why we must pray for reverence

 

“I think you have much ‘compassion and understanding’ but it is limited at present by the natural. You tend to expect others to see as you see, and to feel impatient when they don’t.  And if people sense that one feels dismissive, their hackles rise and, in fear, they can’t listen. We must pray for reverence, that deep acceptance of the difference of others that lets us show them what we are saying. Once people really ‘hear,’ they nearly always respond. But nothing to be sad about. Having difficulties is a way of growing. It opens us up to him.  

Am I mistaken in detecting a slight note of despondency? Living as we do in Jesus, with all sorrow, failure, and disappointment primarily just ways of receiving him more deeply, life is infinitely lovely. It may not appear so, but it is. Our happiness, even if happiness of pure faith, is a duty we owe to the sad world where frustrations are not, as are ours, gateways into love. Happiness is a willed thing, therefore we choose to let Jesus be our joy, our confidence, and to ignore our poor little fumbles. If we really want him and want to live in Love, it will most surely happen.”

 ~Sister Wendy Beckett in “Spiritual Letters”

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“In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy”

~ Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry Be Happy”

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“The Christian does not know through speculations that God, the absolute Being, is wholly love: he knows this through the fact that God gave his Son up for the world that he loved so much, and not only for the totality en bloc, but for each individual one of us. I have been rescued in my sin and lovelessness by the Son of God, who suffered and died on the cross for my guilt and who wishes, in his Resurrection to the Father, to bring me back into the eternal triune love. If one grants that this is true, then, according to the view of the Apostles who bear witness to this message and proclaim it, there can be only one decent answer on the part of man, and once again it is Paul who formulates it: I have been crucified with Christ. I live, yet it is not really I who live: Christ lives in me.”

~Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar , 

as quoted in Magnificat Magazine 

(February 17, 2017)

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"Hands, 

touching hands

                                                         Reaching out, 

touching me, 

touching you"

~Neil Diamond, "Sweet Caroline"