Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

Petition to our Holy Father: Consecration of Russia

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Another view of Our Lady of Fatima by Valeška,...

Petition to our Holy Father: Consecration of Russia.

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Sweet Cause

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The world of men is full of accusers,
Innocent as doves in their own eyes.
Only the sinner finds a place at Your table,
Garbed, no longer in rotting rags,
But in wedding dress and festive best.

The lowly come
And are welcomed.
Choosing a place at Your feet
You invite “Come up higher”.
At Your breast the disciple rests.

Hearts make merry,
While the wine of wisdom
Turns sorrow into joy,
Allowing the cross no less,
Sweet cause of happiness.

©2013 Joann Nelander

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Happy Garden

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Lord, make of me a place of roses,
A gathering of saints,
A palace of Your glory,
Alive with the radiant splendor
Of Your Holy Spirit.

Give me that sincere and true humility,
That clears my ground
Of briars, weeds and thistle,
That rakes away debris
And furrows my field crosswise
To welcome the rains
And receive the seed
Of love and deeds as new growth
Sprouting joy and fruit aplenty.

Come here to my happy garden
To take Your rest,
Lay aside Your Cross
In promised Resurrection
Bringing forth the Sun
To shine on all.

© 2014 Joann Nelander

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Cry of the Heart

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Cry of the Heart

Lord, do others speak to you in whole sentences.
My prayer is like me in my raw and bewildered state,
Mind and feelings at war within me,
Straining to understand, to comprehend myself,
And wondering what You desire,
Still in a quandary to know what to pray;
Indeed, how to prayer.

All I know is that You, O Lord, are.
Though I seem alone, You are with me,
Your Holy Name, my byword.
My prayer is Your Name,
Now echoing in the Father’s ear.
I do not call it back.
It shall resound through eternity,
and on its strains I hold fast.

I wait and I adore.
Let me rest here,
Safe in Your embrace.

by Joann Nelander

 

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From a treatise against the heresy of Noetus by Saint Hippolytus, priest The manifestation of the hidden mystery

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From a treatise against the heresy of Noetus by Saint Hippolytus, priest The manifestation of the hidden mystery 

There is only one God, brethren, and we learn about him only from sacred Scripture. It is therefore our duty to become acquainted with what Scripture proclaims and to investigate its teachings thoroughly. We should believe them in the sense that the Father wills, thinking of the Son in the way the Father wills, and accepting the teaching he wills to give us with regard to the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture is God’s gift to us and it should be understood in the way that he intends: we should not do violence to it by interpreting it according to our own preconceived ideas.

God was all alone and nothing existed but himself when he determined to create the world. He thought of it, willed it, spoke the word and so made it. It came into being instantaneously, exactly as he had willed. It is enough then for us to be aware of a single fact: nothing is coeternal with God. Apart from God there was simply nothing else. Yet although he was alone, he was manifold because he lacked neither reason, wisdom, power, nor counsel. All things were in him and he himself was all. At a moment of his own choosing and in a manner determined by himself, God manifested his Word, and through him he made the whole universe.

When the Word was hidden within God himself he was invisible to the created world, but God made him visible. First God gave utterance to his voice, engendering light from light, and then he sent his own mind into the world as its Lord. Visible before to God alone and not to the world, God made him visible so that the world could be saved by seeing him. This mind that entered our world was made known as the Son of God. All things came into being through him; but he alone is begotten by the Father.

The Son gave us the law and the prophets, and he filled the prophets with the Holy Spirit to compel them to speak out. Inspired by the Father’s power, they were to proclaim the Father’s purpose and his will.

So the Word was made manifest, as Saint John declares when, summing up all the sayings of the prophets, he announces that this is the Word through whom the whole universe was made. He says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through him all things came into being; not one thing was created without him. And further on he adds: The world was made through him, and yet the world did not know him. He entered his own creation, and his own did not receive him.

The Mystery of Our Reconciliation with God

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From a letter by Saint Leo the Great, pope

The Mystery of Our Reconciliation with God

English: child Jesus with the virgin Mary, wit...

To speak of our Lord, the son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as true and perfect man is of no value to us if we do not believe that he is descended from the line of ancestors set out in the Gospel.
Matthew’s gospel begins by setting out the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and then traces his human descent by bringing his ancestral line down to his mother’s husband, Joseph. On the other hand, Luke traces his parentage backward step by step to the actual father of mankind, to show that both the first and the last Adam share the same nature.

No doubt the Son of God in his omnipotence could have taught and sanctified men by appearing to them in a semblance of human form as he did to the patriarchs and prophets, when for instance he engaged in a wrestling contest or entered into conversation with them, or when he accepted their hospitality and even ate the food they set before him. But these appearances were only types, signs that mysteriously foretold the coming of one who would take a true human nature from the stock of the patriarchs who had gone before him. No mere figure, then, fulfilled the mystery of our reconciliation with God, ordained from all eternity. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon the Virgin nor had the power of the Most High overshadowed her, so that within her spotless womb Wisdom might build itself a house and the Word become flesh. The divine nature and the nature of a servant were to be united in one person so that the Creator of time might be born in time, and he through whom all things were made might be brought forth in their midst.

For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful humanity, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.