Thought for the Day - October 7

Keep your life simple. Seek to make your life pure.

Simplicity remains a very complicated ideal for many people. Simplicity requires focus, discipline. Simplicity asks for only the necessary, only the essential. Pray to create a life of simplicity in thought, speech, action. May your every action be directed toward God, directed toward salvation. May each thought, each action begin with charity, humility, and obedience to God. Simplicity asks us to decide who we love, to make God the center of our lives, to establish and promote God and the loving of God, and the serving of God, our using our individual free will to do God’s will as the most important and precious singular activity of our lives. The Christian life when the true focus is God becomes a life of true love, pure hope. The Christian life focuses on love, encourages love, nurtures love. The Christian life is one of giving, sharing. Simplicity asks us to simply love, to believe and accept that God loves us. Do not look for thanks, praise, or love to be shared automatically. Do not desire love in reciprocation for actions. Simplicity asks us to share love unconditionally, to share love universally. Simplicity involves letting go, trusting in goodness, holiness, kindness. Simplicity asks us, then reminds us to trust God, to love God, to have faith in God.

Simplicity leads us on a journey of focus on Jesus Christ and God, respect for the power and authority of God, reverence for the teachings of Jesus Christ, purity of intention creates a powerful connection between our souls and God when our prayers are true and honorable.

From Becoming A Devout Disciple

The Measure of Christ's Gift

How was your day? How is your life going? What are you doing with your life? Are you going in the correct direction? Are you moving?

These simple questions can amuse or annoy us. These simple words can urge us to look beyond our current state. We need to look beyond our present surroundings. Simplicity sometimes leads us toward a certain manner of living. We can discuss the obliquity of faith.

Each time we attend Mass we are asked to remember the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ invites us to love each other, invites us to have faith in each other.

Beauty, goodness, and truth wait to be discovered, wait to be uncovered.

The measure of Christ’s gift remains constant, remains direct. Jesus Christ explicitly commanded each one us to love God, to love each other. This love is a gift. This love is a blessing.

Jesus Christ taught us how to forgive and suggested that we should forgive an infinite amount of times. Forgiveness is important in the lives of all Christians. Forgiveness keeps our lives moving.

We have motion, we have prayer, we have the knowledge of Jesus Christ’s life and death.

We have numerous signs leading us to salvation, numerous paths leading us to redemption.

We received the best gift, the gift of the holy spirit when we were baptized, when we were confirmed.

Seeking Wisdom

Wisdom begins with reverence for the Lord. Pray that your actions are always faithful and fair. Ground your actions in the teachings of the Gospel. Pray that your actions lead both yourself and others to a deeper awareness, deeper connection with God. Pray that you be a reliable witness forever and ever. Pray that others whom you know a members of the body of Christ, as members of the Church remain reliable witnesses for God forever and ever. May truth, equity, liberty, equality, goodness, and beauty draw you closer to Jesus Christ.

The greatness of the Lord begins with patience.

Seek holiness. Live holiness. Breathe holiness. Remember we are all here to help one another, to save one another. All are equal in the eyes of God. Live to deliver your neighbor and yourself to the kingdom of heaven.

The life of a devout Christian begins with love for God, love for neighbor, love for self. The life of a devout Christian is selfless. Many difficulties surround and attack each Christian life. Do not surrender. Do not compromise. Remain prudent. Remain steadfast in your faith, in your love. Keep praying, keep loving God, keep your focus on salvation.

Our prayers, our praise, our thanks offered to God do endure, do strengthen us, do please God.

Remember love endures; God’s love for each one of us endures, lasts forever. May our lives be filled with praise and thanks that endures forever.

Wisdom begins with reverence for God, seeks that which is prudent, faithful, and fair.

Being Christian means Being A Detective

A divinity shapes our means and ends. Consider our prayers, consider our jokes, consider our anecdotes. Being good occurs in spite of our efforts.

Each day there are many reasons to feel disappointment, rejection. Each life contains a riddle, each life becomes a detective story. The activities provide clues and red herrings; we are both reader and actor. Our interest in our lives rises and lowers irregularly. We encounter false pretenses, falsehoods, false teeth. Life teaches us to be a special type of sleuth seeking goodness, holiness, kindness. We employ all types of prayers and reflections to get by, to survive. Many unsolved mysteries capture our attention; sometimes we seek solutions which baffle the police, crime reporters, reality television producers, and actors. DNA and forensic evidence are great for small talk. Fingerprints and footprints recall the carelessness and energy of childhood. Bloodstains and wine stains and food stains indicate accidents. In life questions can be satisfactorily answered, or left unanswered. In life every question should not be answered. A library contains books. A church encourages prayer, reflection. Umbrellas work in certain types of rain. Restaurants contain tables, chairs, plates, and flatware. The adventure of life waits for what we do with different facts within our brain. How commonplace life for each of us begins! How wonderful the great things we notice each day! How wonderful remembering to praise God, remembering to offer thanks to God feels! Each day we exist within a wondrous world of unsensational activities of tinted by a quiet extraordinary glimmer of hope, shimmer of faith.

The city provides many places for hope, many places for fear. Some days our feet carry us to get salad when our head and stomach want greasy french fries, greasy hamburgers. Meals often reveal something about men, reveal their happiness, their loneliness. Meals start quiet, start with reverent tones and become boisterous affairs. Splendid meals arrive on the wings of hope. Conversation leads to special helpings of faith, of hope, of love. Conversation begins with silence, alternates between monologue and dialogue. Words provide moving pictures of sacrifice, salvation, love, eternal life. Words provide a glimpse of the intimacy of God’s grace, grandeur, and power. Surprise awaits us. Stillness arrives allowing the splendor of being Christian to be seen, to be felt.

Hope, Forgiveness honor God: ‘Being Christian . . . has not changed’

Each September arrives with fall to do lists, summer’s lingering list of undone, forgotten, or postponed events. September releases angst in past tense, in present tense, in future tense. This month mumbles “never mind.” Summer newlyweds wait for their photographers to provide proofs and wedding albums. Students wait for instructors to provide course syllabi. Theater subscribers wait for the new season to begin. Strangers talk about autumn trips to London, Rome, Amsterdam. Strangers talk about the beauty of England’s West Country. Strangers talk about alternative evening activities in some cities. Strangers talk of the Catholic Church as the alternative experience. Many things are mentioned in conversations across the world in September. Each passing day becomes shorter and shorter. People go from interview to interview, city to city in search of work. People go from homily to homily in search of hope, in search of God, in search of love. God and Jesus Christ and the Apostle remain staples of Western popular culture, buttressed by Christmas and Easter. The lightness of God remains under attack. Darkness passes into the hearts, minds, and souls of many people creating dark times. This darkness fuels violence, drug addictions, racism, sexism. The light of truth, the light of God remains constant, remains a resource, a guide, a call to return to goodness, holiness, kindness. The light of God intrigues many, encourages many to become believers, encourages others to remain followers.

It was there that I first heard a voice deep inside of me whisper “Find and Share Your Christian Spirit", and naturally I was a little shaken up. Naturally I did nothing until I heard the voice again and again. It was both frightening and exhilarating. I was defiant and lethargic against an immortal chorus, immortal call of hope, call of forgiveness.

I subsequently discovered that this call is not unique to me. Each day all over the world, in every nation in every time zone in many hearts in many different cultures in many different individuals develop a vein of inchoate hope, a desire for goodness, kindness, holiness grows, a prayer for peace and health of all mankind travels through hearts, minds, souls kindling thoughts of universal and unconditional love, kindling thoughts of eternal life, kindling thoughts of salvation. This call maybe be pristine and delicate or heavy-duty rumbling loud. This call is personal, privately territorial speaking to the individual needs first in authentic tones, primal tones. I was reminded of my desire for salvation, my desire for spiritual cleanliness in God’s eyes. Mainstream yet underground my conversion continues each and every day as I learn more and more about God, as I wonder about what more I can do. I have youthful eyes, youthful ears, and a youthful soul as I include service to God more and more in my thoughts and daily activities. There are successful days, and less successful days. Days of hope, days of love follow me, protect me, guide me toward God, guide me toward the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

My journey is not unique; this provides hope as I seek my way toward God. Others have gone before me. Others have sinned. Others have asked for pardon and forgiveness. Asking for pardon and forgiveness from God is not always easy. But it can be done with prayer, reflection.

My rebellion leads me to God, leads me to compassion for my neighbors.

In Your Prayers

Although some of the faces may not be familiar, remember that all believers become adopted children through baptism. There are no foreigners in a house of God, we are all members of the same family.

As we journey toward the Lord, learn to control anxious imaginations. Let our eyes seek what is good, what is fair. Let our actions and deeds be honorable and charitable. Live each day seeking salvation, wanting salvation. God is always with us. He is always making his presence known. Seek goodness, share mercy and charity and God’s justice will arrive.

Love and revere the name of the Lord. Encourage your neighbors to join in praising his name. Allow time to minister for the Lord, to praise God, to give thanks to the Lord. Become a servant of the Lord filled with goodness, kindness, holiness.

Have reverence for the sabbath; have reverence for the Lord. Remember that the sabbath is an important day. Remember that it is a day of rest, a day for the Lord. Do God homage, remember to offer thanks and praise. This day is both a memorial and sacrificial celebration. Bring all of the emotions in your heart and offer them to God with humility. Enjoy each visit to God’s house, each visit to God’s house of prayer.

Share this joyful moment with all your neighbors. Remember that all who believe are welcome at the altar. Remember that all prayers and sacrifices are both welcomed acceptable when done with charity, humility, obedience, and love. The house of God is open all. It is a shelter from the anxieties and fears of the world; it is a place of love; it is a place of learning and guiding.

Return to this house of prayer as much as you can and always keep it in your prayers.

Know the Lord

What is the reason that we are all Christians? What are we trying to do? How are we trying to do it? As Christians we are all asked to love and serve the Lord. We are given the Ten Commandments and asked to obey them. We are given the Beatitudes. We are given one additional request to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We are asked to praise and give thanks to God. We are encouraged to pray to God. What is the real purpose for all of this activity? What will happen to each of us if we do it with love in our hearts, kindness in our souls, honor and holiness in our minds? Our entire being as Christians is a preparation for our eternal life with God. Each moment of each day we are asked to work for our salvation. Each moment of each day we are asked to be compassionate, humble, merciful. Each moment of each day we are asked to work to please God. Our daily lives give us opportunities to serve God. We must work to establish, nurture, and protect a relationship with God. The most important relationship for a Christian is his/her relationship with God. Wanting salvation by itself is meaningless, completely worthless unless we want to know the Lord. Prayer is essential to this. We must learn how to pray. We must make time for prayer in our lives. Prayer filled with kindness, truth, goodness, love, holiness and hope can lead us to closer relationships to God. As Christians we must take time to listen for God's voice, God's gentle call. We are all living, breathing, articulating, gesticulating members of God's ministry. We must understand this with the entirety of our being and then use our lives to share the Good News with everyone with whom we interact. Our actions as Christians are often more important than our words. Each generation searches for something new, something improved. Each generation listens to the campaign promises. Christians have been given a better covenant with better promises. We simply have to believe. We simply have to remember our baptismal promises and try to live a better, more loving life of charity, humility, and obedience. Our purpose here is not to purchase the biggest house, wear the trendiest clothes. Our purpose is to love and serve God. Our purpose is to prepare ourselves for eternal life, to prepare ourselves for salvation.

your redeemer is the Holy One - December 9, 2010

Whoever has ears ought to hear. Matthew 11:15

Different generations have had different people that they have listened to, followed, imitated, and been entertained by. Each of us have both the responsibility and the ability to share the Good News with others, to use our lives to evangelize. This does not mean fire and brimstone oration on street corners or in parks on Saturday afternoons. Each choice we make, each word we speak is important when it is done for the Lord. Each of our little decisions when done with charity, humility, and obedience to God’s rules can lead others to follow us, to deepen their relationship with God.

Our goal is to nurture and grow the grace of Lord in our daily lives. We must always remember to proceed with faith and love in Jesus Christ.

Our goal is to trust in Jesus Christ and to allow ourselves and our faith to be strengthened by the grace that flows from Jesus Christ.

As we search for salvation we must also want our neighbors to find and experience salvation. Our prayers are always inclusive, our hearts are always open, our souls are always filled with hope, love, compassion.

When you attend Mass listen attentively, actively with all your senses, participate actively with all your senses. Allow yourself to be vulnerable, allow yourself to listen and feel the words of the Good News. Allow yourself to be God’s “Beloved.” Understand and accept the responsibility of being God’s servant.

The Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist feed and nurture our minds, our souls.

As Christians we are encouraged to find our individual way to examine the beauty of living life following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is so many things happening within our lives, so many opportunities to evangelize, so many questions to discern.

We each can and must create our own snapshot of our life with Christ.

a spirit of counsel and of strength - December 5, 2010

Allow yourself to cherish the Sabbath and attending Mass on the Sabbath. Allow this to be a day of charity, humility, and obedience.

Remember the half forgotten prayers of childhood, create some prayers with echoes from yesterday.

Within each prayer rests a portion of your youth, a dollop of all that which is good, kind, and holy within you

And so remember the comfort that prayer does offer

Each time you do acknowledge what you have done

Each momentary strength, momentary weakness

Each prayer does unlock childish memories of faith,

And of Easter, and of the greatest sacrifice you ever heard,

And of a candle-lighted Lent of abstinence and silence

Now, vivid, cinematic, asking me to discern.

Presenting faces of hope, faces of faith, faces of love; faces serving, faces following

Tragedy is the handmaid to all human beings

And yet, those who believe with their entire being

Will surely find salvation and eternal life with God.

I am thinking of a child's prayer now

Said proudly, happily before their father at mealtime.

Prayers and Patience

It is time to develop relationships with a common sympathy and interest in fairness and social justice. Mercy and forgiveness should be easily and honestly shared. We should move towards being loving and compassionate. Our hope should be extended beyond any slef-serving goals. Envy and greed, uncontrolled, can lead us away from God. Any separation can lead to all types of afflictions and fears. We must always remember decency and morality. Our lives require a foundation of love, peace, compassion, and hope. Even I cannot know all things that need our prayers; but God knows, and it does please Him to hear our prayers for each other. We must always remember and respect all the blessings that He gave. And we must make time to read and understand the Bible; we must make our lives be right since we are all his servants! Indeed we must expect both great grief and magnificent contentment! Prayer can help us to be better Christians and better human beings when we allow ourselves to believe in the majesty and beauty of God. Love often surrounds me; prayers help me feel closer to God; but I should not then deny the consolation of praying and then remembering to pray for all those in need of God’s mercy and love.

It is both reasonable and acceptable to speak now of our prayers, and circumstances which have been compelled us to pray. We must believe that God’s responses will arrive unquestionably at the appropriate moment according to God’s precepts; the responses will correspond to his plan, his idea of what we need; we must wait patiently, obediently and accept his responses with humility and grace; above all we must believe that his responses are filled with love, compassion, and mercy. We are all his children. We are all alive and well. Our hopes, our dreams have been composed by God—our Father is quietly supporting us with his own forgiveness, his own love, his own patience. He asks that we develop loving fortitude. He asks for our humility, charity, and obedience. He waits for our response. His love and concern for us is an inexpressible comfort to many who bear witness to his goodness and wisdom. God is our comfort. God offers salvation if we simply, lovingly obey him.

I cannot say that being obedient shall always be easy for us; obedience will be very difficult for us at times and we will be filled with all types of rationalizations, justifications and other shoddy reasons and fallacies allowing all types of resistance thoughts and actions. God knows and expects this; we must learn it if we are to follow in Christ’s footsteps. Always remember that God is always glad to see you, to hear your prayers. The weather is never too dreary or too humid for him to listen and we are never too far from him: and when you pray, be honest as you open your heart and soul to him; enjoy your prayers; enjoy the silence; pray often; and listen with calmness and quiet in your mind. God’s answer can take many forms and can occur at any moment. Perhaps we are ready to hear and understand it; perhaps we are not. We must have patience. It might be better if we were less concerned with earthly temporal matters which can make us selfish, distract and divert our love, goodness, and holiness. Within each of us is the capacity for being humble, loving, forgiving like God if we are able to overcome our insecurities and fears long enough to do what he asks—but we must always pray! Words cannot adequately express the regard and esteem that God presents to us each day of our lives. We receive his tenderness, his watchfulness. I can never forget God’s love for us or how unworthy I do feel because of my selfishness, my pettiness. I believe that I have felt God’s presence every hour and minute of my life—my memory is filled with reading and reciting Bible verses, hearing and saying prayers, seeing the wonders and beauty of nature. Building a good relationship with God is more precious to me than any earthly blessing; I have prayed for myself and I have prayed for others and I remind myself not to worry, not to want an immediate response; and yet, what I should feel, and how I should pray, remain as sweet variables, sweet daily lessons teaching me humility, obedience, charity; but I did just now remember that I have so much left learn about how to love as God wants us to love.

Desire for Goodness

Each day I learn more about the Mother of the Church,—I am happy by praying the Hail Mary, and understanding her role and the beauty of her intercession on our behalf, which deepens in every detail my spirituality, my desire for goodness that I now feel.

My daily life as a Christian does contain some failures, but also I am learning the power and glory of prayer by observing men and women of divine energy, among whom I dare not yet count myself, but with whom I hope to become one day. The major thought of the day involves attending Mass and praying, but I attend Mass to find courage to deal with the unpredictable craziness of life; being in the Cathedral allows my mind a moment of quiet, a moment of calm when I may practice the goodness and holiness taught in the Gospels with the hope of extending the goodness and holiness into my life beyond these beautiful marble walls; Mass allows me to quietly listen to the Word of God.

I do understand and believe that I must always be concerned about my own moral and physical state, which is often under attack by the consumerism which dominates our society. True decency, true morality no longer are virtues of our society. Our society has become so permissive that goodness and holiness have been conquered by all types of vice and sin. The great sadness that I feel for those people who are confused by the chaos and the glamor of sin leads me to God and I pray for the souls of all men and women, those who believe in God and those who do not believe in God that they learn of his love and follow his teachings.

I do not completely isolate myself from the outside world as much as I wish, and I am sometimes affected, from the intellectual point of view. Besides, the atmosphere of the modern life is a confluence of hopes and ideas and intellectual and spiritual people seeking to define goodness, decency, and morality for this moment, this current time: the trouble is that the internet and media is constant moving and changing meanings and definitions from place to place, moment to moment and confidence often whithers before the perpetual uncertainty of polls.

Being Christian allows me to have a belief in the mercy and love of God; it also allows us to believe in and work for our salvation.

I am happy to hear about prelapsarian moments.

A Glimpse of Eden

It was the intention of a modern artist, poet, photographer, essayist, with timid and sometimes turbulent reserves of youth lived within a prelapsarian world of natural forests, irregular hillsides, shallow yet swift brooks and streams leading to the deep and wide river. These were days of Bible verses and blue skies and fluffy white clouds and climbing trees and getting lost in the woods, and wishing that the sun would never go down and running around lost in some beautiful game of make-believe, running around laughing, laughing and hoping. How wonderful those moments were! Surrounding this time was a beautiful envelop of admonishments to be Christ-like, to be good. This instruction was delicate, gentle served with warm freshly baked cookies and glasses of milk. Here were examples of both Christ’s goodness and holiness to observe and to learn. This time was never lost, the power and the grace of those days continue to burn, to keep the darkness, emptiness, and loneliness of sin away. And life pulls us away and then pushes us into God. Those lessons from our youth will return to us as we try to translate current thoughts and concerns. Here lives and grows both the tenderness and gentleness of the heart and soul. Here is a fervent love for social justice and mercy! Here is a mystical sense of trust beyond the immediate and concrete. Here whispers the eternal language of love and salvation!

Each day I encounter hope and sadness, witness despair and kindness; urban living presents the human condition completely unvarnished without sentimentality or generosity. The pain and suffering of our neighbors is often displayed as if for the amusement and entertainment of others. My heart rejects this view but is sometimes overwhelmed by all that is seen and heard, but the fatigue I actually feel directs me to prayer.