You are called.

Grace for week 1: Pray for the grace to wake from sleep.

Reading for Monday: Matthew 4:18-22
"'Come follow me'....immediately he laid down his nets."

Keeping Watch: An Advent Retreat

The King is coming. We do not know the time or the hour (Mark 13:32). Let us, then, prepare by setting aside time each day (45 to 60 minutes) to be with the Lord. Scriptures will be posted here daily. Begin by asking for the grace. (See link on left.)

Find a quiet place. Reflect on the readings. Record your experiences. Frequent the sacraments.

Grace for week 1: Pray for the grace to wake from sleep.
Scripture reading Sunday, Nov 29: Matthew 24: 36-44

Gratitude

"Oh! How the very greatness of His favors condemns those who are ungrateful."
-- St. Teresa of Jesus

"Ingratitude is the enemy of the soul, the destroyer of merit and virtue, causing the loss of favors. It is a burning wind which dries up the fountain of piety, the dew of mercy, the torrents of grace."
-- St. Bernard of Clairvaux

"Every gift of God, whether great of small, should be gratefully acknowledged; not even the least grace should be forgotten."
-- St. Bernard of Clairvaux

"We do not realize what is good until it is gone, and the loss we suffer is due to our insufficient thanks to the one who made the good things possible. Thus, our benefactors must wait until we lose their favors before they are repaid, for only the loss of good motivates us to recognize the past benefit and act to give thanks. It is undoubtedly very bad that lack of something rather than the thing itself impels us to action and that in our desire to possess we forget who made us possessors."
-- Franciso de Osuna (in this morning's Magnificat meditation)

"And where are the other nine? Is there no one found to return and give glory to God, but this stranger?"
-- Jesus of Nazareth (Luke 17:17-18)

Feast of the Presentation of Mary

"Mary heard God's word and kept it, and so she is blessed."
--St. Augustine, quoted in the Office of Readings for today

May we all come to hear Him and obey Him as Mary did.

On the Danger of Compromise & the Necessity of Solitude

"During the years 1430 and 1433, the chapter fathers, confronted by the general breakdown in monastic discipline, chose to seek a solution by that most hazardous of routes: an expedient compromise born out of fear and uncertainty. Since so many of the Carmelites were not following the rule, they argued, a solution might be found by mitigating the rule and lessening its severity, thereby making legal and official that which was already being done in practice."

"But the contemporary Carmelites and their succession realized what the changes implied: these reductions in solitude and austerity were a major divorcement from Carmel's historical traditions, practices which profoundly changed the inner spirit of the Order and its original vision. The prophetic vocation, the imitation of the prophet Elijah, demanded solitude and an intensive program of penance, and with an abandonment of this tradition the Order was beginning a further confused descent."

Taken from "Journey to Carith" by Peter-Thomas Rohrbach

It is natural to flee from the place where that hunger throbs. Still, John encourages us to go there. It is what beckons the divine. It is the threshold at which Christ stands. We hunger for him because he has touched us; we want him because he wants us. The wound is the print of the pledge upon us, the pledge of the Spirit who holds us from the abyss. John comments on his poem: we "have our feeling of longing, the sense of God's absence" precisely there, "within our heart, where we have the pledge."

--from "St. John of the Cross and Seasons of Prayer" by Iain Mathews

For the full article, click here.

Feast of All Souls

"Purgatory: perhaps the deepest but also the most blissful kind of suffering. The terrible torture of having to settle now all the things we have dreaded a whole life long. The doors we have frantically held shut are now torn open. But all the while this knowledge: now for the first time I will be able to do it - that ultimate thing in me, that total thing. Now I can feel my wings growing; now I am fully becoming myself..."
-- from this morning's Magnificat meditation by Fr Hans Urs von Balthasar

Feast of All Saints

Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me. I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne.
Rev. 3:19-21