🎯Do not resist the first coming, and the second will not terrify you". By St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD)
🏈 "Why, for us poor humans with lifespans barely a drop in the ocean of eternity, would Hell’s separation be permanent? For finite beings, the prospect of eternal punishment, whatever that might mean, seems hideously unfair. But it’s entirely fair. God doesn’t inflict Hell. The damned freely prefer it. The damned, by their actions and choices, become creatures unable to have it otherwise; creatures who cannot bear Heaven, cannot want Heaven, and could never fit there. If we are free – and our freedom is central to our special dignity; it sets us apart from all other creatures – God cannot force us to be what we’ve freely chosen not to be. God’s mercy is infinite. But it requires the sinner’s honesty, humility, and repentance. These the obstinate sinner will not give. Thus “mercy” would simply be an alibi for injustice". By Francis Maier
📖Matthew 6:34 “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil”
📖Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon”
📖Matthew 6:11 “Give us today our daily bread; Give us today our daily bread;”
These scriptures can in some way demonstrate the need for not holding tightly to the past or forcefully grasping for the future. To do so hinders attention to the present. The past is gone and the future is not a promise. It is certain that one can not live the present and the future all at once, so in missing the moment it becomes the past. It’s to be mindful to eat the “daily bread” of the moment, to digest and enjoy. Tomorrow quickly becomes today soon enough, so it’s wise to fully live one day, one hour, one minute, and one second as it ticks by and by. Recalling to mind what was written somewhere a while back about God, that He is the: “I Am”, not “I was”, or “I will be”.
It is clearly seen how much time is contained in each liturgical season and how much time lies between each, but if we follow the way of the world subversion occurs. Scarcely experiencing one thing, and before you know it we are being bombarded with what is next on the list. This can’t be considered the way to live, to me that is only existing.
Case in point, just yesterday this email arrived. Like really, is it all about the holidays or is it a priority to celebrate the holy days? Yes, it is never to early to get into the spirit, if it’s the Holy Spirit that is being referenced. Lord have mercy, let’s those with eyes see and those with ears hear.
📖Matthew 11:15 “Whoever has ears ought to hear”
Info from this site
www.discerninghearts.com/catholic-podcasts/the-nine-ways-of-prayer-of-st-dominic/
“The Second Way of Prayer: St. Dominic used to pray by throwing himself outstretched upon the ground, lying on his face. He would feel great remorse in his heart and call to mind those words of the Gospel, saying sometimes in a voice loud enough to be heard: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
📖Luke 18:13 “But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’
With devotion and reverence he repeated that verse of David: “I am he that has sinned, I have done wickedly.”
📖2 Samuel 24:17 “When David saw the angel who was striking the people, he said to the LORD: “It is I who have sinned; it is I, the shepherd, who have done wrong. But these sheep, what have they done? Strike me and my father’s family!”
Then he would weep and groan vehemently and say: “I am not worthy to see the heights of heaven because of the greatness of my iniquity, for I have aroused thy anger and done what is evil in thy sight”. From the psalm: “Deus auribus nostris audivimus” he said fervently and devoutly: “For our soul is cast down to the dust, our belly is flat on the earth!”
📖Psalms 44:25 “For our soul has been humiliated in the dust; pour belly is pressed to the earth”
To this he would add: “My soul is prostrate in the dust; quicken thou me according to thy word”
📖Psalms 119:25 “My soul clings to the dust;egive me life in accord with your word”
Wishing to teach the brethren to pray reverently, he would sometimes say to them: When those devout Magi entered the dwelling they found the child with Mary, his mother, and falling down they worshipped him. There is no doubt that we too have found the God-Man with Mary, his handmaid. “Come, let us adore and fall down in prostration before God, and let us weep before God, and let us weep before the Lord that made us”
📖Psalms 95:6 “Enter, let us bow down in worship;let us kneel before the LORD who made us”
He would also exhort the young men, and say to them: If you cannot weep for your own sins because you have none, remember that there are many sinners who can be disposed for mercy and charity. It was for these that the prophets lamented; and when Jesus saw them, he wept bitterly. The holy David also wept as he said: “I beheld the transgressors and began to grieve”
📖Psalms 119:158 “I view the faithless with loathingwbecause they do not heed your promise”
Info from this site: https://vultuschristi.org/index.php/2017/03/dom-jean-leclercq-on-mother-mectilde-de-bar/
“The depth: One of Mechtilde’s most living convictions makes her speak often of what she calls “the depth,” “our depth,” and to use the term “deep,” “deeply.” This is an echo of what the Rheno-Flemish mystics—whose influence on the French School is well known—had called the Grund: that is, the center of ourselves, where our egoism is situated and which, emptied, purified, can become the place of the divine Presence. In this way our depth is returned to its true nature, to which it is necessary to arrive: this is what Mechtilde calls “the return to the depth.” In this consists the “knowledge of ourselves,” which occupies as much space in her doctrine as in that of Saint Bernard: “Let us return to our heart,” she had written more than once, citing a psalm, Redire ad cor, or the words about the prodigal son, ad se reversus, “returning to himself.” “Enter again into yourselves, into your inmost part, keeping yourselves at the feet of the majesty of God; it is there that you will find Him.” All this is in no way theoretical.
Like Bernard, Mechtilde starts from “experience,” she loves this term as well as that of “experiment.” She knows our delights—Pascal calls them “our diversions.” She knows that the opposite of “depth” is “elevation,” “the sense of one’s own excellence. Pride makes us elevate ourselves. We must descend.” And how? Replacing in the depth of ourselves this pole of attraction which is self-love with the other pole which is Jesus Christ, “the divine center, where we must return.” To substitute His “kingdom,” His “empire”—according to the vocabulary of the age of Louis XIV—for the interest we have in ourselves. “The spirit of Jesus Christ,” “Our Lord and His divine Spirit” must establish themselves in us, and have dominion over all. We must “desire this kingdom,” then judge everything “in relation to Him.” Only once is there mention of the “Sacred Heart.” The style of Mechtilde, however, is different from that of Margaret Mary Alacoque, even if no less fervent. Some pages, very Pauline, betray the obsession of one in love with Jesus Christ.
The return to the Father in Christ and by His Spirit is only an effect of grace, the grace of faith deposited in us as a seed in Baptism and which does not cease to guide us. Hence the insistence on docility in everything to the movements—or more exactly, to the push—of grace: “God gives movement to the soul…pray under the impulse of grace.” “A tug of grace, of the mercy of God, the motion of the Holy Spirit…” Doing everything “in faith”: this leads first of all to prayer, conceived of as continual. Before talking about certain interior activities—although it is nonetheless aided by them—prayer is an attitude of presence to God, “of adherence to God.” Mechtilde loved this play on words: “to adore and to adhere.” One of her most dense pages can be summed up in three words: “Wait upon God.” From this life of prayer flow spontaneously, simply, that is, without complications, the activities of prayer. When Mechtilde speaks of these, she takes up the themes—and at times also the terminology—of the monastic tradition of the Fathers and of the Middle Ages and perhaps above all of the 17th century.
This is what happens when she describes as “mute preachers” the texts which form the object of lectio divina; when she describes the Divine Office as integral prayer, which involves our whole being, beginning from the senses; or when she shows in perpetual adoration a way of continuing the laus perennis. It is so above all when she comments in exquisite terms on the little which Saint Benedict said about “prayer” (oratio). To practice “simple prayer,” “leave the different methods…Avoid that way of praying which brings on a headache…” Prayer is like a mystical desert “where we meet with the Bridegroom.” One must remain faithful to the “remembrance of God,” to which P. Hausser consecrated so many pages; one must preserve “the sweet habit of acting in a love which is not sensible, but in faith.”
This teaching of hers is always in relation with the feasts and the mysteries which the liturgy celebrates. It reaches even to prayers in the form of aspirations, brief but frequent, as recommended by Saint Benedict, whose thought finds in this phrase its pleasant equivalent: “Make a little loving return…”, “the spirit casts a glance towards God…” The pages which Mechtilde writes on prayer are without doubt the most beautiful of her work. She speaks of it as a specialist. Her competence is guaranteed especially by her own experience, but also by her conformity to the most ancient and constant spiritual tradition of the Church.
The way of littleness: To treat of humility, Mechtilde found a Gospel language which anticipates that of Thérèse of Lisieux. The vocabulary she prefers is that of littleness and all the shades to which this term lends itself. Like Saint Gregory and the holy Fathers, she knows of “compunction.” But for this Latin-sounding word she prefers to use terms of her own time, very expressive for the 17th century and for our own: “Let yourself be consumed, remain before the Blessed Sacrament, be engulfed in the abyss of God”; and the image of the abyss recalls that of the “depth.” To be “in a complete, continual detachment.” Only once does she use the term “holy indifference,” but she speaks especially of a “simple glance” at God, and consequently without “seeking for oneself.” With Saint Paul she says, “to die to ourselves and to live to God.” “To disappropriate oneself” without a secret self-complacency; to live as in exile, in a foreign land, in poverty: to expect and desire everything from God, even when He remains silent. “If your depth is crucified…”, “be a capacity for God,” “He who loves the little souls, humble, low, brought to nothing,” and “profound littleness.”
Video link: https://youtu.be/o3aIedB9Owc