Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The Relationship Between Eros And Agape Is Deeply Rooted In The Mystery Of The Incarnation

What Pope Benedict teaches about the proper relationship between eros (human love) and agape (divine love) is deeply rooted in the mystery of the Incarnation and, in turn, the Trinity. Eros is distinct from agape, just as the human nature in Christ is distinct from the divine. Furthermore, just as the human and divine natures in Christ are profoundly and indissolubly united, so are erotic and divine love (or at least, they should be). Indeed, the proper unity of eros and agape flows precisely from the mystery of the Incarnation, in which the human and divine meet in an embrace that never ends. - Christopher West

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Drawn By A Superior Force

My heart feels as if it were being drawn by a superior force each morning just before uniting with Him in the Blessed Sacrament. I have such a thirst and hunger before receiving Him that it's a wonder I don't die of anxiety. I was hardly able to reach the Divine Prisoner in order to celebrate Mass. When Mass ended I remained with Jesus to render Him thanks. My thirst and hunger do not diminish after I have received Him in the Blessed Sacrament, but rather, increase steadily. Oh, how sweet was the conversation I held with Paradise this morning. The Heart of Jesus and my own, if you will pardon my expression, fused. They were no longer two hearts beating but only one. My heart disappeared as if it were a drop in the ocean. - Saint Padre Pio

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Let Anyone Who Thinks That He Stands Take Heed Lest He Fall

Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. - 1 Corinthians 10:12-13

Monday, June 18, 2012

All-Purpose "Thens"

All purpose "thens" to use in "if-thens" (ex. "Polly, this discussion is over. Don't say another word, or you'll cool down in your room." or "Nielson, please turn off the TV and come to supper. If I turn it off, I decide when it comes back on."
  • half an hour in their room
  • sitting at the table with their head down
  • fifteen minutes worth of chores

Weak Discipline Invites Relentless Challenge; Resolute Discipline Makes For A Better Relationship

While kids initially may resist stronger discipline, with time they become more amenable to it. Both their demeanor and their mood settle. The explanation is pretty straightforward. Weak discipline invites relentless challenge, causing ill will for all. Resolute discipline, on the other, lays down a stable line. When consequences are clear and sure, kids learn the terms. They cease the battle, and accept what is. Put simply, better discipline makes for a better relationship. - Dr. Ray Guarendi

A Distinction Must Be Made Between The False Notion That Discipline Is "Mean" And The Reality Of Truly Mean Discipline

A critical distinction must be made between the false notion, on the one hand, that discipline in and of itself is mean, and the reality, on the other, of truly mean discipline. Certainly we can be mean as we discipline. We can verbally pummel, demean, and fling all kinds of unnecessary and hurtful words and emotions. By virtue of our human weakness, all parents are prone to some mean discipline. Good parents work hard for years to reduce its presence. Yet setting firm limits and holding children accountable for their actions is not mean at all. It is love in action. It is love that is hard for children to comprehend. Nonetheless, it is love that will endure long beyond our lifetimes in the character of the next generation we leave behind on this earth. - Dr. Ray Guarendi

You Are The Most Kind, Gentle Teacher That Your Children Will Ever Have

A prime motive for discipline is this: You are the most kind, gentle teacher that your children will ever have. Never again will they be taught how to get along in life by anyone who has so much love for them. If you don't discipline now, for whatever reason - because you feel guilty or too strict, or are afraid of doing something "wrong," or you think it's just easier to let them go - then who will ultimately discipline your children? The world. And the world is not a kind or gentle place to learn lessons. If a parent doesn't teach qualities such as self-control, respect for others, consideration, and ability to follow rules, then the teaching task is thrust upon others: a teacher, employer, landlord, army sergeant, police officer, judge. Who of these has the emotional attachment to your child that you do? Who will forgive and forget as many times as you will? - Dr. Ray Guarendi

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Staying Still In Silence Before Jesus In The Blessed Sacrament Let's Us Perceive What He Wants From Us

It is by staying still, in silence, and possibly for long periods, before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, that we perceive what He wants from us, put aside our own plans to make way for His, and let God's light gradually penetrate the heart and heal it. - Fr. Cantalemessa

Sunday, June 10, 2012

What On The Outside Is Simply Brutal Violence Becomes An Act Of Total Self-Giving Love

By making bread into His Body and the wine into His Blood, He anticipates His death, He accepts it in His heart, and He transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence - the Crucifixion - from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). - Pope Benedict XVI, Heart of the Christian Life

External Action Is Fruitless Unless It Is Born From A Deep Inner Communion With Christ

Activism by itself can be heroic, but in the end external action is fruitless and loses its effectiveness unless it is born from a deep inner communion with Christ. - Pope Benedict XVI

Faith In The God Who Became Man Is Believing In A God With A Body...This Faith Is Real And Fulfilled; It Brings Full Union Only If It Is Corporeal, If It Is A Sacramental Event In Which The Corporeal Lord Seizes Hold Of Our Bodily Existence

We have just heard the dramatic and incomparably explicit words of Jesus from John's Gospel: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you...My flesh is food indeed" (6:53, 55). When the murmuring of the Jews arose, the controversy could easily have been quieted by the assurance: Friends, do not be disturbed; this was only metaphorical language; the flesh only signifies food, it isn't actually that! - But there is nothing of that in the Gospel. Jesus renounces any such toning down.; he just says with renewed emphasis that this bread has to be literally, physically eaten. He says that faith in the God who became man is believing in a God with a body and that this faith is real and fulfilled; it brings full union only if it is corporeal, if it is a sacramental event in which the corporeal Lord seizes hold of our bodily existence. In order to express fully the intensity and reality of this fusion, Paul compares what happens in Holy Communion with the physical union between man and woman. To help us understand the Eucharist, he refers us to the words in the creation story: "The two [= man and wife] shall become one" (Gen 2:24). And he adds: "He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit [that is, shares a single new existence in the Holy Spirit] with him" (1 Cor 6:17)


When we hear this, we at once have some notion of how the presence of Jesus Christ is to be understood. It is not something at rest but is a power that catches us up and works to draw us within itself. Augustine had a profound grasp of this in his teaching on Communion. In the period before his conversion, when he was struggling with the incarnational aspect of Christian belief, which he found impossible to approach from the point of view of Platonic idealism, he had a sort of vision, in which he heard a voice saying to him: "I am the bread of the strong, eat me! But you will not transform me and make me part of you; rather, I will transform you and make you part of me." In the normal process of eating. He takes things in, and they are assimilated into him, so that they become part of his own substance. They are transformed within him and go to build up his bodily life. But in the mutual relation with Christ it is the other way around; he is the heart, the truly existent being. When we truly communicate, this means that we are taken out of ourselves, that we are assimilated into him, that we become one with him and, through him, with the fellowship of our brethren. - Pope Benedict XVI, God Is Near Us

There May Be Legitimate Diversity Of Opinion Among Catholics About Waging War And The Death Penalty, But Not With Regard To Abortion And Euthanasia

‘Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.’ - Pope Benedict XVI

Friday, June 8, 2012

A God Who Weeps With So Many Tears At The Loss Of One Soul...

Ah, who would not be touched? ... A God who weeps with so many tears at the loss of one soul and Who cries unceasingly: My friend, my friend, why proceedest thou thus to lose thy soul and thy God? Stop! Stop! Ah! Look at my tears, my Blood which flows yet. Must I die a second time to save thee? Look at me. Ah! Angels from Heaven descend upon earth, come and weep with me for the loss of this soul! Oh, that a Christian should be so unfortunate as to persevere still in running towards the abyss despite the voice which his God causes him to hear continually! But, you may say to me, no one says these things to us. Oh my friends, unless you want to stop up your ears, you will hear the voice of God, which follows you unceasingly. Tell me, my friends, then, what is this remorse of conscience which overwhelms you in the midst of sin? Why do these anxieties and storms agitate you? Why this fear, this dread that you are in, when you seem to be forever expecting to be crushed by the thunders of Heaven? How many times, even when you were sinning, have you not experienced the touch of an invisible hand which seemed to push you away, as if someone were saying: Unhappy man, what are you doing? Unhappy man, where are you going? Ah my son, why do you wish to damn yourself?

Would you not agree with me that a Christian who despises so many graces deserves to be abandoned and rejected because he has not listened to the voice of God or profited by His graces? On the contrary, my dear brethren, it is God Himself Who is scorned by this ungrateful soul who would seem to wish to put Him to death again. All creation demands vengeance, and it is, in fact, God alone Who wishes to save this soul and Who is opposed to all that could be prejudicial to it.

He watches over its salvation as if it were the only soul in the world. - Saint Jean Marie Vianney

Unless You Want To Stop Up Your Ears, You Will Hear The Voice Of God

Oh my friends, unless you want to stop up your ears, you will hear the voice of God, which follows you unceasingly. - Saint Jean Marie Vianney

God From God And Light From Light, Entered Into Human History Through The Family

The only-begotten Son, of one substance with the Father, "God from God and Light from Light", entered into human history through the family: "For by his incarnation the Son of God united himself in a certain way with every man. He laboured with human hands... and loved with a human heart. Born of Mary the Virgin, he truly became one of us and, except for sin, was like us in every respect". If in fact Christ "fully discloses man to himself", he does so beginning with the family in which he chose to be born and to grow up. We know that the Redeemer spent most of his life in the obscurity of Nazareth, "obedient" (Lk 2:51) as the "Son of Man" to Mary his Mother, and to Joseph the carpenter. Is this filial "obedience" of Christ not already the first expression of that obedience to the Father "unto death" (Phil 2:8), whereby he redeemed the world? - Blessed Pope John Paul II, Letter to families, 1994

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Christian Wives And Mothers Owe Gratitude To The Catholic Church

Christian wives and mothers, what gratitude you owe to the Catholic Church for the honorable position you now hold in society! If you are no longer regarded as the slave, but the equal of your husband; if you are no longer the toy of his caprice and liable to be discarded at any moment, like the women of Turkey and the Mormon wives of Utah; but if you are recognized as the mistress and queen of your household, you owe your emancipation to the Church. You are especially indebted for your liberty to the Popes who rose up in all the majesty of their spiritual power to vindicate the rights of injured wives against the lustful tyranny of their husbands.

How opposite is the conduct of the fathers of the so-called Reformation, who, with the cry of religious reform on their lips, deformed religion and society by sanctioning divorce. - Cardinal Gibbons

The Fellowship Of A Christian Husband And Wife Is Cemented By The Grace Of God

Matrimony is not only a natural contract between husband and wife, but it has been elevated for Christians, by Jesus Christ, to the dignity of a Sacrament: “Husbands,” says the Apostle, “love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered Himself up for it, ... so also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.... For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall adhere to his wife and they shall be one flesh. This is a great sacrament: but I speak in Christ and in the Church.”

In these words the Apostle declares that the union of Christ with His Church is the type or model of the bond subsisting between man and wife. Now the union between Christ and His Church is supernatural and sealed by Divine grace. Hence, also, is the fellowship of a Christian husband and wife cemented by the grace of God. - Cardinal Gibbons

The Holy Eucharist: Superior To The Manna

When our Savior says to the Jews: “Your fathers did eat manna and died, ... but he that eateth this (Eucharistic) bread shall live forever,” He evidently wishes to affirm the superiority of the food which He would give, over the manna by which the children of Israel were nourished.

Now, if the Eucharist were merely commemorative bread and wine, instead of being superior, it would be really inferior to the manna; for the manna was supernatural, heavenly, miraculous food, while bread and wine are a natural, earthly food. - Cardinal Gibbons

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Jesus Actively Permits Himself To Be Pierced, Ceaselessly Pouring Forth From Himself A Perfect Merciful Love

As God, Jesus actively permits Himself to be pierced, ceaselessly pouring forth from Himself a perfect merciful Love that has its source in the Father and invites man’s heart to enter into interpersonal communion with the Heart of God. - Rev. Gregory Gresko

When The Heart Of Man In His Entire Person Authentically Meets The Pierced Heart Of Jesus

When the heart of man in his entire person – body and soul – authentically meets the pierced Heart of Jesus, this encounter is the sacred place of our salvation where we ask Jesus to be the Lord of our hardened hearts, exchanging them for His Heart so completely full of love and life, as the Holy Spirit pours forth into us as a living spring of the Father’s Divine Mercy (cf. Ezekiel 36.26-28). - Rev. Gregory Gresko