There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Month: April 2016
Precious Pearls
What happens to all my prayers – those that are not answered, and those that seem to make things worse than anyone ever anticipated? Surely they are still sustaining me. Perhaps there will be unexpected answers to them, answers I may not even be aware of for years. I cannot believe they are wasted or lost. I do not know where they have gone, but I believe God holds them, hand outstretched to receive them like precious pearls. ~Madeleine L’Engle
The Essence of Perfect Prayer
The first thing I wish to discuss, as far as my limited understanding will allow, is the nature of the essence of perfect prayer. For I have come across some people who believe that the whole thing consists in thought; and thus, if they are able to think a great deal about God, however much the effort may cost them, they immediately imagine they are spiritually minded; while, if they become distracted, and their efforts to think of good things fail, they at once become greatly discouraged and suppose themselves to be lost….But it must be realized that not everyone has by nature an imagination capable of meditating, whereas all souls are capable of love. ~St. Teresa of Ávila
Coworkers With God
Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Another Sunrise. Thank you God
I’ve never met a sunrise I didn’t like.
April 25: Feast of St. Mark
Those who, in the biblical phrase, would save their lives – that is, those who want to get along, who don’t want commitments, who don’t want to get into problems, who want to stay outside of a situation that demands the involvement of all of us – they will lose their lives. But those who for love of Christ uproot themselves and accompany the people and go with the poor in their suffering and become incarnated and feel as their own the pain and the abuse – they will secure their lives, because the Father will reward them. ~Blessed Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love
The Earth is Filled With Awe
The Peace of Christ
If God’s peace is in our hearts, we carry it with us, and it can be given to those around us, not by our own will or virtue, but by the Holy Spirit working through us. We cannot give what we do not have, but if the spirit blows through the dark clouds and enters our hearts, we can be used as vehicles of peace, and our own peace will be thereby deepened. The more peace we give away, the more we have. ~ Madeleine L’Engle
Silence is the Language of Faith
Silence is the language of faith. Action – be it church or charity, politics or poetry – is the translation. As with any translation, action is a mere echo of its original, inevitably faded and distorted, especially as it moves farther from its source. There the comparison ends, though, for while it is true that action degrades that original silence, and your moments of meditative communion with God can seem a world away from the chaotic human encounters to which those moments compel you, it is also true that without these constant translations into action, that original, sustaining silence begins to be less powerful, and then less accessible, and then finally impossible. ~Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss
If We Have No Silence
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all of life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty. ~Thomas Merton: No Man Is An Island