A Little Prayer

By Cynthia Scodova

 

“What pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty.”
                                                       St Therese of the Child Jesus

                                          Google Images                  

                                                                     

Who can press back

 the mountain of night?

Grasp the petals 

of morning 

slipping

 through 

the fields of light?

Or keep 

the song rising out

from the small voice,

where everything is falling

in vaporous flux:

these prayers becoming

the edges of hills 

holding 
the little we are

to the mist 

  of the earth. 

Cynthia blogs at The Mad-Eyed Monk.

God is your papa

By Barbara A. Schoeneberger

Digital oil painting by Barb from photo
by Michelle M. from freedigitalphotos.com

And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. (Mark 14:36)

“Abba”, that beautiful Aramaic word spoken by a baby as his first word for “father”, has an equivalent in every language. In English it is “daddy”. In Korean it is “Appa”. In Italian, “babbino”, “papá”, “papino”. In all languages it expresses childlike innocence, trust, intimacy, and affection. In pre-Christian times “Abba” grew from solely a baby’s expression to mean “dear father”, an expression grown children would use to address their fathers.

When Jesus cried out these words during His agony in the garden, He spoke for all mankind, first as a Jew and secondly as a Gentile, as Mark wrote first the Aramaic word and then the Greek for “father”. Abba is for all of us. St. Paul reminds us of this in Romans 8:15:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, “Abba, Father

By this we know that Jesus means for all of us to have that same relationship with His Father that He does, the child with the strong and loving protector and provider who watches over us with the greatest of care. This is His will for us.


Continue reading at Barab's blog Suffering With Joy.

St. Therese on littleness

By Michael Incorvia

(Photo in public Domain)

Littleness is what St. Thérèse desired with all heart.  She saw littleness as a way to spiritual childhood, a pathway to heaven, for “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

For Thérèse, littleness was surrendering to Jesus, trusting in God, bathing in Christ’s divine mercy.  In her littleness, she rested in God’s protection and found serenity.  St. Thérèse made God her Father in all aspects of her life.

She became completely dependent on God’s merciful grace.  When asked to describe this littleness, she replied:  “When we keep little we recognize our own nothingness, and expect everything from God just as a little child expects everything from his father. Nothing worries us.”


Michael originally posted this at his blog   To Love and Truth.

Receiving the Kingdom like a child

By Heidi

King David in Prayer by de Grebber (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

LORD, my heart is not proud;
nor are my eyes haughty.
I do not busy myself with great matters,
with things too sublime for me.
Rather, I have stilled my soul,
Like a weaned child to its mother,
weaned is my soul.
Israel, hope in the LORD,
now and forever.

Sometimes I read this Psalm 131 and I feel great peace and trust.   Sometimes I think, Yeah, easy for King David to say, he has the Lord's blessing, he is King and loved by his people.  He accomplished great things, and pursued great marvels.  I am nothing like that, but I want, I want, I want.  And that is when I take my eyes off of the Lord and focus on myself.  But in His great patience He waits, and soon I return, realizing that in all he did, King David had a heart for God. Only in resting with Him and then receiving His grace will I truly be able to see that my wants all are fulfilled in Him.  Even in my daily tasks, like feeding a little two-year old boy lunch and putting him down for a nap, if it is done with a heart for the Lord, it is truly a task great and marvelous that is laid out just for me.

Childlike faith is the key.  Humbly accepting the tasks that God has laid before you, not without zeal or passion, but without grasping at honor and earthly glory (and running back to His mercy when you realize that those desires have crept into your motivation for serving God).   All reward is sought from the Father.

And God places examples of this childlike faith before our eyes all the time; because He is a Father, and He knows we need encouragement.  Last fall as I was waiting for my preschool daughter’s dance class to start I was entranced by a vision of childlike discipleship.


Continue reading at  Journey to Wisdom.

Becoming like a little child

By Terry 

Blind Man's Bluff by Laufberger (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

#8 has a science project on Matter and Energy.  This past week, she gathered information on her topic.  Since I wanted her to use other sources besides the internet, we walked to the library on Saturday afternoon.

On the walk home, she decided to see what it would be like to be blind.  She closed her eyes, linked her arm through mine and asked me to guide her on the almost 2 km. walk home.

The mind plays all kinds of tricks when we shut off the sense of sight.  #8 felt she was walking in circles and even found her balance a bit off, but she was determined to continue her experiment.  Over one section of sidewalk, two men were trimming some badly overgrown hedges.  There were branches, debris and hedge clippings strewn over a distance of about half a block.  I thought #8 would open her eyes at this point, but she didn’t.  She walked in front of me and with my hands on her shoulders and my voice guiding her steps, she made it past that stretch of sidewalk.  As we continued on and she became a little disoriented, she leaned closer into me and persevered.  When we finally arrived home, she tentatively climbed the first two steps to our front door but then ran up the remaining three steps, felt for the door handle and opened the door triumphantly.


Continue reading at Terry's blog 8 Kids And A Business.

Mary is my real mum

By Melanie Jean Juneau

Madonna and Child by Bellini (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

God has inscribed a moral code on my heart. It is  hidden in my deepest self. Actually, if  as an adult, I can block out my own ego and simply stop to listen, I can live a holy life. In fact Christ  offers an easy way to sanctity, to loving God and each other.  A spirituality that a child understands. A spirituality that St.Thérèse of Lisieux understood. Relax. Give up striving.
Surrender to His love and let it saturate every cell of your body. Then simply let His love flow through you. It ends up being a long journey to embrace such a carefree lifestyle because pride and ego get in the way. It is so simple that it seems complicated to our adult, logical minds.

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).

And in even stronger terms: “'I assure you,'” He said, 'unless you are converted and become like children,  you will never get into the kingdom of heaven…’” (Matthew 18:4).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church:  To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little. Even more: to become “children of God” we must be “born from above” or “born of God”. Only when Christ is formed in us will the mystery of Christmas be fulfilled in us. Christmas is the mystery of this “marvelous exchange”:

O marvelous exchange! Man’s Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity. (526)

A relationship with the living God is child’s play. Listen to this exchange between my young children:

One afternoon, I was making dinner, standing at the counter with my back to our three youngest children. Grace and Daniel were lounging around the kitchen table, with three-year-old Rebecca perched like a little elf on a high stool, happily swinging her legs. Simply making conversation, Grace who was eight, asked Rebecca,“Rebbecca, whose your favorite, Mum or Dad?”

Rebecca replied,”Both!”

Still facing the counter, I looked over my shoulder and intruded on their conversation, “Smart answer, Rebecca.”

Rebecca was not done though, “But she’s not my real mum, Mary is.”

Grace rolled her eyes, slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand and said incredulously, “Where does she get this stuff?”

I tried to explain as simply as I could, “Well, the Holy Spirit is in her heart and she listens to His voice.”

Rebecca jumped right back into the discussion and chanted in a sing-song, lilting voice, “That’s right. God the Father in my heart. Baby Jesus in my heart. Holy Spirit in my heart. Mother Mary in my heart…but…I still like Mum and Dad the best!”

Grace rolled her eyes and plunked her head down on the table with a loud sigh, “Where does she get this stuff?”

I just laughed.

Continue reading at Melanie's blog The Joy of Nine.