"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
On Saturday evening preparing for the glory of Sunday, Arsenius would turn his back on the sun and stretch out his hands in prayer towards heaven till once again the sun shone on his face
– Sayings, Aresnius 30
The article Waiting for the glory of Sunday first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net
“After you have made a decision that is pleasing to God, the Devil may try to make you have second thoughts. Intensify your prayer time, meditation, and good deeds. For if Satan’s temptations merely cause you to increase your efforts to grow in holiness, he’ll have an incentive to leave you alone.”
– St. Ignatius of Loyola
(Thanks to Anh for this one)
One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time. – John Piper
Some monks called Euchites, or ‘men of prayer’, once came to Lucius in the ninth region of Alexandria.
He asked them, “What manual work do you do?” They said, “We do not work with out hands. We obey St. Paul’s command and pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). He said to them, “Don’t you eat?” They said, “Yes, we do.” He said to them: “When you are eating who prays for you?” Then he asked them, “Don’t you sleep?” They said “Yes, we do.” He said, “Who prays for you while you are asleep?” and they could not answer him.
Then he said to them, “I may be wrong, brothers, but it seems to me that you don’t do what you say. I will show you how I pray without ceasing although I work with my hands. With God’s help, I sit down with a few palm leaves, and plait them, and say, “Have mercy upon me, O God, after they great mercy: and according to the multitude of they mercies do away with mine iniquity” (Ps 51:1). He asked them, “Is that prayer, or not” They said, “It’s prayer all right.”
He said, “When I spend all day working and praying in my heart, I make about sixteen pence. Two of these I put outside the door, and with the rest I buy flood. Whoever finds the two pennies outside the door prays for me while I am eating and sleeping: and so by God’s grace I fulfil the text, “Pray without ceasing”.
– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V
Yesterday Pope Benedict officially stepped down as Pope. We must continue to pray for him and for his successor…
“I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth.” – Pope Benedict XVI
A hermit said, “Chastity is born of tranquility, and silence, and inner prayer”
– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V
I meant to post this blog entry a long time ago, but it became one of the many posts to hide itself away in my Drafts folder. I came across it yesterday and, given the recent horrific events in Connecticut, I thought it was an appropriate time to finally post it.
Back in May of 2011, there was a great stir after a parishioner of a parish in Florida requested a Mass to be said for the soul of Osama Bin Laden.
This request caused all kinds of uproar among other parishioners:
“I think it’s totally wrong, he doesn’t belong in the Catholic religion. For what he did to Americans, he doesn’t belong anywhere…”
“It’s unconscionable, it’s sacrilegious…”
While I can understand the gut reaction of those who objected to this proposed Mass intention, how compatible are these statements with the Catholic faith?