Tag Archives: healing

Joy and Sorrow

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H/T Franciscan Flowers:

Just as one season moves into another, so are there like seasons in our life cycles. There are times of joy and beauty and times of sorrow and suffering. They sometimes go hand-in-hand. They are companions on our journey. We need to befriend them, not control them. When we hold on to either or both, we stop growth. We stop God’s work in us. Spring, summer, fall, winter–each has its beauty and difficulties; each has its dyings and risings. We need to let God be God. We need to depend on God’s strength in each phase of the journey. “Fear not. I am always with you.”

Sister La Donna Pinkelman, OSF Sylvania, Ohio

The Man and The Eagle

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The Story

Healer and Keeper of My Soul

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Lent “Forgiving the Living”

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“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

“Remember, O man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return”

A Lenten reflection on “Forgiving the Living” a phrase used by Immaculee Ilibagiza in her own story:

Left To Tell, Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Most of us struggle to forgive, finding it difficult to put aside our bumps and bruises.  We savor our wounds as though they give us pleasure. We are a strange lot.

Imagine, if you can, living with the memory of genocide.  Not a genocide across the world from you, but surrounding you; a genocide that includes your mother and father, your brothers, friends and all your neighbors in one way or another.  Imagine a genocide you can smell and touch and that touches you, that calls your name, hunts you and haunts you.

For thousands in the world today, that is the reality.  For one particular soul, Immaculee Ilabigiza, the author of  Left to Tell, this reality has sprouted wings.  She flies high above her small village in Rwanda living forgiveness, not as a half-hearted effort, but as a mission.  A dream, that she believes was given her by God, opened her heart to the world.  Her touch is one of grace and healing.  Immaculee was left behind to let us know that in order to truly be alive to Life, we can and must forgive by the living grace of God.

Lenten alms and charity

The Incorruptible

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Today is the feast day of  Our Lady of Lourdes.  Lourdes, the shrine of healing, will be forever linked to the weak and the humble.  The miracles that happen are often those of the soul.  It should be noted the Bernadette Soubirous to whom Our Lady appeared, had a tuberculous tumor on her knee and was never herself healed.  In life, she knew great suffering.  The miracle that did happen to her body,, though, is ongoing.  After her death,  her body proved to be in corrupt.

Old school Catholics are very familiar with the injunction, “Offer it up!”  St. Paul, you will recall, made an outrageous claim.  He said, ” Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” Col. 1:24

Rev.  Jeffrey Whorton, now, a Catholic priest, coming to us from Episcopal fields,  offers this in his inimitable fashion.  He found the Catholic concept of “Offer it up!” astonishing.  That our warts and wrinkles,  our far from perfect acts and sufferings, could ever be more than the sad effects of the Fall, seemed far too good to be imagined.  He did find something to which he, and, perhaps, we, could relate.  He said for us to think of our 401Ks and an employer who offers to match any funds that we contributed to our account.  Now,  God the Father, in his magnanimity,  goes far beyond matching funds.  He turns our humble dross into pure and eternal gold by clothing it in the sufferings of  His Son.  The thing, Fr. Jeff says we must  remember is:  “No funds, no matching fund!”   So “Offer it up!”  The corruptible can become incorruptible.

The Anchoress has more and more and more on St. Bernadette