Some people are always complaining. Every time you talk to them you get an organ recital. It begins with their liver, then it moves onto their stomach, plantar warts, dandruff. Who knew there were so many organs? You know what holiness is? Listening to all of that as if you had never heard it before. Holiness is listening to the joke your've heard twenty-five times and laughing at the punch line for the twenty-sixth time, while keeping your mouth shut. Holiness is putting up with the gripes of others with tenderness. All of that is holiness. ~ Mother M. Angelica
Listening with love means listening with compassion and sincerity; it means listening without interrupting or zoning out. It means listening without trying to solve the problem. Many times problems disappear into the thin air as soon as they are listened to. ~ Deacon Bill Steltemeier
Showing posts with label EWTN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EWTN. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Spiritually Dry?
I think I am feeling spiritually dry.
I haven't been wanting to put on my cross necklace ("It's too much trouble"). I haven't been wanting to listen to my Christian radio stations ("They keep playing the same songs over and over"). I would rather watch The Beverly Hillbillies or The Cosby Show while I walk on the treadmill instead of EWTN or Beth Moore ("I could use a good laugh"). I would rather blog pictures of food and my kitchen than write about my spiritual life ("I didn't read anything interesting and pictures are easy and I don't feel like thinking so hard").
This is the "Prayer for Power" in my Dieter's Prayer Book this morning:
During my quiet time this morning, I half-heartedly read this and didn't pay much attention to the words. During the time I spent getting ready and particularly getting dressed and spending 10 minutes on the treadmill, God spoke to my heart and revealed to me the places where I have been moving away from Him. I am taking action. I switched the TV to EWTN. I cleaned my cross necklace and have it on. I pulled the Father Stan CD off the shelf and ripped it to iTunes and will take it to work today (I had promised months ago to bring it for a co-worker to listen to and kept forgetting). Today I will make the effort to draw close to God instead of pull away from Him.
Thank you God for speaking to me this morning. Your servant is listening. Amen.
I haven't been wanting to put on my cross necklace ("It's too much trouble"). I haven't been wanting to listen to my Christian radio stations ("They keep playing the same songs over and over"). I would rather watch The Beverly Hillbillies or The Cosby Show while I walk on the treadmill instead of EWTN or Beth Moore ("I could use a good laugh"). I would rather blog pictures of food and my kitchen than write about my spiritual life ("I didn't read anything interesting and pictures are easy and I don't feel like thinking so hard").
This is the "Prayer for Power" in my Dieter's Prayer Book this morning:
Dear God,
I truly want to be healed!
At least I think I do.
Show me if there is any part of met that has become content
with a cycle of striving and failing.
I don't want to sit poolside any longer.
I surrender my excuses--
all the reasons why I can't seem to overcome
certain familiar sins or cycles of defeat.
I am ready,
I am willing.
I want to be whole!
I want my life to be full and exciting because I am living it for You.
Don't let me be seduced by the subtle lie
that life is more meaningful when I am wrapped up
in a war with my appetites.
Deliver me.
Heal me, and I will take up my life,
new, fuller,
and give You all my thanks and praise.
Amen.
During my quiet time this morning, I half-heartedly read this and didn't pay much attention to the words. During the time I spent getting ready and particularly getting dressed and spending 10 minutes on the treadmill, God spoke to my heart and revealed to me the places where I have been moving away from Him. I am taking action. I switched the TV to EWTN. I cleaned my cross necklace and have it on. I pulled the Father Stan CD off the shelf and ripped it to iTunes and will take it to work today (I had promised months ago to bring it for a co-worker to listen to and kept forgetting). Today I will make the effort to draw close to God instead of pull away from Him.
Thank you God for speaking to me this morning. Your servant is listening. Amen.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Ecce, Fiat, and Magnificat
This was from the March EWTN newsletter. It is written by Deacon Bill Steltemeier.
I liked this. I particularly like the line, “Behold, here I am Lord. I have come to do Your Will, for I know that You alone are worthy of all praise!” It sound like something that would be a good part of my personal mission statement. No, I don't have a personal mission statement. I read all the time that I should, but I have never come up with one. I'm sure the main reason I never has is because of my perfectionist procrastination - I don't know how to make it perfect, so I put off doing it at all. Maybe that should be one of my goals for 2007.
In addition to praying for an increase in the virtue of reverence, sometimes we need some extra help in meditating upon the profound mysteries of our Faith. I recently read something about Our Lady that aided in my own meditation on her life and her relationship to the Father. The crux of what I read explained that Our Lady’s life can be summed up by three words: ECCE, FIAT, and MAGNIFICAT. As we prepare for the great Solemnity of the Annunciation, I encourage you to take these three words to prayer:
Ecce — "Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” This was Our Lady’s response to the Angel Gabriel. Her “Ecce” is synonymous with her availability to God. Mary was ever ready (and remains ever ready) to fulfill her Lord’s command. How available am I to the Lord when I hear His call?
Fiat — “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Obedience, especially prompt obedience, is a fitting offering to make to the Lord. He never imposes Himself upon us, yet we can be 100% sure that if He asks us to do something, it is for our good. The Lord will never abandon us, particularly when we strive to do His Will in a spirit of obedient surrender.
Magnificat — “My soul magnifies the Lord.” To exalt God is the quintessential cause of our joy. Praising the all-loving, all-merciful Father is the path to ultimate
fulfillment. To exalt ‘self’ only leads to misery and disappointment. Our Lady pointed the way, as her soul proclaimed the greatness of the Lord. Let us jealously follow her example.
Family, daily, even hourly, we each have the opportunity to repeat these words to the Lord: “Behold, here I am Lord. I have come to do Your Will, for I know that You alone are worthy of all praise!” Let us join our own Ecce, Fiat, and Magnificat to those of Our Lady. It is in this way that we will most perfectly model our life after hers.
I liked this. I particularly like the line, “Behold, here I am Lord. I have come to do Your Will, for I know that You alone are worthy of all praise!” It sound like something that would be a good part of my personal mission statement. No, I don't have a personal mission statement. I read all the time that I should, but I have never come up with one. I'm sure the main reason I never has is because of my perfectionist procrastination - I don't know how to make it perfect, so I put off doing it at all. Maybe that should be one of my goals for 2007.
Friday, December 29, 2006
EWTN Family Newsletter - February 2007
I received the EWTN newsletter yesterday. There is a lot of "stuff" in it that I want to spend some time thinking about. I might write about it later after I let it sink in.
“We often look at Jesus with an attitude of predestination - a cold, hard-hearted acceptance of His sufferings and pain. We think, at least in our subconscious, that somehow He had to do what He did and so we slough it off with a shrug of our shoulders, without a thought of the awesome wonder of a suffering God. We cannot comprehend a love that desires to feel our misery.” — Mother M. Angelica
“Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him as stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” — Isaiah 53:4-6
Over and over I read this excerpt from Isaiah. Year passes year, one Lent follows another Lent, and I continue to read it. Each time I read it, though, the passage affects me in a different way — some ways more profound than others. But the aspect that continually strikes me, each and every time I read it, is the sense of my own powerlessness. High and mighty, at times, we imagine that we are our own saviors. Yet, humble and contrite, we realize our need for Jesus Christ and the saving power of His life, death and resurrection.
In the course of my own life, I have experienced some bitter tragedies. I think most of us have. Such heavy burdens of grief and anguish are sure to come to us at one point or another. Looking at the life of our beloved Mother Angelica, we see that she too tasted such suffering from very early on in her childhood — her parents’ divorce, poverty, hunger, loneliness... How did she bear it? “Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows.”
When we pray the Stations of the Cross, three separate times we recount Jesus’ falling under the heavy weight of the Cross. He fell, so that we could get up. He carried our sorrows, so that we could carry Him in our hearts. Bent under the weight of our own crosses, we must swallow our pride and allow Him to lift us up and to carry our grief. We must allow His humility to surmount our pride. His self-emptying can and must melt the glacier of our self-sufficiency.
The truth of the matter is that He has borne our grief. There is no question as to whether He will do it or not. He has done it. Now it is up to us! Will we choose to hang on to our pain, our burdens, and our sorrows.. .in a spirit of malformed independence? Or will we look in the eyes of our true Savior and thank Him for bearing our sins, our grief, our sorrows and our misery. Every suffering, whether great or small, presents us with an opportunity for growth and surrender. We are preparing once again to enter into the Lenten Season. It seems, during this time of year, we are presented with a plethora of opportunities of dying to self and rising in Christ. What will we choose to do with such opportunities?
Mother Angelica always told us NOT to miss the opportunity of becoming a great saint. Maybe we have become too accustomed to hearing her say this. But let’s think about it for a second. An opportunity can be a missed opportunity. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.” Or if we grab on to suffering as an opportunity for holiness and growth, we can allow Christ’s wounds to heal us. Saints are those who seized opportunities.. . and many times that meant suffering, sorrow, and sometimes even martyrdom. Yet this did not discourage them or make them despondent. They looked upon such things as favors from their Crucified King, for they knew that through such opportunities would come their sanctification.
Family, let us ponder the real meaning of suffering this Lent. Let’s go deeper into the Passion of Christ and understand the depth of what He did for us. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed.”
“We often look at Jesus with an attitude of predestination - a cold, hard-hearted acceptance of His sufferings and pain. We think, at least in our subconscious, that somehow He had to do what He did and so we slough it off with a shrug of our shoulders, without a thought of the awesome wonder of a suffering God. We cannot comprehend a love that desires to feel our misery.” — Mother M. Angelica
“Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him as stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” — Isaiah 53:4-6
Over and over I read this excerpt from Isaiah. Year passes year, one Lent follows another Lent, and I continue to read it. Each time I read it, though, the passage affects me in a different way — some ways more profound than others. But the aspect that continually strikes me, each and every time I read it, is the sense of my own powerlessness. High and mighty, at times, we imagine that we are our own saviors. Yet, humble and contrite, we realize our need for Jesus Christ and the saving power of His life, death and resurrection.
In the course of my own life, I have experienced some bitter tragedies. I think most of us have. Such heavy burdens of grief and anguish are sure to come to us at one point or another. Looking at the life of our beloved Mother Angelica, we see that she too tasted such suffering from very early on in her childhood — her parents’ divorce, poverty, hunger, loneliness... How did she bear it? “Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows.”
When we pray the Stations of the Cross, three separate times we recount Jesus’ falling under the heavy weight of the Cross. He fell, so that we could get up. He carried our sorrows, so that we could carry Him in our hearts. Bent under the weight of our own crosses, we must swallow our pride and allow Him to lift us up and to carry our grief. We must allow His humility to surmount our pride. His self-emptying can and must melt the glacier of our self-sufficiency.
The truth of the matter is that He has borne our grief. There is no question as to whether He will do it or not. He has done it. Now it is up to us! Will we choose to hang on to our pain, our burdens, and our sorrows.. .in a spirit of malformed independence? Or will we look in the eyes of our true Savior and thank Him for bearing our sins, our grief, our sorrows and our misery. Every suffering, whether great or small, presents us with an opportunity for growth and surrender. We are preparing once again to enter into the Lenten Season. It seems, during this time of year, we are presented with a plethora of opportunities of dying to self and rising in Christ. What will we choose to do with such opportunities?
Mother Angelica always told us NOT to miss the opportunity of becoming a great saint. Maybe we have become too accustomed to hearing her say this. But let’s think about it for a second. An opportunity can be a missed opportunity. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.” Or if we grab on to suffering as an opportunity for holiness and growth, we can allow Christ’s wounds to heal us. Saints are those who seized opportunities.. . and many times that meant suffering, sorrow, and sometimes even martyrdom. Yet this did not discourage them or make them despondent. They looked upon such things as favors from their Crucified King, for they knew that through such opportunities would come their sanctification.
Family, let us ponder the real meaning of suffering this Lent. Let’s go deeper into the Passion of Christ and understand the depth of what He did for us. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed.”
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