Earlier today, I spoke of preparation for Lent. The Anchoress is giving us a head-start. It’s never too early to prepare, so give a listen to her experimental-podcast as she podcasts her way to Heaven.
Category Archives: Defending Life
St. Gertrude the Great – God’s Promise
You may find the language of St. Gertrude the Great difficult. The arcane style is cumbersome in these days of expediency. If I simplified it, you would lose the sense of the Saint, herself. Slogging your way through is well worth the effort to get to the treasure . God made promises to St. Gertrude the Great, recorded by the Saint, herself, contained in The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great. When you consider Who it is who condescends to make the promise, how likely is it that we in our day have outgrown the promise in favor of modernity?
Your liberality, O Lord, has bestowed on me this gift, more necessary than all – certifying to me that whoever, in their charity, will either pray for me – the vilest of God’s creatures – or perform any good works, either for the amendment of my life, or the forgiveness of the sins of my youth, or the correction of my iniquity and malice, shall receive this reward from thy abundant liberality – namely, that they shall not die until, by Your grace, their lives have been pleasing to You; and that You will dwell in their souls by a special friendship and intimacy………
You have added to all these favors, my kind God, by an abundant liberality – that if anyone, after my death, considering with how much familiarity You did communicate with my unworthiness while in this life, should recommend themselves humbly to my prayers, You would hear them as willingly as if they invoked the intercession of any other person, provided that they had the intention of repairing their faults and negligence, and that they humbly and devoutly thanked You for five special benefits which You granted me.
First. For the love by which You freely chose me from all eternity, and which I declare to be the greatest of all the benefits which You have bestowed on me: for as You were not ignorant of, or rather did foresee, the corrupt life which I should lead, the excess of my ingratitude, and how I should abuse Your gifts, so that I deserve to have been born a pagan, and not an enlightened human being – Your mercy, which infinitely exceeds our crimes, has chosen me, in preference to many other Christians, to bear the holy character of a religious.
Secondly. Because You have drawn me blessedly to You; and I acknowledged it to be an effect of the clemency and charity which is natural to You, Who have won, by the attractions of Your caresses, this rebellious and stubborn heart, which deserves to be loaded with fetters and chains; and it has seemed as if You hadst found in me the faithful companion of yYour love, and that Your greatest pleasure was to be united to me.
Thirdly. Because You have united me so intimately to You; and I declare, as I am bound, that I am indebted for this only to Your signal liberality, as if the number of the just was not great enough to receive the immense abundance of Your mercies, not that I had better dispositions than others, but, on the contrary, that Your charity might be the more signalized in me thereby.
Fourthly. That You have taken pleasure and delight in dwelling in my soul; and this, if I may so speak, proceeds from the ardor of Your love, which has deigned to testify, even by words, that it is the joy of Your all – powerful wisdom to stoop to one so dissimilar to You, and so utterly ungrateful.
Fifthly. That it has pleased You to accomplish Your work happily in me; and, it is a favor which I have hoped with humble confidence from the tenderness of Your most benign charity, and for which I adore You with gratitude, declaring, O sovereign, true, and only treasure of my soul, that I have in no way contributed to it by my merits, but that it is a true gift of Your liberality.
All these benefits coming from Your immense charity, and being so far above my nothingness, I am unable to give thanks for them worthily; but You has further assisted my misery, in exciting others, by the most condescending promises, to render thanksgivings to You, the merit of which may supply my deficiencies. For which may all creatures in Heaven, on earth and under the earth, glorify You and thank You continually!
What hope we have, when we consider the lengths to which our Lord goes, reaching through the centuries, to supply for our lack of merit.
Remembering Michael
Amy Welborn shares not only her grief but her gratitude for all that is Michael. Amy writes:
“How can I, even as I acknowledge the crushing, puzzling, confusing loss and my shattered heart – for even Jesus wept – how can I say that I love him and that I believe all this stuff we both said we believed is actually true – and not allow some gratitude, albeit limited and struggling gratitude – to creep into my soul, for that thing, which is not a small thing, but a great thing?”
It will be a good day to die when someone who knows me intimately can write:
He prayed the Office almost every day of the last 25 years or so. Prayed the rosary every day for longer. Went to Mass almost every day.
He prayed, and knew intimately all those words I have been praying – or trying to pray – so intensely over the past week.
Thirsting for God. Rescuing from the snares of the enemy. Letting Christ live in me, being consumed, taken over by Christ, the Risen One, alive in Him. Praying for that. Every day. Asking God for mercy, for forgiveness, for peace. For the total embrace of Love.
You Are My Hiding Place
The Anchoress reminded me of a verse from the Evening Prayer of the Divine Office for Thursday Week I.
So let every good man pray to You
in the time of need.
The floods of water may reach high
they shall not reach him.
You are my hiding place, O Lord;
you save me from distress.
You surround me with cries of deliverance. (Psalm 32: 6-7)
When I read the words, “You are my hiding place,” Corrie ten Boom’s story,”The Hiding Place” came to mind. I was also reading Immaculee Ilibagiza’s book, “Left To Tell, Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.” Both Corrie’s story and Immaculee’s book leave vivid images of the faithfulness of God not only in the mind, but in the heart, . Neither tells the story of the proverbial rose garden that we all want. Corrie and Immaculee lose the people they love. Their homelands become unrecognizable.
Corrie introduces us to her sister, Betsie, who dies in the concentration camp. What I loved about Betsie was how she made a home in the midst of the horrific circumstances of the camp; cheery dish towels hung at the window. Betsie’s actual home was the hiding place she made in the heart of God. Betsie was prepared to die.
Immaculee’s book describes an actual hiding place, a bathroom that became a haven for her and seven other women for ninety-one days. It was here they hid, and silently prayed, while hundreds of crazed, “machete-wielding” neighbors sought to butcher them. Again, God proved to be the real hiding place.
The triumph of their stories is told by the transformed hearts of these women of faith. Their books are a witness to God’s faithfulness in times of desperation.
Living in the Womb
I should be in bed. It’s too early for this, but if I don’t share it, I won’t be able to get back to bed as I still imagine I will do. I was listening to a rosary reflection on the Visitation. Here in essence is what was said:
Our Lady, now expecting, goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. We can be sure that during the journey and the months she was caring for Elizabeth, Mary never forgot the baby growing within her. Jesus, being fashioned, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit; that’s an image of what happens to us in our life of grace. That intimate fashioning is what my whole life as a christian is to be.
When we are in the state of grace, we have the Holy Trinity living in us. We, however, can be so caught up in daily life and its demands, that we don’t think of that at all. If we did, we’d be aware of the movements of grace within, and so be motivated more by grace than by nature. Jesus being fashioned by God in the womb of His Mother Mary; to be in touch with this mystery is not to leave Jesus alone, as it were, but to be with Him as Mary was. The reality of our life of grace is that, like Jesus, we are very dependent on Mary. It is our Father’s plan: to be fashioned by God in intimate dependence on Mary into a perfect likeness of Jesus. This is the essence of our whole life of in the Spirit. Our entire life is now wrapped up in loving God. In Mary, for the first time, God is adequately loved by a creature.
Shine
Here a bright ray of hope from the up and coming generation.
From The Raving Theist and Happy Catholic
Be Holy! 