Sunday Meditation: Wash your Face, Put on a Smile, and Stop Complaining!

It's a good thing to remember that everyone has troubles and, really, no one wants to hear a long litany about yours. Ask for prayers but leave the dissertation unread. A confessor urged me a few months ago to "kill the spirit of complaining." I'm working on it, but I think it's a lifetime work. I better get busy because I don't have that much lifetime left. I'll ask all the angels and saints, especially my guardian angel and the Blessed Mother to intercede for me with Jesus to put a lid on it!

Where's Your House? What Land Do You Live In?

Did you ever dream about being in a house? In many cases dreaming about houses relates to a person's identity. Think about the expression, "That really hits me where I live." What does that mean? Doesn't it indicate those things that are most important to you, in fact, those things at the very center of your being, where you live? Knowing ourselves is foundational to the spiritual life. Self-delusion is no virtue and, in order to know ourselves, we need to see ourselves in relation to God and His will for us. If you want to know yourself, get to know God!

Do You Have Trouble Sleeping?

Then today's saint is an intercessor for you. St. Peter of Alcantara got my attention last year on 
this date when I read about him in Butler's Lives of the Saints. He took mortification seriously and spent many hours awake during the night. Those of us with sleep issues would do well to seek his help in our own "night watchings" although I can't say I'm ready to practice his mortifications:

He had no other bed than a skin laid on the floor, on which he knelt a part of the night and slept sitting, leaning his head against a wall. His [night] watchings were the most difficult and remarkable of all the austerities which he practiced, and in consequence of them he has been regarded in after-ages as the patron saint of night-watchmen.

Once when a friend of St. Peter lamented over the wickedness of the world, something we can all certainly relate to these days, he replied:

Sunday Meditation from St. Teresa of Avila

On Prayer:

"All that the beginner in prayer has to do - and you must not forget this, for it is very important -- is to labour and be resolute and prepare himself with all possible diligence to bring his will into conformity with the will of God As I shall say later, you may be quite sure that this comprises the very greatest perfection which can be attained on the spiritual road. The more perfectly a person practises it, the more he will receive of the Lord and the greater the progress he will make on this road; do not think we have to use strange jargon or dabble in things of which we have no knowledge or understanding; our entire welfare is to be found in what I have described. If we go astray at the very beginning and want the Lord to do our will and to lead us just as our fancy dictates, how can this building possibly have a firm foundation? Let us see that we do as much as in us lies and avoid these venomous reptiles, for often it is the Lord's will that we should be persecuted and afflicted by evil thoughts, which we cannot cast out, and also by aridities; and sometimes He even allows these reptiles to bite us, so that we may learn better how to be on our guard in the future and see if we are really grieved at having offended Him.

Happy Feast Day, St. Teresa

I love St. Teresa of Avila. I spent months using a little booklet of seventeen Communion meditations she wrote as my own thanksgiving after Mass. Whenever I got to the end I started over. You can tell how much the little paperback was handled because it's taped and held together with rubber bands. I still use it occasionally.

The title of my booklet is Lingering with my Lord, but it wasn't a title St. Teresa selected. According to the introduction the translator, Michael Griffin, she frequently didn't title her works. When the meditations were published in 1588 the publisher, Luis de Leon, called it "Exclamations or meditations of the soul to its God, written by Mother Teresa of Jesus, on different days, according to the spirit communicated to her by our Lord after she made her Communion, in the year 1569." Wow! How did he fit all that on the cover? The title most often given to the book is Exclamations of the Soul to God. I like Griffin's title better. It has a sense of savoring -- "taste and see the goodness of the Lord."

Today I'm savoring once again St. Teresa's meditations and I offer you a few tastes as well:

Ah...St. Teresa., Happy Feast Day

And thank you for writing all those lovely Communion meditations. Help me to be more still and silent and composed after Communion and inspire me with blessed thoughts like yours.

O God of my soul, how quick we are to offend You, and with how much greater speed You pardon us! What could be the cause, Lord of such foolish boldness? Is it because we have already understood Your great mercy and that we forget how just is Your Justice? The sorrows of death encompass Me.  Oh, oh, oh, how serious a thing is sin, that it was enough to cause the death of God and to afflict Him with so much suffering! And even now, my God, You are surrounded by these pains! Where can You go so that they will not torment You! Everywere mortals are wounding you. 

O Christians! Now is the time to defend your Kin and to keep Him cmpany in His great solitude; there are so few vassals who remain with Him and such a great multitude that follow Lucifer. And the worst of it is that they show themselves to be friends in public, and sell Him out in secret. There is hardly anyone who can be found that He can trust. O true Friend, how badly are You repaid by the one who betrays You! O true Christians! Help out by weeping for your God.

Ah, St. Teresa, help us to love God as you did. Help us to have the zeal of true friends of Jesus.

Pentecost Sunday - Are you on fire?

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

Do you want to light the fire of Christ's love on the earth? What one thing can you do today to become a burning furnace of charity as St. Teresa of Avila said? What one candle can you light to dispel the darkness. Remember that darkness is the absence of light. One candle pushes it back, 100 candles create an oasis of light. A million candles may be as bright as a sunny day. It all begins with the first candle, the first tongue of flame on an apostle's head.

If you feel like a spent match, put your hand in Christ's and ask him to remake you. The apostles in the upper room weren't exactly paragons of zeal. But once they were filled with the spirit, they lit a flame on the earth that still burns (even if sometimes dimly). You make a difference; the world needs your light. Don't hide it under a bushel basket.