Note to God

Because you need a heart which is in love, not an easy life, to achieve happiness. . As St Gregory remarks: There are some who want to be humble without being despised. They want to be content with what they have without suffering need. They want to be chaste without mortifying their body ... When they try to acquire virtues while fleeing from the efforts that virtue requires, it is as though they hoped to win a war by living comfortably in the city, without having anything to do with the combat on the battlefield. Of course they cannot win in that way. The conquerors are those who remain awake and vigilant, those who battle with the enemy, those who regularly mortify themselves. And these people are precisely the happiest. 

The elder son didn't have compassion it seems. But the elder son have yet to encounter his brother. Probably, if he had seen his brother first before the song and dance, he would have wanted his brother to return back to the father. Because his brother had suffered much,  he has died. He was probably gaunt,  lost, emaciated, lifeless.  If he had seen that, the way the father saw,  he would have wanted an even bigger celebration for his brother. So let us encounter our brothers. Especially those who are lost. That we may truly desire to bring the home. 

Once again we see God's unfathomable mercy. Our Father God, when we come to him repentant, draws, from our wretchedness, treasure; from our weakness, strength. What then will he prepare for us, if we don't forsake him, if we go to him daily, if we talk lovingly to him and confirm our love with deeds, if we go to him for everything, trusting in his almighty power and mercy?

St. Bernard’s saying, to apostles: “If you are wise, you will be reservoirs and not channels.” Si sapis, concham te exhibebis et non canalem? (Serm. xviii in Cant.) The channels let the water flow away, and do not retain a drop. But the reservoir is first filled, and then, without emptying itself, pours out its overflow, which is ever renewed, over the fields which it waters. How many there are devoted to works, who are never anything but channels, and retain nothing for themselves, but remain dry while trying to pass on life-giving grace to souls! “We have many channels in the Church today,” St. Bernard added, sadly, “but very few reservoirs.”70

Amongst these, the mortifications which refer to the control of our internal senses are especially important for our interior progress and for enabling us to achieve purity of heart.  1. mortification of the imagination — avoiding that interior monologue in which fantasy runs wild, by trying to turn it into a dialogue with God, present in our soul in grace. We try to put a restraining check on that tendency of ours to go over and over some little happening in the course of which we have come off badly. No doubt we have felt slighted, and have made much of an injury to our self-esteem, caused to us quite unintentionally. If we don’t apply the brake in time, our conceit and pride will cause us to overbalance until we lose our peace and presence of God.  2. Mortification of the memory — avoiding use less recollections which make us waste time(cf idem, The Way, 13) and which could lead us into more serious temptations.  3. Mortification of the intelligence — so as to put it s...

In a life that is almost exclusively active, the soul is excited, worked up, scatters its energies and, by that very fact, weakens itself. It has a threefold defect: sollicita es60 (thou art careful), it is worried with mental problems, sollicitudines in cogitatu; turbaris (thou art troubled), and here are the troubles that stir up the passions, turbationes in affectu; finally, erga plurima (about many things), occupations are multiplied, and so our energy and our action is divided: divisiones in actu. But for the interior life one thing alone is necessary: union with God. Porro unum est necessarium. All the rest can only be secondary, something accomplished solely by virtue of this union and in order to strengthen it more and more.

There was a big old house there, and I was struck by some words carved on the main facade of the building. I was told that they reflected the stubbornness of the admirable fellow who owned the house. From the building, through a little door set into the outer wall, he had a direct means of exit from the city. But the civic authorities made him block it up. He complied, but he had this inscription put over the window on the facade: Where one door closes, another door opens. There's stubbornness for you! Are you and I like that in our affairs? When something doesn't work out in our daily struggle, well then, tomorrow it will! My children, be stubborn. Raise your stubbornness to the supernatural level.

As Pope Francis said, speaking about the conversation between Jesus and the rich young man: “When we listen with our heart, the other person feels welcomed, not judged; free to talk about their own life experience and spiritual path.” [12]  Also, in a broader sense: “The Spirit asks us to listen to the questions, concerns and hopes of every Church, people and nation. And to listen to the world, to the challenges and changes that it sets before us. Let us not soundproof our hearts; let us not remain barricaded in our certainties. So often our certainties can make us closed. Let us listen to one another.”

1. The easiest kind of label is manual labour. 2. Then come intellectual labour. The intellectual toil of the scholar, the thinker, in his often arduous pursuit of truth; that of the writer, of the professor, who put everything they have into the effort to communicate all they know to others; of the diplomat, the financier, the engineer and so on, as well as the intellectual labor required of a general during a battle if he is to foresee and direct everything and make the proper decisions. 3. Finally, there is the labor of the interior life. And he did not hesitate to declare that of the three, this kind, when it is taken seriously, is by far the most exacting. But at the same time, it is this kind that offers us the most satisfaction here on earth. It is likewise the most important. it comes to the effort to acquire virtue.