Missing

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV9Rc7yOSj0&ab_channel=ASunnyAdventure

Our incomplete love is at fault for our inordinate longings. We are reluctant to admit how much someone means to us and what it  means when their presence is denied.

It is a shadow of the longing of all creation for unity with God, who made everything and orders all things in harmony, including us in His most lavish treats.

As much as we can miss a friend, He misses us infinitely more, and we do not always realize how great His love is until somehow He catches us in an idle moment and steals a bit of our heart, just enough to burn beyond enduring.

Union can catch us off guard, and reshape our life. The pain of our wounded heart longs to be whole again, but until we are ready to surrender all our defenses, so that we can feel the cross, we will waste most of our life not realizing what has happened to us or what is necessary to remedy the situation. To let it hurt as much as it wants to, and the Heart of Christ has finished binding us to Him and to the cross to become a fountain of grace and life to all who are near us.

See if it is so. Dare to sit still long enough, and let your distracted heart rest a bit until you are ready. 

If our dessication was not immensely worth it,
He would not bother with us at all. He is never content
to miss us and do without our company.

Contemplation

 

In transcendant prayer, words become a nuisance.

Contemplation is a gift of God, and blessed be the man who takes up prayer to encounter God in Himself. Lesser forms of prayer are no less desireable or meritorious, but prayerful living is not as common among the great numbers of persons.

To be given the gift of contemplative prayer is a blessing not that frequent, though those who have practised it have been swiftly swept up into God Himself to the wonder of the common observer.

It stands to reason, then, that for most persons, a fruitful prayer life is a great blessing as well, and the exuberance of joy expressed in pilgrimages and processions and decorations such as beautiful flowers are a means of expressing delight in the life and the Lord, every bit as much as contemplative ecstasies and other states of exaltation.

There is too, the injunction of the Lord that whoever is ashamed of Him, He is ashamed of them, and the lavishness of processions and services at church are a bold means to express love of a prayerful life in service to the Lord, to remind those who reject God that there are punishments for such behavior and blessings for life for those whose love of God is plainly demonstrated in a secular world. To get anyone to pray in public is a monumental task.Those involved in habitually encountering Jesus in contemplation are immediately engrossed in Him to their delight.

to divest our celebrations of God by foregoing processions, songs and vocal prayers as well as floral displays impoverishes our celebrations of God and dilutes our witness to the world. If some have taken advantage of the sentimentalities of persons by concetrating on the monetary gains to be had by a community celebrating a feast is obnoxious to the Lord, but we should reform our celebrations and not forbid them. 

Since contemplative prayer is a gift, it is not given widely among the congregation. When it is given, it is  meant to inform and instruct as well as to immerse a whole person in the experience of God as a consolation all His own. Often, the gift is given because a person has invested his entire self exclusively in God and desiring His presence not merely or solely so that one might be consoled but so that the Lord might be made known to all by the giving of and experience of Himself that rewards and demonstrates life perfected in His holiness.

Often God manifests Himself in a special way to someone as a demonstration of a service or special charism to exercise among the faithful where poverty and violence have been the common experience of life.

There are wealthy people in the world because there are the poor, and only the wealthy have the opportunity or means of alleviating the suffering of others. It is fitting therefore, that persons be raised up in the world who are gifted with the most intimate prayer to God so that they might console the unconsoled, the impoverished and those bereft of joy in its many forms.

In life there is misfortune, and many who profess only to make everyone they encoutner as miserable as possible. God has the right to snatch such miserable creatures out of their recreation, to turn them around and uplift them so they may lift the suffering out of their sorrows for the Lord's sake. We ought to give God thanks in all ways but most especially in our prayers for His providence, and if possible, by having processions that express every form of prayer and song and recital. To ban celebrations and demonstrations of solidarity with God is a mistake. Life for so many people is dreadfully tiresome and unenjoable. Anyone who exercises his ability to lift up others ought to be blessed for his love of God, and he should express his delight in Him in every way possible.

In order to pray it is necessary that one concentrate on the Lord; He then, if He so desires, can lift one up out of himself, and if one's appreciation and gratitude are sufficient, the delight given will transcend common life to enhance it with gratitude and the swelling of the feelings to more closely resemble those of Christ.

Adversaries

I am humbled because He forgives us.

Let us not forget that our adversaries may be cleverer than us, and more intelligent. That they can weaponize their cleverness ought to promote a desire to exceed their cleverness and that we might be able to use it for survival when the enemy is acting so as to destroy us, but might overlook something we already recognize..

If we are clever, we should also be wise. If we build a sword that is revolutionary in the context of military tactics, let us remember to build it with a steel that can cleave stone; if a sword is created from faulty iron, and we try to cut down an enemy with it, we may find the enemy cutting down our swords and killing us.

Let us not think we are superior to anyone else, for if our weaknesses are brought up before our eyes, we ought to own them and embrace them as if they contain some unseen merit so that we might succeed where others engage us to annihilate us.

We are sinners, and are subject to death; Forgiveness and healing of our weaknesses ought to prompt hummility in us and to remember that God is merciful and forgiving as well as healing what is broken in us. For if God acts to heal us, He demonstrates His superiority over us, and if we have embraced humility, He will respond to our moves with appreciation and love, and not let death overtake us.

Let us remember that we all are subject to death and our days are numered; there is only so much time to act as humbly as God Himself, for that is what He intends in extending His clemency to us.

Whatever offenses we acknowledge were born by us, let us remember God has forgiven us and not hold judgement over others.

Retribution belongs to God, and forgiveness is not held against us. Before condemning others, let us apologize for the wrongs that we have committed, and not foment wars to right supposed wrongs when everything we have thought and done can be deemed an injury inflicted on another. Sharing instead of greed will avoid a war, and a war averted is a great mercy which protects everyone from death and destruction so that good might be spread on earth that prospers everyone.

God views us according to forgiveness and mercy so that the most forgiving and most merciful are superior to those who are given to demonstrate miracles and spiritual prodigies.

Let us fulfill the promise that wars will cease, and a new heaven and earth will be created for the just to live in. We live in the universe we can scarcely see let alone undertand,, and we cannot grasp it until the old has passed away. We shall be stupified indeed if God has forgiven all sin but we are found committing the final sin before the old is erased by the new.

Let it be said that we busied ourselves working the works of peace and not of war, building rather than tearing down, building just peace and forgetting wars and killing so that we may forget each others' sins before God and making Him glad He was merciful to us when the first sin was committed, and endured our ignorance to Him in crucifying Him so there might be forgiveness and peace in the world.

Divisions

The light of a fire lights up the sky.

Neither Donald Trump nor anyone else knows a word that can bring peace; it is in God and is revealed not to liars and evildoers but to those who came close to God and were changed, as God changed Moses on the mountain.

Scheming and trickery will not bring peace, because true peace is not a human thing, but a divine one.

Pray that God should send a man to whom He has spoken the word that changes hearts and minds and delves into the hearts of people who do not know that they are chosen to be a tabernacle of peace.

They are few because very many cannot hear because of their worldly hearts, always seeking the divine but failing to see Him or hear Him or know Him. 

God wishes to uncover His children so they can be seen and come to know God. The land itself burns in the heat of drought, but it is not earthly water that He desires, but souls to sit listening in the silence for the holy word in the garden of God where He speaks to the holy in the silence.

You cannot find truth in worldly minds, but God can see and He can bring forth delights. Pray for peace and expect it to come from the light of God, not from men.

Service and Sacrifice

 Who are we talking about? Basically it is all about JESUS. He has the right to call a person out and set him or her aside in seclusion, solitude and silence. Their service becomes one of union with the suffering that sets people free and heals them. If we are only concerned with human feelings, we will never get any closer to Christ or healing and serving like Him. The life we are talking about is HIS, not our own, otherwise no one has the authority. We should judge no one and hold no one up to any other life or standard than Christ Himself. The very fact that He continues to suffer on the cross for our sake means that any union with Him will encounter the cross, since He is still one with the cross. Any union will be accomplished by merging with Him on the cross.+

Need

 The need of love, is love itself.

Touching

 

We must be as wise as serpents and

courageous as martyrs.

Every Christian should be aware that when you touch someone to heal them, you are touching their wounds. That in and of itself can deter a person from using a gift of healing, for fear of encountering the pain, and aggravating the suffering, but if one is deterred by these things, they are not healing, they are walking away from Jesus without saying a word, in an act of indifference that is more painful than any known suffering.

Some have the courage to touch, to offer prayer, to encounter the suffering, to enter into the wounds of Jesus, to confront His pain. He does not send us into the world with gifts to entertain us, but to go into the world equipped with a blessing for souls.

And what of that one that is sent out to be immersed into the wounds of Christ? The courage to ask to enter into another's suffering is the grace to set aside an ongoing reality of misery and bless another human being with the peace of wholeness and love. Jesus may be pained still from Golgotha, but He is not deterred by our cries as He imparts Himself into wounds in another person.

We live in an unprecdented din of noise and screams of loneliness and darkness. Jesus sends us to heal, to encounter wounds, so that precisley those people might be restore to peace and healing.

Pray for the healers in the world. In so doing you will bring peace.

Providence

Be at peace. He is providing.

I keep seeing videos of Russia being bankrupt and militarilly washed up, alongside Beijing having collapsed and China on the brink of political upheaval. It is hard to know how all these calamities  will be overcome; they must be overcome in order to continue as civilized human sociaties.

On the other hand, I read with disbelief, the ridiculous things being done to the government and the structures of our societies, and wonder just as much.

Perhaps worst of all, I can't imagine how the rubble can be cleared away and new cities be born from the collapse of the old ones. 

Science Fiction combines with reality to try to portray what will happen, and it is difficult to watch. On the other hand, we just had an anniversary of the nuclear attack on Japan, and see the results of attacks perpetrate by many different countries, on perceived enemies and how it can  be allowed and no possibility of being able to assist the victims. 

How can all this happen and no hope of rising appear? I appeal to Christians to set aside religious ideolgies so they can get in contact with religious reality in which the need for mercy screams at us to care.

It is like the pain in my hands, in precisely the places that would hurt if I were truly crucified. I have the means to palliate the pain, by taking pain  killing drugs. I also have the opportunity to just suffer with it and stand with my arms outstetched to Jesus offering all my heart struggles so to endure, begging for peace, for grace for redemption, hoping someone will care. It is easy to offer a word of comfort because the hard part, actually suffering, has already become part of my life and my life has come to be part of Christ's. 

I may not see, but I can know the way someone suddenly blinded might know what is going on around me. i takes patience and grace, love and an embrace of the God I serve. Sometimes it is I who embrace Him, and sometimes it is He who embraces me. My life is very small; I fear sometimes it is too small to help anyone in any way. Then it becomes clear to me that He is helping as He always has and always will, and I rest a litle in His arms.

Developments

 

From everywhere He reminds us of Himself,
and we must seek Him with all we can.

It is good to keep up with developments in the world, but not to the point that a video will supplant your reliance on Jesus. 

 The universe was created by God for us so we would have a place to live. He gave us intellect with which to chane the world so we might be able to live in it, but not to the extent that any human thought might overshadow God.

Atonement for our offenses against God  in the form of sin cannot oversharow Him to the point that we will supplant His will. The atonement necessary is just that, necessary and will be carried out.

The result of atoning for sin is the chance to show our love for Him and stand at His right side at the judgement. Judgement and a new creation will follow, and by then any alienation from God will be unfortunate.

We can see earthquakes, violent storms, volcanoes and the empty fury of nuclear war which render the earth  uninhabitable. There is no satisfaction to be had in mutual annihilation, and even less satisfaction in having our own will in our mututal wills.

Simplification and love in solitude and silence provide a way to go. There is no joy to anticipate except that rises out of love.

The frustration that modern people experience in life rises from lack of love for others, because God has made our will conditional to His. If our activities in life are  not gentle and purposeful toward the revelation of love for one another, it will remain futile.

Extremes

 

we are dealing with a man who has the  morality of an iguana, and the intellectual capacity of an earthworm.  He threatens to use nuclear weapons on Russia if they do not capitulate in Ukraine. Who does he plan to bomb with nuclear weapons to back up what he says? If anything, this will test what Jesus and Mary mean to us in reality, because these eventualities threaten to get out of hand, and the sole place sanity is evident is in a prayerful heart. Let us pray for peace and the Holy Spirit to influence people's raw emotions which threaten to get out of control and tear down what little is actually still left of civilization.