Only you have been keeping me out

By David Torkington

St. Francis of Assisi (Wikimedia Commons)

 
An Examination of Conscience

When we begin to experience God making his home within us, we are beginning to experience the most  momentous and the most moving moments  possible on earth. They are not just moments of blissful happiness, but moments when we enable the love of God to surcharge our weak human loving, so that we can be more and more like Jesus, enabling his loving to be alive and active again in the world through us, through all we say and do. This is how God’s sway, his sacred sovereignty  is spread, how his secret plan or  his Mysterion can finally be brought to completion here on earth, as it is in heaven.

 ‘Only You Have Been Keeping Me Out’

There is only one thing that can prevent the implementation of this plan and that is the sickness  of selfishness that  does to the mystical body of Christ what  high cholesterol does to the physical body.  It must ultimately be controlled, if not totally rooted out. This is a long process and can never be fully achieved without God’s help, and the acceptance of the suffering that this will mean.


Continue reading at David's blog David Torkington.

Be a people of the Word

By Caroline

Light of the World by William Holman
Hunt (Wikimedia Commons).

I’m on a short three-week break in between classes so I’ve had some time to catch up on news and things around the cultural landscape… Sometimes, I wonder why I bother. What an assault on the senses, what a challenge for anyone in this modern day to continue on the path of living in the world, but not being of it. It’s difficult seeking a life where one is,

like sheep among the wolves…as cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves.

—Matthew 10:16

Quite an exercise in discernment and yet, if I don’t do it, my class of 6th graders tell me about it nonetheless and then some; at least this way I’m prepared.

When they do tell me, they expect me to react as the world does, in anger and bitterness. They expect me to give in to the inevitability that, whatever I may teach them about God’s ways, it just isn’t going to cut it in the world where they’re growing up .

And the children are really in survival mode. The stories I hear about what goes on daily in school, it’s heartbreaking. But, bless their hearts they carry on and they have the energy to because they’re young.

 Who can overcome the world?

—1 John 5:5

 Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

Lord, free me of sin

By Nancy Shuman

 

The picture of the wall on this post is not "pretty."  It isn't supposed to be.  It is here to represent the thing that walls us off most fully from connecting with God, and that thing is unspeakably ugly.  It is so ugly that our Lord Jesus suffered an excruciating death to free us from it, to break through the wall of it, so we can enter the presence of God.

I am speaking, of course, of the wall of sin.  The thick, dark, grungy wall of sin.  The sin that separates us from God, darkening our minds to the light of Christ and causing us to flee from that light as we might from a searing blaze. 

Hopefully, we are not experiencing a wall that thick as we read this.  However, I daresay most of us have known it, at one time or another, and many live in such bondage today.  It can be hard to even want to get out of it.

Such a wall, can, in time, begin to feel comfortable.  We fool ourselves into thinking of it not as the place of danger it is, but as actually something of a "safe place."  If I cannot perceive God because of this wall, maybe it works both ways (I tell myself).  Maybe He can't see ME.  Maybe He'll forget all about me, and then He won't notice that I'm living in sin.  Maybe there isn't any such thing as sin; I mean, all I have to do is turn on TV to know that everybody's living these days in ways unthinkable only a generation ago.




Continue reading at Nancy's blog, The Cloistered Heart.

Springing forward and acting on impulse

By Robert Batch

It is part of simply “being human” to “spring forward” and act out of impulse.  What do I mean exactly?  Lets look at the first reading from Mass today from Genesis.

The woman saw that the tree was good for food,
pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.
So she took some of its fruit and ate it;

Often times we see something that looks satisfying, or looks like it will be fun and we simply “spring forward” into the action and we skip the important step of thinking.  Whether we are in the situation of eating the cookies…or marshmallows that mom said not to eat….

Read the rest (and watch a video) at Love is Calling.

Don't Stop Believin'--the magic of Christmas

By Lara

Christmas Comes But Once a Year by Charles Greene (Wikimedia Commons).

 


We all know Christmas is about an innocent baby born in a manger. But for me, what embodies the spirit of the season this year has to do with a 49-year-old man who will be getting out of prison this week.

I know that doesn’t make you all warm and fuzzy the way your footed pajamas and hot cocoa by the fire does.

I get that.

The birth of our Savior is the greatest story ever told, not to mention it has baby lambs in it too.  There’s no way I can compete with that.

Certainly, the man in prison is no Christ-child.

He is an addict.

He is an ordinary Joe.  Well, kind of anyway.

What I mean by ordinary is he made a mistake, and how much more ordinary can you get than making mistakes – it seems to be at the essence of our humanity.

I guess what is unique about his mistake, unlike so many of mine, is it landed him in prison.

Thirteen years ago Joe was arrested for buying cocaine for personal use, and was charged and sentenced as a trafficker.  His punishment was 20 years with no chance of parole.

Kind of harsh.
 
The world is full of addicts though. It seems everyone’s addicted to something — drugs, fame, possessions, power and oh, how I could go on.  So, Joe is kind of ordinary that way.

Joe is one of six boys whose family grew up next door to a dear friend of mine.  Their moms were best friends for 40 years.  Even the way my friend described her childhood, that Joe was so much a part of, was kind of ordinary.  They carpooled together, teased each other, and played with all the other kids until way past dark.


Read the rest at Lara' blog Mercy Me! I've got work to do.

Don't commit spiritual suicide

by Allison Girone

The Bride by Anders Zorn (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

How many leave the faith because they hold it to the standard of their fellow worshipers holiness? Yet, people will always disappoint you...at some point. We all fall short. We fail because we're sinful, all of us. Singularly, we're not worthy to worship. But the Church,Christ's Church, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. No matter what we do to tarnish it, Holy Mother Church is, as Mother Angelica once wrote:

"[T]he Bride of Christ, the Mother from whose womb of grace each of us was born to a new life, a life of Sonship... When we hate her we only hate ourselves, for we are part of her Body and Jesus is our Head. To alienate ourselves from Him and His Bride is to cut ourselves off from the Vine."

My wise and caring Pastor had words today, for such a situation:

"When such disappointments strike the household of faith, they remind us of our ongoing need for God and his mercy. Too many people use sin and human failure in the Church as an excuse to commit spiritual suicide, to write off the importance of faith. Our reaction should be the opposite, for we all stand together in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. Our thanksgiving is first and foremost for the gift of God’s mercy."

When you are brought down, look up.

Allison originally posted this at her blog  Totus Tuus Family and Homeschool