There is one thing I noticed in the Garden of Olives one morning , which I found touching. I saw many , many people who came there in prayer to comfort and stay in company with the Lord. But what I found so touching is this, that they looked to me that so many of them needed comforting so very much themselves. Yet out of their own need they reached out to comfort Jesus. But this is the way of the spiritual life, isn't it, that those who have the least give the most, out of the little that they have. I saw one in particular, a young serving girl from a previous age very long ago who was more nor less a slave and treated very badly all her life, despised and alone , yet a great comforter in the garden. These dear saints all unknown, yet known to God; the humble, the little one. All angels of comfort
Padraig, ...those who have the least give the most, out of the little that they have. Such a hopeful line! Safe in the Flames of the Sacred Heart!
Its funny the way God works things out Terry. I have started to reada book by A Norbertine priest called FR. John Michael Tourangeau http://www.peregrino.press/books.html The Journey of a Roman Catholic Priest Rev. John Michael Tourangeau, O. Praem. & Travis James Vanden Heuvel PURCHASE PAPERBACK look inside to Heaven & Back While connecting me up to various machines and monitors and placing nitroglycerine tablets under my tongue, the doctor looked at me early on and said: "You waited too long to get here, sir." I was petrified. There was no immediate response on my part, only a deep sense of fear entombed by a completely paralyzed inner spirit. Much to my surprise, he spoke again: "Sir, you've waited too long to get here. You're not going to make it." And he continued: "If you believe in God, this is the time to make peace." In that very moment, I said to myself, "What do you mean, 'If you believe in God?' Of course I believe in God! I'm a man of faith and a Catholic priest!" Fr. John Tourangeau, O. Praem., a Norbertine priest who had an afterlife experience following a major heart attack, emphatically states, "Heaven is for real!" Within this enlightening and hope-filled book, Fr. John weaves a powerful and dynamic tapestry of the Kingdom of God at hand through the exploration of Christian tradition, Sacred Scripture, Catholic teaching, as well as his own lived experiences. "While the fullness of heaven cannot be fully experienced in our life here on earth," Father explains, "we are able to more fully experience God's love for us through our relationships with others. For it is in and through these relationships that we draw closer to Christ and his promise for us."
But the reason why this is so interesting is that Fr John;s spiritual here was the late Fr Henri Nouwen , who you may have read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Nouwen Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen, (Nijkerk, January 24, 1932 – Hilversum, September 21, 1996) was a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian. His interests were rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community. Over the course of his life, Nouwen was heavily influenced by the work of Anton Boisen, Thomas Merton, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh and Jean Vanier. After nearly two decades of teaching at academic institutions including the University of Notre Dame, Yale Divinity School and Harvard Divinity School, Nouwen went on to work with mentally and physically handicapped people at the L'Arche Daybreak community in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
You know I 've never read Fr Nouwen at all, but Fr John quotes him very exstensively and what he talks about is us being , 'Wounded healers'. That we have to be broken as bread is broken in order to be shared. Which is pretty much the bottom line of what I am trying to write here.
I have to laugh, at the satrt of his book Fr John quotes a few times the singer Cher as an an illustration to make a point , in cluding quoting extensively from one of her songs. This made me laugh, 'Cher' of all people. .and form one of her songs , 'A song for the Lonely'
Though to be quite honest I am distrustful of a lot of things moderns write in the Church. There has been such an infection of modernism everywhere. I much prefer the old spiritual masters where we are qutie safe. I would say from about the 1950's onwards we bagan a long descent to be honest. We ajust now , as A Church coming down to hit the Earth, the bottom with a bump to such a plave were entire synods are no longer Catholic in anything but word.
I can't fully comprehend what you mean when you say you saw these people. As in a vision? Sounds so wonderful and amazing!
It is kind of like a meditation that kind of comes alive. Like looking at a photo that turns into a video. It is hard to decribe as this is what we look at with our hearts. It is a bit like sidereal vision , we are looking stright ahead but catch things with the side of our eyes.
I suppose what I am trying to say is if we are too comfortable in our pray life this may not necessarily a good thing. Change equal growth. I was reading something nice about Faith there. Someone compared doubts in Faith to anti bodies in the body. If we do not get little infections our body is not built up to major desease. We need these little attacks to build up our bodies defenses. Our bodies need to be built up by being strressed in order to go. This is what we are doing for instance when we take physical execrcise, we are stressing our bodies to help them to grown right. I think it is the same in prayer. Having a few doubts can be good, even severe doubts. For you may be sure a time will come when our Faith and spiritual life will be deeply stressed and we will be ready if already tested. There was a series of bombings in London a few years back. But there was a woman Minister's daughter who died in the attacks and she just could not accept this. She was full of anger and bitterness towards the attackers and publically renounced her Ministry and Christian Faith. The storm came and the boat sank, so to speak. What kind of boat would we like to take to sea in a storm on? A ship that had never sailed thorugh a storm and was new and untested or a ship that had gotten through many storms? Psalm 34:19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the LORD delivers him out of them all. http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/interview-the-rev-julie-nicholson-1-476857
But he said to me,“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong .[2 Corinthians 12: 9-10]
A good one for today ---- Merry Fall Equinox HeartLight Daily Verse - 21 September 2 Corinthians 13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Thoughts on today's verse: I have a friend in Jesus who has taught me the power of blessings. I can't think of a better one! Grace, love and fellowship rooted in the eternal, sacrificial, and gracious nature of our God, and we share it with God's children all around the world. Prayer: Father, I am thinking of several precious friends who need the richness of this blessing to fall upon them. Please bless them. In Jesus name. Amen. Visit heartlight.org for more GOD BLESS & SAVE ALL HERE!!
I think someone once once said that, 'God shines brightest through a broken window'. Was it Ernest Hemingway? Or me? If only.
I don;t know if you have ever used a very old frying pan, not one of those modern , person friendly non stick ones but an ancient solid iron one that you use to drive in nails? Well when you try to clean it at the end it is a pretty tough job. You have to saok it a long while and then attack it al lthe while with steel wool and sometimes you ahve to pretty well use dynamite on it to get it clean. Our souls are oftne liek thins and become pretty hardened in many ways. So there are times in our lives when steel wool no matter how fiercley used is no longer enough and the Dear Lord has to pretty well blow us up. Or knock us over on our backs in order to lift us up again. We can see this in the lives of the Apostles. They were just ordinary people like you and me, petty, jealous, quarrlesome, afraid, lacking in Fiath and so on. But at the death of Christ and after they pretty well were kncoked clean over only to rise again at Pentecost with the birth of the CHurch new and shinning frying pans ready to go intoaction. At the conversion of St Paul on the road to Tarsus we see a simliar knock out knock down action when Paul was literally knocked off his feet and even blinded. Though notice Jesus says to St Paul '...it is hard for you to kick against the goad'. In others words God has been trying to clean Pauls pan with steel wool but it has not worked , now Jesus is trying to clean Paul's pan with a little high explosives.
There are times in ourlives when God has to use high explosives to get things done. This includes our prayer lives. This use of explosives is not an everyday event. I doubt if looking back on our lives we coudl count them more than the fingers of one hand. Some of these evensts we can pretty well count on. A for instance is our death agony. This is pretty well the final bill and accounting when the devil is let of his leash for his last chance. This is like a toting up of the bill this final testing. Notice how often in our prayers the CHurch asks us to pray to get all set in advance for this. So wehn we say the hail Mary we always ask.. '..' ..paray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death . Amen'. Getting us set for the big event, the final all out use of the high explosives to get the frying pan clean. So we also pray.. 'Jesus, Mary and Jospeh may I give you my heart and my soul , Jesus Mary and Joseph mayI pour forth my soul in peace with you , Amen'.
My Nan was one of the greatest pray-ers I knew as a child! She got up every morning at 5am and got ready for Mass, which I think was at 6am, Grandad or Uncle Harry drove her to Mass each morning and then she walked home after Mass approximately 1.5 kms, she said the rosary daily and many other prayers, she read many spiritual magazines and books, she was the main person who inspired me in my faith and I'm sure it was due to her prayers as well, I remember her as a person who was always smiling [at least at me and it seemed to me she smiled at the world], and she never had a bad word about anyone I was trully blessed to have such a Nan! Imagine my surprise, when I was in my late twenties, when one day I visited her [and she would have been in her mid to late seventies and she was still going to mass each morning! ], when she said to me............ I can't pray anymore?????? And she added other things like, I haven't did much with my life, and I really want to be able to keep praying! Just to let you know that her statement of, 'I have not did much with my life was extremely false' I will tell you a little about her life. My Nan had 8 children, [I also learnt she also misscarried a child], plus she raised her children practically by herself, as Grandad worked in the bush and was away from Nan during the week in their early years of marriage and then he fought in world war 2 in New Guinea for the full 6 years of the war! and then after the war he went back to New Guinea and built bridges there [that was his job and Nan was left alone again] it wasn't until I was about 10 years old that Grandad came home for good. So for her to say she had not did much with her life made me laugh! I must have been inspired by the Holy Spirit because I told Nan that Mother Theresa says.......God has placed us all where we are supposed to be and all He asks of us is that we be like a little flower to help brighten up our small corner of the world! I also wrote out a little prayer on a small piece of paper, that Mother Theresa told her sisters to pray. 'Oh Jesus in my Heart......I believe in your tender love for me.........I love you'. About a year later Nan thanked me for this little insignificant prayer, that I had written out and she said 'she had prayed it every day!' she died about a year after that, she was 78 years old, when she died and she was still going to daily Mass! May she rest in peace. Amen. And May she continue to pray for me. I need her more now than I ever did.
