Caryll Houselander

The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin

Prayer

Mary,
Immaculate Love,
   we bless you.

Because, though rooted in earth
   as we are,
you opened your heart to God;
   expanding and opening wide
   to the heat of the sun
   in your sinless heart,
you opened our hearts
   to the light.

All generations bless you,
flower of our race.

We are crowned
   in you,
Queen of Heaven,
   crowned with stars
   by the hands of Christ.

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[From The Essential Rosary (Sophia Institute Press, 1996), p. 59]

Msgr Romano Guardini

When is heaven truly and completely present? It is when all heaviness is gone; when all sluggishness has been overcome, all wickedness, coldness, pride, irritation, disobedience, and covetousness; when there is no danger anymore of falling away; when grace has made one's whole being open up, body and soul, to the ultimate profundities, when there is no further danger that it will all close in again, become hardened in ways of evil; when all work to be done on earth is finished, and all guilt has been paid by repentance.  What all this means is:  after death.

After death -- when time is no longer; when everything is in the everlasting now; when nothing can change anymore, but the creature stands illuminated by the light of eternity, before God -- at that time, everything will be open, and will remain so.  That is being in heaven ...

This is how we properly understand heaven.  It is that close presence wherein the Father stands in relation to Jesus Christ.  And heaven for us will be participation in this intimacy of love.  This condition is already beginning; it approaches closer; now in peril, it is fought over, lost, and won back again.  So it goes with our Christian life.

[Via Magnificat, November 2011, pp. 275-6.  From Msgr Guardini's book The Inner Life of Jesus]

Blessed John Paul II

Despite the suffering that invades my soul, I feel empowered, even obliged, solemnly to reaffirm before all the world what my predecessors and I have repeated so often in the name of conscience, in the name of morality, in the name of humanity, and in the name of God:

Peace is not a utopia, nor an inaccessible ideal, nor an unrealizable dream.

War is not an inevitable calamity.

Peace is possible.

And because it is possible, peace is our duty: our grave duty, our supreme responsibility.

[From Breakfast with the Pope: Daily Readings (Charis/Servant Publications, 1995), meditation 7]

St Francis de Sales

One form of gentleness we should practice is toward ourselves.  We should never get irritable with ourselves because of our imperfections.  It is reasonable to be displeased and sorry when we commit faults, but not fretful or spiteful to ourselves ...

All irritation with ourselves tends to foster pride and springs from self-love, which is displeased at finding we are not perfect.

We should regard our faults with calm, collected, and firm displeasure.  We correct ourselves better by a quiet persevering repentance than by an irritated, hasty, and passionate one.

When your heart has fallen raise it gently, humbling yourself before God, acknowledging your fault, but not surprised at your fall.  Infirmity is infirm, weakness weak, and frailty frail.

[Via In the Footprints of Loneliness by Catherine Doherty (Madonna House Publications, 2003), p. 81]

And now, brethren,

all that rings true, all that commands reverence, and all that makes for right; all that is pure, all that is lovely, all that is gracious in the telling; virtue and merit, wherever virtue and merit are found -- let this be the argument of your thoughts.

Philippians 4:8, trans. Msgr Ronald Knox

Bishop Robert F. Morneau

A third grader got it right.
"A saint is someone that
the light shines through."

She was looking at a stained glass window --
the one St. Francis inhabits.
Every morning the light comes
and Francis lets the light pass through.

Saints are bearers of the light
and love
and life.

Just ask any third grader.

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[From A New Heart : Eleven Qualities of Holiness by Robert F. Morneau.  Via A Maryknoll Book of Inspiration : Readings for Every Day of the Year (eds. Michael Leach and Doris Goodnough, Orbis Books, 2010), meditation for November 1, p. 332]

Robert D. Lupton

I am reassured to know that the straightness of my grain is not a precondition of usefulness to God.  And I am humbled to see that out of the twistedness of my wounds, he designs for me a special place of service.

[From Theirs is the Kingdom by Robert Lupton.  Quoted in Reconciliation by (Bishop) Robert F. Morneau (Orbis Books, 2007), p. 81]

Wendy M. Wright

[...] our hearts cannot be fixed on the generic or the ideal but must learn and exercise love through the particular.  We are called to encounter God in the specific, embodied persons and events with which we come in contact.   The extended tradition of contemplation on the Sacred Heart makes this abundantly clear.  In much of that tradition the distinctive, bodily heart of Jesus is the focus.  I have come to love the stunning fleshiness of it all, the sense that in gazing upon the organ itself one can know the depths of God.  I admit it took me a long time to adjust to this concept and that originally I came to my study prepared to focus on the heart in a more conceptual manner.  But the tradition is unambiguous.  God does not love only with a free-floating, "spiritual" love but with the rush of blood, the tensing of muscle, with the tearing of tissue and bone.  And so must we love.

To have a heart inhabited by God's heart, we must love specific people in all their idiosyncrasies.  We must practice an energetically engaged love that mucks in the messiness of things.

[from Sacred Heart: Gateway to God (Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 78-79]

Quotations of note

We need not be afraid of the power that is in us; it will meet its match one day in the omnipotent weakness of God.

Fr Simon Tugwell, OP

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Beauty is the purpose of history.

Fr Arturo Paoli

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Information and insight, [Sister Thea] would assert, are not the only qualities that characterize a university.  The university, surely the Catholic university -- should transform the person into a living icon of Christ and help the person see the mark of God in all creation.  For her, one who masters human knowledge, however extensively, but fails to employ that knowledge for the betterment of the human family and the promotion of God's reign -- for her such a person remains fundamentally ignorant and irresponsible.

Bishop James Lyke, OFM, accepting the Laetare Medal for Sister Thea Bowman

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And this is my prayer, that your love may grow ever richer in knowledge and insight of every kind, enabling you to learn by experience what things really matter.

Philippians 1:9-10 (Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha)

A Maryknoll Missioner in Burkina Faso

One day I started to play Frisbee with a young boy who had stopped by for a visit.  While we were playing, one of the young women who worked in a bar as a prostitute started watching us.  After a little while, I threw the Frisbee to her, and she joined in with our fun.  Then a little while later, an old man came walking by and started watching us play.  Pretty soon the young woman threw the Frisbee to him.  He dropped the Frisbee and his cane too, but then clumsily picked it back up and threw it to the young boy.

And there we were, the most unlikely mix of people in a little African village:  an old man, a prostitute, a little boy, and a foreigner, all standing together in a circle, throwing a Frisbee, and having fun together.  When I reflected on this experience later, I realized that I had received a vision of what the reign of God is all about:  love, equality, beauty, and enjoyment with no one excluded or left out.

~ Dennis Moorman, MM, from Why Not Be a Missioner?

Via A Maryknoll Book of Inspiration: Readings for Every Day of the Year, ed. Michael Leach and Doris Goodnough (Orbis Books, 2010), p. 330