help me to see what you want me to be

“Jesus, help me to simplify my life by learning what you want me to be,
and becoming that person.”
St. Therese of Lisieux

(a willet pokes around for something to eat / Julie Cook / 2021)

“However great our efforts, we cannot change ourselves.
Only God can get to the bottom of our defects, and our limitations
in the field of love; only he has sufficient mastery over
our hearts for that.
If we realize that we will save ourselves a great deal of discouragement
and fruitless struggle.
We do not have to become saints by our own power;
we have to learn how to let God make us into saints.
That does not mean, of course, that we don’t have to make any effort . . .
We should fight, not to attain holiness as a result of our own efforts,
but to let God act in us without our putting up any
resistance against him;
we should fight to open ourselves as fully as possible to his grace,
which sanctifies us.”
Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 14-5
An Excerpt From
In the School of the Holy Spirit

real hard truth found in life’s warfare

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth;
and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word,
to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God,
men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Pope St. John Paul II

(a wandering willet / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2020)

“We live in a fallen world.
We must therefore work out our destiny under the conditions created by sin.
Did we but realize this truth,
we would accept each of life’s trying changes in the same spirit in which
we accept the penance from the confessor.
Were we truly convinced that our hope of pardon, and consequently our salvation,
depends upon repentance, we would willingly undergo all the sufferings of life’s warfare.”
John A. Kane, p. 81
An Excerpt From
How to Make a Good Confession