Prayer of reflection on the qualities of God

 

A Prayer

Dear Lord, Today I thought of the words of Vincent van Gogh: “It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.” You are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life, by your love I am sustained, and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love. . . . O Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know there is ebb and flow but the sea remains the sea. Amen.

Thoughts on virtues

 

Powerful Gifts

“Now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”—1 Corinthians 13:13

The three Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love bring you and me into a direct relationship with God. Of course, love is the greatest of the three, but hope is the most important. If I have faith in God’s intimate personal, presence to me, I have hope. I am free to love more. And the opposite is true. A world without hope soon becomes a world without love. Hope is nourished by faith in God’s unconditional love. Faith brings that which seems hopeless within one’s reach. Faith gives birth to hope, which gives birth to love. A person of faith is not necessarily the one who only believes that God can do everything, but rather the one who believes that he and she can obtain everything from God. The saints often taught that we obtain from God as much as we hope for from him. Hope and pray with a peace that comes from trusting God’s love for you.

Please increase in me these powerful gifts from you: faith, hope and love. I need your help to live them. Amen.

 —from the book Three Minutes with God: Reflections and Prayers to Encourage, Inspire, and Motivate
by Monsignor Frank Bognanno

Thoughts on Saint Louis IX, King of France

 

Saint Louis of France’s Story

At his coronation as king of France, Louis IX bound himself by oath to behave as God’s anointed, as the father of his people and feudal lord of the King of Peace. Other kings had done the same, of course. Louis was different in that he actually interpreted his kingly duties in the light of faith. After the violence of two previous reigns, he brought peace and justice.

Louis “took the cross” for a Crusade when he was 30. His army seized Damietta in Egypt but not long after, weakened by dysentery and without support, they were surrounded and captured. Louis obtained the release of the army by giving up the city of Damietta in addition to paying a ransom. He stayed in Syria four years.

Louis deserves credit for extending justice in civil administration. His regulations for royal officials became the first of a series of reform laws. He replaced trial by battle with a form of examination of witnesses and encouraged the use of written records in court.

Louis was always respectful of the papacy, but defended royal interests against the popes, and refused to acknowledge Innocent IV’s sentence against Emperor Frederick II.

Louis was devoted to his people, founding hospitals, visiting the sick, and like his patron Saint Francis, caring even for people with leprosy. He is one of the patrons of the Secular Franciscan Order. Louis united France—lords and townsfolk, peasants and priests and knights—by the force of his personality and holiness. For many years the nation was at peace.

Every day, Louis had 13 special guests from among the poor to eat with him, and a large number of poor were served meals near his palace. During Advent and Lent, all who presented themselves were given a meal, and Louis often served them in person. He kept lists of needy people, whom he regularly relieved, in every province of his dominion.

Disturbed by new Muslim advances, Louis led another crusade to North Africa in 1270. Within a month of their landing at Carthage, the army camp was decimated by disease. Louis himself died there at the age of 56. He was canonized 27 years later.

Thoughts on gifts

 

Receiving the Gifts of Others

A gift only becomes a gift when it is received; and nothing we have to give—wealth, talents, competence, or just beauty— will ever be recognized as true gifts until someone is open to accept them. This all suggests that if we want others to grow— that is, to discover their potential and capacities, to experience that they have something to live and work for—we should first of all be able to recognize their gifts and be willing to receive them. For we only become fully human when we are received and accepted. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on mystics

 

God’s Word Is Everything

 

We read the mystics for the same reason we read the Bible, because we find there an articulation of intimacy with God. Abraham and Moses have experiences of God; the writers of Genesis and Exodus relate these experiences. The prophets experience God; their prophecies find words to express that experience. We read the prophets to learn what God told them. But we also read, hoping, through them, to have a vicarious experience of God. As with Holy Scripture, in reading the mystics I feel that God is somehow there in the words. God created everything with words, and so through words I hope to be recreated. For those in the Judeo-Christian tradition, no mystical writing incarnates the divine power and presence as does the Bible…. No other Judeo-Christian text demands more of the reader because it demands the humility to listen to God, not our own prejudices. The Bible, in short, demands that we abdicate the ego’s need to be like God. The Bible’s truth is that God alone is God; God alone is. God is God, and we are but creatures dependent on God for everything yet endowed by God with a free will that can reject God’s primacy, privileging our will over God’s will.

Without God’s sustaining love we are nothing. God alone keeps us in existence. Once we realize that, we want to know more about this God. Who is God, and what does God have to do with us? That is the question, and so we go in search of words and other signs that can reveal to us who God is and, thereby, who we are. Thus, after Scripture and nature, we turn to those who have experienced God—the mystics. What has God revealed to them? Anything more or other than is in Scripture? Anything more than is revealed in the Word that is Jesus Christ? I have not found in the mystics anything more than God has revealed in Christ—at least not anything more that relates to the question, “Who is God, and what does God have to do with us?”

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God’s Love
by Murray Bodo, OFM

Thoughts on the Assumption of Mary

 “In her, assumed into Heaven, we are shown the eternal destiny that awaits us beyond the mystery of death: a destiny of total happiness in divine glory.”

– St. John Paul II

 

 

Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 974) teaches, “The Most Blessed Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was completed, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven, where she already shares in the glory of her Son's Resurrection, anticipating the resurrection of all members of his Body.” 

 

We have a special page dedicated to the Solemnity of the Assumption. We answer questions such as:

• Is the Assumption of Mary in the Bible?
• What happened to Mary after Jesus ascended to Heaven?
• Did the Virgin Mary die?

On the page, we also offer a free eBook, The Pondering Heart of Mary. Filled with beautiful images and quotes, this eBook will encourage you to run to Our Lady and call upon her to guide you on the path of holiness.

 

We hope this eBook and this page help you grow closer to Our Blessed Mother and her beloved Son.

 

May God bless you!

 

In Christ,

Your EWTN Family

  

 

 

Thoughts on compassion

 

Compassion

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on the Transfiguration

 JESUS TRANSFIGURATION

 

When Jesus was transfigured, the three disciples with him on the mountainside with him were likely struck with a variety of feelings and emotions: amazed, overwhelmed, frightened as well as confused by what had occurred. To compound all of this  is that Jesus’ only comment is to tell them not to discuss this with anyone until after he has risen from the dead.  This statement must’ve left them even more perplexed. 

 

I have wondered why in so many places in the Scriptures we find this event.  One conclusion is that the Transfiguration occurred not so much for the disciples benefit but as for that of Jesus.

 

The Transfiguration event is akin to that of Jesus’ baptism. In both instances His Father is confirming and consoling and preparing Jesus for what he is doing and is about to do. At the time of the Transfiguration Jesus is ready to journey to Jerusalem where he will suffer his passion and death. This is a time when Jesus would certainly need confirmation,  just as he needed for reassurance at his baptism when about to begin his public life and preaching.

 

What does this say to you and me? Recall that St. Paul tells us that Jesus is like us in all things except for sin. These incidents present excellent examples of this. At his baptism Jesus is about to embark on a way of life he is almost totally unfamiliar with.  No wonder he will spend some time with John and his disciples. With them he will discover how to nurture disciples, how to draw crowds, how to preach to them, how to deal with people reacting in so many different ways, favorable,  hostile, cynical to the message that he proclaims. Similarly, at the time of transfiguration, he is about to go to Jerusalem, the stronghold of his bitter enemies, some of whom have either tried or vowed to destroy him. All of this demands of Jesus' incredible determination and courage.

 

And so as Jesus ponders this and prays, his Father touches him in a most unique way telling him that he is doing the right thing. Moreover, the Father does this in a manner that provides Jesus a foretaste and confirmation of the incredible outcome that will result from the ordeal of the Jerusalem trials and tribulation. What a blessed and wonderful experience the Transfiguration is for Jesus.

 

Jesus sought and needed in the most difficult and mysterious moments of his life his Father’s affirmation and encouragement that He is indeed doing his father’s will. We too need this and we too should seek this.

-Fr. Jim Blumeyer, SJ