God is our providence; do not doubt that He can provide. If you have any hope of doing His Will with your own wayward will, how shall it be without His providence and trusting in Him? Trust in Him, and do His Will, for this is more important that your next breath, and without Him you cannot draw it.

If you will not be told what to do, how do you expect to live in the happiness of union with God?

But men will all learn to accept being told what to do. Men will see themselves as they are, and for some it will be eviscerating, but for those who do His Will, it will not be difficult, because God has made them to be like Himself and He is gentle and full of love and strong to rescue and save us.

here’s a picture of the Angel Gabriel holding Baby Jesus while the Blessed Mother tries to rip off Satan’s head

Tuesday of 7th week in Ordinary Time (5/22/18)

Read these first.

St. James asks the question that is on everyone’s mind today: Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? We live in an exceptionally violent culture, full of wars and conflicts. As Christians, we are tasked with seeing even the most difficult of circumstances within the framework of a greater, divine plan. We say with the Psalmist: Throw your cares on the Lord, and he will support you. But then tragedy and misfortune find us, and we experience the violent storm and the tempest.

Christ, who is Truth itself, answered the question for us, speaking to his disciples in the Gospel reading. It is when we collectively and decisively turn away from the will of God - then our world deteriorates. Only when we, both as individuals and as a people, choose the path of love, the path of humility which Christ exemplifies for us, can we truly begin to see that evil, wars, divisions - even death - are never the final word. One must have faith like a child’s and put oneself last of all, serving all. 

St. James reminds us what childlike servitude looks like: submit yourselves to God, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. The world and a consumerist culture tell us otherwise, but a lover of the world is at enmity with God. St. James is echoing the words of Our Savior: If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all. 

For we know that God gives grace to the humble. To a disciple of Christ, despair and death are battles already won. One must pray to remember that the path to the victory gained for us by Christ is paved with humility. 

My heritage is sin, my inheritance is grace - and God, who has given me all I have, affords us all the choice of what measure in which we wish to receive that grace. It is only when we accept love infinitely that we become what we were made to be.

For each instance in which I depart from His protection, there is a larger instance in which He welcomes me back. He asks us only to love as He loves - that is, infinitely.

Maria, Mater Ecclesiae

The Church celebrates the new memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, for the very first time today. At Mass for the new memorial, the gospel reading from John recalls the moment at the foot of the cross when Jesus, as his final gesture of love for us before His death, gave us His own mother as our own. “Behold your mother,” Christ tells the disciple whom He loved. We believe this beloved disciple to be John - but it is a powerful exercise to imagine oneself as the beloved disciple, as if Christ were speaking to us Himself. Imagine standing next to Mary, looking at Jesus, bloodied, torn, battered and nailed to the cross, and what was on His mind? Looking down at you and saying: “Behold, your mother.” 

This was the situation in which John found himself. It is easy to say that it affected him deeply, if we go by what he did next: “from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” If we are a beloved disciple of Jesus, it is important for us to ask ourselves if we have done the same. Did Jesus’ words affect me like they did John? Have I taken Mary into my home? If Christ commanded her to care for me, then surely she does - do I afford her the love befitting such a mother? 

Mary has constantly led me to her Son. Like the patient mother she is, she waits for me. Then, when I turn to her, she takes me by the hand and walks me back to this scene on Calvary, and stands with me as we watch our Savior demonstrate the true meaning of love.

Somewhere along the way, my despair evolved into hope. 

I was used to being sad, in fact I was attached to my sadness - there was a feeling of obligation to remain that way, a distrust of anything not cynical. So I didn’t notice this hope immediately: it took time to truly recognize what had happened. I began to think and act in a way foreign to me, surprised by the consolation I was finding in simpler things and in loving without thinking. When I began to notice that hope’s saplings had poked out of the soil of my soul, immediately I wondered who planted the seeds - I saw that it was not I. Hope was there, in a place where formerly the sun had been blocked out and nothing could germinate, except more darkness. 

It felt as if morning came early. The light shone in and burned my eyes, but I did not want to check the clock to see if I could get more sleep. I felt ready to rise and walk. There were no new “answers,” at least not in the sense of how we speak of the “questions” one has about life, purpose, and direction. All that was new was an understanding that those same “questions” all have a false premise: we need not ask them at all.