may 2020 faithposting
May. 1st, 2020 01:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prismaticbleedI genuinely think that the reason we are currently being denied access to the Most Holy Eucharist (COVID restrictions) is because we have been desecrating it for too long through complacency. How many of us DO have unconfessed mortal sins on our souls, yet we "reason" their gravity away through feeble self-justification and proud excuses? How many of us don't fast properly before receiving the Real Presence? How many of us leave right after the Sacrament? How many of us drift through the Holy Mass in distraction and ignorance, before receiving Jesus Christ Himself with what can only be described as a blasphemous lack of ardent recognition and love? How many of us don't even really BELIEVE that Christ is Present there? How many of us forget that He remains in us after Mass, and return to living lives that mock our faith WHILE Jesus abides literally within our bodies?
God has temporarily deprived us of the greatest blessing we HAVE on earth, because we didn't realize that's what it was, and we didn't honor it as such. So now, in this season of mourning, let us repent, let us strive to amend our lives and purify our hearts, let us do penance for our awful lack of love and devote ourselves more totally and sincerely than ever before to living lives worthy of our call to be Christians. God is chastising us out of profound love-- we must humbly submit to His discipline and change our ways, for we may never get such a notable chance again!!
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I'm homebound the way it is, but the added depth and "memento mori" feeling of this COVID quarantine has deepened my faith SO much, SO quickly, and I had been scraping through Lent in near despair. Thanks be to God; I don't know what sort of paradoxical grace this is but WOW. I'm praying, reading holy books, studying Scripture, & watching more online masses than ever before, out of LOVE. Like my soul is ravenous for holiness now. | can't NOT seek God. And it's an ever deepening love, fervent with joy and desire to know Him more closely. It's amazing. I guess it's true that the Real awareness of one's mortality- as an immunocompromised individual in a VERY high risk family- pushes one all the more to focus on the spiritual over the physical, the lasting over the temporal. But | always thought it'd feel obligatory. Nope! This faith growth is entirely grace. There's no forcing, no begrudging, no reluctance. Its absolutely JOYOUS. Like heart burning, teary eyed NEED for God, and WANT of God, that was never so intense or freely felt before.
I've wanted this all my life. God keep me here, & closer!
If you ask God to help you grow, do not be surprised if it starts raining.
This is so important! EVERYTHING God gives us is a blessing from His Hand, meant to help us grow in holiness, to grow closer to Him!
So give thanks to the Lord at all times, and sing in the rain He sends. ❤🌧🎶🙏
(also... of course this reminds me of a certain someone, who has helped me grow so much spiritually. he's a perfect example of this. thank You, God, for him.)
worshipgifs: My goal is to pray so much and so often I pray with out realizing it. I want talk to God and learn how to tap in to a relationship. I want to hear His thoughts and I want to laugh with Him. I want to pray so much that it is like talking to my best friend.
This. This is what I want, so much.
I want to live in ever-deepening love with God every moment of my life… and to live in perfect eternal love with Him in heaven.
God meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be.
God is Truth Himself. We must be open-heartedly honest in order to meet Him, at all… no exceptions, no excuses.
But He waits for us… 🙏🥺
The danger of peace and decadence lies in the ability of temporal pleasure to cause man to forget about the war that is forever waged within himself.
This is the reason why are called the Church Militant– We seek Christ’s peace, not that of the world, and His peace is rooted in hope of heaven with Him– for our true and complete triumph comes only after death, when we are reunited with Christ our Victor! Until then, it’s war against the devil, the flesh, and the world, and we can only achieve that through Him, Who is opposed to all such temporal temptations! So remember from Whom an to Where you are called, hold to this holy hope, do not despair, and endure until the very end as a soldier of God.
“The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.”— Victor Hugo
What is real now is only imperfect. What is ideal is what exists in God– the true full potential of Creation, and its ultimate fulfillment in Christ, which we see the first realized glimpse of in the Resurrection of Jesus. We too are called to be part of this divine ideal, as we are also part of the real that He glorified as man, for we alone as reasoning souls are able to perceive this blessed hope, let alone participate in it through faith. Therefore, whereas all other creatures only exist, it is our sacred responsibility as humans to live, to strive ever upwards, and to carry all of Creation with us, in the salvific strength of our perfect Savior.
“Beauty attached to God is sacrament, cut off from God it becomes an idol.”— Frithjof Schuon
God is the Source and Cause of beauty. If we fail to recognize Him in it, then we effectively admire earthly beauty as its own cause– turning it into a false god. This misattribution is the essence of all idolatry.
"Religious experience is bigger than religion. That is to say, God himself is “outside the box.” While we have our doctrines and dogmas and traditions and theology, God is greater than all our explanations and there is more in heaven and earth than our neat little answers can contain."
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
modern-day-distributist: I don’t disagree, but people usually only say that sort of thing right before they go full heresy mode.
Honestly that’s what concerns me about most of the reblogs here. It’s a humbling truth that can sadly be taken far out of the proper context.
Nevertheless, in a beautiful sort of irony, Fr. Longenecker said this in an article discussing how Catholicism’s history of the miraculous is still entirely valid even if the formal religion has no outright inclusion of such things. And even then, God is greater than BOTH wondrous miracles and religious comprehension. But even so, God EXISTS, not as some vague and unknowable pantheistic “force,” but as GOD, the Creator of All, Who we see reflected in all and Who we do strive to know and worship and serve to the best of our humble human ability… but Who is inevitably bigger than our brains can fathom, and the experience of Him, beyond theory and study and dogma, will always shatter our notions and knowledge in some way… because it will both fulfill and surpass them in a way that can never be confined in systematic theology.
Religious experience DOES NOT invalidate religion. Personal religious experience, in truth, must always be evaluated in light Of religion, as our own feelings are prone to skewed objectivism and may not be legitimate outside of our own imaginations, as it were. But honest religious experience is “bigger than” religion in that it is not obligated to occur within the bounds of any formal faith practice– for indeed, such practices grow and are enriched over time BY religious experience. Consider Abraham, Moses, Jesus Himself! They and so many more experienced their religion in ways that their religious practice hadn’t fully been able to include prior. And Jesus Christ is honestly the BEST example of this: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)
If you are quoting this in an attempt to elevate the supposed validity of your own objective experiences above the time-tested validity of subjective religion, you have grossly misunderstood the essence of the quote itself. But if you reblog this as a humble admission that even your own experiences cannot and will not ever fully comprehend God– and that He may indeed reveal Himself to you or others in ways that confound and baffle all your previous individual notions– then you’re on the right track.
A rule of thumb: in discussing God & religion, if you are speaking from a sense of pride or superiority, you’re no longer discussing God, but yourself. God is bigger than you, and that is what this quote is about. You are not your experiences. They happen TO you. And the One who gives those experiences cannot be held in any finite box, no matter how sturdy and solid the box is. It’s just too limited– not in “size,” but in what it’s able to hold. Think of it this way: can you fill a box with the color of a sunrise? Or the sound of a river in springtime? Those things are real and beautiful and true, but they can’t be fully described or comprehended outside of direct experience. In this sense, Religion is a painting, a photo, an orchestra, a book– all gorgeous and grand ways of more fully expounding such experiences, but never able to encompass the totality of what it holds in honest part. Nothing is invalidated or denied. You just need both to properly get it– and even then, God is bigger than it all.
"What if" = Fear
"Even if" = Faith
Some may say this is "inquiry vs hubris."
It’s only hubris if you’re trusting in yourself– that’s the literal opposite of faith.
And faith is not without inquiry. The point is that, even in the face of a trillion hypotheses, God Is Still Good. Fear only asks “what if?” But faith responds TO fear with an infinitely joyful “even if.” What if the worst occurs? What if this cannot be fixed? What if I die? Even if all this and more happens, God Is Still Good, and He is STILL in charge of everything, orchestrating it all to reach His ultimate ends– “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
Hubris denies fear. Faith soothes it. Inquiry is actually stifled by pride, which seeks to shut up any negative possibilities, thus leaving fear in hiding until failure or disaster inevitably occurs, which pride cannot admit. But eventually fear will become the loudest voice, like a panicked child desperate for comfort… and that’s when faith must step in and embrace it. Yes, things are scary. Yes, things are painful. Yes, you may not see any light at the end of the tunnel. But have faith. Do not be afraid. God Is Still Good. And this adamantine assurance will carry you through every question and crisis both, until at the end of it all, fear ceases forever and peace reigns with joy.
“The revulsion towards and violent detachment from nature leads to its desecration, to the destruction of the organic conception of the world as a cosmos, as an order of forms reflecting a higher meaning, as the ‘visible manifestation of the invisible’ - a conception (of Indo-European origin) which is an integral part of the Classical view of the world and which also lies at the basis of various forms of knowledge of a different sort compared to profane, modern science.”— Julius Evola, The Bow and the Club
Such revulsion and detachment ultimately stems from pride, a self-idolatry that inherently opposes the humbling reality of a greater whole, of a cosmos that is defined by “us and them” instead of “me.” All of Creation is God’s Creation, blooming from His Heart, an ineffably grand painting that inevitably bears the signature brushstrokes of its Painter. But pride hates to be a painted thing, especially just one among trillions, and so it begins to detest the work of art itself, denying its Cause and Purpose, and instead attempts to make a painting within a painting– not as a joyously innocent imitation of the art around it, as one who acknowledges their proper place in the cosmic whole could do– but as a staggeringly arrogant and futile effort to replace the canvas itself, proclaiming itself as the true functional backdrop of all things, despite not having any hand in the matter even then. But such con artists manipulate, and mutilate, and make every effort to usurp and appropriate power from the Creation they have come to begrudge so bitterly. They desecrate because to admit sacredness means admitting ones own inherent mortal failure to achieve it. They ignore the higher because they can be kings of the lower, but only servants of what is above. They think themselves greater than nature, from “other things,” but in the end, all this achieves for them is a lonely death, ironically surrounded by a universe that only ever wanted to embrace them again as God’s Child… but they said no.
“…unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish.”— The Gospel According to Saint Luke, cap. xiii, verse 3 (via egosvmqvisvm)
There are no exceptions, to both justice and mercy… yet there are conditions. We are condemned to the first by our pride and ignorance, and only faithful penance can free us to receive the second. God will have mercy on us only if we humble ourselves enough to genuinely admit our desperate need of it.
“Even in trifling matters the depths of one’s heart can be seen.”— Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Remember this. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” (Luke 16:10)
The heart is the fountain of all our deeds. “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:45)
Make sure yours is anchored to Christ, and humbly obedient to Him, because left alone, the heart is pulled violently to and fro by wicked things, and it will become corrupt by constantly acquiescing to their whims. The waters of our soul become dirtied terrifyingly easily. Furthermore, our very nature is sinful because sin is disobedience, and from birth, our fallen pride sadly disposes us to commit such. Only Jesus can change this, and so we must die with Him to be recreated in Him. Only then will our hearts be renewed, more and more day by day, until our inner depths are washed clean and clear.
“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road.” – C.S. Lewis
After the Resurrection, there’s a strange exchange between Jesus and Peter. We see it in today’s Gospel. Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me?” Peter says yes.
Just like you’d expect.
Jesus repeats the question. Peter gives the same answer.
But Peter knows that something’s off.
Jesus repeats the question again. Now, it’s not a friendly question.
Peter is distressed. Because he sees where Jesus is going. This is a call-back to Peter’s most shameful moment. To Peter’s betrayal of Jesus.
On the night before the Crucifixion. When Peter, the one who bragged about being with Jesus to the end, ended up denying even knowing Jesus. Three times.
This is Peter’s reboot. It’s progress. But progress that doesn’t ignore what Peter did.
It’s the only kind of progress that can last. One that begins by turning back. To deal with what went wrong.
Before Peter can be filled with the Holy Spirit. Before Peter can live up to the new name that Jesus gave him. Before Peter can be who God made him to be. Before Peter can make any progress.
Peter has to turn back. Peter has to deal with what went wrong. Peter has to get right with Jesus.
The Gospel is showing us a universal truth. When things go wrong. Especially when we’re the reason why they went wrong. We can’t just ignore what happened, what we did. And try to keep on going like it was nothing.
It’s not healthy. And the longer we avoid it, the worse it will get.
We’ll never make any real progress towards being who God made us to be, without first turning back, without dealing with it.
Without that re-grounding in God, there can be no progress. Not for Peter. Not for any of us.
It’s simple. It’s not easy. But God will give you the courage to do it. If you have the humility to ask.
Turn back. Deal with it. Get right with God.
Then get ready to see real progress.
Go. God is waiting for you with open arms.
The only kind of progress that lasts begins with turning back, to deal with what went wrong. Especially when we’re the reason why they went wrong, we can’t just ignore what happened. We must get right with God and each other.
This hit me like a truck, especially since I honestly JUST received the grace TO do this in a broken friendship, two years of prayer later. But by God’s mercy, in response to my contrition and confession, He set things as right as they could be, and I am profoundly grateful… and profoundly humbled.
Turn back and deal with it. Remember the prodigal son. God is always there waiting to mend whatever you give Him… but you must first admit why it’s broken. Don’t be afraid though. God loves to fix things. And once He does, you will be able to move forwards in joyful gratitude, to a more whole and holy future.
