Let the Little Ones Come

A Manger for Our Lord

Christ in the Manger, El Greco

 
"Let your soul be a lifelong manger for Christ the Child. Pray that He may give you the heart of a child, and the awesome courage to live it out." --Catherine Doherty

 

Good Friday Meditation from Catherine

This week, Holy Week, is intensifying.  Today, Good Friday, pain and joy meet in a strange apex, a fantastic mountain of the Lord.  Moses climbed a mountatin and God spoke to him.  When he returned, his face was shining so brightly that people could not look at it.  He had to put a veil over his face.  

Then God himself came down from the mountain through his Incarnation and lived amongst us.  Today, Good Friday, he is lifted up again, on an unspeakable mountain.  Anyone who thinks about it feels a strange tension and total incredulity:  for me, who am so poor, God sent his Son to climb this mountain--a cross.  

Just thinking about it holds you tight, close to this Love that is incomprehensible, incredible, but so real!  God came and took upon himself the shape of a servant, a slave, for us.  He surrendered everything including his body for love of us.  He emptied himself.

The great question that stands before us on Good Friday is:  are we going to empty ourselves in response to his emptiness?  The moment we do, we shall know the joy of Christ!  Notwithstanding the pain, the cross, the tomb, if I empty myself because I am in love with God, I shall know joy.  

--Catherine Doherty, Season of Mercy

Palm Sunday Reflections from Catherine

 The triumphant ceremony which liturgically opens Holy Week on Palm Sunday teaches us that death leads to life, that the cross is inseparable from God's glory and ours.  And that the redemptive sacrifice completes itself only on the day of the Ascension when Christ, conqueror and king, enters  heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father.

Our life is intimately bound up with Christ's triumphant mysteries:  death on a cross, tomb, resurrection, and ascension.  Because of these, you and I will also ascend to heaven and be with God--the Father, Son and Holy Spirit--in a union of love and joy.  Because of these mysteries we are a union of love and joy.  Because of these mysteries we are redeemed.  We have faith, we walk in hope and we have charity, which means that we already possess God who is love.

Let our joy in the meaning of these mysteries reflect itself in the procession on Palm Sunday, which reminds us of the triumphant entry Jesus made into Jerusalem a few days before his death.

...Dearly beloved, our life should be such a procession.  Our ordinary, everyday life, I mean.  What does it matter that instead of palms, we hold brooms and tools of all kinds, dishes and scrubbing brushes and books.  Every day of our life should be a living Hosanna to Christ the King, a march, a triumphal march toward Jerusalem, the City of God--and the day of his Second Coming, the parousia.

...So we also remember, as we walk daily in this glorious procession of love and allegiance, that it will lead us inevitably to Golgotha.  About that we should be joyful, as we grow in love and faith.  For as we grow, an incredible miracle will take place within us by the grace of God:  Golgotha, the cross, the tomb will become so very small and easy of acceptance, even willed, desired and waited for.

--Season of Mercy

The Cradle of Hope

It is true that we shall be judged on our words.  Lent is a time when we must think about the Word, the Bible, what God says.  And then we must think of what we say.  Out of us must come tenderness, love, pity, compassion, gentleness; because we are men and women of faith--Christians.

But faith is the cradle of love and the cradle of hope.  Have you ever seen a man or woman whose eyes have lost, or almost lost, hope?  Do you realize what you have to do when you meet those people?  You have to render "first aid," my friends.  We have been told that to resuscitate drowning people, we now have to use a new system:  mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

When we see hopelessness, we must give love.  And love, like a fire, will bring forth hope.  For we too can resuscitate; even as Christ brought forth Lazarus from the tomb, so can you and I.  Christ has given us this power.  It's not my power or yours.  It's Christ's power:  "Men shall know that you are my disciples if you love one another, as I have loved you."  I can't love like God; neither can you.  But I can clean myself.  I can dispossess myself of myself, so that God can walk through me towards you.

Catherine Doherty, Season of Mercy

Ash Wednesday: Start with Love!

From Season of Mercy, Chapter One:  Prepare for Lent!

What is our Christian faith and life all about?  It's all about love.  Sometimes we do not love each other because our mind is cluttered with a thousand thoughts, most of them self-centered.  So how do I fast from my will and accept God's will?  For what I live out is often not the will of God, but rather my will, my manipulation; or your will, your manipulation of me--if I'm a little weaker than you are.  That is what is shown all over the place.

How long does it take to say, "Lord, I don't know anything, and without you I can do nothing.  Help me to speak your words, not mine."  How long does it take to do that?  It takes a lifetime.

Now begins the long pilgrimage to the passover:  the abandoning of my will, the surrender of my deepest inward person to the Holy Spirit in a totality of surrender that has some kind of a beginning but knows no end--the surrender in which I really offer myself to the Holy Spirit and say, "Now do with me as you will.  Cleanse me.  Open my ears so that I can hear what you tell me."  Do we do that?  This is the pilgrimage that we must begin."

Lenten Reflections with One of my Best Friends

 

Lent is only two days away.

I pray this Lent will help me to journey closer to the Love that is waiting for me.   The Lord's will for me now is in my home, caring for my husband and children, my family.  I pray that this Lent I will be better able  to serve them simply with love and without complaint.  

One of my favorite books to read during Lent is now sadly out of print.  I am going to share some quotes from one of my best friends, Servant of God, Catherine Doherty, here on Wednesdays and Fridays during the Forty Days.  I find her writings so spiritually refreshing and beautiful.  I hope you do, too.

Please pray for me this Lent and I will pray for you!

Preparing for Christ's Coming

My Mother used to say that the days of Advent were the days of building a golden stairway that would bring us to a star, the star of Bethlehem, that in turn would bring us straight to the Christ Child!

So now place yourself in Nazareth in Mary's time of waiting when nobody paid any attention to her.  You may pay attention to her.  You sweep for those who don't sweep the cobwebs and the dirt from their souls.  Sweep in the Nazareth of the human minds and hearts.  Prepare that inn eternally, every day, for the child to be born in, the child who was denied the inn in reality, and still is denied the inns of our hearts.  Smaller and smaller is the group of people who believe, and still smaller those who believe and will lay their life down for him.  Begin to lay your life down now in the exacting, disciplining, routine, monotonous, repetitious work of your day, cleaning or whatever.

Remember that your humble tasks, done well with great love for Christ, can lift the world!  This is your strength.  You can lift the communists, the one who hate, the ones who are indifferent.  Do your work.  Offer it up.  Pray.  Don't pray with words--pray with the work of your hands.

--Catherine Doherty, My Russian Yesterdays

 

Thought for the Day

"We tend to pray with great intensity for the things we want, but do we ever think of praying for what God wants?  It is very important that when we pray, we move with the current of God's will, and not against it.  This is true even when we are praying for someone we love tremendously."

--Servant of God, Catherine Doherty

Words of Wisdom

"Your life as a lay person in the world is hard.  Around you, things may be grim, even sordid, but God will give you strength.  Everything can be borne between two Masses.  When you eat the Bread of Heaven, you will be able to face any kind of day.  Your faith will be renewed.  You will plunge into the sea of the fire that is the Mass and come out burning, ready to go forth and light fires of love."

--Catherine Doherty

Prayer should be primarily for others.

"Prayer should be primarily for others.  God will see to it that our own needs are met.  We shouldn't always be pleading, 'God, do this for me, do that for me."  When we say, 'God, look after this person,' He takes care of us as well."

--Catherine Doherty, Grace in Every Season