patience of love

“Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love,
for they enkindle and melt the soul.”
St. Teresa of Avila

(a garden spider perches in the woods and waits patiently for a meal / Julie Cook / 2018)

Think of the spider…
he sits for hours upon end waiting…
He spins, toils and then waits.

Think of God.
He created, toiled and now He waits…patiently He waits on both you and me…

“We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.
If we love things, we become a thing.
If we love nothing, we become nothing.
Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ,
rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation.
This means we are to become vessels of God´s compassionate love for others.”
St. Clare of Assisi

“Real love is demanding.
I would fail in my mission if I did not tell you so.
Love demands a personal commitment to the will of God.”
Pope John Paul II

As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men,
the anguish in our neighbor’s soul must break all precept.
All that we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself,
because God is love.
Edith Stein

(Edith Stein was born a German Jew, yet due to her precocious ways,
came to a point early in life that she rejected, God.

Eventually Edith earned her degree in Philosophy, becoming one of German’s intellectual
elites as well as a professor.
Yet her heart yearned for more.

After much study and contemplation, Edith converted to Catholicism, being baptized in 1922,
eventually entering into a vocation of a Carmelite nun.
By the time the Nazis came to power, Edith was living in Holland, where being both Jew
and now Catholic but her at grave risk. She was arrested and sent to Auschwitz
where she was put to death in the gas chambers in 1942.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987 and later canonized by John Paul in 1998.

It is always amazing to me to be reminded of those who suffered so grievously under the evils
of the Nazis yet who continued to proclaim God’s love until the very end.

Edith’s life is a strong lesson for those of us of this 21st century who need to be reminded of what it is we must cling to…that being the Love of God demonstrated to us through His Son, Jesus Christ)

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/the-life-and-legacy-of-edith-stein/ )

Sin and Confession

“No conflict is more pivotal to the heart and soul of America than the sin battle.”
David Fiorazo

“If forces of sexual deviancy prevail, every part of our culture will be corrupted
and contaminated beyond repair…
Religious principle, tolerance, and rights of conscience mean nothing to pro-sodomy advocates.
They will remorselessly crush anyone and anything that gets in their path…
In their quest for cultural domination,
they will relentlessly extinguish the light of sexual normalcy and morality,
as well as the light of Christianity.”
Bryan Fischer
former Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association

(fungus growing on a fallen tree / Cades Cove, TN / Julie Cook / 2018)

Sin.

It’s a word that we take for granted yet it is a word whose actions are destroying us.
For we are its actions and we seem not to even care.

Our culture has opted to expunge the word from our vocabulary while blindly
embracing its very nuances.

And what of the Chruch?

She is either impotently silent or either she busies herself by embracing those
very nuances in order to appear more viable, more likable, more cultural.

And yet sadly, once again, we hear of the scandal and predation from those very
souls who are entrusted to represent this bride of Christ, the Church.

We are betrayed.
We are complicit.
We are quiet.
We are culpable.

The following quote by the martyred Confessing Church pastor Deitrich Bonhoeffer could have
easily been stated today rather than 78 years ago.

Bonhoeffer was speaking of Nazi Germany and of the German Lutheran Chruch’s blood
it bore upon it hands… but his words could readily speak to us today…
speaking to the Catholic Chruch, the Anglican and Episcopal Church, the Methodist Chruch,
the Presbyterian Church…
his words could be directed to most of us who claim to be Christians of the 21st century.

We the church must confess that we have not proclaimed often or clearly enough
the message of the One God who has revealed Himself for all time in Christ Jesus,
and who will tolerate no other gods beside Himself.

She must confess her timidity, her cowardice, her evasiveness and her dangerous concessions.

She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was
crying aloud to heaven.
The church must confess that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force,
the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people,
oppression, hatred, and murder.

And that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims.
And has not found a way to hasten to their aid.
The church is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers
of Jesus Christ.
The church must confess that she has desired security and peace, quiet,
possession, and honor to which she has desired security and peace, quiet, possession,
and honor to which she has no right.
She has not born witness to the truth of God and by her silence,
she has rendered herself guilty,
because of her unwillingness to suffer for what she knows to be right.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1940

Bishop Gavin Ashenden has recently addressed the tragic issue of predation in the church
and of the current need for the Chruch to speak up while she owns up to her responsibility–
finally speaking the Truth while she gets busy with a much-needed Spring cleaning…

Gay predators, telling the truth and spring-cleaning the Church.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sine that so easily entangles.
And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…
Hebrews 12:1