Reciprocating mercy

We cannot live together in harmony, in a family or in another kind of community, without the practice of forgiveness and reciprocal mercy.

From Minute Meditations

Hope

Hope is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness and moves us away from the sources of our fear.

Henri Nouwen

In the depth of winter

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Albert Camus

The cross

Never was fount so clear,
undimmed and bright;
From it alone, I know proceeds all light
although 'tis night.

Saint John of the Cross

Avent and waiting

Advent calls us to strengthen that interior tenacity, that resistance of the soul that permits us not to despair in waiting for some good thing that is late in coming, but to expect it, indeed, to prepare for its arrival with an active confidence.

Pope Benedict XVI

The more you pray

The more you pray, the more you will be illumined; the more you are illumined, the more profoundly and intensely you will see the Supreme Good, the supremely good Being; the more profoundly and intensely you see him, the more you will love him; the more you love him, the more he will delight you; and the more he delights you, the more you will understand him and become capable of understanding him. You will arrive successively to the fullness of light, because you will understand that you cannot understand.

Blessed Angela of Foligno

May my countenance always be open and joyful

May my countenance always be open and joyful, and my words gentle and pleasing, as is suitable for those who, no matter what the state of their life, enjoy the greatest of all goods, the favor of God and the expectation of eternal happiness.

Blessed John Henry Newman

Brave and patient

We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.

Helen Keller

To give all

This giving of self is a discipline because it is something that does not come spontaneously. As children of the darkness that rules through fear, self-interest, greed, and power, our great motivators are survival and self-preservation. But as children of the light who know that perfect love casts out all fear, it becomes possible to give away all that we have for others.

Henri Nouwen

Hope

Hope is faith that won't give up even in the dark.

Duffin

People are good

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.

Anne Frank

Solitude

One must pass through solitude and dwell in it to receive God's grace. It is there that one empties oneself, that one drives before oneself all that is not God, and that one completely empties this little house of our soul to leave room for God alone. In doing this, do not fear being unfaithful toward creatures. On the contrary, that is the only way for you to serve them effectively.

Charles de Foucald

Sorrow and Joy

Joy and sorrow are inseparable ... together they come, and when one sits alone with you ... remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Kahlil Gibran

Silence

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

A chance to start over

Each day is a new beginning. A day to have wounds healed. A day to believe. A day to welcome home parts of ourselves that we have refused to embrace.

From: Ask a Franciscan

The joy of suffering

It is difficult to find a saint or a mystic whose life has not been touched significantly by disability or illness.

From: Good Words

Potential tragedies

There are only two potential tragedies in life: if we go through life and we do not love fully, and if we go through life and do not tell those we love that we love them.

John Powell

A response

Faith always involves a response - not to impress God but to allow God's grace to bear fruit, to effect our decisions radically.

From: Ask a Franciscan

Heart

Have a heart that never hardens,
a temper that never tires,
and a touch that never hurts.

Charles Dickens

Sorrow is worth the price

In times of sorrow, I can be thankful for the fact that I have loved and been loved, thankful, in fact, for the ability to grieve because grief witnesses to love.

From St. Anthony Messenger magazine

The path to wisdom

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

George Eliot

People of joy

People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness.

From "The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Henri J. M. Nouwen

On the loss of friends

Learn thou to resign any near and beloved friend for the love of God. Nor take it amiss when thou hast been deserted by a friend, knowing that we must all be parted from one another at last.

From The Imitation of Christ

The "Father" in Rembrandt's "The Return of the Prodigal Son"

It seems that the hands that touch the back of the returning son are the instruments of the father's inner eye. The near-blind father sees far and wide. His seeing is an eternal seeing, a seeing that reaches out to all of humanity. It is a seeing that understands the lostness of women and men of all times and places, that knows with immense compassion the suffering of those who have chosen to leave home, that cried oceans of tears as they got caught in anguish and agony. The heart of the father burns with an immense desire to bring his children home.
Oh, how much would he have liked to talk to them, to warn them against the many dangers they were facing, and to convince them that at home can be found everything that they search for elsewhere. How much would he have liked to pull them back with his fatherly authority and hold them close to himself so that they would not get hurt.
But his love is too great to do any of that. It cannot force, constrain, push, or pull. It offers the freedom to reject that love or to love in return. It is precisely the immensity of the divine love that is the source of the divine suffering. God, creator of heaven and earth, has chosen to be, first and foremost, a Father.
As Father, he wants his children to be free, free to love. That freedom includes the possibility of their leaving home, going to a "distant country", and losing everything. The Father's heart knows all the pain that will come from that choice, but his love makes him powerless to prevent it. As Father, he desires that those who stay at home enjoy his presence and experience his affection. But here again, he wants only to offer a love that can be freely received. He suffers beyond telling when his children honour him only with lip service, while their hearts are far from him. He knows their "deceitful tongues" and "disloyal hearts", but he cannot make them love him without losing his true fatherhood.
As the Father, the only authority he claims for himself is the authority of compassion. That authority comes from letting the sins of his children pierce his heart. There is no lust, greed, anger, resentment, jealousy, or vengeance in his lost children that has not caused immense grief to his heart. The grief is so deep because the heart is so pure. From the deep inner place where love embraces all human grief, the Father reaches out to his children. The touch of his hands, radiating inner light, seeks only to heal.
Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless.
... He has no desire to punish them. They have already been punished excessively by their own inner or outer waywardness. The Father wants simply to let them know that the love they have searched for in such distorted ways has been, is, and always will be there for them.

From "The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Henri J.M. Nouwen

A bow in God's hands

Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord, draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord, I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!

Nikos Kazantzakis

Walk

Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk." Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.

(John 5:8-9)

Be gentle with yourself

Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.

Wilfred Peterson

Choose!

A few years ago, I, myself, was very concretely confronted with the choice: to return or not to return. A friendship that at first seemed promising and life-giving gradually pulled me farther and farther away from home until I finally found myself completely obsessed by it. In a spiritual sense, I found myself squandering all I had been given by my father to keep the friendship alive. I couldn't pray any longer. I had lost interest in my work and found it increasingly hard to pay attention to other people's concerns. As much as I realized how self-destructive my thoughts and actions were, I kept being drawn by my love-hungry heart to deceptive ways of gaining a sense of self-worth.
Then, when finally the friendship broke down completely, I had to choose between destroying myself or trusting that the love I was looking for did, in fact, exist ... back home! A voice, weak as it seemed, whispered that no human being would ever be able to give me the love I craved, that no friendship, no intimate relationship, no community would ever be able to satisfy the deepest needs of my wayward heart. That soft but persistent voice spoke to me about my vocation, my early commitments, the many gifts I had received in my father's house. That voice called me "son".
The anguish of abandonment was so biting that it was hard, almost impossible, to believe that voice. But friends, seeing my despair, kept urging me to step over my anguish and to trust that there was someone waiting for me at home. Finally, I chose for containment instead of more dissipation and went to a place where I could be alone. There, in my solitude, I started to walk home slowly and hesitantly, hearing ever more clearly the voice that says: "You are my Beloved, on you my favour rests."
This painful, yet hopeful, experience brought me to the core of the spiritual struggle for the right choice. God says, "I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you ... may live in the love of Yahweh your God, obeying his voice, holding fast to him." Indeed, it is a question of life or death. Do we accept the rejection of the world that imprisons us, or do we claim the freedom of the children of God? We must choose.

From "The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Henri J.M. Nouwen

I asked God

I asked God for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health, that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy;
I was given poverty, that I might be free...

I asked God for power, that I might have praise from men;
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need for God.

I asked God for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing I asked for, but everything that I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among all men the most richly blessed.

Anonymous

You will find me

When you call me, when you go to pray to me, I will listen to you. When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me with you, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 29:12-14

Be like clouds

Good people, like clouds, receive only to give away.

An ancient proverb

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

Meekness

Those who take the office of preaching must not do evil but must tolerate it so that with their meekness, they may mitigate the anger of those who wound them. Those who are wounded can thus succeed with their sufferings to heal the wounds of sin in others.

Pope Gregory the Great

Jesus, give me victory

Lord, my life is a struggle, though there are times of peace. I know You are with me, Jesus, to give me victory. Sustain me in this certainty of faith and grant that I may live it with the help of the Archangels as well.

From "Friends and Servants of the Word"

God in hell

There is no hell, no private hell of wound, depression, fear, sickness or even bitterness that God's love cannot and will not descend into. Once there, it will breathe out the peace of the Holy Spirit.

Ronald Rolheiser

Everything is a gift

Naked I came forth from my mother's womb, and naked shall I go back again. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!

Job 1:21

Dance

Life isn't about how to survive the storm but how to dance in the rain.

A half-hour of silence

A half-hour of silence once a day, twice a day if you can afford the time. That will do marvels for your health.

Eric Fromm

Rest on the will of God

Rest with calm mind on the will of God, and bear all things which come upon thee unto the praise of Jesus Christ; for after winter cometh summer, after night returneth day, after the tempest a great calm.

From The Imitation of Christ

Pray

First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgiving be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth.

1 Timothy 2:1-4

Lead, kindly Light

Lead, kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I
Have loved long since, and lost awhile!

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path, Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Savior, lead me home in childlike faith, home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.

Blessed John Henry Newman

Do not judge

Let us be on our guard to avoid thinking that we are in a position to be able to judge the entire world.

Margaret Delbrel

Spiritual friendship

It is lovely to be able to love on earth as one loves in heaven, and to learn to love one another in this world as we will eternally in the next. I am not speaking here of the simple love of charity, because we must have this for all people; I am speaking of spiritual friendship, in the ambit of which two, three or more persons exchange devotion, spiritual affections, and truly become one spirit.

From Introduction to the Devout Life, by Saint Francis de Sales

Pure friendship

Pure friendship is an image of the original and perfect friendship that belongs to the Trinity and is the very essence of God.

Simone Weil

The cross, source of new life

The Cross often frightens us because it seems to be a denial of life. In fact, the opposite is true! It is God's "yes" to mankind, the supreme expression of his love and the source from which eternal life flows. Indeed, it is from Jesus’ heart, pierced on the Cross, that this divine life streamed forth, ever accessible to those who raise their eyes towards the Crucified One. I can only urge you, then, to embrace the Cross of Jesus, the sign of God’s love, as the source of new life. Apart from Jesus Christ risen from the dead, there can be no salvation! He alone can free the world from evil and bring about the growth of the Kingdom of justice, peace and love to which we all aspire.

Pope Benedict XVI

Willed, loved and necessary

And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of the thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.

Pope Benedict XVI

Everything I have is yours

My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.

Luke 15:31

We are sum of the Father's love

We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.

Pope John Paul II

The serenity prayer

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Life goes on

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.

Robert Frost

The joy of the Resurrection

Remember that the passion of Christ ends always in the joy of the Resurrection,
so when you feel in your own heart the suffering of Christ,
remember the Resurrection has to come, the joy of Easter has to dawn.
Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Risen Christ!

Teresa of Calcutta

Sing

When we look beyond our self-centered world to the greater world around us and allow ourselves to take in the beauty – how can we keep from singing?

Nancy Shirley

Why

We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, "Why did this happen to me?" unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way.

Author Unknown

Wisdom

For what man knows God's counsel, or who can conceive what our Lord intends? For the deliberations of mortals are timid and unsure are our plans. For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns. And scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out? Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given Wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high? And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight, and men learned what was your pleasure, and was saved by Wisdom.

Wisdom 9:13-18

Fly

When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you’ll find something solid to stand on
Or you’ll be taught how to fly!

Richard Bach

Coming home

Real love is always a coming home, it is not a place we deserve or earn, it is coming to a place where you sense others will love you without necessarily being impressed with you.
It is interesting how, in love and friendship, we can be infatuated and obsessively drawn to someone who is very different from ourselves – into whose heart we can never sail as into a safe harbour. It can be exciting and titillating being with that person. Perhaps, as in cases of infatuation, we might even need obsessively to be with that person, like a drug addict needs a fix.
But in the end, in spite of the excitement and obsession, after we have had our fix we need to, and want to, go home. That person’s heart can never, ultimately, be home for us.
Given the complexities of the human heart, we can be obsessed with someone, painfully and hopelessly, and yet in that relationship not be at our right place in the universe. In the end our completeness, real love, home, lies elsewhere.
But the heart needs to be scrutinized carefully before it will tell us that. It has, as Pascal said, its reasons.
Yet at a certain level it rings true and will tell us where our true rest lies, namely at that place where we do not have to impress or perform, or earn or win, where we feel safe and secure and where we are at home.

Ronald Rolheiser

Lost treasure

Sometimes we cannot figure out, either, why we have lost some part of our self that we have cherished and have had to painstakingly recover. Even after we stand in the temple of our soul and say, “Ah, there you are! sometimes we still do not understand why our depression was so lengthy, why our spiritual energy waned into hopelessness, why our enthusiasm faded into lethargy. We may not know the answers for why things happened the way they did for many years, and perhaps we may never fully understand the “why.”
There are circumstances when no amount of talking, healing therapy, good books to read, quiet reflection, intense research, or other deliberate searching adequately solves the story of “why.” Sometimes we can sit for years inside the experience of losing a treasure and not have the satisfaction of knowing “why” it happened. We can grind and grind our rational teeth, trying to figure out what went wrong and the reason for it. We can spend our energy blaming ourselves or others for what took place, or we can forgive whoever and whatever caused our great search and then move on with our lives. There may always be a piece of mystery that is left to sit in our soul, to tug us from time to time and keep us humbled by our inability to sort it all out.
Like Mary who pondered what she had lost and found, we also need to stand in the middle of the mystery of our life and reflect upon the message it has for us. By reflecting on our experiences, we can learn from them. Instead of just going busily about our life, we can let our inner eye scan our lost and found event and see what the deeper message might be for us. Once we have paid full attention to our experience, with all its hurt and turmoil, there comes a time when we must put the matter to rest even if we do not understand why this happened to us.
When we have lost a treasure and are searching for its return, it is time to reenter the temple of our soul. We ought to go searching all alone. It is essential to call on God for guidance and direction. In our frantic, heartaching, panicky search for our treasure, we need a deep center of peace and harmony. This can be nearly impossible to feel when we are in the midst of a painful search. Yet, we must constantly give ourselves to divine peace, begging that we receive this peace so that we can search with a heart of love and trust.

Joyce Rupp

Happiness

You must take happiness when you find it - there is no use in marking the place and coming back to it at a more convenient season, because it will not be there then.

From Chronicles of Avonlea, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Humility

Humility is the source of all tranquility ... bear with the defects of others since there is no perfection in this world but only in heaven ... stop grumbling because this chills affection, and above all, ... strive to live in God's holy grace. He who is not at peace with God is at peace neither with himself nor with others.

Saint John Bosco

The interior witness

Whoever is mocked by his friend, as I am, shall call upon God, and he shall hear him. A weak-minded person is frequently diverted toward pursuing exterior happiness when the breath of popular favor accompanies his good actions. So he gives up his own personal choices, preferring to remain at the mercy of whatever he hears from others. Thus, he rejoices not so much to become but to be called blessed. Eager for praise, he gives up what he had begun to be; and so he is severed from God by the very means by which he appeared to be commendable in God.

But sometimes a soul firmly strives for righteousness and yet is beset by men’s ridicule. He does what is admirable but he gets only mockery. He might have gone out of himself because of man’s praise; he returns to himself when repelled by their abuse. Finding no resting-place without, he cleaves more intensely to God within. All his hope is fixed on his Creator, and amid all the ridicule and abuse he invokes his interior witness alone. One who is afflicted in this way grows closer to God the more he turns away from human popularity. He straightway pours himself out in prayer, and, pressured from without, he is refined with a more perfect purity to penetrate what is within.

In this context, the words apply: Whoever is mocked by his friend, as I am, shall call upon God, and he shall hear him. For while the wicked reproach the just, they show them whom they should look to as the witness of their actions. Thus afflicted, the soul strengthens itself by prayer; it is united within to one who listens from on high precisely because it is cut off externally from the praise of men. Again, we should note how appropriately the words are inserted, as I am. There are some people who are both oppressed by human mockery and are yet deprived of God’s favorable hearing. For when the mockery is done to a man’s own sin, it obviously does not produce the merit that is due to virtue.

The simplicity of the just man is laughed to scorn. It is the wisdom of this world to conceal the heart with stratagems, to veil one’s thoughts with words, to make what is false appear true and what is true appear false. On the other hand it is the wisdom of the just never to pretend anything for show, always to use words to express one’s thoughts, to love the truth as it is and to avoid what is false, to do what is right without reward and to be more willing to put up with evil than to perpetrate it, not to seek revenge for wrong, and to consider as gain any insult for truth’s sake. But this guilelessness is laughed to scorn, for the virtue of innocence is held as foolishness by the wise of this world. Anything that is done out of innocence, they doubtless consider to be stupidity, and whatever truth approves of, in practice is called folly by their earthly wisdom.

Saint Gregory the Great

Love

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-9

Be

People are often unreasonable, irrational and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Pain

Happy events make life delightful but they do not lead to self-discovery and growth and freedom. That privilege is reserved to the things and persons and situations that cause us pain.
Every painful event contains in itself a seed of growth and liberation.

Anthony de Mello

Longing

Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing - so longing - for everything. To talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone.
And I do so long ... to cry! I feel as if I am going to burst, and I know that it would get better with crying; but I can't, I'm restless, I go from room to room, breathre through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it is saying, "can't you satisfy my longing at last?"
I believe that it is spring within me, I feel that spring is awakening, I feel it in my whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally, I feel utterly confused. I don't know what to read, what to write, what to do, I only know that I am longing.

From The Diary of Anne Frank

Saviours

We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time.

Jean Vanier

Life

That was life. Gladness and pain ... hope and fear ... and change. Always change! You could not help it. You had to let the old go and take the new to your heart .. learn to love it and then let it go in turn. Spring, lovely as it was, must yield to summer and summer lose itself in autumn.

From Anne of Ingleside, by Lucy Maud Montgomery