Wholly Surrendered...

The more fully one surrenders to the Lord, the more fully He has access to every part of you and to every circumstance and situation that you encounter -- because you then bring Him with you and give Him access.

Simple Trust

“Sooner or later, each of us has to be confronted with the terrifying truth…that we have nothing, nothing whatever, to go on or to rely on except Jesus.  In all other areas of life our own efforts and activity are crucial and we have to be thoroughly adult;  but where we stand vis-à-vis God, there we are only children.  No other state is appropriate or possible.  Our fears, complexities, scruples, complacency and conceit come from not fixing our eyes on him who is our way, our truth, and our life…So we look around, in the name of prayer, for ways of diverting ourselves from simple, trusting exposure to Love.  ‘O foolish and slow to believe’ that God is who God is!

--from a meditation by Sr. Ruth Burrows, OCD, in Magnificat, August 2011 p. 364

The Road of Love

"O God, how necessary it is that we should learn to love You without any motive of self-interest: To walk along the road of love as one should, we must have the one desire of serving You, O Christ crucified; therefore, I neither ask for consolations nor desire them, and I beg You not to give them to me in this life.

"No, my God, love consists not in interior favors but in the firmness of our determination to please You in everything, and to endeavor in all possible ways not to offend You, and in praying for Your greater honor and glory. It consists especially in perfect conformity to Your will, so that I too want -- and steadfastly -- all that I know You will, accepting the bitter and the sweet with equal joy. O strong love of God! I really think nothing seems impossible to one who loves."
--Divine Intimacy, #255 (page 764-5 in one volume), (quoting St Teresa of Jesus)

Feast of the Assumption

"Sing of Mary, pure and lowly, Virgin Mother, undefiled. Sing of God's own Son most holy, who became her little child. Fairest child of fairest Mother. God the Lord who came to earth. Word made flesh our very brother, takes our nature by His birth.
Sing of Jesus, Son of Mary, in the home at Nazareth. Toil and labor cannot weary love enduring unto death. Constant was the love He gave her, though He went forth from her side. Forth to preach and heal and suffer 'til on Calvary He died."

Mary our sweetness and our hope, pray for us.

Begin Again

"Jesus never stops loving us, helping us, protecting us, talking to us, not even in our moments of sheer ingratitude, or after we have committed the greatest disloyalty. Perhaps it was during such sad circumstances that our Lord has been most attentive to us...Among the hundred sheep in the flock, only the one that was lost had the honor of resting on the good shepherd's shoulders. I will be with you always, in each situation, at every moment, our Lord tells us. And especially when we begin that final journey towards him.

Certain that our Lord is close to us, we should be moved to begin again in the interior struggle, without being disheartened by the negative experience of our defects and sins. Every moment we live is unique, and therefore provides a good opportunity to begin again, because - as we read in the book of Deuteronomy - the Lord will go before you. He will be with you: He will not leave you or abandon you. Do not fear or be cowardly.

--from In Conversation With Christ, vol. 4, pp. 361-362

Kingdom Math

"Christian optimism is rooted in God, who says to us: I am with you always, to the close of the age. With him we can do anything. We are victorious even when we are defeated. This is the optimism of the saints. St. Teresa of Avila would often repeat....Teresa can do nothing alone. Teresa and a maravedi (a penny, say), less than nothing. But Teresa, a maravedi and God can do anything. It is the same with us. Cast away that despair produced by the realization of your weakness. It's true: financially you are a zero, and socially another zero, and another in virtues, and another in talents... But to the left of these zeros is Christ. And what an immeasurable figure it turns out to be."

-- from In Conversation With God, vol. 4, p. 298-9