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