"God never wishes to entrap us or take us at a disadvantage."
It is of faith that God always answers right prayers, and in a way and to a degree beyond our most enthusiastic expectations; but He does not yet let us see how. We must take it on faith. We are quite sure that in the long run we shall not be disappointed.
-- Father Faber
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The Expectation
She would gaze on that countenance, whose expressive beauty, even when it was mute and still, would, like the voiceless music of light playing on the forest, the mountain and the sea, transparently display to her all the workings of the Sacred Heart. She was on the point of seeing that human face which was to light up all of the vast heaven for eternity, and be to it instead of sun and moon.
-- Father Faber
-- Father Faber
Monday, December 17, 2007
Compassion
We must aim most at compassion for others when we are suffering most ourselves. This is the way to gain the peculiar graces of suffering. Grace and nature are almost always at cross purposes. Because Moses had the hastiest of tempers, he became the meekest of men. So sorrow naturally shuts us up in ourselves, and concentrates us upon itself, while grace forces us to become more considerate because we are suffering, and to go out of ourselves, and to pour out upon others, as a libation before God, all that tenderness and pity which nature would make us lavish upon ourselves.
-- Father Faber
-- Father Faber
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Tranquil Gladness
Let us cultivate a holy cheerfulness, not a boisterous, worldly joy, which dissipates the spirit, but that gentle and tranquil gladness which springs chiefly from a pure conscience, from the grace of the Holy Ghost shed abroad in our hearts, and from resignation to the divine will.
-- Rosmini, A Spiritual Calendar
-- Rosmini, A Spiritual Calendar
Friday, December 14, 2007
Gaudete
. . . To rejoice in the world is but a sorry kind of joy, on account of its transitory character. "Gaudete in Domino" says the Apostle -- "Rejoice in the Lord" . . . He means the joy that is the result of such love of God as makes us simply wish that His will should be done in all things . . . This is the secret of true joy, for then what befalls ourselves is a matter of indifference to us.
-- Rev. R.F. Clarke, The Devout Year
-- Rev. R.F. Clarke, The Devout Year
