth about the saints, the Church, the virtues, etc. These are short faith-filled stories, with a few questions and a prayer following each one, enabling the moral of each story to sink into the minds of your little ones.

The stories are only a page long so tired mothers, who still want to give that “tucking in” time a special touch, or pause a brief moment during their busy day to gather her children around her, can feel good about bringing the realities of our faith to the minds of her children in a childlike, (though not childish), way.

There is a small poem and a picture at the end of each story.

Through these small stories, parents will sow seeds of our Holy Catholic Faith that will enrich their families all the years to come!”

Available here.

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