dec 2019 faithposting

 

"What began in the Immaculate Conception, runs without a fault or break straight to the Blessed Sacrament. The one mystery answers to the other; the one illuminates the other; the one completes and consummates the other. The Blood that is in the Chalice is from the living Heart of Jesus. It was shed in the Passion before it was shed in the Chalice. It had lived long in His Sacred Heart before He shed it; and He took it at the first, with His spotless Flesh, from the Immaculate Heart of Mary; and that it was sinless and stainless there was from the Immaculate Conception. And so at one end of the avenue is Mary’s sinless flesh, prepared for her as for the Mother of God, and at the other end the sinful flesh of man made immortal and incorruptible by the Flesh of Jesus, Mary’s Son, and the sinful soul of man bathed to a glorious purity in the Blood of Jesus, Mary’s Son, through the mystery of His sweet Sacrament of love; and the light that lies ahead, the light we are all approaching, and have not yet attained, the glow and splendour of our heavenly home, it is by the same sweet Sacrament that we shall attain it, and make it ours at last. So at every mass, and in each communion we look up to the Immaculate Conception. The light of that far-reaching mystery is in our faces on the altar-step. It beams direct upon us, and so full is it of the same light as the Blessed Sacrament that we seem almost to hear our Mother’s voice from that distant fountain, “Eat, O friends, and drink, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved.”"
-(Fr. Faber)

 

God created Mary without sin– the Immaculate Conception who would immaculately conceive His Only Son in turn… His pure body was formed within hers, His Body and Blood gaining their very Substance from hers. When Christ died upon the Cross, He then mysteriously and wonderfully imitated His Mother in that He now gives US His Body and Blood, so that we might be born anew in Him, purified by His redemptive Sacrifice… but from that same Cross He also gives us His Mother, so that she may also “conceive” us, through her Son, as new holy children– His Flesh and Blood now flowing back to her in a sense, to be born again through Him, through her. It’s amazing. Heaven came to earth in Jesus, by Mary’s ‘Fiat,’ and we can taste that same firstfruits of promise in the Most Holy Eucharist, wherein we tangibly and really participate in the mystery of not only Jesus’s death, but also– paradoxically and beautifully– His birth. And Mary was inextricably present as participant in both, in the joy of His coming and the “birth pangs” of His Passion and Death, before His Resurrection– the new “birth” He promises to all who unite themselves in love to Him in this total sacred cycle. And Mary is the one standing at the threshold of it all, the one who opens the gate, the one who joyfully declares “May it be done to me according to your word”… Indeed, by God’s Word Himself. And so it must be with us, to enter into the life of God with her, the New Eve, the Mother of Mankind as it is reborn in her Son… Mary, the Immaculate Conception.


-------------------------------------------

“I question whether the defenses of the gospel are not sheer impertinences. The gospel does not need defending. If Jesus Christ is not alive and cannot fight His own battles, then Christianity is in a bad state. But He is alive, and we have only to preach His gospel in all its naked simplicity, and the power that goes with it will be the evidence of its divinity.”
- Charles Spurgeon

I personally think we should defend its honor and truth, for the sake of living the integrity of our faith, instead of being complacent in the face of blasphemy– but indeed, the Gospel is true and real and honorable no matter what we do or don’t do. We don’t need to “prove” anything. The real issue is not personal power, but personal fidelity. The last line of this quote sums that up wonderfully.

-----------------------------------------------

"Not to us, Lord, not to us
    but to Your Name be the glory,
    because of Your love and faithfulness."
(Psalm 115:1)

This is such a core confession of Christianity, but I don’t think we fully grasp just how universal this praise must be.

Yes, let your prayers and hymns and good deeds glorify God. But let everything else do so, too. And I mean everything.

Are you at work? Glorify God through it. Are you reading a book? Glorify God through it. Are you shopping for groceries? Glorify God through it. Are you painting a picture, dressing a child, balancing your checkbook, driving a car, playing a video game, washing your hair, dusting the furniture, exercising at the gym, watching television, telling a story, planting a garden, changing a tire, eating breakfast, or doing any other little blessedly mundane thing of life? Glorify God through it. I’m serious. God is already in ALL the times and places and things of our existence– therefore it is our lovingly faithful duty to actively acknowledge and praise and glorify Him within those moments, without fail, without exception.

In everything we do, all glory be to God.

-----------------------------------

"What you see may seem small compared to what God promised you, it’s easy to dismiss it and think it’s nothing. But God can take a small cloud and bring a big blessing. He can take what looks insignificant and cause it to turn into something amazing."

The essence of this– trust in God– is good and true, but quotes such as this bother my spirit with their consistent focus on more, on big, on amazing… words which I fear are are being used in human terms here. And the very notion of “dismissing” ANY gift from God, let alone because it doesn’t meet our expectations, is frankly deplorable.

God promises us Himself. That is big and amazing enough, and infinitely more than we could ever even dream. But as for the temporal things of this life, the “smaller” manifestations of this ultimate blessing, we need to stop looking for “something more.” That has the scent of greed and entitlement and it opposes the Christian spirit of humility, surrender, gratitude and radical trust.

Consider the alternative: God purposely sent you that “small cloud.” It’s “amazing” just as it is because He sent it. It might “appear” drab, plain, unexciting, or otherwise uninteresting, but that doesn’t matter. It’s His will.

And hey– maybe God will send you a bigger cloud, something amazing and significant for sure– a huge terrific thunderhead, black with rain and lightning and wind to turn your life upside down. You should still get on your knees and thank Him, because both the blue skies and blustery storms come from His Hand and serve His Purposes. For all you know, that awful disaster could– or did– bring unfathomable blessings, that you might never even see. But God does. Trust in that. And above all, trust Him, who is making Himself evident within that cloud, thereby giving you the greatest gift of all, no matter what the circumstances may seem to suggest.

Stop judging, dismissing, weighing, and critiquing God’s working in your life. Start accepting everything He gives with humble gratitude, complete trust and resignation to His Will, and total cooperation. Seek Him, desire Him, and love Him above all else, and you won’t need to keep “looking for blessings”– you’ll realize that in Him, you already have everything you could ever need.

--------------------------------------------------------

“The fault this body has is that the more comfort we try to give it the more needs it discovers. It’s amazing how much comfort it wants.”
-St. Teresa of Avila
 

 

I am reminded of this daily, often to startling extents. The flesh cannot ever be satisfied or consoled. Trying to do so is utterly useless.

Instead, strive to comfort your soul, through Christ. Satisfy your heart with Him; console your mind with Him. He will meet and exceed every spiritual yearning you have.

--------------------------------------------

“Anyone God uses significantly is always deeply wounded.”

— Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God
 

Then may God wound me ever deeper, so that I may serve Him all the more wholeheartedly. I surrender to Your Cross.

-----------------------------------------

“You aren’t as bad as you think you are, you’re worse. And God doesn’t love you as much as you think he does, he loves you more.“”

— Chris DeLuna

I could meditate on this for hours… but honestly it’s a daily, lifetime reflection. It’s profound in humility, contrition, gratitude, discipline, comfort, awe, and love.

We are sinners and we are deplorable. But God, through Christ, loves us so much that while we were still sinners, He died for us, so that we can be forgiven and justified, therefore becoming able to live with Him in love for eternity. That’s unfathomable. That’s true. And that’s something we must remember always.

-------------------------------------------------

“…the greatest thing each person can do is to give himself to God utterly and unconditionally - weaknesses, fears, and all.”
Soren Kierkegaard

We must give our most ugly, painful, raw, wounded places to God, else they will never be healed or soothed or corrected. Hiding them in shame only prolongs our sinful suffering.

Give your ALL to God! Surrender in weeping joy. He is all you need. He is peace and life and hope. When you give every moment and every atom to Him, over and over, then everything in your life will be put into the right place, by your obedience to His Will.

------------------------------------------------

“The Jesus Prayer is not a method.  Properly, it is a relationship, something personal, emotional.  If one treats it as a method, intellectually, then you are missing the whole point, the main point of it, which is a slowly developing relationship
with the person of Jesus.”

~Archimandrite George of Grigoriou

The Jesus Prayer is spoken directly to Christ. It is the beginning of an ever-deepening conversation with Him, a humble and wholehearted cry for mercy, doors thrown achingly open to Love. If you pray thus without love, without ardent attention to the Beloved, without personal sincerity and honesty, then it is not a prayer at all in truth. You must pour your entire being into it– you must offer your entire self to Him.

-----------------------------------------------------

“God is love, and therefore the preaching of His word must always proceed from love. Then both preacher and listener will profit. But if you do nothing but condemn, the soul of the people will not heed you, and no good will come of it.”

~taken from the book Saint Silouan the Athonite, by Archimandrite Sophronius Sakharov

 

Correction is good and has its proper place– it must work upon the foundation of humility and love. Condemnation of sin, although just, will only feel like violence, if it is spoken without mercy. It is not our place to pass judgment– that is Christ’s power alone. We are called to forgive, to instruct, and above all, to bring souls to Christ… including our own. If preacher and listener both intend to reach heaven, they must so act as striving saints together now!

If you speak, do so with love. If you are silent, do so with love. And in all things, act for the love and glory of God!

---------------------------------------------------------

"When you persist in prayer, you receive what you need, you receive what you do not have, and you receive all that is necessary to be a blessing to those that are in your household."

That bit about becoming a blessing to one's household-- I desperately need that. Lord, please help me persist in prayer always, so that I may never be a disgrace or dishonor to my family or to Your most Holy Name!!

----------------------------------------------------------

"The appropriate word you left unsaid; the joke you didn't tell; the cheerful smile for those who bother you; that silence when you're unjustly accused; your kind conversation with people you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in those who live with you... this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification."
- Saint Josemaria Escriva

Mortification is a vital exercise of faith that we need to practice constantly. It is anchored in humility and love, in patience and mercy, and it brings us ever closer to Christ both in imitation and intimacy.

----------------------------------------------------

 

I find it quite impossible, reading the New Testament on the one hand and the newspaper on the other, to suppose that there will be no ultimate condemnation, no final loss, no human being to whom, as C.S. Lewis puts it, God will eventually say, “Thy will be done.” I wish it were otherwise, but one cannot forever whistle “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy” in the darkness of Hiroshima, of Auschwitz, of the murder of children and the careless greed that enslaves millions with debts not their own. Humankind cannot, alas, bear very much reality, and the massive denial of reality by the cheap and cheerful universalism of Western liberalism has a lot to answer for.

~N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, 180.

 

Mercy requires repentance. You cannot show mercy where one denies the undeserving need of it in the first place.

Sin will be punished with strict justice wherever it is found. The only hope of expunging its stain is the Blood of Christ. And we cannot receive that without genuine faith in Him.

Those who commit such atrocities with a sense of pride, self-righteousness, and/or “a good reason”… there will be an ultimate condemnation. God’s Will will be done. This is reality.

-------------------------------------------------

“Sin, we note, is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; rather, the rules are the thumbnail sketches of different types of dehumanizing behavior.”

— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, 180.

 

YES. The letter of the Law is only a summary of its Spirit.

You cannot keep the letter and yet deny the essence, nor can you claim to be respecting its heart while breaking its word.

Sin will always exalt its own ideas, motives, and goals. If you find yourself trying to exalt yourself above another in your behavior, in letter or in spirit… you’re sinning.

There are limitless sins, and they are everywhere. Our only refuge is to live in an unflinchingly humble love of God. When our sole idea, goal, and motive is love and respect for Him… then sin cannot topple us, however it may rage.

---------------------------------------------------------

“But judgment is necessary–unless we were to conclude, absurdly, that nothing much is wrong or, blasphemously, that God doesn’t mind very much.”

— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, 179.

Judgment is discernment. It is not proud self-exaltation. To judge something as right or wrong is necessary to live well; to be able to discern what will or won’t glorify God is essential to choose rightly. The heart of it is simple– love of God above all, even at our own expense– but the practice of it, made difficult by our weakness and temptation and sinful inclinations, requires that we have a healthy sense of judgment, and the graceful gravity to obey those Spirit-given conclusions.

A lot is wrong, and God minds very much. Hence the Cross. Hence the entire plan of salvation.

Christ is our Just Judge. Follow His instructions, and judge well!

-------------------------------------------------------------

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing–for that would be harmful for you.” (Hebrews 13:17)
 

I have been shamefully guilty of causing such sighing, and I will admit it is because I am often afraid of correction– afraid because my sinful nature is so strong, and I am so guilty.

To obey and submit will bring me great joy and peace, as well as to those in authority over me for the good of my soul. To see exasperation in those individuals indicates that I am being stubborn and proud– resisting the yoke of humility, and thus putting my soul in great danger. That would cause great sighs of concern, worry, and frustration in any person who cared about my highest good!!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Hebrews 13:16)
 

The word “sacrifices” here is so important. Do good, be kind, share and give and bless, even when to do so would be difficult, frustrating, or inconvenient– indeed, especially then.

It is in the face of spiritual adversity that virtues grow the most strongly. We will be tested, so surrender to the Spirit and pray for the grace to do what honors God with loving joy.

---------------------------------------------------------

“People who persevere in error are so far away from acknowledging their sin that they even defend it as the height of righteousness. Therefore it is impossible for them to be forgiven.”

— Martin Luther, “Lectures on Galatians” in Luther’s Works, vol. 27, 33.

I also want to add that this disturbing modern attitude of treating sin and sinfulness as funny, trendy, or even desirable, is exactly what this quote warns against, even though the “sin” is being acknowledged… the horror is that the sin is being redefined as righteousness while still calling it a sin.

There are individuals who will admit, with a proud smile, “oh I absolutely have sinned! I know I am a sinner! But there’s nothing wrong with sin!” Ironically, this carefree embracing of one’s sinful nature is the deepest rejection of it. It is a rejection of Christian morality, an attempt to justify and absolve oneself, by denying the very possibility that one even needs justification and absolution. If you lie, but say “it’s okay though!” and explain why, you are entirely deluded. If you steal, but say “I had a good reason though!” you have completely missed the point. If you entertain thoughts of violence and hatred and revenge, claiming it’s “fine” if you don’t act on them, you are mistaken. If you celebrate lust and promiscuity and shamelessness, declaring that they are “natural feelings” to be “proud of,” you are devastatingly lost. Sin is sin. Sin is ALWAYS wrong, we cannot alter that, we cannot cut corners or make excuses, and our very inclination to is blatant proof of just how weak we are and how powerful temptation is. We NEED a Savior to deliver us from our own corrupt nature– another truth the sin-celebrators will refuse utterly. They don’t want to admit guilt, helplessness, or shame. They are afraid. But defending and denying their crimes instead, out of fear of judgment, is just worsening the problem… because it bars them from being contrite, and therefore being forgiven. Pride and humility cannot coexist.

So be brutally honest with your examination of conscience. Are you insisting your sin was righteous in some area? Are you making excuses or allowances for a behavior that you know deep down was wrong? Lay it all down before Christ! Admit your weakness, admit your fear, admit your shame and guilt and regret. It is only when you have been so crushed and humbled that the chains of sin can be broken along with your heart. Christ can and will forgive even your most terrifying sin… if you have wept over it, and if you give it to him raw– no sugarcoating, no gilding, no smoothing over.

Acknowledge your sins, acknowledge your error, admit that you are not righteous, admit that you need forgiveness. Only from this sincerely lowly position can we be healed and brought to the heights of heaven. If you try to grab heaven on your own, you’ll catch nothing but delusions. It’s God’s Way, or no way at all.
 

---------------------------------------------------------

 

“Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never send away.” (John 6:37)

 

God cannot lie. That “never” is a glorious promise that moves my wretched heart to joyful weeping.

We have been given, and received in absolute love. That is truly something to remember during this most holy Christmas season!

---------------------------------------------------------

“God did not choose perfect people to form his church, but rather sinners who have experienced his love and forgiveness.”

No one is perfect; only God is perfect. If we think of ourselves as such, we will be unable to see or receive Him.

We are all sinners, and when we confess this and turn to God in contrite humility, He will help and heal us, and this foundation of Christ’s endless love for us unworthy yet penitent souls is a great beauty of the Church.