Sabbath Moments
Sabbath Moments
November 12, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to our weekly meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Visit her to read other bloggers’ Sabbath Moments and join in or comment.
Death of a friend
A couple of weeks ago my friend Shirley passed away at age 98. I have had many Sabbath Moments thinking about her last few weeks as related by her daughters and the pastor. “Jesus, I love you,” was constantly on her lips. She lost no opportunity to tell her family she loved them, and her friends, too. One day the pastor came and sat next to her on the bed and asked, “Shirley, how do you feel about meeting Jesus?” She answered, “I’m ready.” She said it often in that last week.
At age 88 Shirley decided to become a third order Carmelite. She was using a walker by then because of hip degeneration that left her bone-on-bone. From my own experience I know how painful that was. Thinking of her physical issues, her daughter asked her in some dismay, “What are you going to do, Mom?” Shirley looked at her and answered, “Pray.”
As I have been contemplating St. Catherine of Genoa’s writings on purgatory and the need for souls to be in perfect charity with God to enter heaven, Shirley comes to mind as an example I should follow. I cannot know what hidden stains from faults God might have to cleanse away before she enters heaven, but I do know that she died in the most perfect charity of anyone I have personally known. Detached from everything and every person in this world, but bound by that golden filament of charity to all of us, living and dead, she shows me both how far I’ve come and how far I need to go to begin in this life the way of being in total unity with God that St. Paul speaks of in 1 Cor. 13:13.
A conversion story
Tanks in Tianamen Square, 1989 uprising
This week the Rome-based Dignitatis Humanitae Institute received a guest whose remarkable history and conversion provided me with unexpected Sabbath Moments. Chai Ling, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was a key leader of the pro-democracy movement in China that drew over 100,000 students to Tianamen Square in 1989. You can read more at Zenit’s Ongoing Tianamen, but I want to focus on her retrospective of the events the day the world saw Chinese military tanks and soldiers violently suppressing their own people.
Twenty years after her Tianamen Square experience, Ling converted to Christianity and in 2010 was baptized. She says (quoting Zenit):
“I had faced death, looked it into the eye, but I didn’t overcome it — in other words I didn’t have the peace nor the joy, just sadness, sorrow and fear,” she recalls. “But we had a duty, we knew we had to confront whatever we were confronting.
“Then, after I’d given my speech, I felt this huge warm sensation come into my heart — a sense of love toward the leaders of China, toward the soldiers, the people who were about to kill us. It was the most amazing feeling and I wished they had known how much we’d loved them.”
“Now I know that this must be how Jesus felt on the cross,” Ling says.
She remembers witnessing “a power, an amazing spirit” at Tiananmen Square, but at the time she didn’t know how to articulate it.
“I’ve since come to know that it’s the spirit of Jesus,” she says. “Then everything started to makes sense.”
I cannot help but wonder what the outcome would have been for China had all those students been Christian. What if all of them at once would have fallen to their knees and prayed the Our Father together? Would China be a force for good today rather than a force for death?
Every day 35,000 forced abortions take place in China. Every day a large portion of those killed are girls. Today in China 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. That’s just the abortion angle of their culture of death. Greed and corruption lead to shoddy construction that results in many deaths every time there is a natural disaster. We could go on and on here.
As I observe the “Occupy Wall Street” partisan political movement I again wonder, what if everyone who has a grievance against the government fell to his knees and prayed the Our Father? What if everyone did it daily and in public in groups? Could we not be delivered from the forces of darkness in this country and in the world that are choking the life out of people and destroying souls?
The Roman Coliseum was the site of public mass martyrdom of Christians. Because of those and many other lives freely given as Christ gave His on the cross, Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor saw a rising tide of Christianity that eventually overcame the worst cruelties of their times. Today we have the wonderful 40 Days for Life movement that involves small groups praying in front of abortion mills all over our country. Many lives are saved through this effort and many souls are won for God.
The love of Christ seeks to envelop the world and govern our actions. It alone heals. It alone converts those in darkness. Even if it takes 20 years to bring about conversion as it did in Chai Ling’s case, His light shines no less brightly. We are His apostles of love and light. We cannot hide it under a bushel and call ourselves real Christians. So many are waiting to put a name, as Chai Ling did, to the longing in their hearts. How long shall we keep them waiting?
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
November 5, 2011
Awareness of God
Our weekly Saturday meme is hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Be sure to visit her to read others’ Sabbath Moments for the week and join us if you like.
Eucharistic Adoration
For about a year and a half I’ve felt the pull to somehow get into a situation where I could resume Eucharistic Adoration. I prayed that the local parish, which I do not normally attend because of no access to the Extraordinary Form, would start an adoration program. My prayers were answered. On every First Friday after Mass the Blessed Sacrament is exposed in the day chapel until noon and it is less than 2 miles from our house! So Friday was a really great day – and sunny, too!
In case anyone is interested, I like to use a pamphlet in adoration that is hugely helpful in conversations with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. It’s called “A Meditation Before the Blessed Sacrament.” You can get free copies from:
Blessed Sacrament Pamphlet P.O. Box 640358 Kenner, LA 70064
It is also available online here: http://www.sesnaperville.org/ador/ador_meditation.html. I think I’m going to order a bunch of them to give to the pastor so he can have a tool to encourage more people to take advantage of these First Friday opportunities. It would be great to see it grow into an every Friday event and maybe some day, to a 7 day a week 24 hour program.
Dinner With a Friend
I’ve been helping a friend who is going through a particularly difficult time. Thursday evening she took me to Red Lobster for dinner. My husband and I seldom go out to eat unless we’re on one of our few trips somewhere, and he won’t eat fish or seafood whereas I love it. So the meal together with her was extra special for me in many ways.
Working on Blog Posts
This week I completed my series on vocations and polished a post on purgatory. Thinking deeply on our faith and how to live it, then making it come alive in a post is always a series of Sabbath Moments. Without God’s grace I could do none of it.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
October 29, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to our Saturday meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Visit her to read other Catholic blogger’s moments of resting in the Lord or finding Him in the ordinary.
This week was busy. Due to problems with a neighbor, we had to get a privacy fence installed along one side of our property. Fortunately, it only took 3 days. One to set the posts, one to let the concrete harden, and one to nail the boards. It looks lovely. Between now and next spring I’ll have time to consider what to plant near it. For sure it looks like this will be a great opportunity to start kiwi vines in a sunny section. No problem presents itself without a corresponding opportunity. Meanwhile, I am praying for the neighbor when I otherwise wouldn’t have. Sometimes God sticks stuff right under our noses so we can’t miss those He wants us to pray for.
Sunlight through the red, orange, and yellow leaves casts a warm glow over morning and evening. Just looking out the window at this intangible beauty is calming and peaceful. Physical light is important and healthy for the body as the light of Christ is important and healthy for the soul. I’ve found that part of my wellness program is getting enough sunlight. On sunny days fibromyalgia pain is much lower than on overcast and rainy days. Meditation and prayer brings the light of Christ into my soul which starts to wither away without it. It’s like what Colleen wrote about last week: put God first. I’ll add, or you’ll get lost in the dark and be in a world of hurt.
We are getting a kick out of the neighbor boy who is around 9-10 years old. He is an outgoing, enterprising young man. When we cleared the honeysuckle from the back fence, it exposed a lot of rocks – the Ozarks gifts of the ground. He asked if he could have some and we said yes. The next day he was knocking on our front door offering to sell us some beautiful rocks – the ones we gave him permission to take! I thought it was hilarious. He is a polite boy and very intelligent with an outgoing nature. It’s always a Sabbath moment to see today’s children growing into decent people – a good antidote to the selfish and self-centered youth that dominate the news. The Lord is raising wheat among the weeds. We must all pray for the wheat to stay strong and not be choked out by the weeds.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
October 22, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to Sabbath Moments, the meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Visit her to read other bloggers’ moments this week when they were especially touched by God.
We’ve had colder than normal weather this October. The orange maple we put in a few years ago is starting to turn color. The welcome rain has allowed all our trees to hold on to their leaves a bit longer and the crisp air has me longing to get ahold of some fermented apple cider. There’s nothing like that fizzy stuff to make sitting on a porch in the sunshine just perfect. It’s good the Lord lets us enjoy these blessings and gives us the grace to realize they are from Him.
Friendship with God
This week the subject of the Divine Intimacy meditations has been the apostolate of every Christian: to participate with Christ in the salvation of souls. Today’s theme is the soul of the apostolate. Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene has these words:
The first degree of friendship with God, which consists in the absence of serious sin, does not suffice to fulfill the purposes of the apostolate. [Staying out of mortal sin isn't enough. It's just skating by. God asks much more of us.] A deeper friendship is required, one which creates such uniformity of will, desire and affection that the apostle is enabled to act according to God’s Heart; he is moved not by his own impulses, but by the Holy Spirit.
It is a very significant fact that Jesus made His apostles live for three years in intimacy with Him, treating them like dear friends, before sending them out to convert the world: “I will not now call you servants…but I have called you friends” (Jn. 15:15). Friends, not only because He shared the treasures of His divine life with them, but also because He wanted them to be the collaborators, and in a certain sense, the successors of His mission as Redeemer.
Only if we are friends of God can we be apostles; God Himself invites us to this friendship, but we must correspond by living an intense interior life, one which makes our relations with God ever more intimate and richer in love.
The growth of Eucharistic Adoration in the past ten years is a great sign of spiritual renewal. What better way to build a friendship with God than by spending time with Jesus in person? The Holy Spirit works with willing hearts. That’s what counts.
I used to be a little jealous of the apostles and everyone who got to know Jesus while He was on earth. But thanks to His loving mercy, I can, through the sacraments and sacred scripture, know Him better every day until that time when I no longer have to see “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12). It’s a long road filled with many pitfalls and an uphill battle every day, but “the armor of God” (Eph. 6:13) is invincible.
Sure, I’ve turned my ankle many times, skinned my shins, gotten a bloody lip and cracked my head severely on this path. At times I turned around and started down hill because I wanted to take the easy way out. I even threw the armor off, which only made things far worse.
Now I know this: as long as I don’t take the armor off again, and as long as I practice my spiritual martial arts every day, I’ll grow in that friendship of God that is the soul of the apostolate. I hope to see many people in heaven some day that helped me and whom I have helped, all of us apostles of Jesus Christ.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments – Rain, A Trip, and Meditation
October 15, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to Sabbath Moments hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Visit her to read about other bloggers’ moments of resting in the Lord or finding Him in the ordinary.
Rain
September and early October dragged on with cool, dry air, lots of sunshine and no rain. We got a lot of work done outside because of this, but I was anxious over the continuing drought. This past week we finally started filling the moisture deficit with a couple of days and nights of rain – not forecasted. “Lord, thanks for answering all the prayers for rain. What a blessing it is,” I said often when I looked out the window. Rainy days are always welcome opportunities to spend more time in prayer and domestic pursuits such as finding recipes on the internet, tackling clean up and disposal of the detritus of life, and just plain loafing.
A trip to the country
Yesterday Roger and I had some business to conduct in a small town about 50-60 miles away. I’ve always loved driving into the countryside, speeding by the rolling hills and limestone cliffs of Missouri. We made some new Christian friends and enjoyed ourselves in the lovely weather. I learned to fire a gun among other things, and had a great time target shooting. It was amazing to discover the kick a revolver produces and the ease of firing a .22 automatic. More amazing was the fact that I could hit the target, considering my complete lack of success with BB pistols in earlier years.
Movies and TV are pretty much fluff when it comes to portraying real gun action. Today I’m somewhat sore from the action and tired from the long day, but I’m looking forward to learning more and target practicing again. God always sends us people to help us grow and acquire new skills when we need it. Since my body doesn’t work all that well, it was great to find out personal defense actions I can take even in my condition and at my age that will give an aggressor a more difficult time when trying to inflict bodily harm. Thanks to our new friends and their training, I feel safer.
Meditation time
Making extra time to meditate is a great Sabbath moment. I’m always surprised at where God takes me when I ponder Him and His action in my life. Reading Catholic blogs often stimulates my meditations so I take time every week to make rounds of various reliable sites even though I seldom comment. My favorite meditation time is in the early morning quiet while I’m still in bed. Once I get up and go about my routine, life can be too distracting. Dark and quiet let me see God and hear His teachings more easily.
A thought occurred to me more than once recently: as God has limited my activity through my health, age, and financial situation, I have more time than most people to meditate and pray, and time to write this blog. If I were younger and healthier with the ability to have more money, I wouldn’t necessarily have the time I have now to ruminate on the divine. I might well be off track engaging in worldly pursuits and not putting God first. So God is obviously giving me the chance to put Him first and be of use to others through prayer and writing. We all have our assigned jobs from the Almighty. This is mine.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments – Spiritual Progress
October 1, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to Sabbath Moments, a meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Please visit her to read other Catholic bloggers moments of awareness of God.
Extra time with God
It must be the prednisone. I’m waking up at 5:30 in the morning, giving me quite a bit of extra time with the Lord. Prednisone = bad. Extra time with the Lord = good Sabbath Moments. This must be the idea behind turning lemons into lemonade.
Puttering
Beautiful weather Friday morning allowed me to putter in the garden and yard and get plenty of sunshine. I always feel God’s presence when I’m digging, weeding, pruning and harvesting. God bless my friend Steve, the physical therapist who works out in the therapy pool when I do. He told me about a small tractor we decrepit people can sit on and roll wherever we need to go to get those pesky weeds out, and do other close to the ground chores. Hubby and I bought it on sale over a year ago and it’s made doing outside work so much easier and fun.
Spiritual Progress
One of my meditations for this week from Divine Intimacy gave me much to think about throughout the following days.
It’s tempting to try to gauge our spiritual progress by ourselves. The minute we start focusing on ourselves and worrying about being holy, our eye is off the ball, the ball being God. The opposite of sin is virtue. We are either practicing sin or we are practicing virtue. Real spiritual progress comes with the practice of virtue.
Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD has good news for us:
Infant Baptism - Catholic
In fact, although God has infused the virtues into us at Baptism without any merit on our part, He does not make them grow without our collaboration; it remains for us, always with the help of grace, to put into practice the virtuous principles He has given us. Only in this way shall we acquire good habits of virtue and facility in practicing them.
Therefore, if we desire to cooperate with the action of God who wishes to make us like to Himself, we should apply ourselves with great zeal to the practice of the virtues.
…”the obligation to advance in the love of God – and therefore, in all the other virtues as well – lasts even unto death” (St. Francis de Sales). No one, however advanced in the spiritual life, can consider himself dispensed from the practice of the virtues.
In certain Catholic circles there seems to be an over emphasis equating holiness or spiritual progress with spiritual consolations and contemplation alone. The incursion of transcendental meditation (a New Age practice) and its off-shoots pushed by well-meaning but misled people has deceived more than a few. On the other hand, there are Catholics that really believe that if you cannot engage in charismatic prayer the Holy Spirit is not working in you and you are not holy. I’ve met both types.
I think we have no greater expert on spiritual progress in prayer and living than the Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila. She alerts us to pitfalls and shows us how to avoid them.
Father Gabriel continues:
St. Teresa of Jesus in describing the high states of the life of union with God, often digresses to urge the practice of virtue. “You must not build,” she wrote to her daughters, “upon the foundation of prayer and contemplation alone, for unless you strive after the virtues and practice them, you will never grow to be more than dwarfs” (Interior Castle VII, 4); and elsewhere she expressly says that, by means of the virtues, “even though not greatly given to contemplation, people who have them can advance a long way in the Lord’s service, while, unless they have them, they cannot possibly be great contemplatives” (Way, 4).
It is not essential that God should lead us by the path of high contemplation in order to make us saints; [note: We do not make ourselves saints. It is not in our power to do this. Only God can make us holy.] besides, this does not depend upon our will. What does depend upon us, and is essential, is that we maintain the practice of virtue. Whether God wills for us a family life or one dedicated to the duties of a professional life, whether He calls us to the apostolate or to the contemplative life, in each case we shall become saints only in the measure in which we practice virtue.
…However, we shall never reach perfect, much less heroic, virtue unaided by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the end of which is precisely to perfect the virtues. Although the task of practicing the virtues is ours, it is only God who can actuate the gifts, and ordinarily He does this in proportion to our zeal in practicing virtue. The assiduous practice of the virtues opens our soul wide to God’s action, rendering it apt to receive and follow the motions of the Holy Spirit.
Thinking on this, I see how important it is
- to ask God’s help in identifying a key virtue to develop,
- to recognize the opportunities God gives us to practice this virtue, and
- to examine our conscience daily for our omissions when we let the chance go by, as well as our commission of sins opposed to the virtue.
If we’ve blown it, we simply tell God we’re sorry – and really mean it – and ask Him to wize us up. A little penance or mortification in both repentance and thanksgiving for His generosity to us in the many graces He gives us daily keeps us in the right frame of mind to persevere.
This simple approach keeps our eyes on the prize: eternal union with God starting now. If we don’t have some degree of this union before we die, we aren’t going to find it after death.
Spiritual progress can’t be accomplished by prayer alone St. Teresa says. We shouldn’t get hung up on whether we can actually engage in contemplative prayer even though the writings of St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross and other contemplatives make it very attractive. Who doesn’t want to experience what they did? The same goes for getting hung up on whether or not we can pray in tongues. Both instances makes the prize a particular satisfaction with ourselves in prayer – an end in itself. It sets up a false measure of something only God can truly assess and leads to pride and vainglory, the opposite of several virtues including humility.
We have to be careful about making assumptions about our own holiness based on any other person and what he or she experiences in prayer or even what we experience in prayer. We can be sure God is always calling us to union with Him every minute of every day. His call is always individual. Co-operating with God’s action in our souls is the main thing, and what Sabbath Moments are all about.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments: Perseverance
September 24, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to this meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Please visit her to read others’ Sabbath Moments of the week.
This week we got some good and lengthy rain showers – just the right kind to soak the earth after a parching summer. Rainy days are good days for resting in the Lord.
My experiment with late sowed zucchini failed. I’m getting 4 inch veggies that just won’t grow longer or bigger. We’ve had such weather extremes – very hot then dropping into the upper 40s at night – that I think, along with the angle of light changing, conditions aren’t good for normal growth. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and nothing learned. I’ll move the second planting up a couple of weeks next summer and see what happens. And here’s hoping next summer won’t be so hot. God is my partner in gardening and He always gives me a lot to think about as I try to coax the best out of the plants and apply the knowledge of those more experienced than I whom He puts in my path.
Hives are still a problem. At times they drive me crazy and I have to deal with the trade-off of having more of them and itching worse with taking more prednisone than I want. Right now I’m opting for less drug and more itch. This is a test of perseverance, which happens to be the lesson from Divine Intimacy today.
Father Gabriel writes:
The angel, a pure spirit, is stable by nature; if he makes a resolution, he holds to it; but this is not the case with us. We, being composed of spirit and matter, must suffer the consequences of the instability and fluctuations of the latter.
As stability is characteristic of spirit, so instability is characteristic of matter; hence it becomes so difficult for us to be perfectly constant in the good. Although we have formed good resolutions in our mind, we always feel handicapped by the weakness of the sensible part of our nature which rebels against the weariness of sustained effort, and seeks to free itself from it, or at least to reduce it to a minimum. [No kidding.]
Our bodies are subject to fatigue; our minds are disturbed by emotions which are always fluctuating. That which at one moment fills us with enthusiasm may, at the next, become distasteful and annoying to such a point that we think we can no longer endure it. This is our state while on earth and no one can escape it.
However, God calls us all to sanctity, and since sanctity requires a continual practice of virtue, He, who never asks the impossible, has provided a remedy for the instability of our nature by giving us the virtue of perseverance, the special object of which is the sustaining of our efforts. Though fickle by nature, we can, by the help of grace, become steadfast.
Physical and mental obstacles to bearing up under life’s difficulties seem, at times, to be monumental. Sometimes it looks like a lot of things pile up on us all at once and all our good intentions fly out the window in a second. It’s especially difficult to come to terms with chronic conditions that fluctuate in severity and are badly affected by other temporary difficulties. Father Gabriel notes:
Sometimes just a momentary inattention, an unexpected happening, a little weariness or emotion, is enough to make us commit some fault that we had sincerely resolved to avoid at any cost, and here we have failed again! This, however, is no reason for being discouraged or sad; rather it is a motive for humbling ourselves, for recognizing our weakness and begging more insistently for God’s help to rise at once and begin again.
Because our human nature is so unstable, our perseverance will usually consist in continually beginning again. This is the perseverance to which we should all attain, because it depends on our good will, in the sense that God has infused this virtue in our soul, giving us at every moment sufficient grace to practice it.
It is not in our power to free ourselves from this instability of our nature, and therefore we cannot avoid every slackening in virtue, every negligence, weakness, or fault; but it is within our power to correct ourselves as soon as we perceive that we have failed. This is the kind of perseverance, that God demands of us, and when we practice it faithfully, and are always prompt in rising after each fall, He will crown our efforts by granting us the supreme grace of final perseverance.
So dealing with hives along with everything else is God’s way of strengthening the virtue of perseverance in me. Just as an athlete doesn’t get to be a gold medal winner in the Olympics without daily intensive practice, so we will not achieve heaven without rigorous practice of perseverance. I’m going for the eternal gold. How about you?
Thanks to everyone who’s been praying for me. I’m sure your prayers are helping.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
September 10, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to the Sabbath Moments meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Please visit her to read other bloggers’ pauses with the Lord this week.
Bye-bye Asparagus Beans
This week we tore out the asparagus bean plants and I pickled my last three jars for the season. Sharing this crop with friends and neighbors throughout the summer is a way to pass on the generosity of God to others. I’ll miss getting fresh beans every day, but I saved some seeds to plant next spring. Whenever I work in the garden and with fruits of the harvest I’m aware of how blessed I am that I can participate in God’s work of providing food.
Thoughts on Justice
Reading the meditations of Divine Intimacy this week on the subject of justice were peaceful moments with God. Today’s reading contained the following paragraph from Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD:
What good, then, is the outer display of justice if its interior spirit is lacking? For example, what use is it to pose in public as a defender of the rights of the people, if in private life a man does not pay workmen a just wage, or is dishonest in commerce, in business, in exercising his profession? What use is it to pour out fine words and promises – or even gifts – on anyone, when we are not willing to recognize and respect his rights?
After reading this I couldn’t help but think how important it is that we pray for our politicians and businesspeople. The above paragraph seems to be written especially for them. Yet we can’t point fingers at others without looking at ourselves on these points. Hypocrisy begins in the heart and often we are blind to it in ourselves while we can easily see it in others.
Father Gabriel continues with something that is really hard for most people to swallow, including me. For those of us who are of the ilk of “I love you Jesus but please don’t make me get up on that cross with You,” nothing shines a greater light on our lack of humility and virtue of justice than this:
For a soul aspiring to sanctity, it can well be said that the greatest justice consists in bearing patiently and humbly all the injustices of which it is the target, for it would be absurd to think of reaching perfection without following in the footsteps of Jesus. If He, Innocence itself, suffered so much injustice without complaining, is it not just that we who are sinners should, at least, suffer something without posing as victims, but remaining calm and serene? Justice itself, then, urges us to bear injustices. Thus, this virtue which begins by enjoining us to give to everyone his due, reaches its culmination in making us enter fully upon the path of sanctity and union with God.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
September 3, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to this meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace where we recount moments when we rested in the Lord or found Him in the ordinary. Visit her to read other bloggers’ Sabbath Moments.
Supernatural Prudence
This week I’ve spent time pondering meditations from Divine Intimacy. It makes me feel grounded. Today’s reading covered supernatural prudence vs. human prudence. The first is the virtue which suggests to us what we should do and what we should avoid to reach eternal union with God. Human prudence is oriented towards earthly happiness, helping us choose those actions which lead to earthly power or wealth with no orientation towards God. St. Paul calls it the “wisdom of the flesh” in Romans 8:7 and calls it the “enemy of God.”
It seems to me that supernatural prudence leads to a certain amount of happiness on earth even when we choose to do difficult or repugnant things out of a love of God and our neighbor. Doing the will of God even in the hard things of life brings peace and happiness. That’s what suffering with joy is all about.
Zinnias
This year I planted zinnia seeds in the east flower bed. I’ve wanted to grow these tall, colorful flowers for years and finally decided on the best location. They love the heat and dry conditions of this summer and so are doing very well. Butterflies flock to them.
Each week I send a few over to my piano students’ mom after their lessons and cut a few to enjoy in the house. They have no scent so they don’t make me sneeze or get a headache. My husband loves them, too. I enjoy their beauty and the continuing surprise of so many different colors. The zinnia patch is a little bit of heaven.
Pope St. Pius X
Today is the feast of Pope St. Pius X whose motto was “restore all things in Christ.” He recognized that Christianity was under attack from the Modernists and issued new rules on receiving First Holy Communion and daily Communion to strengthen Catholics’ relationship with God. We enjoy today the fruits of his leadership. Pope Pius XII canonized him on May 29, 1954.
A few years ago I read the story of his life and learned that he performed some healing miracles during his life. My Sabbath Moment for today is reflecting on how blessed we are to have had such great 20th century popes to lead the Church in such troubled times.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
August 27, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to Sabbath Moments, a weekly meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Visit her to read other blogger’s times when they paused for a moment with God or experienced Him in ordinary every day life.
Asparagus Beans
In the past two weeks we’ve had cooler evenings and the asparagus beans have taken off once more after dwindling in production during the heat of July. I pickled another five jars this week and gave one away to a friend. It’s hard work to harvest, cut the beans, steam them and make the vinegar mixture to pour over them. I’m thankful to God that I now have the strength to do what is a 2 hour job without getting exhausted. However, when I’m done, I have to lie down because the fibro pain is too fiery. This is OK with me because I think about how delicious those beans will taste this winter and know it’s a good trade-off.
Rule of St. Benedict
Because I’m a Benedictine Oblate I read short meditations on the Rule most days. Part of chapter 58 for today reads:
Let him [the novice who has chosen to make vows] know that from henceforth, being bound by the law of the Rule, he may not leave the monastery, nor shake off from his neck the yoke of the Rule which after such prolonged deliberation he was free either to refuse or accept.
"Listen carefully, my son, to the master's instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart."--Prologue to the Rule of Saint Benedict
This passage calls to mind the words of Christ, “My yoke is sweet and My burden is light” (Mt. 11:30). The yoke of the Rule becomes the yoke of Christ for those called to the monastic or oblate life. Today’s commentary includes words from the Covenant of Peace, Section II, n.3 that monks of the Swiss-American Federation read:
By his public profession, the Benedictine monk intensifies his baptismal commitment to God in Christ and enters into a covenant with his community. He surrenders all he is and has to his brothers in expression of his total gift of self to God with them. From now on his life, his talents, his own will are not his to direct or govern, but are submitted to the good of the community under the abbot.
With regard to oblates, the commentary goes on to say:
[These words] can also mean much to our oblates, who, after mature deliberation, choose to direct their lives according to the spirit of St. Benedict and promise (but not make a vow) to dedicate themselves to the service of God and mankind according to the Rule of St. Benedict in so far as their state in life permits.
In an insane world full of incessant racket and commotion, the sanity of the Rule of St. Benedict brings peace and focus – a respite from distractions and unwitting pursuit of the trivial. It is a practical reminder to surrender everything to God for the good of our neighbor. With continuing gratitude I ponder this rule so old and so fresh. Moreover, keeping it in the back of my mind helps me make good choices concerning any undertakings. From the Rite of Oblation:
May God strengthen you in your faith. May you persevere in your holy resolution to serve God and mankind in accord with the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict. So be it. Amen.
And now I must go outside and pick beans. Thank you, Lord, for St. Benedict.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
August 20, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to the weekly meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. This habit of reflecting on moments touched by God is a great leveler of the highs and lows we all go through. Finding God present with us, whether we go to Him or He comes to us, is a reason for thanksgiving – a wonderful motivation for participating in the great thanksgiving of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
This is my only blog post this week. A dear friend is going through the savage emotional turmoil of separating from her husband of many years. Devout Catholics don’t do this lightly and she is suffering greatly. I’ve been devoting quite a bit of time over the past two weeks to listening and helping her sort through difficult issues so I haven’t been trying to blog. In my mind’s eye we are standing at the foot of the Cross offering these trials to Jesus. He is the only one who can lighten her load. In my life I’ve seen that going through times like these is an opportunity to surrender to God, to let Him take the lead, to submit to His claim on us. When we step out into what appears to be darkness and uncertainty putting one foot in front of the other, we find His light and the generous blessings He is waiting to give us. Suffering can be a Sabbath Moment even though it doesn’t feel good.
Psalm 107
This morning’s Office of Prime contains Psalm 107, an expression of trust in God in the time of battle. These verses stood out for me today:
Give us aid against the foe, for worthless is the help of men.
Under God we shall do valiantly; it is He who will tread down our foes.
I love these words because they acknowledge God as all powerful and ourselves in need of His help to overcome our foes: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Men cannot help us. Only the grace of God can do this. Surrendering to Him and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us enables us to overcome these three valiantly, that is, intrepidly. We need have no fear, only confidence. We can fight off any threat to our spiritual well-being and gain control over our unruly selfishness by simply asking God for aid and accepting it, then using it. Although we are co-operating, “it is He who will tread down our foes.”
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
August 13, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to Sabbath Moments, a meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Sabbath moments are those times we rest in the Lord or find Him in the ordinary.
Butterflies
For the past few weeks we have been blessed with huge butterflies I’ve never seen before. Even a news anchorman mentioned it on the evening news. They are attracted to the flowers and flowering bushes in our yard, including the mint and lavender, asparagus bean flowers and other growing things. Perhaps it is the excessive heat that has brought them. In any case, it is most peaceful and enjoyable to watch them soar through the air and land for a second or two and soar again. A lovely metaphor for the soul enjoying the presence of God.
U.I.O.G.D.
This week I read an article about how the faith has diminished in Spain, once a strongly Catholic country. What you find in churches there is mostly children and older people, with few teens and adults. The anti-clericalism of the 1930s is once again strong and when the Pope visits for World Youth Day anti-Catholic demonstrations are expected.
How does a country lose its faith? I believe it is because those who call themselves Christian are only nominally so. What is professed by the mouth is not lived in practice. Marxism has replaced true Catholic social teaching and materialism has supplanted working for the glory of God.
When I think of the years I spent chasing money and position in the business world while neglecting God, and when I see how it never gave me true satisfaction, I am reminded of rats dashing around in a maze, unable to find the exit. It is a life of death – wasted talent, wasted health that vanishes into a dark hole.
Fortunately, St. Benedict’s practical motto, Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus (U.I.O.G.D.), from chapter 57 of his rule, reminds us to sanctify all our works. “That in all things God may be glorified” is the translation. If we ask God to give us the grace to make a habit of living like this, He will surely answer our prayer.
St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana has meditations on the Benedictine Rule for oblates. A paragraph from the August 13 meditation says:
What seems so important is that this motto of Benedictines came from a chapter in the Rule where there was not a discussion of deeply spiritual things, but in a question of business. Even in money matters the monks might find means for a sort of apostolate. Each financial endeavor should be taken up with the motto: “in all (or all of you) God is to be glorified through Jesus Christ,” as St. Peter said (1 Pet. 4:11). This phrase has become one of the mottoes of the oblates of St. Benedict. What a distinctive motto is presented to us all. Even the craftsmen must have been pleased to know that their work gave glory to God by its perfection. Whatever then you do, whether you eat or drink or work or sleep, do all for the glory of God. (1 Cor.: 10:31)
I am convinced that if we Christians did all with our eyes on God’s glory, if we did not shrink from being identified as Christians living the two great commandments, many would convert and stop chasing what will perish. They could not numb their consciences with the phrase, “Everybody else is doing it” when everybody else most certainly is not doing it. It doesn’t hurt to keep in mind that no moving van will follow us to our grave with earthly possessions for paradise.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
August 6, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to Sabbath Moments, a meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. These are times when we rest in the Lord or encounter Him in the ordinary times of life. Visit Colleen to read other bloggers’ Sabbath Moments for the week.
Rain
We got blessed this week with rain – twice. The heat remains excessive and now we have high humidity which is helping our garden. I enjoyed gathering veggies in the rain once again, thanking God for the cleansing showers. St. Paul tells us in Col. 3:17: All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. If we keep this in mind, everything becomes a Sabbath Moment. If only it were easier to do! Resting in the Lord is, after all, a state of mind and heart as St. Therese of Lisieux so ably taught us.
A group of Christian Texans and Oklahomans are spreading the word to pray for rain and cooler temperatures, so please join them in prayer. These two states have exceptionally high heat and drought which is causing a terrible farm crisis, not just crop production but cattle raising. Many people’s livelihoods are at stake as well as economic suffering brought about by these conditions. Both states have had heavy losses to wildfires, too. And in southwest Missouri neighboring Oklahoma, I have seen evidence of many grass fires as we share many of the conditions in Oklahoma.
Essentially Satanical
This week I sent out the August edition of the Una Voce Arkansas Ozarks Regional Newsletter. The second article is about Joseph de Maistre who wrote Du Pape in which he commented on the French Revolution. The excerpt I included is well worth reading. I found much to ponder and pray over, especially his thought that the state is ultimately accountable to Divine Providence. When a people abandons this truth, we have what the whole world is experiencing today – rampant culture of death, consuming greed and corruption, and state sanctioned disruption of the right of the person to act freely according to a well-formed conscience.
The image in my mind as an answer to our world today is that of all people falling on their knees in unison and bowing their heads to the ground before God, an answer both individual and corporate. And once again, I am reminded of the terrible responsibility each of us has to proclaim the Gospel to all according to the gifts and opportunities God gives us, and to set a good example in our daily lives of humility, gratitude, chastity, cheerful giving, truthfulness, and gentleness.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
July 30, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to this meme hosted by our faithful Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Sabbath Moments are times when we rest peacefully in the Lord or times when we are aware of Him through the ordinary moments of life.
Dilled Asparagus Beans
Monday of this week I took our great harvest of asparagus beans from last week, pickled six jars of them and froze the rest. I like dilled anything and these beans taste slightly sweet with the vinegar. They are delicious cold by themselves or cut in small bites and put in egg salad or potato salad. Just about any way you can use dill pickles you can use dilled asparagus beans.
I thank God often for my discovering these beans last year and for being able to grow them this year from seeds I saved from the beans I grew last year. It reminds me of the true meaning of stewardship. Another great thing about doing this work is that following the regimen my natural health doctor has me on has given me energy and strength enough to perform it.
Japanese Beetles
Japanese Beetle (photo courtesy of Northrup Photography
God is generous in giving us means to deal with pests – means that are not harmful to man or animals. Such are the very effective Japanese beetle traps we hung for the first time this year. Thirteen years ago there weren’t any Japanese beetles in Missouri and now we are totally infested with them. They chew up the leaves on our sand cherry to the point of making them lace, and their attacks on crepe myrtles are legendary.
I tried using Neem on them last year and this year but it didn’t seem to help and they have no known natural enemies. Even the birds won’t touch them, although I know a lady whose daughter hand picks them (yuck!) off her plants and feeds them to her chickens.
People who bought traps last year complained that they attracted all the beetles in the neighborhood, making the problem worse. Hmmm…beetle traps attract beetles from all around. They fall in the sack and die, rendering it impossible to lay eggs and repopulate themselves every year. So what if every beetle in the neighborhood makes it into my yard and ultimately into my traps? How is that bad? It’s just that many grubs less to turn into beetles next year and aggravate everybody.
I thanked God many times this week for the effectiveness of the beetle traps. It’s the means He’s given us to preserve our landscape and enjoy the beauty He’s given us, beauty that is a dim reflection of His glory, but a reflection nonetheless.
Early Morning Quiet Time
This week I’ve been waking up early for some reason. It’s been an opportunity to pray and meditate, especially for pleading God’s mercy on the world. We each are missionaries of the love of God to those around us, those we reach through our blogging, and those we pray for but will never meet in this life.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
Sabbath Moments
July 23, 2011
Awareness of God
Welcome to the Sabbath Moments meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Visit her to read other Catholic bloggers’ moments this week when they rested in the Lord or when they recognized God in the ordinary.
This week we pulled up the zucchini because it wasn’t producing and, in spite of my spraying, was infested with squash bugs. The southwest Missouri heat this year has been carrying on much higher and much longer than any year since we moved here in 1993, so the plants had a lot against them. It reminds me that Jesus said the bad fig tree would have to be cut down and thrown into the fire. If we associate with people who are giving themselves over to sin (the squash beetles), go to places that lead us to sin (the excessive and enduring heat), we are going to be torn up and thrown into the fire (hell). Even my veggie garden has the lessons about how to live.
Yesterday, just as Roger and I started to gather veggies, rain started pouring down. We stayed outside and got soaking wet, enjoying ourselves to the utmost while we picked the fruit of our labors. I was thanking God for the rain and enjoying myself immensely, knowing that all those negative ions in the rain were doing something good for us and the plants. Plus, getting wet in the rain is just plain fun. I guess I’ve never grown up. The kids across the street were playing outside in the rain, too. We do have to release our inner child sometimes, don’t we?
Every day I read a life of the saint of the day from the Lives of the Saints by Father Alban Butler, from TAN books. This week we celebrated the feast of St. Vincent de Paul. He is a great example of a manly man. He grew up in a family of pig farmers, guarding his father’s pigs. Shortly after his ordination to the priesthood, he was captured by pirates and carried off to the Barbary coast as a slave where he converted his master and fled with him to France. Not long after that, he was appointed the chaplain-general of the galleys where he spread hope and joy among the prisoners. On one occasion he took on a prisoner’s chains so that he could be released to his mother, serving out the sentence for him.
Like our modern day Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, he saw the face of Christ in the poor and suffering. St. Vincent went into the streets of Paris to gather the children left there to die like Mother Teresa went into the streets of Calcutta to gather the dying. He taught the rich to do works of mercy and founded the daughters of Charity.
I’ve thought a lot about St. Vincent this week. He is one of the incorruptibles. God’s favor on his life is a body that didn’t decay in death and is a lesson that purity in a man is saintly, not wimpy. He died in 1660, which is a long time not to have been turned into dust.
To me, St. Vincent is a great example of someone who made the most of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. He inspires me to do my best in my circumstances. I won’t do the great things he did, but I can do quiet, small things greatly by following his example.
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R. Now and forever. Amen.
(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)
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