Note to God

We practise a spirit of penance and of sacrifice in our daily lives, in the ordinary events of the day, without having to wait for extraordinary occasions. Penance is fulfilling exactly the timetable you have fixed for yourself even though your body resists or your mind tries to avoid it by dreaming up useless fantasies. Penance is getting up on time and also not leaving for later, without any real reason, that particular job that you find harder or most difficult to do. Penance is knowing how to reconcile your duties to God, to others and to yourself by making demands on yourself so that you find enough time for each of your tasks. You are practising penance when you lovingly keep to your schedule of prayer, despite feeling worn out listless or cold. Penance means being very charitable at all times towards those around you, starting with the members of your own family. It is to be full of tenderness and kindness towards the suffering the sick and the infirm. It is to give patient answ...

We cannot be seeing our faith as imposing on our life, but really as life itself. Our Christian faith doesn't impede us from things. It makes us really savour what life truly is with the love of God who loves you so immensely and so deeply and so richly. 

The mid day examination of conscience - tie in with Angelus Has the day been too safe? Have I talked to anyone?

Practice visualisation to just jump into the ocean of peace. Sink and exhale all the oxygen you have, in total surrender and u sink deeper and deeper into the abyss.  You see the last string of bubbles from your breath. You see the glimmer of light. You breathe your last.  And you inhale through your nose, the ocean of peace. 

Christ occupies a different place in Christianity than Buddha does in Buddhism, than Confucius in Confucianism, Mohammed in Islam and even Moses in Judaism. Buddhism does not demand you believe in Buddha, but that you become an enlightened one and follow his teachings concerning the suppression of desires. Confucianism does not demand an intimate relation with Confucius. What are important are the ethical precepts, and anyone who follows those precepts is presumed to enter into peace with his ancestors. Moses did not command people to believe in him, but to put their trust in the Lord, God. He was not pointing to himself. Islam demands faith in God and the other four tenets, but not necessarily in Mohammed. But when you come to Christ, here Christianity demands a personal, intimate bond. We have to be one with Him. We cannot in any way claim to be Christian unless we reflect the person, mind, will, heart, and humanity of Christ.

I picture a father who has two children, mischievous and disobedient, and when he comes to punish them, he sees one of them who trembles and gets away from him in terror, having, however, in the bottom of his heart the feeling that he deserves to be punished; and his brother, on the contrary, throws himself into his father’s arms, saying that he is sorry for having caused him any trouble, that he loves him, and to prove it, he will be good from now on. Then this child asks his father to punish him with a kiss. I do not believe that the heart of the happy father could resist the filial confidence of his child, whose sincerity and love he knows.

10 mins to give thanks Use the traditional prayer  Or just be with Jesus 

The false crosses are those when we start to focus on ourselves - tend to exaggerate the crosses - when it's about ourselves for ourselves The true cross is a cross for others - these are the cross we need to embrace, for others.

Commitment, that marvellous capacity of human freedom to weave love through promises, has become an almost unutterable word in every aspect of life. We seem to find greater freedom in the ease of breaking ties than in the patient effort of building them.

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed. I want – to be bound to Christ with unbreakable bonds and to feel these bonds. To be sorrowful yet alway rejoicing. To live in and for Christ, to be one of the poor in His kingdom, steeped in the leaven, filled with His spirit, impelled by His Love, reposing in the Father with the repose of which I wrote to you in my last letter. To become one who finds repose in Him alone, who desires nothing but Him on earth, and who abides in the Love of God and Christ, in whom we are fervently bound to one another.