The Fire of Burning Love

I want you all to fill your hearts with great love.  Don't imagine that love, to be true and burning, must be extraordinary.  No; what we need in our love is the continuous desire to love the One we love.  To possess God we must allow him to possess our souls.  How poor we would be if God had not given us the power of giving ourselves to him; how rich we are now!  How easy it is to conquer God!  If we give ourselves to him, then God is ours, and there can be nothing more ours than God.  The money with which God repays our surrender is himself.  We become worthy of possessing him when we abandon ourselves completely to him.  Total surrender consists in giving ourselves completely to God.  We must give ourselves fully to God because God has given himself to us.  If God owes nothing to us and is ready to impart to us no less than himself, shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves?  Should we not rather give ourselves fully to God as a means of receiving God himself?  I for God and God for me.  I live for God and give up my own self, and in this way God lives for me.  To surrender means to offer him my free will, my reason, my own life in pure faith.  My soul may be in darkness.  Trial and suffering are the surest test of my blind surrender.  Surrender is also true love.  The more we surrender, the more we love God and souls.  If we really love souls, we must be ready to take their place, to take their sins upon us and expiate them in us by penance and continual mortification.  We must be living holocausts, for the souls need us as such.  

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

-Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (1997) won the Nobel Peace Prize and founded the Missionaries of Charity.

Going to Jesus like Little Children

It is in a spiritual fashion that God gives himself, reaching to the deepest depths of the heart with his inspirations and uniting himself so gently with the soul that words cannot express what happens.  The net result is that whoever is thus joined to God becomes one spirit with him.  Let us drown ourselves then in this ocean of holiness, of infinite purity.  If we lose all, we shall thereby gain all.  The divine heart will never fail us, this I tell you for certain, if we do not fail him.  And even if we did, he would not fail us, because his fidelity is greater than our unfaithfulness.  He is not one of those who breaks faith with a person who has broken faith with him and we shall forever find him ready to call us back.  Let us humble ourselves before the grandeur of God.  Let us make ourselves nothing in the presence of this adorable Unknown.  Let us lose ourselves forever with never a thought of finding ourselves again.  Let us plunge into his divine abyss.  If only we could say in utter truth these words:  "My God is my all," we would never find our prayer long or boring.  When boredom descended upon us in prayer, that simple phrase said from the heart would act like a spell to drive away our weariness and disgust.  David declared that God hearkens to the desires of the poor.  This is why it is sufficient in order to make a good prayer, merely to tell God:  "All my desires are before you and my groanings are not hidden from your sight."

Saint Bonaventure offers us this advice for prayer.  "If you wish God to stoop down to reach you, carry the woes of Christ crucified in your heart."

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal

-Saint Jane Frances (1641) co-founded the original community of the Congregation of the Visitation.  

Whoever us Humble is the Greatest

Be recollected; whoever pours himself out on exterior things quickly loses the graces he has acquired.  A full jewel box is always kept closed.  Humility:  Avoid all those words which can draw down on you glory, esteem, or the appreciation of others.  Let us listen unwillingly (without interest or reflection) and with interior reluctance to the words of those who praise or commend us.  It is dangerous to listen to one's own praise in the mouths of others.  It makes one lose his good judgment.  When others praise us let us keep our sins before our eyes.  In this way we shall judge ourselves unworthy of any commendation, and consequently we shall find an occasion for being ashamed of ourselves and for humbling ourselves.  Rejoice when you hear others praised.  Jealousy, attachment to one's own glory, is a defect.  Never do anything so that men may see and esteem you.  Never do anything out of human respect.  Do everything perfectly, because you are working in God's presence, for God and not for men.  In every situation think more about loving than about working.  Don't offer excuses when you make a mistake.  Don't cast the blame on others.  Do not offend by sarcasm those who correct you.  Do not renounce in advance your errors which someone is trying to point out to you.  Practice for a long time and with zeal until you succeed in willing that your defects may not remain hidden any longer, and until you learn how to rejoice when others judge you imperfect.  Do this to make up for your errors.  When you are reproved unjustly, do not excuse yourself.  Cut short all thoughts of pride...  Willingly accept every opportunity for humbling yourself.  Don't be offended at a harsh word, an imperious tone of voice, not being respected as much as you would like to be.  Welcome occasions of being disregarded and humiliated, first with patience, then willingly, without raising any difficulties, and finally with joy.  That will be perfect humility.  Make acts of humility (as also of the other virtues on which you are interiorly examining yourself), beginning with a rather small number of them; then increase these continually, and make more and more progress.  This, in fact, is how one acquires a good habit and makes it grow strong.  Humility is the foundation of the virtues.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe

-Saint Maximilian (1941) was a Polish Conventual Fransciscan priest who was martyred in Auschwitz.

Faith that Moves Mountains

My heart keeps within itself an infinite number of his mercies.  It knows that it doesn't have any thing of value with which to glorify itself before God...  When I ask God what have I done to deserve such consolations, he smiles and says repeatedly that nothing is refused to such an intercessor.  In return he asks me for nothing but love, but do I not perhaps owe him this in gratitude?...  He is so much in love with my heart that he makes me burn with his divine fire, with the fire of his love.  What is this fire that pervades my whole being?...  There are moments when I call to mind the severity of Jesus and am about to feel distressed, but then when I consider his affability I am completely consoled.  I cannot help abandoning myself to this tenderness, this happiness.  What is it that I feel, Father?  I trust Jesus so completely that even if I were to see hell open up before me, and find myself on the brink of the abyss,  I should not lose confidence.  I should not despair but continue to trust in him.  Such is the extent to which his meekness inspires me.  Whenever I reflect on the enormous battles in which by the divine assistance I have overcome the devil, I find them innumerable.  If he had not stretched forth his hand to me, perhaps I might have wavered in my faith, grown weak in hope and charity; perhaps my intelligence would have been darkened if it had not been enlightened by Jesus, the eternal Sun!  I realize that all this has really been the work of his infinite love.  He has never refused me any thing and indeed I must say he has given me more than I asked.  

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina

-Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (1968) was an Italian Capuchin priest who during his lifetime enjoyed a vast reputation for sanctity.  

Beginning the Way of the Cross

The words "Your will be done" must be the rule of the Christian's life in all their fullness.  They must be the principle that regulates his day from morning to night, the course of the year and his whole life.  It then becomes the Christian's only concern.  For all other cares the Lord will make himself responsible; this alone will remain with us as long as we live.  From the objective point of view it is not absolutely certain that we shall always remain in the ways of God.  Just as the first man and woman became estranged from God though they had been his children, so every one of us is always balancing, as it were, on the edge of the knife between nothingness and the fullness of the divine life.  Sooner or later we shall be feeling this also subjectively.  In the infancy of the spiritual life, when we have just begun to surrender ourselves to the guidance of God, we feel his guiding hand very strongly; it is clear as daylight what we have to do and what to avoid.  But it will not remain like this.  If we belong to Christ, we have to live the whole Christ-life.  We must mature into his humanity, we must one day begin the way of the cross to Gethsemane and to Golgotha.  And all sufferings that come from without are as nothing compared with the dark night of the soul, when the divine light no longer shines, and the voice of the Lord no longer speaks.  God is there, but he is hidden and secret.

God became man in order once more to give us a share in his life.  This is the beginning, and this is the last end.  But between these there is something else.  Christ is God and man, and if we would share his life, we must share both in the divine and the human life.  The human nature which he took enabled him to suffer and to die.  The divine nature which he possessed from eternity gave his suffering and death infinite value and redemptive power.  Christ's suffering and death are continued in his mystical body.  

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

-Saint Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein; 1942) was a German philosopher and a convert from Judaism who became a Carmelite nun and was put to death at Auschwitz.

With Peter on the Water

Prudent men, those who are schooled in misfortune and purified in the fire like gold, declare, "It is good for me that you have afflicted me, that I might learn your ordinances," for they realize that abasement generates understanding of his ordinances, indeed, they act like Peter, who cried out for help when he was about to go under, and their pain somehow draws them closer to God and through their distress they make him their friend, since a troubled soul is next to God and their need turns them to the one who can provide, him who is even perchance despised for his unstinted generosity.  This is why, my brothers, we should look up to heaven; at all times and before every adversity let us exude good hope; let us relinquish neither anxiety in time of happiness nor confidence in time of sorrow.  Even in fair weather let us not forget the gale, nor in the storm the pilot; yes, let us not lose heart in the midst of afflictions or become wicked servants who acknowledge their master only when he treats them well and repudiate him when he tries to correct them.  Yet there are times when pain is preferable to health, patience to relief, visitation to neglect, punishment to forgiveness.  In a word, we must neither let our troubles lay us low nor a glut of good fortune give us airs.  

Saint Gregory Nazianzen

-Saint Gregory Nazianzen (390) was a monk, a bishop, and a writer of letters, prayers, and poems.  

The Death of John the Baptist

What inexpressible joy a person experiences who was banished from home or led away into captivity, when told that they may return to their own country, to their families and friends!  The same happiness awaits a soul which loves God and languishes in the ardent desire of seeking him in heaven in the midst of the saints, who are our real family and friends.

Death, my friends, is to the just man what sleep is to the tired laborer who is glad of the approach of night, which will bring him rest after the hardships of the day.  Death delivers the just man from the prison of his body, as Saint Paul says:  "Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"  "Deliver me, my God," said the holy King David, "deliver my soul from the prison of this body.  Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?"... 

How happy, then, is a Christian when he follows in the footsteps of the divine master!

But in what consists the life of Jesus Christ?  Listen, my good friends.  It consists of three things - namely: prayer, good deeds, and suffering.  You know that the Redeemer often withdrew from public life to pray and that he was always active in the salvation of souls.  The thought of God should come as natural to us as breathing.  During his life of prayer and good deeds Jesus Christ had to suffer much.  Now, poverty, now persecution, now humiliations, and then all kinds of harsh treatment.  "My life," he says through his prophet, "is wasted with grief: and my years in sighs.  My strength is weakened through poverty" (Ps 30: 2).  Can the life of a good Christian be any other than that of a man who is nailed to the cross with his master?  The righteous man is a crucified man.

Saint John Vianney, The Cure of Ars

-Saint John Vianney (1859) is the patron of parish priests.