Thursday, September 10, 2009

Jesus in the Eucharist

I have had the privilege, three weeks now, of spending time with the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. It is called Eucharistic Adoration. And how Jesus has set me free! I have realized so starkly that He is not about condemnation (the devil's great work) but about setting me free. I have realized that confessing my sins has truly set me free! I know this sounds cliche-ish but I have understood my Savior so much more fully, have felt so much more as His sister b/c I have simply obeyed Him. "To behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His Temple..." (Psalm 27) These are not empty word but alive words that are fulfilled today...all my thoughts, my joys, my duties are His...I hope never to stop listening to Him and asking for His grace, His power, to please His Father. That is all my Lord Jesus was about was pleasing and obeying the Father and what else is there but this? What greater felicity, what greater joy, what greater time spent than feeding on His Word - Jesus Christ. This is all....this is all that matters....this is the pearl of great price and look what we receive! Divinization! I don't know what that will be like but it is real....it is the only REALITY and the only thing worth living for....pleasing and obeying the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. I pity anyone who finds life on this earth more appealing.

Jesus in the

Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Room of the Soul

Remember that the virtue of humility is the solution of all our troubles, a sure and quick remedy in all our temptations. Let your concern and terror be this, that the devil take advantage of distressing moods and make entrance. Remember that humility is the antidote. Your place at that moment is not on the lofty heights of self or studying wounded self-love but on your knees before the crucifix, seeing what sin has done to Jesus. Stifle the murmuring complaint of whining vanity and blinded pride. Let the recording angels hear this confession: “I confess to Almighty God. that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”(2) Fr Thomas A Judge


I know my blogs are boring - no pictures. But I hope to create pictures in the window of the soul that one may look into that room and see what furnishings lie there. Also what condition they are in. Is the furniture dusty? Is it crowded with knick knacks? Is it so cluttered that the beauty of the room is choked? Is it hard to move around in there - are you prevented from kneeling if necessary? How is my interior life? And does the Holy Spirit find welcome, worship and listening heart there?

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

“If any man think himself to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.”(Gal. 6:3) Subject to many infirmities, man comes wailing into life, lives in fear, leaves it in anguish. Inconstant by nature, the sport of change, now he is glad, now he is sad. He needs everything, is dependent for everything, can do nothing of himself. He cannot guide himself; he is blind in his judgments. He regrets the past that is gone, is suspicious of the future; he grasps at the present which escapes him. He struggles against adversity. Prosperity intoxicates him, praise makes him proud; humiliation irritates and crushes him, anger makes him insane. Laziness enervates him; sensuality devours him. He is the plaything of his passions. His infancy is spent in helplessness, his youth in frivolity, his mature years in cares and worries, his old age in dotage. His mind is subject to ignorance, his will to uncertainty, his heart is tried by so many deceptions. Ennui inexorable weighs on his existence and he becomes a burden to himself. There is not a sense nor member of his body which does not know sorrow, which is not capable of suffering. There is not an instant of his life when he can believe himself safe, and the grave is always before him.
What, then, is man? Nothing before he came into existence, nothing in revolt by sin, dust when his life ends, misery as long as it lasts. That is the condition of humanity caused by sin. It is this human condition, so infirm, so fallen, which became the condition of the Son of God, clothed in our flesh.
Fr Thomas A Judge

This is so powerful b/c it illustrates so vividly what we are without redemption. And everyday I witness people who have responded to redemption and have climbed out of their grave.