Tag Archives: hope

Krauthammer’s Hammer

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Excerpts from the pen and wisdom of Charles Krauthammer writting for the Washington Post with my emphasis:

The Fierce Urgency of Pork

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.”
— President Obama, Feb. 4.

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Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

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And yet more damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

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It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus — and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’s own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

St. Gertrude the Great – God’s Promise

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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

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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.

Shine

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Here a bright ray of  hope from the up and coming generation.

From The Raving Theist and Happy Catholic

With Great Sadness, A Farewell

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The news was sudden, sad and unexpected.   Amy’s beloved husband, Michael, was gone.  Amy Welborn Dubruiel, writer of all things Catholic,  is living on the trust her husband Michael wrote about in his awe-inspiring  The Last Column . He is remembered and celebrated by all who knew him and knew of him.  In his last column for OSV, Mike spoke of  what his friend, Fr. Benedict Groeschel had called “The Big Lie.’ It is that, “If we say all the right prayers and live correctly, then nothing bad will ever happen to us.” Michael then related a true story told him by Fr. Benedict:

Diana was a young Puerto Rican woman who grew up in a very faith filled home. Even though they were poor, her mother taught her at an early age to trust God above everything. By the time she was old enough to go to college, Diana found a way to pursue her education – again something that she credited to her strong faith – and became the first member of her large family to graduate from college. She then married and was hired by a large investment firm in New York.

Even though her job kept her busy, she found time to attend Mass everyday. When her friends threw parties, Diana made up goodie bags for them that included candy and make-up, but also a prayer book and holy water. When a member of her family couldn’t pay their bills, Diana secretly paid them. When someone in the family got into trouble she bailed them out of jail.

One night Diana had a strange dream. In the dream Jesus appeared to her, dressed in a white robe, standing on a cloud of smoke. He was beckoning her to come to him, telling her not to worry, that he was going to take her with him. Then it seemed to her that the whole world disappeared from beneath her and she awoke. She told her husband about the dream the next morning, but he didn’t want to hear about it—it scared him.

The next few nights, the dream repeated itself. She told her mother, who wondered what it could mean.

A month later on September 11, 2001, Diana was at work at her investment firm in the World Trade Center on one of the top floors. She phoned her husband and mother on her cell phone after the second plane struck the tower below her. She reminded them of the dream, just before the tower crumbled.

What is the opposite of the “big lie”? Trust.

To hear Michael speak, Amy suggests Spirit Catholic Radio

“There is an appointed time for everything… A time to be born and a time to die…. A time to weep. and a time to laugh and to mourn …a time embrace…a time to be silent …  A time to love”    Ecclesiastes 3

Amy our hearts are with you and your family.