bloom more beautifully

“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Isaiah 35:10

(a former rose bush / Julie Cook / 2013)

“Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity.
Individuals who have carried their sinning to extremes
should not despair or say,
‘I am too great a sinner to change,’ or ‘God would not want me.’
God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gesture,
but with a ‘passionless passion,’ a ‘wild tranquility’.
A sinner, unrepentant, cannot love God, any more than someone on dry land can swim;
but as soon as a person takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection,
he will become happy, as he was never happy before.
It is not the wrong things one has already done that keep one from God;
it is present persistence in that wrong.
Someone who turns back to God, as the Magdalene and Paul,
welcomes the discipline that will enable him to
change his former tendencies.
Mortification is good, but only when it is done out of love of God…
Mortifications of the right sort perfect our human nature;
the gardener cuts the green shoots from the root of the bush,
not to kill the rose, but to make it bloom more beautifully.”
Venerable Fulton Sheen, p. 185
An Excerpt From
Peace of Soul