Thanksgiving!

I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise You with the harp, O God, my God. ~Psalm 43:4

O God, what love can we have sufficiently worthy of the infinite goodness of our Creator, who from all eternity has determined to create, preserve, govern, redeem, save, and glorify all men in general and each man in particular? Ah, what was I when I was not? What was I, I who even now when I am something am still only a mere, pitiful worm of the earth? Yet from the depths of his eternity God thought thoughts of benediction in my behalf. He meditated and planned, yes, determined, the hour of my birth, of my baptism, of all the inspirations he would give me, and in sum, of all the benefits he would do me and offer to me. Ah, is there kindness like to such kindness? ~St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God (Bk 12, Ch 12)

Oh Lord my God, so worthy of all praise, may every moment of every day of my life be one of humble thanksgiving to You and for You! Amen! Alleluia!

Today's Feast: Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Mount Calvary is the mount of lovers. All love that does not take its origin from the Savior's passion is foolish and perilous. Unhappy is death without the Savior's love; unhappy is love without the Savior's death. Love and death are so mingled in the Savior's passion that we cannot have one in our hearts without the other. Upon Calvary we cannot have life without love, or love without the Redeemer's death. Except there, all is either eternal death or eternal love. All Christian wisdom consists in choosing rightly...

O love eternal, my soul needs and chooses you eternally! Ah, come Holy Spirit, and inflame our hearts with your love! To love -- or to die! To die -- and to love! To die to all other love in order to live in Jesus' love, so that we may not die eternally. But that we may live in your eternal love, O Savior of our souls, we eternally sing, "Live, Jesus! Jesus, I love! Live, Jesus whom I love! Jesus I love, Jesus who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen."

~St. Francis de Sales in Treatise on the Love of God

Flowers in My Garden

Mary Magdalen is looking for Our Lord and it is him she holds; she is asking for him, and it is him she asks. She could not see him as she would have wished to see him; that is why she is not content to see him in this form and searches so as to find him in some other guise. She wanted to see him in his robes of glory and not in the lowly clothes of a gardener; but all the same, in the end she knew it was Jesus when he said to her: Mary.

...it is our Lord in his gardener's clothes that you meet every day in one place and another when quite ordinary occasions of mortification come your way. You would like him to offer you different and more distinguished mortifications. But the ones that look best are not in fact the best. Do you not believe that he is saying: Mary, Mary? to you. No, before you see him in his glory he wants to plant many flowers in your garden; they may be small and humble, but they are the kind that please him; that is why he comes to you clothed in this way. May our hearts be for ever united to his, and our will to his good pleasure. Be of good cheer, let nothing dismay you; let us belong wholly to God, for God is ours.

~St. Francis de Sales

Dear Lord, my Divine Gardener, my garden is full of little flowers that You have planted there. May I cherish each one as Your gift to me, tending them all carefully for Your delight and glory. Amen.

Our Little Crosses

But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ~Gal. 6:14

May we always unite our little crosses to his great cross. ~St. Francis de Sales

Jesus, my Crucified Lord and King, Your great cross is the only one that matters, but my little crosses are of value, too, when I lovingly unite them with Yours. Let me never disdain my little crosses for they are Your gift to me. Amen.

Love By Loving

There are many souls who would like me to tell them of techniques and methods and secret ways of attaining perfection. Yet I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God and the only method of acquiring that love is by loving. You learn to speak by speaking. You learn to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working. Just so, you learn to love God and your neighbor by the act of loving. All those who wish to learn in any other way deceive themselves. If you really want to love God, go and love Him more and more. Never look back, move forward constantly. ~St. Francis de Sales

Jesus, my Lord, my God, my all... O make us love Thee more and more!

Dear Mary, it's so simple to love your Son. Why do I make it so complicated? Today may I "move forward constantly" with you, rejoicing that every step brings me closer to the secret of love, the heart of your Beloved Son and the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Amen.

National Vocation Awareness Week

This week, January 10-16, is National Vocation Awareness Week. While the emphasis is on vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, we do well to remember other vocations as well. The simple but profound fact is that without the vocation to marriage, we would have no priests, no consecrated men and women. The sacrament of marriage is a magnificent one, and every day I pray for married couples, especially among my own family and friends. I ask our dear Lord, who worked his first miracle at the wedding at Cana, to give them all the strength and the courage they need to be faithful to their vocation, to God and to each other. And I thank God for their deep, abiding love that "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Cor 13:7). In them and through them, Christ makes all things new. Hallelujah!

It was to a married woman that St. Francis de Sales wrote this practical advice: "We must love all that God loves, and he loves our vocation; so let us love it too and not waste our energy hankering after a different sort of life, but get on with our job (St. Francis de Sales, Selected Letters Translated by Elisabeth Stopp). This is excellent counsel for all, and so this week I've been praying that each one of us will indeed love our God-given vocation and throw ourselves into it with boundless enthusiasm and great faith, confident that the Lord who calls us wants nothing less than our total cooperation and our absolute joy. Even if we are in the midst of discerning our vocation in life, we are still at this precise moment within a vocation to which God has called us, and that alone is reason to rejoice.

Thank you, dear Lord, for our respective vocations. Help us to bloom where we're planted and thus give glory to you. Amen.

Resolutions of St. Maria Faustina

Yesterday I posted Pope John XXIII's daily decalogue. Today it's Sister Faustina's resolutions from her diary. Like Pope John XXIII, she offers me concrete ways to grow in love, virtue and holiness. I've never been much for making New Year's resolutions, but I do follow St. Francis de Sales' advice to make a resolution each morning and stick to it throughout the day ahead. Since he wisely observes that unless we're specific in our resolutions, they will amount to nothing, I strive to make my resolution as particular as possible. For example, let's say that today my resolution is #8. As I review my schedule for the next 24 hours, I note that it's going to be the sort of day wherein "the whirl of work" may possibly consume me. So I carefully plan here and there for mini retreats to "look up to heaven" so as to refresh my soul and restore my balance. Between Pope John XXIII and St. Faustina, I have an ample supply of resolutions for the year ahead. And every day, thanks be to God, I can begin afresh. Oh, glory!

RESOLUTIONS OF ST. FAUSTINA
from her Dairy of Divine Mercy, #226-227

1. The duty of the moment that I most often fail to obey, I will do my very best to improve.

2. I will keep silent before others who grumble.

3. I must take no heed of the opinion of others.

4. I must do everything and act in all matter now as I would like to do at the hour of my death.

5. In every action I must be mindful of God.

6. I must be faithful in my spiritual exercises.

7. I must have great appreciation for even the most minute task.

8. I must not let myself become absorbed in the whirl of work, but take a break to look up to Heaven.

9. I must speak little with people, but a good deal with God.

10. I must pay little attention to who is for me and who is against me.

11. I must not tell others about those things I have had to put up with.

12. I must maintain peace and equanimity during times of suffering.

13. In difficult moments I must take refuge in the wounds of Jesus; I must seek consolation, comfort, light and affirmation in them.

14. In the midst of trails I will try to see the loving hand of God.

Dear Saint Faustina, please pray for me to be at peace in Divine Mercy. Amen!

Thoughts of benediction...

O how worthy of love is this great God who out of his infinite goodness has given his own Son for the redemption of all men. Yes, truly, for all men in general but for me in particular, who am the chief of sinners! Ah, he has loved me! I say he has loved even me, even me myself, I say, such as I am, and has delivered himself to his passion for me.

O God, what love can we have sufficiently worthy of the infinite goodness of our Creator, who from all eternity has determined to create, preserve, govern, redeem, save, and glorify all men in general and each man in particular? Ah, what was I when I was not? What was I, I who even now when I am something am still only a mere, pitiful worm of the earth? Yet from the depths of his eternity God thought thoughts of benediction in my behalf. He meditated and planned, yes, determined, the hour of my birth, of my baptism, of all the inspirations he would give me, and in sum, of all the benefits he would do me and offer to me. Ah, is there kindness like to such kindness?

~St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God (Bk 12, Ch 12)

Thank you, dearest Lord, that Your kindness is everlasting, that Your love endures forever. Let my soul live to praise You! Amen.

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

All that you do for love is love. Fatigue and even death itself accepted for motives of love is nothing else but love!

Today is the feast of the Holy Cross. How beautiful and worthy of our love! It was hard work setting up the wood and erecting it on Calvary, but how happy are those who love the cross and carry it generously. It will appear in all its glory in the heavens when Christ Our Lord will come to judge the living and the dead. Heaven is the altar for all who are crucified; therefore, let us love the crosses that we meet as we go through life.

~St. Francis de Sales

Forget not all his benefits...

We must consider God's benefits in their original, eternal source. O God, what love can we have sufficiently worthy of the infinite goodness of our Creator, who from all eternity has determined to create, preserve, govern, redeem, save, and glorify all men in general and each man in particular? Ah, what was I when I was not? What was I, I who even now when I am something am still only a mere, pitiful worm of the earth? Yet from the depths of his eternity God thought thoughts of benediction in my behalf. He meditated and planned, yes, determined, the hour of my birth, of my baptism, of all the inspirations he would give me, and in sum, of all the benefits he would do me and offer to me. Ah, is there kindness like to such kindness? ~St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God

My soul, give thanks to the Lord and never forget all his blessings. ~Ps 103:2

Going on a Journey

The Gospel from today's Mass, Mark 6:7-13, reminds me that when our Lord Jesus sends us out to do His work and preach His gospel, I can count on opposition. Not everyone wants to hear the truth. People will not always welcome me and, at times, even those closest and dearest to me will resist me. Then, Jesus says, I must leave, shaking the dust from my feet as I go (vs. 11). As I ponder this, an admonition of Thomas a Kempis comes to mind: "Do not be concerned overmuch who is with you or against you, but work and plan that God may be with you in all that you do" (The Imitation of Christ, Bk. 1, Ch. 2).

Three things stand out for me as I reflect upon today's Gospel.

1) When Jesus dispatches me to sow His seed, He does not ask me to hoe someone else's garden. He has given me my own little plot of land to cultivate, and I am responsible only for that, not for the whole world. I must trust the Divine Gardener that the seed He gives me to sow will bear fruit according to His divine plan, when and where He wills and in whatever conditions He chooses for the greatest good of each individual. As St. Francis de Sales used to say, "God's providence is wiser than we are."

2) Our Lord sends out His disciples two by two (vs. 7). None of us journey alone. We have each other. Yes, there is safety in numbers -- and great strength, too. The author of the book of Ecclesiastes says it best: "Two are better than one: they get a good wage for their labor. If the one falls, the other will lift up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm? Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken." (Eccles 4:9-12)

3) Our Lord tells us that we must take nothing for the journey but a walking stick (vs. 8). As I think back to the reading that precedes today's Gospel, Ephesians 1:3-14, this makes great sense to me. After all, the Father who loves us so "has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens "(vs. 3), so what could I possibly need to take with me? Except for that walking stick. And what is that if not the Cross of Jesus Christ? The Cross is surely the cost of discipleship, but it is also the sure staff of the disciple. I turn again to Thomas a Kempis: "Why, then, do you fear to take up the Cross, which is the road to the Kingdom? In the Cross is salvation; in the Cross is life; in the Cross is protection against our enemies; in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the Cross is strength of mind; in the Cross is joy of spirit; in the Cross is excellence of virtue; in the Cross is perfection of holiness. There is no salvation of soul, nor hope of eternal life, save in the Cross." (The Imitation of Christ, Bk. 2, Ch. 12)

Ah, Lord, what a magnificent journey You send us on! Let us go swiftly and gladly, believing in Your goodness, hoping in Your mercy, trusting in Your love. Amen. Alleluia!

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart

May Your Heart dwell always in our hearts! May Your Blood ever flow in the veins of our souls! O sun of our hearts, You give life to all things by the rays of Your goodness! I will not go until Your Heart has strengthened me, O Lord Jesus! May the Heart of Jesus be the King of my heart! Blessed be God. Amen.

~To the Sacred Heart by St. Francis de Sales