Note to God

So important to prevent lukewarmness.  Self examination is the starting point to be more enkindled with God's love through practical deed of daily self giving. Take it very seriously. What have you done to prevent you to lose intimacy with christ? What do u think of more? Yourself or glory of God? About yourself , your little things? Your sensuality? 

Recently I’ve been thinking about the difference between the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being—whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.

I no longer believe that character formation is mostly an individual task, or is achieved on a person-by-person basis. I no longer believe that character building is like going to the gym: You do your exercises and you build up your honesty, courage, integrity, and grit. I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away. You love things that are worthy of love. You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, lose yourself in the daily act of serving others as they lose themselves in the daily acts of serving you. Character is a good thing to have, and there’s a lot to be learned on the road to character. But there’s a better thing to have—moral joy

In their book Practical Wisdom, psychologist Barry Schwartz and political scientist Kenneth Sharpe tell a story about a hospital janitor named Luke. In the hospital where Luke worked, there was a young man who’d gotten into a fight and was now in a coma, and he wasn’t coming out. Every day, his father sat by his side in silent vigil, and had done so for six months. One day, Luke came in and cleaned the young man’s room. His father wasn’t there; he was out getting a smoke. Later that day, Luke ran into the father in the hallway. The father snapped at Luke and accused him of not cleaning his son’s room. The first-mountain response is to see your job as cleaning rooms. “I did clean your son’s room,” you would snap back. “It was just that you were out smoking.” The second-mountain response is to see your job as serving patients and their families. It is to meet their needs at a time of crisis. That man needed comfort. He cleaned the room again. 

1st mountain I am what the world says I am.  The ego ideal The goals on that first mountain are the normal goals that our culture endorses—to be a success, to be well thought of, to get invited into the right social circles, and to experience personal happiness. It’s all the normal stuff: nice home, nice family, nice vacations, good food, good friends, and so on. Then something happens. Some people get to the top of that first mountain, taste success, and find it…unsatisfying. “Is this all there is?” they wonder. They sense there must be a deeper journey they can take. 2nd mountain They want their organizations to be thick places,where people find purpose, and not thin places, where people come just to draw a salary. 

Men should learn how to communicate with your spouse 

Love idealise Like how mums think their children are the best and exaggerates the best trait To see the ideal of that person God is the ultimate idealise- despite our sinfulness, he idealise us to see our best and fullness  He sees many other Christ trying to emerge  Likewise , marriage is supposed to be like this - to see the ideal in the person

Virtue lies in doing what we understand we ought to do even though we don't feel like it,  and not doing what we should not do even though we feel like it, to know how to stay in my place and recognise my limitation. 

Keep struggling, so that the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar really becomes the centre and the root of your interior life, and so your whole day will turn into an act of worship — an extension of the Mass you have attended and a preparation for the next. Your whole day will then be an act of worship that overflows in aspirations, visits to the Blessed Sacrament and the offering up of your professional work and your family life. The Forge 69

Every time we gather together for a moment of prayer, and in particular contemplative prayer, we enter into a kind of combat: “a symbolic hand-to-hand combat not with an enemy, adversarial God, but with a Lord who blesses and who remains always mysterious, who seems unattainable. For this reason the sacred author uses the symbol of struggle, which implies strength of mind, perseverance, tenacity in order to achieve what is desired”  [2] . Contemplative prayer is “a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus”  [3] ; a gaze that seeks him, and that does not stop doing so, that does not let him go until he blesses us, that is, until he illuminates, with the light of his gaze, “the eyes of our heart”  [4] .

do I have that same thirst? Do I share in the fire that burns in his heart? Am I consumed by zeal for souls wherever I am? Do I fearlessly strive to enkindle the people I meet, through my prayer and atonement, through my sincere friendship? We can recall St. Josemaría’s insistence that our mission is to bring to all souls, in the middle of the world, the fire of our Lord that we harbor in our hearts: “Don’t let your life be barren. Be useful. Make yourself felt. Shine forth with the torch of your faith and your love. With your apostolic life, wipe out the trail of filth and slime left by the corrupt sowers of hatred. And set aflame all the ways of the earth with the fire of Christ that you bear in your heart” (The Way, no. 1).

Each time I am frustrated by others