"I have loved you with an everlasting love...And I know the plans I have for you says the Lord"
Jeremiah:29-31
We have ashes placed on our foreheads. What a curious Catholic custom. What does it mean, having ashes on your head? It means that you came from the earth and to the earth you will return. “Remember, man, that you are but dust.” Ah, but what dust! You are dust that is going to be one with God. Isn’t that enough to make you dance, right in the middle of this ash business? We are not an ordinary dust—we are a dust that is going to be eternal, a dust that is going to be glorified, a dust that is going to be with God. So, let us prepare ourselves to receive that “dust” with joy—a joy based on discipline—and let us enter the corridor of Lent. Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves, of really straightening the ways of the Lord. What is it that we have to tear out of our soul, by the roots? What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation. Let us be willing to surrender all that we have within ourselves. Lent is a corridor that leads us to the face of the Father, the face of God. You cannot come heavily laden—you were born naked, and when you die you will come naked before God. His Son died naked. So, do not carry anything. You will take before God only that which you have given away. But you are not dead yet! So meanwhile, let things drop, really drop. Then you will enter Lent with a fantastic joy. For every time you drop anything pertaining to the wrong type of self-fulfillment, or to the adoration of yourself, or to all the things that clutter up your life, a sense of immense joy will come to you and through you. Seven weeks are set aside every year for us to let go of the old and to enter into the new, because God is merciful. Now we can pass over from the old life that we led before Lent into the new life after. This “passover” is a daily occurrence; it is not only during Lent. But Lent enhances it and makes you think. It concentrates you. It brings you into the heart of God. Lent is you and I, like Saint John the well-beloved, putting our head on the bosom of Christ and hearing the heartbeats of God (Jn 13:21-25). When you hear the heartbeats of God, you change. We try to listen well to those heartbeats during Lent, so that we may not only repent and make our peace with God, but forgive all who have hurt us. Let each one of us open his or her heart to God, and let him wash us clean, let him fill us with a hunger for him, and a thirst. Let him make us his own, so that when we come to Easter our joy will be beyond reckoning. Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty Jesus and Mary
O most compassionate heart of Jesus, accept all my tears, every cry of pain as an entreaty for those who suffer, for those who weep; for those who forget you. O Mary, Mother of sorrows, at the foot of the cross you received the title of “Our Mother.” I am the child of your sorrow, the child of Calvary. My Jesus, I suffer and I love you. All my cries of anguish rise to you, my Comforter. In your adorable heart I weep. To your heart I confide my sighs, my anguish, my grief to your grief. My Jesus, sanctify my sufferings by this holy union. Grant that by increasing my love for you, my grief may become lighter and easier to bear. My divine spouse has drawn me to a humble and hidden life and he often tells me that my heart will not stop beating until I have sacrificed all to him. To help me decide, he often reminds me that at the hour of death I shall have no other comforter than Jesus, and Jesus crucified. He alone, faithful friend, shall I carry, to my grave between my icy, cold fingers…. O Jesus, give me, I beg you, the bread of humility, the bread of obedience, the bread of charity, the bread of strength to break my will and to mold it in yours, the bread of interior mortification, the bread of detachment from creatures, the bread of patience to bear the sufferings my heart endures. O Jesus, you want me to be crucified, fiat. The bread of strength to suffer as I ought, the bread of seeing you alone in all things and at all times, Jesus, Mary, the Cross, I want no other friends but these. Saint Bernadette Soubirous Asking Jesus to Lay His Merciful Hands on Us
Our faith does not consist in conquering weakness but in clinging in the midst of suffering to the will of him who suffers out of love for us. We must correct the habit of looking at our dark side instead of the transfiguring light of the Son who can change our dust into pure gold. We too often stop to examine ourselves instead of plunging ourselves into the purifying furnace of the Sacred Heart, which is open to us with a single act of confidence in his love. We believe all too easily in our wretchedness, but not enough in his merciful love. We have to learn how to take advantage of our littleness and failures, our incapacities, even our sins, and to transform them into reasons for trusting. If we can learn how to transpose such things into bold self-abandonment, then for us—as for the good thief, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, all the poor, weak, and sinful—the impossible becomes possible. It is trust and confidence that make what seemed so far away suddenly come within reach. It is trust and confidence that liberate the mercy of God, while a lack of faith constrains it. Our weakness attracts God because it offers him an emptiness that he can fill. Weakness brought in confidence before God becomes, in a sense, the promise of God’s intervention. We must have confidence, not in spite of our weakness but because of it—misery attracts mercy. No matter how deep the abyss of our misery, it cannot be an obstacle to God’s action. Sanctity, says Saint Thérèse, does not consist in this or that practice but in a disposition of the heart which makes us little and humble in God’s arms. Sister Mary David Totah Praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercy and God of all consolation who consoles us in all our trials and enables us to console others who are being tried, for we urge them on as God urges us on. As we share generously in the sufferings of Christ, so do we share generously in his consolation.
The words are those of Saint Paul the apostle. He was beaten with rods three times, flogged five times, stoned once and left for dead; he suffered every persecution men can inflict, his body was twisted by pain and toil. And all this was his lot not just on one or two occasions, for he writes: We are constantly being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in us. In all these tribulations he does not murmur or complain about God, as weaker men do. He is not saddened as those who love status and pleasure are. He does not beg God to be relieved of them, as men do who are unaware of their true value and therefore will have no part of them. He does not make light of them, as men do who set little value upon them. On the contrary, fully aware of the value of these tribulations and rising above his own weakness, Paul blesses God amid his sufferings and thanks him as though he had bestowed a fine reward. He thinks it an honour to be able to suffer for him who subjected himself to so very much shame in order to free us from the dreadful effects of sin; who exalted us by giving us his Spirit and making us adopted sons of God; and who gave us, in his own person and through his own efforts, a proof and pledge of heavenly joy. Dear brothers and sisters, I pray God may open your eyes and let you see what hidden treasures he bestows on us in the trials from which the world thinks only to flee. Shame turns into honour when we seek God’s glory. Present affliction becomes the source of heavenly glory. To those who suffer wounds in fighting his battles God opens his arms in loving, tender friendship, which is more delightful by far than anything our earthly efforts might produce. If we have any sense, we shall yearn for these open arms of God. Can anyone but a man in whom all desire is dead fail to desire him who is wholly lovable, wholly desirable? If you long for these festivals of heavenly joy, if you want to behold them and take part in them, be assured that there is no better way to reach them than the way of suffering. This is the way Christ and his disciples have always travelled. He calls it a narrow way, but it leads straight to life. That is why he tells us that if we want to join him, we shall travel the way he took. It is surely not right that the Son of God should go his way on the path of shame while the sons of men walk the way of worldly honour: The disciple is not above his teacher, nor the servant greater than his master. God grant that our hearts may find no rest and seek no other food in this world, save in hardship and suffering beside the Lord’s cross. Saint John of Avila |
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I'm not really a writer, but it's on my long list of aspirations to become one. The first on the list is to become a great Saint! My hope is to share knowledge and inspiration as we walk together during our pilgrim journey on earth and guide each other, hand in hand to the gates of Heaven... If you for find this website helpful please consider making a donation today! Archives
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