As God was physically formed in Mary, so he wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew he was seeing through your eyes, you would see in everyone a child of God. If you knew that he worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through …. If you knew that he wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how different you would be. If half the world did this, there would be no war!
How to find Christmas Peace
What Christ did in his own human nature in Galilee, he is doing today … in every city and hamlet of the world where souls are vivified by his Spirit. He is still being born in other Bethlehems of the world, still coming into his own and his won receiving him not, still instructing the learned doctors of the law and answering their questions, still labouring at a carpenter’s bench, still “[going] about doing good” (cf. Acts 10:34-43), still preaching, governing, sanctifying, climbing other Calvaries, and entering into the glory of his Father.
In the Fullness of Time
It makes no difference what you do here on earth; what matters is the love with which you do it. The street cleaner who accepts in God’s name a cross arising from his state of life, such a person is the scorn of his peers; the mother who pronounces her fiat to the Divine Will as she raises a family for the kingdom of God; the afflicted in hospitals who say fiat to their cross of suffering are the uncanonised saints, for what is sanctity but fixation in goodness by abandonment to God’s Holy Will?
Seven words of Jesus and Mary
We do not always know why such things as sickness and setbacks happen to us, for our minds are too puny to grasp God’s plan. A person is like a little mouse in a piano, which cannot understand why it must be disturbed by someone playing Chopin and forcing it to move off the piano wires.
From the Angles’ Blackboard
God does not love us because we are loveable of and by ourselves, but because he has put his own love into us. He does not even wait for us to love; his own love perfects us. Letting it do this, with no resistance, no holding back for fear of what our egotism must give up, is the one way to the peace that the world can neither give nor take away
Lift up your Heart
Once our helplessness is rendered up to the power of God, life changes and we become less and less the victims of our moods. Instead of letting the world determine our state of mind, we determine the state of our soul with which the world is to be faced. The earth carries around its atmosphere with it as it revolves about the sun; so can the soul carry the atmosphere of God with it in disregard of turbulent events in the world outside.
Lift up your Heart
Many people nowadays want God, but on their terms not on his, They insist that their wishes shall determine the kind of religion that is true, rather than letting God reveal his truth to them. So their dissatisfaction continues and grows. But God finds us loveable, even in our rebellion against him.
Lift up your Heart
We always make the fatal mistake of thinking that it is what we do that matters, when really what matters is what we let God do to us. God sent the angel to Mary, not to ask her to do something, but to let something be done. Since God is a better artisan than you, the more you abandon yourself to him, the happier he can make you.
Seven Words of Jesus and Mary
Ours is a world characterised by noise, and by chatter. It’s hard to escape it’s everywhere, we even have social media to pursue us relentlessly, so that it feels like there is no escape. We long for more silence in our lives, in which case we had better do something about it. It is not for nothing that the first word of the Rule of S. Benedict is Ausculta ‘Listen’. One cannot listen if one is talking, one needs to be silent, to be attentive, to concentrate on one thing, and the præcepta Magistri the words of the Master are simply a means to end, that we focus upon and listen to God, hence the large amount of quotation from Scripture in general and the Psalms in particular contained in the Rule, so that we are attentive to the Word of God, that’s the point of the Opus Dei, to help us to listen to what God says to us. Listening too lies at the heart of Obœdentia: being obedient, subject to another, listening – one cannot obey if one has not first listened.
De zelo bono quod debent monachi habere
Sicut est zelus amaritudinis malus qui separat a Deo et ducit ad infernum, ita est zelus bonus qui separat a vitia et ducit ad Deum et ad vitam æternam. Hunc ergo zelum ferventissimo amore exerceant monachi, id est ut honore se invicem præveniant, infirmitates suas sive corporum sive morum patientissime tolerent, obœdientiam sibi certatim inpendant: nullus quod sibi utile iudicat sequatur, sed quod magis alio; caritatem fraternitatis caste inpendant. Amore Deum timeant. Abbatem suum sincera et humili caritate diligant. Christo omnimo nihil præponant, qui nos pariter ad vitam æternam perducat.
Concerning the good zeal which monks ought to have.
Just as there is an evil zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to hell, so there is a good zeal which separates from vices and leads to God and to life everlasting. This zeal, therefore, the monks should practice with the most fervent love. Thus they should anticipate one another in honour (Rom. 12:10); most patiently endure one another’s infirmities, whether of body or of character; vie in paying obedience one to another — no one following what he considers useful for himself, but rather what benefits another; may they cherish fraternal charity chastely; fear God in love; love their Abbot with a sincere and humble charity; and prefer nothing whatever to Christ. And may He bring us all together to life everlasting!
The Chapter above, Chapter 72, lies at the heart of, and is the culmination of the Rule, and it is serious wonderful stuff. I know from personal experience that it is all to easy to fall into the evil zeal of bitterness, and it eats up your soul: you become suspicious, cynical, and while you try to kid yourself that such behaviour is in fact justified, borne out by the facts, all we are doing is trying to excuse the inexcusable, to salve our conscience, to save ourselves the difficult and hard task of loving those whom we would rather not. Thus, in the Gospels, Our Lord calls us to love our enemies (Mt 5:44, Lk 6:27-36) which is no small ask, if it were he would not ask it of us, it goes against our deepest nature, we want to hate those who hate and persecute us, we forget their humanity, and are wrapped up in our own pain. It is something which the world around us finds very hard, social media is full of it, it can feed off fear and jealousy, it is corrosive, it damages us, and those around us, and its consequences are toxic, and sinful, that’s what hell and being separated from God means, and its what Christ comes to save us from, from ourselves.
Love then is the key, it is the heart of the Gospel and the Rule: love God, and love one another as I have loved you, with that same costly love. Only then can we truly prefer nothing to Christ, which is the way to life everlasting: believing in Him, following Him, trusting Him, and letting Him guide our thoughts, our words and our actions. So that we may proclaim in word and deed that saving love which was born in Bethlehem, to a world which longs for healing, for love, and for peace.
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?…
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
The words of the Introit at Mass and the Epistle, set to music by Mr Henry Purcell:
As we prepare the way of the Lord may peace and joy reign in our hearts and in our lives.
Ours is a sick world, which longs for healing, which longs for the reconciliation which Christ alone can bring. As we prepare to welcome the Saviour, let us remember why He came among us, and why He is the Balm of Gilead which heals the sin-sick soul. Come Lord Jesus!
Here’s Sam Cooke saying more with music than I can just with words:
