Month: April 2021

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Meditation of the Day – When Our Souls Leave Him, He Feels the Loss Keenly

“Do not suppose that after advancing the soul to such a state God abandons it so easily that it is light work for the devil to regain it. When His Majesty sees it leaving Him, He feels the loss so keenly that He gives it in many a way a thousand secret warnings which reveal to it the hidden danger. In conclusion, let us strive to make constant progress: we ought to feel great alarm if we do not find ourselves advancing, for without doubt the evil one must be planning to injure us in some way; it is impossible for a soul that has come to this state not to go still farther, for love is never idle. Therefore it is a very bad sign when one comes to a standstill in virtue.”— St. Teresa of Avila, p.99

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Daily Message from Pope Francis – Our Strength is Prayer

MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2021

“Many of us learned how to whisper our first prayers on our parents’ or grandparents’ laps… We become aware that the gift we received with simplicity in infancy is a great heritage… The garment of faith is not starched, but develops with us; it is not rigid, it grows, even through moments of crisis and resurrection… After certain passages in life, we become aware that without faith we could not have made it and that our strength was prayer – not only personal prayer, but also that of our brothers and sisters, and of the community that accompanied and supported us, of the people who know us, of the people we ask to pray for us.”
Pope Francis

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Give Us This Day – Bountiful the Giver

04-26
Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus – Apr 23, 2021 – 1 min(s) read
In our sickness we need a saviour, in our wanderings a guide, in our blindness someone to show us the light, in our thirst the fountain of living water which quenches forever the thirst of those who drink from it. We dead people need life, we sheep need a shepherd, we children need a teacher, the whole world needs Jesus!  

If we would understand the profound wisdom of the most holy shepherd and teacher, the ruler of the universe and the Word of the Father, when using an allegory he calls himself the shepherd of the sheep, we can do so for he is also the teacher of little ones.  

Speaking at some length through Ezekiel to the Jewish elders, he gives them a salutary example of true solicitude. I will bind up the injured, he says; I will heal the sick; I will bring back the strays and pasture them on my holy mountain [cf. Ezek 31:11–16]. These are the promises of the Good Shepherd. . . .   

Such is our Teacher, both good and just. He said he had not come to be served but to serve, and so the gospel shows him tired out, he who laboured for our sake and promised to give his life as a ransom for many [Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45], a thing which, as he said, only the Good Shepherd will do.   

How bountiful the giver who for our sake gives his most precious possession, his own life! He is a real benefactor and friend, who desired to be our brother when he might have been our Lord, and who in his goodness even went so far as to die for us!  

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Minute Meditation – Returning to Our Roots

Among the proper lessons of culture is that we remind ourselves of our limits, of our need for community, of our ignorance and the tragic realities of living in such ignorance—lessons, in other words, that help us remember that we are creatures. It is through such recollection, being gathered back to ourselves from the diffuse ambitions that draw us away from our roots, that we are able to begin to heal the damage done to the world and ourselves. “The task of healing,” writes Wendell Berry, “is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less.” Humility, by helping to return us to the integrity of our humanity, which involves an acceptance of our particularly human creatureliness, also helps to make our lives more coherent, more integrated. “The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature,” writes Berry, “the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.” 

— from the book Wendell Berry and the Given Life, 

by Ragan Sutterfield

//Franciscan Media//

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Saint of the Day – April 26 – Saints Cletus & Marcellinus

St. Cletus (1st c.) and St. Marcellinus (3rd c.) were both Romans, popes, and martyrs who ruled the Holy See during the terrible persecution of Christians at the hands of the Roman Empire. St. Cletus was a convert and disciple of St. Peter the Apostle who became the third Bishop of Rome from 76 to 89 A.D., under the reigns of Roman Emperors Vespasian and Titus. His name appears in the Roman Canon of the Mass. St. Marcellinus was the twenty-ninth Bishop of Rome from 296 to 304 A.D. during the infamous persecution of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, on the eve of the legalization of Christianity across the Empire. Statues of these two popes of the early Church sit on opposite corners of the portico ceiling of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. They share a feast day on April 26th.

//The Catholic Company//

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Meditation of the Day – Everything That Exists is a Gift From God

“Everything that exists is a gift from God. Yet oftentimes we look to the things and creatures created by God for a satisfaction and fulfillment that only God Himself can provide. When the soul wraps itself around the things and the people of this world, looking for satisfaction or fulfillment that only God can give, it produces a distortion in itself, and in others as well. Many spiritual writers call the process of unwinding this possessive, self-centered, clinging, and disordered seeking of things and persons ‘detachment’. The goal of the process of detachment is not to stop loving the things and people of this world, but, quite to the contrary, to love them even more truly in God, under the reign of Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Things and people become even more beautiful and delightful when we see them in this light. There are almost always painful dimensions to this process of ‘letting go’ in order to love more, but it’s the pain of true healing and liberation. Christian detachment is an important part of the process by which we enter into a realm of great freedom and joy.”— Ralph Martin, p.205

//The Catholic Company//