St. Andrei Rublëv

Guidance

O creator past all telling,
you have appointed from the treasures of your wisdom
the hierarchies of angels,
disposing them in wondrous order
above the bright heavens,
and have so beautifully set out all parts of the universe.

You we call the true fount of wisdom
and the noble origin of all things.
Be pleased to shed
on the darkness of mind in which I was born,
The twofold beam of your light
and warmth to dispel my ignorance and sin.

You make eloquent the tongues of children.
Then instruct my speech
and touch my lips with graciousness.
Make me keen to understand, quick to learn,
able to remember;
make me delicate to interpret and ready to speak.

Guide my going in and going forward,
lead home my going forth.
You are true God and true man,
and live for ever and ever.

~ Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

To Love...

To love God is something greater than to know Him.

~ St. Thomas Aquinas

The Mystic Rose

Saint Francis de Sales

What greater honor or grace, what more real and perfect happiness can we desire, than that of being loved by God? Yet our hearts allow themselves to be carried away by their caprices and go from creature to creature, just as if they were going from house to house, to see if they can find lodgings and discover real satisfaction. All in vain! God, Who has reserved the human heart for Himself, has forbidden all creatures to give our hearts genuine satisfaction and contentment, so that we are forced to return to Our Lord. And even if we return to Him more by force than by love, God does not refuse to restore us to His grace, to give us back the place we had previously enjoyed, and to caress us without inflicting any reproaches.

(Sermons 46; O. X, pp. 45-46) ~ St. Francis de Sales

Daily w/ de Sales --

http://www.oblates.org/spirituality/daily_with_desales/

:)

Eternal Worth

The troubles and sorrows, caused by our perversity, the Lord Jesus takes, and lifts up to heaven where they are transformed to things of delight and pleasure greater than heart can think or tongue can tell. And when we get there ourselves we shall find them waiting for us changed into things of beautiful and eternal worth.

~ Julian of Norwich

Saint Sebastian

The devil strains every nerve to secure the souls which belong to Christ. We should not grudge our toil in wresting them from Satan and giving them back to God.

~ St. Sebastian

Like a Prayer :)

Life is a mystery,

everyone must stand alone

I hear You call my name,

and it feels like home....

Teach Us

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
Unuttered or expressed;
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear
The upward glancing of an eye,
When none but God is near.

Prayer is the simplest form of speech
That infant lips can try;
The upward glancing of an eye,
When none but God is near.

Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,
The Christian’s native air,
His watchword at the gates of death;
He enters heaven with prayer.

O Thou, by Whom we come to God,
The Life, the Truth, the Way;
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod:
Lord, teach us how to pray!

Prayer is the contrite sinner’s voice,
Returning from his ways,
While angels in their songs rejoice
And cry, “Behold, he prays!”

The saints in prayer appear as one
In word, in deed, and mind,
While with the Father and the Son
Sweet fellowship they find.

No prayer is made by man alone
The Holy Spirit pleads,
And Jesus, on th’eternal throne,
For sinners intercedes.

O Thou by Whom we come to God,
The Life, the Truth, the Way,
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod:
Lord, teach us how to pray.

~ James Montgomery (1771-1854)

Messenger Winds

Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers. You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken. You cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.

~ Psalm 104:1-6

Like Smoke

Incense is prayer

That drives no bargain.

Child, learn from incense

How best to pray.

~ Alfred Barrett

Gentle Flame

My heart is filled with a fire of love....It is a delicate and very gentle flame which consumes without causing any pain....this is a wonderful thing for me, something I will perhaps never understand until I get to Heaven.

~St. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968)

Closer than Breathing

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains

Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the Vision He? Tho' He be not that which he seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?
Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but that which has power to feel 'I am I'?
Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom
Making him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom.
Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,
For if he is thunder by law the thunder is yet his voice.

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Verdieh Davoodzadeh

Dominus possedit me

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before

He made anything, from the beginning.

I was set up from eternity, and of old, before the earth was made.

The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived;

neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out;

the mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established:

before the hills I was brought forth;

He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers,

nor the poles of the world.

When He prepared the heavens, I was there;

when with a certain law and compass

He enclosed the depths;

when He established the sky above,

and poised the fountains of waters;

when He compassed the sea with its bounds,

and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits;

when He balanced the foundations of the earth;

I was with Him, forming all things, and was delighted every day,

playing before Him at all times, playing in the world:

and my delight is to be with the children of men.

Now therefore, ye children, hear me:

blessed are they that keep my ways.

Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.

Blessed is the man that heareth me,

and that watcheth daily at my gates,

and waiteth at the posts of my doors.

He that shall find me, shall find life,

and shall have salvation from the Lord.

Divine Light

No one can be saved without divine light. Divine light causes us to begin and to make progress, and it leads us to the summit of perfection. Therefore if you want to begin and to receive this divine light, pray. If you have begun to make progress and want this light to be intensified within you, pray. And if you have reached the summit of perfection, and want to be superillumined so as to remain in that state, pray.

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309)

Obedience of Being

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him.... The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him....

This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do.... The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this April day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God.

The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God. This leaf has it own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonised by their beauty and their strength. The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance. The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God's saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity....

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

Trees and animals have no problem. God makes them what they are without consulting them, and they are perfectly satisfied. With us it is different. God leaves us free to be whatever we like. We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny.... The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, by God's will, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, my own sanctity....

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the person that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy.

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love - outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

We are not very good at recognising illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves - the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.

All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honour, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface....

~Thomas Merton

St. Raymond of Peñafort

King James of Aragon, a man of great qualities,

but held in bond by a ruling passion, was bidden

by the Saint to put away the cause of his sin.

On his delay, Raymund asked for leave to depart

from Majorca, since he could not live with sin.

The king refused, and forbade, under pain of death,

his conveyance by others. Full of faith, Raymund

spread his cloak upon the waters, and, tying one end

to his staff as a sail, made the sign of the cross

and fearlessly stepped upon it. In six hours he was

borne to Barcelona, where, gathering up his cloak

dry, he stole into his monastery.

The king, overcome by this miracle, became a

sincere penitent and the disciple of the Saint till his death.

Love ~

"God is love and he loves us; that is the heart of the Christian faith. God gave us the commandments and it is in observing them that we show whether we love God. Pray that you may obtain a true love of God. God loves us so much. He wants us to love Him."

~ Blessed Brother Andre (1845-1937)

A Visit

Now the dusky wing of twilight

Hovers o'er the weary day,

And the ever deeping shadows

Slowly steal across our way.

Here amid the solemn stillness

And the gathering shades of night

Sweet it is, O loving Jesu,

Thee to seek, our fadeless Light!

Yonder lamp before the altar

Tells us of Thy presence there,

As the wondrous Star of Bethlehem

Did Thy dwelling place declare.

And we bow in adoration

As the Magi knelt of old,

Offering Thee our humble tributes

With their incense, myrrh, and gold.

Grant us like those Kings of the Orient,

Ever onward to proceed,

Through all dangers, pain, and labor,

Wheresoe'er Thy Light may lead;

Till our earthly journey ended,

We at last may rest with them,

Where no shadow veils Thy glory,

In the heavenly Bethlehem.

~ John Bannister Tabb (1845-1909)

Rejoice ~

God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, . . . for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us; we are all equal in His sight, and we are placed in our different ranks and stations, not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labor in them for Him.

As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also.

~ St. John Neumann (1811-1860)