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

Now the Evening Lights

'Night is falling and day's allotted span draws to a close.  

The daylight that You created for Your pleasure has fully satisfied us;

and yet, of Your own free gift, 

now the evening lights do not fail us.'

St. Hippolytus

Painting: Johan Christian Claussen Dahl

Whatever Your Stage of Life

"Whether married, religious, single, consecrated, or widowed," says today's post at The Feminine Gift, "we all have a primary vocation to holiness.  Nancy Shuman, of The Cloistered Heart book and blog, writes about how we can fulfill that vocation by making our lives a cloister - a total consecration - where 'God is loved and lived for and served.'  We feel greatly blessed that Nancy will be sharing this way of living for Christ with us once a month..."

I am deeply honored to be guest writing for The Feminine Gift, a blog that speaks to women in all ages and stages of life.  And if you've ever wondered what "the cloistered heart" was all about, the post there will hopefully provide a brief initial overview.  You can click here to visit The Feminine Gift.... whatever your stage of life!   

Painting by Aaron Draper Shattuck

That We May Bring Our Vessel Safe to Shore

'My God and King... cast a gracious eye
upon those of us who are in our dangerous voyage still.
Remember, succour us in our distress;
think of those who lie exposed to the rough storms of troubles and temptations!
Strengthen our weakness in Your strength,
that valiantly we may do Your will in this spiritual battle.
Help us against our own negligence, our cowardice;
defend us from the treachery of our unfaithful hearts.
We are exceedingly frail,
and indisposed to every virtuous and gallant undertaking.
Grant, O Lord, that we may bring our vessel safe to shore,
into our desired haven.'      St. Augustine

St. Augustine, pray for us!

Marin-Marie illustration in public domain due to age

As Raindrops to the Ocean

'Our merits compared with Our Lord's 

are what raindrops are to the ocean, only infinitely less.

And yet, as there is a way of making
the raindrops share in the immensity of the ocean,

 so there is a way of communicating to our actions the infinity, 

so to speak, of the actions of Jesus Christ. 

The raindrops, as they hover over the ocean for an instant

are only tiny specks.  But the moment they fall into the ocean 

they commingle with it and become the ocean. 

So with our tiny actions - looked at in themselves 

they are only a tiny particle, a mote, 

but let us plunge them moment after moment

into the ocean of the Merits of our Divine Lord,

thus steeping them in the Infinite.'

(from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 147)

Painting:  Sunset at Sea, Thomas Moran

Have The Blues?

"It is surprising how strong we become 

under the pressure of 'the blues' 

when we cling to God more tightly than ever, 

and love Him in spite of the dark clouds that encircle us."  

(from In Love With The Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, Pelligrini, Australia, 1934, pp. 170-171)

Painting:  Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, Changeable Weather 

A Window on the Infinite

 

'The function of all art 

lies in breaking through 

the narrow and torturous enclosure of the finite,

in which man is immersed while living here below,

and in providing a window on the infinite

for his hungry soul.' 

 Pope Pius XII

Painting: Orazio Gentileschi, St Francis Supported by an Angel

You Shall Reap in Joy the Harvest

                                                
                                               Sow with a generous hand;
                                               pause not for toil or pain;
                                               weary not through the heat of summer,
                                               weary not through the cold spring rain;
                                               But wait till the autumn comes
                                               for the sheaves of golden grain.

                                               Sow, while the seeds are lying
                                               in the warm earth's bosom deep;
                                               and your warm tears fall upon it,
                                               they will stir in their quiet sleep;
                                               And the green blades rise the quicker,
                                               perchance for the tears you weep.

                                              Then sow, for the hours are fleeting
                                              and the seed must fall today;
                                              And care not what hands shall reap it
                                              or if you have passed away
                                              before the wavering cornfields
                                              shall gladden the sunny day.

                                              Sow, and look onward, upward,
                                              while the starry light appears,
                                              Where in spite of the coward's doubting
                                              or your own heart's trembling fears,
                                              you shall reap in joy the harvest
                                              you have sown today in tears.

(from In Love With The Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, Pelligrini, Australia, 1934, pp. 170-171)

Painting:  Fendi der saemann

A Different Quality

'Music rouses the emotions,

it calls the senses to a different quality...

Music comforts the mind in the enduring of labors, 

and singing lightens weariness in solitary tasks.'

St. Isidore 

Painting: Poul Friis Nybo Girl at Piano

Once I Had a Secret Blog

This has been a most unusual day..  

First:  with no prior warning, late yesterday I felt drawn to start a new blog.  Probably a secret one, where I could store videos of sacred music and maybe a few holy pictures.  Hopefully things that could inspire me if I clicked in from time to time during the course of a day.  In effect, a secret little "chapel."  I didn't have to tell another soul about it (shhhh...).

Second:  I gave the blog a simple and obvious title, chose a template, and set it up within the space of an hour, perhaps less.  I began to put on a few videos and pages.

Third:  After thinking I'd let others know about this after all, I had a sense (almost a question) of "why not right now?"  Why not, indeed.  I posted about it, and before long I was hearing from a few visitors.  One of whom mentioned a link to an online 24 hour webcam broadcast of exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.  My heavens, thought I!  I was astonished that such a thing exists.

I had just been thinking that a "chapel" is no such thing without the Blessed Sacrament.  So I put a link to the webcam feed, and then I realized.  

I was doing this in the wee hours of the morning on the feast of St. Clare of Assisi.  

St. Clare is the patroness of television. 

St. Clare was named as such by St. Pius XII in 1958, after he realized that television is Greek for "vision from afar."  It seems that one Christmas Eve, St. Clare was too sick to leave her bed to attend Mass.  She prayed, "See, Lord, I am left here alone."  God granted Clare a miraculous vision in which she was able to see Mass from afar, as it were happening right in her own bedroom. From other accounts I've read this morning, this may have happened for St. Clare more than once.  It was as if she could see the events of Mass "projected" on her wall. 

Obviously our new blog has a patroness. 

I hope to stock the blog, over time, with videos and pictures and prayer-links that will help my frazzled, distracted mind turn to God.  Perhaps these will help someone else as well.  

Twenty-four hours ago I had a secret blog.   Now I invite you to click this line and come visit this new spot on the Internet..   

Looks like my secret blog's no secret anymore.