The Watcher on the Shore

"In the early morning, as the first streaks of light lit up the beautiful Sea of Galilee, Simon and Andrew were casting nets into the sea.  Jesus stood on the shore, watching them as they worked.
As the Divine Lord tarries on the seashore of my life, does He see me casting nets into the sea?
For what am I fishing?
For the pearl of great price?
Or for minnows?
Am I fishing for my own will, or for the will of the beautiful Watcher on the seashore?
Am I fishing for the appreciation of my companions, or for Christ's approval?
Am I fishing for the esteem of men, or for the applause of Christ?
I wonder what Our Lord thinks of me as He stands watching me while I cast my nets morning after morning......"

(from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 224)

Painting: James Tissot, The Calling of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew

This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network Linkup

Be to Him a Field

'Go forward then, full of faith and loving confidence, and deliver yourself into the hands of His providence.  Be to Him a field that He may cultivate as He pleases, without any resistance on your part.  Remain humbly and peacefully clinging to His good pleasure.'

St. Margaret Mary

Painting:  Charles Courtney Curran, Betty Newell. In US public domain due to age

This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network Linkup

Awakening

'Often when a soul is distracted and forgetful of God, His Majesty will awaken it.'

St. Teresa of Avila

Painting:  The Sleeping Princess, Duncan, 1915; cropped

Shhhhh

                                          'Encourage quiet thoughts.

        Truth is eternal, and eternal things are low-keyed.

                                           Imitate God, Who is the most silent of all.
                                           He hides in nature.
                                           He lurks in the secret places of the heart. 
                                           He moves hidden behind history.'

(from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 54)

Painting:  James Sant, Woman Feeding the Chicks

That Thorns Remain

               
                            'I thank Thee (Lord) that all our joy
                            is touched with pain;
                            That shadows fall on brightest hours;
                            that thorns remain:
                            so that earth's bliss may be our guide,
                            and not our chain.

                            For Thou Who knowest, Lord, how soon
                            our weak heart clings,
                            hast given joys, tender and true,
                            yet all with wings.
                            So that we see, gleaming on high,
                            Diviner things.

                            I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou has kept
                            the best in store;
                            we have enough, yet not too much
                            to long for more:
                            A yearning for a deeper peace,
                            not known before.

                            I thank Thee, Lord, that here our souls,
                            though amply blest,
                            can never find, although they seek,
                            a perfect rest -
                            nor ever shall, until they lean
                            on Jesus' breast.'

(from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, pp. 181-182)

                                     Painting: Swallow, John Everett Millais

                                    This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Linkup

Why Were the Saints Saints?

          'Why were the saints saints?
          Because they loved Me much, hence they never complained.
          They were cheerful when it was hard to be cheerful,
          patient when it was hard to be patient.
          They pushed on when they wished to stand still,
          and kept silence when they wished to talk,
          and were agreeable when they wished to be disagreeable, 
          and all this because they loved Me much.' 

              (from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 75)

              Painting:  Childe Hassam; Rainy Day, Boston, detail

He will Clasp Me

                      
                         "I stay inside the stronghold:  that is, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus."
 
                        "His goodness no one has fathomed, no one can measure,
                         His compassion is untold.  
                         Every soul that approaches Him experiences this.  
                         He will shield her and clasp her to His merciful bosom."  

(St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in My Soul, Marians of the Immaculate Conception, #s 1287 and 1652)

Painting: Our Lord Jesus Christ, James Tissot, detail 

Oh, the Scrapes We Have Seen!

If my guardian angel were made of flesh instead of pure spirit, I'd be sending him an October feast day present right about now.  Ice packs, splints, ointment, maybe a tin of aspirin - those might be nice tied together with a bright blue bow.  After all, he deserves something appropriate to thank him for putting up with me all these years.

I should have presented him with a box of chocolates after I wasn't expelled on my first day of school.

At that time, I knew little about Religious Sisters.  Only that they wore long black dresses and starched white bonnets.  And I knew that when a student misbehaved, Sister would swoop toward the child "with her beads swinging!!!"  Or so my mother had warned me, using a tone of apocalyptic doom.

I realized, from Mother's words, that the beads  were something worn by Sisters.  Now this, to me, was thoroughly exciting.  I positively loved beads; I was enchanted by the gleaming white pearl ones Mother put on when she and Daddy went out for the evening.  I loved colorful glittery beads worn, usually with matching earrings, by my aunts and cousins.  Oh yes, beads were fine things!  Fine, fine things!  They signaled celebration and beauty and times when a lady wore her finest.

I must say, what Sister wore on the first day of school didn't strike me as her finest.  Today must not be particularly special to her, I decided, because she arrived unbeaded.  She stood tall and straight beside a cracked slate blackboard, dressed in a stiff white bonnet and a long plain dress of black.  Around her neck, I saw not one single bead.

I still have a sharp memory of my disappointment.  Not only had I expected beads, I'd anticipated lengthy strands of them (after all, they had to be long enough to "swing").  White, gleaming strings of pearls dancing around Sister's neck as she swooooooped.... which was a rather attractive image all on its own to my six year old mind.  I envisioned a large, dark, graceful bird, magically flying forward with its pearly circlet swinging.

But Ah! (I suddenly remembered).  Mother had said I must DO something in order to see the beads swing.  Ah HA!  I suddenly got it.  I had the magic!  I knew the secret. 

I must misbehave!

Sister presented me with the perfect opportunity.  It happened when she told us that whatever we did, no matter what, we MUST NOT WRITE ON OUR DESKS.

Ahhh, that was it.  My ticket to a vision of swinging, gleaming beauty.  I waited until Sister was looking directly at me, I made sure to catch her eye, and I took my big fat long wooden pencil and carved as hard as I could onto the top of my desk.

Here it was:  the moment of swooooooping!  Like a rushing hawk, Sister flew down the aisle between desks and swept toward me.  But oh dear.  She had forgotten her pearls.

And then I saw them.  A long strand of fat black beads had been concealed in the gathers of Sister's skirt all along, and now they were swinging.  Back and forth, with every swish of her dress, they were swinging.  I was so focused on the dark, unshiny beads that What Happened Next has always been a  blur.  It had to do with my being grabbed up from my chair, shaken back and forth a bit (remember that to Sister I must have seemed like the most defiant child in all the universe), and a red-haired classmate looking over at me with thumb in mouth and horror on face.  I don't remember what was said; the scene replays in my mind like a silent movie.  It's just as well.  I didn't know words like defiant and disobedient and disrespectful and wicked yet anyway.  It was probably better to learn those later, in some other way.

(I wonder if my guardian angel just read that last sentence and sighed).

Yes, this story of the swinging beads is true.  And the gratitude to my guardian angel:  that's true as well.  Oh, the scrapes we have seen!!  Oh, those sad times when he has watched me race headlong  into sin.  I've gone along my merry, self-appointed, disobedient, defiant path of potential doom so often.  And all the while, he has stayed busy wrestling and fighting and trying to lead me in right paths.  

This is a long overdue public thank you, guardian angel.

Thank you for battling for my soul.


© 2013 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thebreadboxletters.blogspot.com


Painting:  Domenichino, Guardian Angel

Flowers Before Your Throne

"My Beloved, this is how my life will be consumed.  I have no other means of proving my love for You other than that of strewing flowers, that is, not allowing one little sacrifice to escape, not one look, one word, profiting by all the smallest things and doing them through love; and in this way I shall strew flowers before Your throne.

"I shall not come upon a flower without unpetalling it for You.  While I am strewing my flowers, I shall sing, for could one cry while doing such a joyous action?  I shall sing even when I must gather my flowers in the midst of thorns, and my song will be all the more melodious in proportion to the length and the sharpness of the thorns.

"O Jesus, of what use will my flowers be to You?  Ah!  I know very well that this fragrant shower, these fragile, worthless petals, these songs of love from the littlest of hearts will charm You.  Yes, these nothings will please You.  They will bring a smile to the Church Triumphant.  She will gather up my flowers unpetalled through love and have them pass through Your own divine hands, O Jesus.

"And this Church of Heaven... will cast these flowers, which are infinitely valuable because of Your divine touch, upon the Church Suffering in order to extinguish its flames, and upon the Church Militant in order to gain the victory for it."  St. Therese of Lisieux 

Painting: Knaus, Ludwig; Girl in a Field, 1857

Not this Way

'No one heals himself by wounding another.'

St. Ambrose of Milan

Painting:  Agghazy Gyula, To be Angry with You

I am in a Dry Land

'O my Lord, 
I am in a dry land, 
all dried up and cracked 
by the violence 
of the north wind 
and the cold; 
but as You can see, 
I ask for nothing more.  
You will send me 
both dew and warmth 
when it pleases You.'

St. Jane de Chantal


Painting: Eastman Johnson, The Girl I Left Behind Me

The Little Sacrifices

'The big sacrifices are -
comparatively speaking - 
easy to make. 
It is the little ones 
that cost us so dear!' 






From In Love With The Divine Outcast, 
compiled by A Religious, 
Pelligrini, Australia, 1934, p. 258.  
A reprint of this book is now available 
for purchase online.  For information contact  

http://www.traditionalcatholicpublishing.com/

OR http://www.allthesaintsbooks.com/in-love-with-the-divine-outcast.html


Painting: Anker Mädchen Hühner fütternd 1865

Words! Words!

'Words are powerful, they are for weal or woe.  They build up or raze to the ground.  They cut to the quick or they soothe and heal.  They inspire courage and loftiness of purpose, or they rouse to anger, bitterness and revenge... Words!  Words!  How powerful you are!  How terrible you are when lodged in an unkind and critical heart! ... If we have not been perfect in this regard, let us begin now to make a record in charity.  It is never too late to work at our perfection, it is never too late to determine to be saints.  Let us seal our lips against cutting remarks, unkind insinuations, unfavourable words.  Many a heart has writhed in pain because of poisoned arrows that pierced to the core.'

(from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, pp. 24-25)

Painting: Irving R. Wiles, Russian Tea

A Mystery...

'A revelation is religious doctrine viewed on its illuminated side;

a mystery is the selfsame doctrine viewed on the side unilluminated.'

John Henry Cardinal Newman   

Painting:  Peter Paul Rubens, Night Scene

This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network

Then We Shall See

 

'Soon we shall be in eternity, and then we shall see how very petty are the things of this earth....
When we were small children, how carefully we collected pieces of wood, stone and such to build huts, and if someone knocked them down we cried.. but now we understand how unimportant these things were.  We will feel the same way one day in heaven, when we see that all our preoccupations in this world were nothing but childish concerns.  Be faithful to your duties, but be convinced that there is nothing more worthy or more important than eternal salvation and the perfection of your soul.'

St Francis de Sales (letter)

Albert Anker Painting


This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network

One Secret Work

"God is more pleased by one work, however small,

done secretly, without desire that it be known, 

than a thousand done with desire that men know of them."  

St. John of the Cross

Painting:  Andrea Commodi, Young Woman in the Kitchen

A Religious in the Attic

Someone I know compares the Church's storehouse of spiritual treasures to an attic filled with family heirlooms, ones discovered anew as each generation comes and goes.  Our Church is blessed with devotions, traditions, revelations, stories, truths, and precious gems of faith.  Some of these are emphasized at particular times, while others slide into the background only to resurface a few decades later.  Thus we may find it helpful to “climb up into the attic” from time to time to see if perhaps there might be some treasures we're overlooking.

There are a few people who try to caution us about the attic.  There's nothing but old stuff up there, we're sometimes warned.  Just bundles of old junk not relevant to the world today.  "We don't really have books about saints," I was once told by someone running a Church library.  "Mostly we have modern self-help books and some fiction." I came away feeling like someone whose spiritual ancestors had been forgotten; maybe even erased from the family tree.

One of my favorite books was sent to me by a friend in another country.  She'd rescued it when people hosting a retreat were throwing it into the trash.  It's just an old volume, very "out of date," she was told.  Funny.  I quote this (out of print) book here from time to time, and am often told how much help it has been.  In fact, because of a recent request, I have gone back and labelled blog posts quoting this writer - so now we can more easily find them.  The author, who wrote simply under the name "A Religious," actually wrote a number of small volumes on prayer and spiritual growth.  Thanks to the generosity of yet another kind friend, I'm currently able to borrow some of these titles, one at a time.

If you've ever searched for copies of The Living Pyx of Jesus, or any other writings by this particular author, you know they're rare - and in the neighborhood of $300 per volume (last time we checked) when they can be found.

And someone was throwing one into the trash.

If you'd like to sample some treasures from the heart of "A Religious," you can now do so by clicking this line. 

Also:  I have used other short quotes from this writer on The Cloistered Heart, and I've now labelled those as well.  They can be found by clicking this line.   

This post (which is an adaptation of an earlier one on "the attic") is also being published on The Cloistered Heart blog today.  

We are unearthing treasure!  It's good to have at least the shadow of a map.

Dusting in Harmony

 

'Each small task of everyday life is part of the total harmony of the universe.'

St. Therese of Lisieux

Painting:  William Paxton, The Figurine, 1921

A Fitting Consecration

"Since there is in the Sacred Heart a symbol

and a sensible image

of the infinite love of Jesus Christ

which moves us to love one another, therefore:

it is fitting and proper

that we should consecrate ourselves

to His most Sacred Heart -

an act which is nothing else than an offering 

and a binding of one's self to Jesus Christ, 

seeing that whatever honor, veneration and love

is given to His divine Heart

is really and truly given to Christ Himself"  

Pope Leo XIII

Click here for more about St. Margaret Mary's revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

This post is linked to O Sacred Heart of Jesus, First Friday Linkup

The Prayer, The Answer, The Plane

Until twelve years ago, I had never met anyone "interesting" on a plane.  Oh, I know amazing persons were all around me, but I'd never struck up a conversation with one.

That changed the day I decided to say a prayer.

I felt a little silly, asking for something as trivial as "could I please sit beside someone interesting on the plane?" It was a quick prayer, uttered as I hurried out the door, ready to board a flight to another (American) state. 

I don't remember exactly how the seating went, but for some last-minute reason there was a quick exchange. By the time we were airborne, Mr. and Mrs. S. had switched to the seats beside me.

I have no idea how the subject of "Australia" came up.  But here we were, shortly after take-off, going from hello-how-are-you into conversation about a land across the earth.  Mr. and Mrs. S. had never been there; I had.  They said they knew one person in Australia, a lady named Katherine, who was American and had once lived in their hometown.  Katherine had been a neighbor of Mr. S., and a good friend of his mother's when he was growing up.  After being widowed at a relatively young age, Katherine met and married an Australian gentleman.  As Katherine's story unfolded before me, I began to think of Kate.

Dear American Kate.  I'd met her when my husband and I were staying with friends in a tiny Australian town.  Kate was a member of my friends' Catholic parish, was so happy to meet us, and loved to talk with The Americans about "home."  She was elderly, and generous, and we wrote each other after my return to the States.

Mr. and Mrs. S. and their family had lost touch with their friend Katherine, but they'd been so intrigued by how she'd met her Australian husband that they told me more about it.

This was starting to sound familiar.  Why, Katherine had met her husband in the same way Kate met hers.  How unusual.  I told Kate's story to my new friends. The two accounts were identical.  

Could Kate and Katherine be one and the same person?  Mrs. S. was astonished at the very possibility.  I mean (she kept asking), what were the odds?  The Australian town was a tiny one, across the continent from Sydney... not a place many Americans happen to visit.  To sit on a plane next to a woman who'd been there and knew their friend would be an amazing circumstance. 

Long-story-less-long:  Katherine was (of course) Kate.  And through a last minute switch of plane seats and exchanged addresses, I was able to help long-lost friends re-establish contact across the earth.

Mrs. S. has phoned me several times over the past few years.  In almost every conversation, she has said, still with that obvious astonishment, "we know ONE person in the entire continent of Australia, and we happen to sit on a plane next to a woman who knows her too!?!!"  

Of course, the woman sitting next to Mrs. S. had prayed.  Taking a quick minute as she headed out the door, she'd asked for something quite tiny in the grand scheme of things.  Or so it seemed.  Only God knows how it has all played out in the lives of reconnected friends.

Mrs. S. phoned me a few weeks ago.  She wanted me to know that, just after celebrating her 100th birthday, Katherine had recently died.

Always when I think of that day on the plane, I am struck by the power of prayer.  I'm reminded of the truth that anything we ask of God can never be too "small" for His attention.  God answered my tiny prayer in a big way.

I sat beside someone interesting on the plane.





Painting: Penleigh Boyd, Ghost Gum at Kangaroo Flat, 1921 (Australian)

In memory of Kate.  May she rest in God's peace