Month: August 2022

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Life is Messy – Do You Like Who You’re Becoming?

“When we are healthy in a holistic sense, or in any one aspect of our lives, we are driven by the dream to become the-best-version-of-ourselves. Why are there so many products and programs available that help people transform different areas of their lives? Because there is an enormous demand for them. Marketers know that people have this insatiable desire to improve themselves. This desire is what drives us when we are healthiest.

When we are unhealthy, we tend to abandon our true selves, often wishing we were more like someone else or that we were someone else altogether. This is often most noticeable during adolescence, when people grapple with identity issues. But many of us develop a permanent contempt for ourselves (or for certain aspects of ourselves) during this period of development. This contempt for self stifles our dreams.

Living the dream and striving to become all we are capable of being is the only thing you ever truly need to answer for, and our only regrets come from abandoning our true selves. Are you celebrating your true self, or are you still trying to be the person you think other people want you to be—or the person you think other people will like?

Now is your time. There will never be a better time to begin. It is time to peel back the layers of conditioning and expectations that have encrusted your heart and mind. It is time to become perfectly yourself.

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60 Second Wisdom – Three Great C.S. Lewis Quotes

“I was reading some C.S. Lewis again last week and three quotes stood out as particularly insightful… even almost 100 years after they were written.

The first relates to society and the insanity we are witnessing all around us today…

Lewis wrote, “When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”

Every day I get emails and letters from people filled with regret and shame about their past. Lewis wrote… “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

And finally, good people are faced with great difficulties in times like our own, and Lewis writes, “Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties.””

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Dynamic Catholic – Want to Feel Amazing Again?

Want to Feel Amazing Again?

5 Ways to Increase Your Enthusiasm – Matthew Kelly

Here are five concrete things you can do to infuse your daily life with enthusiasm:

1. Prioritize your legitimate needs. Diet, exercise, sleep, and prayer all increase your capacity for enthusiasm. Take a walk today, make a healthy meal, get to bed early, and watch your enthusiasm begin to grow!

2. Schedule 15 minutes every day to do something you love doing. Why are children so consistently enthusiastic? Because they do so many things every day just for the joy of it. You don’t have to spend all day doing something you love, start small, fifteen minutes a day.

3. Say “no” to people, activities, and things that drain your energy and enthusiasm. Develop an awareness of who and what drains your enthusiasm. Protect your enthusiasm by learning to say, “no.”

4. Spend time with enthusiastic people. We rise or fall to the level of our friends in most things. Who are the most enthusiastic people you know? Are you spending enough time with those people? Your enthusiasm is probably the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you wish to raise your level of enthusiasm in life, surround yourself with enthusiastic people.

5. Dream. Your dreams are your dreams for a reason. Our dreams animate us, they literally breathe new life into us. So, what are your dreams and what are you doing about them? Start pursuing your dreams and they will fill you with new passion, energy, enthusiasm, and vitality.

It’s time to rediscover your enthusiasm and flourish. And just remember, everyone who really cares about you wants you to flourish.”

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Minute Meditation – Change is Good News

The Good News of Jesus Christ is precisely that things have changed and that they are going to change even more. He came to a world that was stuck, to a people that could not find a way out of their sinfulness, to announce that there was another way. Better yet, he came not simply to announce this path and carry us there as passive recipients of grace, but empowered his followers to bring about the kingdom of which he spoke. The kingdom of God is at hand. It is not simply a far distant reality, but something that is inbreaking here and now, something that can be felt and brought about by those who live in communion with him. In the way we love one another, work for justice, and offer sacrifice—doing as Jesus did—we can actually make a difference in our world because it is in these moments that Christ dwells in us and the Holy Spirit is sent forth from us. What is it that we always pray? “Send down your Spirit and renew the face of the earth!” If we want to follow after Jesus, we must let go of our cynicism and bleak outlook on the world, and instead believe with all our hearts that Christ is in control of this mission. We must look beyond what is not yet redeemed and open our eyes to the overflowing torrent that is God’s love in our world, transforming and renewing the face of the earth. We must realize it is through us, those whom Jesus has called as his disciples, that this work is being accomplished.

— from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM, page 34

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – They Only Self We Bring to Christ 

Despite being a finite creature in the midst of an all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present Being—an absolute nothing next to God, in every way dependent and with no reason to boast—I never feel insignificant or unwanted. I am God’s child, chosen and adopted out of love, called to love and serve in his kingdom. What could ever matter more than knowing this? Truly, everything else is straw. Everything else is the working of a false self, an ego that knows nothing of reality. It is why in his admonitions St. Francis writes, “As much as [one] is before God, that much he is and nothing more.” Nothing in all of existence matters at all except what God thinks of us. What we say about ourselves, what others think of us, who we wish were are—these are all useless questions, false selves that keep us from who we truly are before God, and prevent us from following after Christ with our whole hearts. If we want to be his disciples, the only self we can bring is the one that he created and redeemed. Everything else, we must let go.

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Disciples Have Passion

We can walk with Jesus, whose mission will be accomplished whether we like it or not, or we can grasp at our fleeting comforts, getting in his way. It doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me. If we want to follow after Jesus, we need to let go of our apathy and laziness, the comfort that comes from being disconnected from others, and begin to truly care. Discipleship is about a life of passion, about giving our lives completely over to the mission that Christ is calling us to. Either we’re fully in, or we’re not in at all.

— from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM, page 74

//Franciscan Media//
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Minute Meditation – Herald of Christ’s Dream

Some faces seemed to fix upon him the searching, expectant look of those whose journey had no end, of those who wandered aimlessly through life because they did not know what else to do, or because they were fleeing from something rather than toward something. For these Francis had the most compassion because they had no dream and because the dream would have to come from within themselves where all was barren desert. Or could someone else find the dream for them? He began to wonder if everyone heard an inner Voice as he had, or whether some heard only human voices.

If his Dream were something very special, then perhaps he would have to become a voice from Christ for others to hear. He would have to become the Herald of Christ, singing aloud the glory of the Dream that God had made for everyone. As he walked about the countrysides and through the streets of all the world, he would imagine that he was taking each face from the anonymous crowds and breathing hope and love into it. He would share the Dream.

—from the book Francis: The Journey and the Dream
by Murray Bodo, OFM, pages 26-27

//Franciscan Media//

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The Disciples Doubted the Eucharist. Do You?

You may have heard that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, but have you really heard those words? You may have been in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but have you really seen him in the Eucharist?

Today, Fr. Mike challenges us to take Jesus at His word (John 6:6) and to grow in our faith in His real presence, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist!