This is the will of God: your sanctification

His abundant grace is sufficient. Sufficient even for the "impossible". It is enough to make an inarticulate Moses into the Hebrew liberator, leader, lawgiver, and prophet; to free the Israelites from 450 years of bondage; for the virginal conception of Jesus Christ, God incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary; for 12 ordinary men to change the face of the earth through the proclamation of the Gospel; to transfer your soul from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of life... His grace is sufficient to make you and I saints. It is enough to take your individual life and make it one that is graced, one that is a proclamation, a manifestation, of the life of God. Believe and let it be done unto you...

Humility... Holiness...

Happy Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

These Princes of the Apostles are dear to my heart as is the city "washed in their blood" - Rome.

O Roma felix, quæ duorum Principum. Es consecrata glorioso ceteras. Horum cruore purpurata ceteras. Excellis orbis una pulchritudines :: :: :: O happy Rome! Who in thy martyr princes’ blood, A twofold stream, art washed and doubly sanctified. All earthly beauty thou alone outshinest far, Empurpled by their ourpoured life-blood’s glorious tide.

Today is a big day for my fathers! My dear father, Paul, was born today 55 years ago and my Holy Father, Pope Benedict, was ordained a priest today 60 years ago. Needless to say, I love them both.

I owe my life to these men - the Princes, the Holy Father, my father.

Our Lord “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men…He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7-8) and these men follow Him, yoked to Jesus and His humble obedience. They have chosen self-denial, they have laid down their lives for His sake. They model a simple humility that is the gateway to LIFE. Let us follow our Lord and his humble servants and give our own lives without reservation to the Source of Life itself.

The Will of the Father

This whole week, the second reading for the Office of Readings is from a treatise on the Lord's Prayer by St. Cyprian. It is beautiful.

In today's reading, he reflects on what it means to do the will of the Father:

"Humility in our daily lives, an unwavering faith, a moral sense of modesty in conversation, justice in acts, mercy in deed, discipline, refusal to harm others, a readiness to suffer harm, peaceableness with our brothers, a whole-hearted love of the Lord, loving in [Christ] what is of the Father, fearing [Christ] because he is God, preferring nothing to him who preferred nothing to us, clinging tenaciously to his love, standing by his cross with loyalty and courage whenever there is any conflict involving his honor and his name, manifesting in our speech the constancy of our profession and under torture confidence for the fight, and in dying the endurance for which we will be crowned - this is what it means to wish to be a coheir with Christ, to keep God's command; this is what it means to do the will of the Father."

Humility. Whole-hearted love. Clinging to HIS love.

Let us pursue the will of the Father with St. Cyprian as our guide and intercessor.

Holy Spirit

St. Hilary expounds on the Trinity, some [paraphrased] excerpts:

The Holy Spirit is the gift of perfect hope.

The Holy Spirit aids the weakness of our mind which cannot comprehend the Father or the Son, shedding light on our understanding. He is the Spirit of Truth enabling us to know the things of God. As our eyes need light to fulfill their task, so too the human soul needs the gift of the Holy Spirit through faith to have the light necessary for knowledge of God.

He is offered in fullness to all, yet is given to each in proportion to one's readiness to receive. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the fuller, the greater a man's desire to be worthy of Him.

He is the light of our minds, the splendor that illuminates our understanding.

Let us be receptive to the gift of God. Let our hearts be ready. Let our desire be stirred. Come Holy Spirit!

detachment

All our loves we must relinquish to the heart of Christ. All our loves must point and direct us to His Heart and drive us deeper into His Heart. If we relinquish our loves to His Heart and then we ourselves journey there, we shall find those loves again, for we will meet them in their true resting place in the heart of Christ. There, they will be given to us more fully and we will find more joy in them than we ever could have if we had simply held fast to them as if they were our own. For all who dwell there are satisfied and refined to such purity and perfection by the furnace that is that blazing heart.

mystery

"...invisible in his own nature, he became visible in ours. Beyond our grasp, he chose to come within our grasp. Existing before time began, he began to exist at a moment in time. Lord of the universe, he hid his infinite glory and took the nature of a servant. Incapable of suffering as God, he did not refuse to be a man, capable of suffering. Immortal, he chose to be subject to the laws of death."

- Pope St. Leo the Great

whispers

my mind is as a feather

in search of a resting place

caught on light breezes

it feels, it knows

yet grasps not

moved over the face of the deep

a grander mystery than I can conceive

many torrents

these waters

what is held in the fathomless depths?

moved by your mighty breath

fullness I cannot contain

touch only for an instant

a mere whisper

it is too vast for words

shall I alight?

will then I find rest?

no, I shall be carried

in this is my rest

on these, your whispers, that move me