Aug 31: St. Aidan of Lindisfarne

saint-aidan-of-lindisfarne

 

St. Aidan, pray for us.

“He cultivated peace and love, purity and humility; he was above anger and greed, and despised pride and conceit; he set himself to keep and teach the laws of God, and was diligent in study and in prayer…I greatly admire all these things about Aidan.” ~The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Called to be Fruitful

We have been called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness. ~Fr. Henri J.M. Nouwen; public address at Yale, March 30, 1995

St. Augustine of Hippo

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace. ~St. Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions

Together With Christ

Together with Christ—in Christ, through Christ, with Christ—each one of us can help to save the world in the same way he did, by working, by enduring, by loving. He was a carpenter. He worked. He endured life, he endured much pain. He had mental agonies and physical agonies. This is a blueprint for each person in the Mystical Body of Christ. ~Catherine Doherty, Mystical Body of Christ

Where there is love, there is pain.

“Where there is love, there is pain. But whatever our walk in life, this kind of pain is God’s way of teaching us how to pray. Everything that happens to us spiritually, everything that causes us to grow, will bring us closer to God if we say yes. This is what spiritual growth means. It doesn’t come from what we do, necessarily, from all our actions and good works. Sometimes it comes from simply sitting and seeing the shambles of what we tried to accomplish, from watching what was seemingly God’s work go to pot. You can’t do anything about it, but watch. This happened to me. I knew dimly then what I see more clearly today, that this was the moment when God really picked me up and said, ‘Now I am offering you the union you seek. the other side of my cross is empty. Come, be nailed upon it. This is our marriage bed.’

“All we can answer in response to that invitation is, ‘Help me, God! I don’t have the courage to climb on this cross.'” ~Catherine Doherty, Soul of My Soul

Our Indispensable Nourishment

At this point, Peter makes his confession of faith in the name of the other Apostles: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (v. 68). He does not say, “Where shall we go?,” But “To whom shall we go?” He does not say “Where shall we go?” But “To whom shall we go!” The real problem here is not in going and abandoning the work that has been undertaken, but rather ‘to whom’ to go. From that question of Peter, we understand that loyalty to God is a matter of loyalty to a person with whom they are bound to walk together on the same road. And this person is Jesus. All that we have in the world does not satisfy our hunger for the infinite. We need Jesus: to be with Him, to nourish ourselves at His table, His words of eternal life! Believing in Jesus means to make Him the center, the meaning of our life. Christ is not an accessory element: He is the “living bread”, the indispensable nourishment. Attaching ourselves to Him, in a real relationship of faith and love, does not mean being chained, but being profoundly free, always on a journey, open to the challenges of our time. ~Pope Francis, Angelus address, Sunday, August 23, 2015

 

 

To Set the Prisoner Free

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” ~Lewis B. Smedes

 

 

All creation shows forth His loveliness

“If we are generous in cooperating with God’s prompting from within our soul as well as with His providential indications from without, we shall find that He uses creatures to lead us to Him. As a matter of fact, every creature owes its origin to God, and anything of good that is to be found in each one is but a faint image of God’s own beauty. There is no charm that any creature has that cannot be found in a higher and more perfect way in God. All creation shows forth His loveliness; and what we find lovable in the creature is really the creature’s resemblance to God. Creatures thus can lead us to God; their danger is that their charm may prevent our love from going further, and even lead us to prefer them to God. That is why custody of the heart is so important in the spiritual life. The truly spiritual man can love all creation; but he loves God above all, and he loves all else because of God. This principle will help many sincere souls to solve the difficulties that arise from too narrow a concept of the detachment necessary for the pursuit of perfection.” ~Dom Eugene Boylan; This Tremendous Lover (p. 277)

The Void in Our Heart

Only God

“There is a void in our heart which all creatures united would be unable to fill. God alone can fill it; for He is our beginning and our end. The possession of God fills up this void and makes us happy. The privation of God leaves in us this void and is the cause of our wretchedness. Before God fills up this void, He puts us in the way of faith; with this condition, that if we never cease to regard Him as our last end, if we use creatures with moderation, and refer to His service the use we make of them, at the same time contributing faithfully to the glory which it is His will to draw from all created beings, He will give himself to us to fill up the void within us and make us happy. But if we are wanting in fidelity, He will leave in us that void, which, left unfilled, will cause our supreme misery.” ~Fr. Lallemant, S.J., Spiritual Doctrine

Pride…

Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you. ~Andrew Murray