All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be if you consent to let him do it? All you have to do is desire it.
Thomas Merton quoting his friend Bob Lax in “The Seven Story Mountain”
Nowhere in the world has so great a miracle occurred as in that little stable in Bethlehem;
here God and man became one.
-Thomas A. Kempis
We have to put mercy before judgment, and in every case God’s judgment will always be in the light of his mercy. Let us abandon all fear and dread, for these do not befit men and women who are loved. Instead, let us live the joy of encounter with the grace that transforms all.”
– Pope Francis
I prefer winter and fall,
when you feel the bone structure of the landscape
– the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
– Andrew Wyeth
Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning and plotting.
–Regina Sara Ryan, Praying Dangerously
The law of God is not a gate you make it through, not a finish line you attain.
It is the road toward relationships of healing, blessing and justice.
The law of God is not a target you can hit or miss. It is the bow that shoots you toward perfect love.
The law of God is a metaphor for awe which you wonder about out loud until you become a metaphor for love.
– Steve Garnass-Holmes
May the light we now kindle inspire us to use our powers to heal and not to harm,
to help and not to hinder,to bless and not to curse, to serve you, Spirit of freedom.
– From a Passover Haggadah
The bare trees have made up their seed bundles.They are ready now.The warm brown light pauses briefly, shrugs and moves on. They are ready to play dead for a while…The spring will find them rested.
– Denise Levertov
We need some pines to assuage the darkness when it blankets the mind, we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly as a plane’s wing, and a worn bed of needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,and a blur or two of a wild thing that sees and is not seen. We need these things between appointments, after work, and, if we keep them, then someone someday, lying down after a walk and supper, with the fire hole wet down, the whole night sky set at a particular time, without numbers or hours, will cause a little sound of thanks–a zipper or a snap–to close round the moment and the thought of whatever good we did.
– Marvin Bell, Poet
A sure way of changing how we feel about another is to find a quiet spot and imagine that we are surrounded by God’s love. Then imagine that other person sitting opposite you also surrounded by God’s love.The same love embraces both of you. God loves and embraces you both. Let this truth sink into your very being and slowly, over time, you will find that acceptance has found a home in your heart.
– Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto
