Wise Words on Wednesday: Sum of our weaknesses
“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his son”
– JP2
Tag: Love
Back on track
I recently wrote a few concluding thoughts about Jeff Bethke’s “Jesus > Religion” video. I’ve just seen a new video starting to go viral on Facebook…
Good chap, that’s much more like it.
…do it anyway
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.
Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
– Blessed Mother Teresa
Wise Words on Wednesday: Pope St. Gregory the Great
“The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist”
– Pope St. Gregory the Great
A new definition of love
A short post today…
A while ago there was this girl who was…well, she was pretty amazing…I was kinda nuts about her…
One evening I went to a Young Adult Diocesan event and was all all set to ask her out. Before I could speak to her that evening, the speaker got up and began his talk. During his presentation he gave a definition of “love” that I had never heard before:
“Love….is seeking the good of ‘the other’, in preference to your own, even at the expense of your own happiness”
Husbands, *love* your wives
Before we leave the Easter season, I wanted to share with you something that stood out for me during the last days of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. It was a slightly odd thing for me, being that it was the subject of marriage….
How did I manage to get to the subject of “marriage” from the Easter celebrations? Well, what was running through my mind throughout the Easter liturgy was the last part of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians:
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” – Ephesians 5:21-27
Now, without a doubt, this is a passage that has been abused over the years. It has certainly been used for the subjugation of women and the preservation of tyrannical husbands. In response to this, many have rejected the entire passage out of hand. I don’t think either of these two positions is acceptable, since both reactions ignore the passage’s context and miss the important imagery being used by Paul.