Tag: God
Make the Lord your joy
My advice to you is to turn aside occasionally from troubled and anxious pondering on the paths you may be treading, and to travel on smoother ways where the gifts of God are serenely savored, so that the thought of him may give breathing space to you whose consciences are perplexed. I should like you… Read More ›
God is always present
Expect a twofold help from God in the course of your spiritual life: correction and consolation. One controls the exterior, the other works within; the first curbs arrogance, the latter inspires trust; the first begets humility, the latter strengthens the faint-hearted; the first makes one discreet, the latter devout. The first imbues us with fear… Read More ›
What the soul desires
God is love, so the soul desires a return, seeking the union in ways often self defeating, desiring warmth and escape from loneliness as an end in itself, not understanding that love, true love deepens our sense of otherness, knowing that all that we see around us is limited and cannot filll a heart made… Read More ›
If today you hear his voice….
Saint Benedict takes his cue from Psalm 95(94), which he prescribed to be sung at the beginning of the first liturgical office of the day. Its message is clear: “Today if you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.” As we have seen, God’s light shines upon us every day and God’s call invites us… Read More ›
The initiative comes from God
God’s seeking of a workman reminds us of the parable of the workers in the vineyard. In the first place, God does not call everyone at the same point in their life: some he summons early, others later, and others again at the eleventh hour. This is because the initiative for the monastic or spiritual… Read More ›
A Lenten Prayer
O God, love, who have created me, recreate me in your love. O Love, who have redeemed me,whatever I have neglected of your love, amend for yourself and redeem in me. O God, love, who with the blood of your Christ have ransomed me for yourself, sanctify me in your truth. O God, love, who… Read More ›
Nations are subject to God and His Law
It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, and to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in Holy Scripture, and… Read More ›
Finding God … in service of our brothers.
There is a stage in the spiritual life in which we find God in ourselves – this presence is a created effect of His love. It is a gift of His, to us. It remains in us. All the gifts of God are good. But if we rest in them, rather than in Him, they… Read More ›
The ultimate consequences of our choices
If we resist the advances of God’s love in this life, there is no solid reason to expect that things will be different in the next. The fear that this possibility evokes is due less to some fearsome quality in God than to the dread eventuality that our power of free choice will be seduced… Read More ›
Silence and Removing Barriers
The silence of the tongue and of the imagination dissolves the barrier between ourselves and the peace of things that exist only for God and not for themselves. But the silence of all inordinate desire dissolves the barrier between ourselves and God. Then we come to live in Him alone. Thomas Merton No Man is… Read More ›