Batman revised...

Well, we watched Batman Begins last night and I was wrong!  It happens.  A lot.

Alfred didn't originally say, "Why do we fall, Master Wayne?  So we can learn to pick ourselves up again."  It was Bruce's father, teaching Bruce a life lesson.  Nonetheless, Alfred said it later and he does have some of the best lines in the movie!

Temperance

"To live temperance well means to be detached from earthly things, to give them the importance which they merit and nothing more, to avoid creating personal needs, to exercise moderation with regard to food and drink, to rein in our whims and passions...  When we rest we do not need to run up unnecessary expense or allocate to our leisure an inordinate amount of time.  One area where we can give good example in this virtue relates to our use of television and all the other means of comfortable pastime offered by modern technology."  ---  In Conversation with God, vol. 4, p. 218

St. James

Today is the feast of St. James.

"Can you drink My cup?" Jesus asked James and He asks us.  "If we are united to Him, we will respond positively and bear what is humanly disagreeable for His sake.  In union with Christ even our pain and failure are converted into joy and peace.  It helps a great deal for us to see evidence of James' defects and of those other eleven the Lord had chosen.  They were not powerful, or wise or even simple."  (paraphrasing now...)  They were often ambitious, argumentative and lacking faith.  God can work wonders in us.  He also called us.  Do not give in to discouragement at your defects and weaknesses.  Ask Jesus for help; He is ever patient with us.  Also ask Mary's intercession to find the joy and courage to proceed on our way as the Apostle James did. 

Did anyone see The Way?  I have yet to watch it, but I heard it was very good.

On a side note - pray for our newest relation, Benjamin Thomas out in Utah who was born July 23rd! :)  The family is all doing well!

Holes

Holes are part of the design and that design is an art.  Don't compare yourself to another home educator; just do it.  Education is an art, not a science.  ---- Elizabeth Foss, 2004 (not verbatim)

St. Teresa of Avila - she must have been so cool!

St. Teresa's quotes often floor me.  We tend to think of a Saint as some perfect being, but that is far from the truth.  They struggled just as we do.

"There come days when a single word distresses me and I long to leave the world altogether, for everything in it seems to weary me."  --- St. Teresa, The Way of Perfection

I love this one -

She was traveling far to set up a new foundation and kept meeting with problems:  flooding, hotels without proper beds, twisted ankles...  "Wryly she complained:  'So much to put up with and You send me this!'  Jesus replied:  'Teresa, that's how I treat my friends.'  She was not at loss for an answer:  'Small wonder You have so few!'  Soon her good humor returned, for once the danger was passed, they enjoyed talking about it."  --- ICWG/The Foundations

So, we don't have to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, we just have to keep TRYING to be!  Happy Sunday!

Contrition Prayer

Mother, my life, my hope, lead me by the hand and if there is anything in me which is displeasing to my Father God grant that I may see it, so that, between you and me, the two of us, we may uproot it.  O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary, pray for me, that by fulfilling the most lovable Will of your Son, I may be worthy to obtain and enjoy what Our Lord Jesus has promised.  ---  St. Josemaria Escriva, The Forge, p. 161

Interior Struggle and Batman!

In the interior struggle we will meet with many failures, some unimportant, others more serious, but our atonement and contrition will bring us even closer to God.  God allows for our weakness and always forgives us, but we need to be sincere, to repent and to struggle to rise up again.  --- In Conversation with God

I don't know any movie quotes but this one from Batman Begins which is applicable to this subject:

"Why Do We Fall, Master Wayne...?"

"So that we can learn to pick ourselves up."

Hail, loving Mother of the Redeemer, gate of Heaven ever open, star of the sea; assist your people who have fallen yet strive to rise again... --- Divine Office

God bless all those who were hurt and killed last night in Colorado, their families and friends, the perpetrator, those working the case and all the Holy Souls in Purgatory.

The educated differ as much from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead. --- Aristotle

Knowledge vs. Information

"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge." --- John Naisbitt

My grace is sufficient for you...

"My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness," from last Sunday's reading in 2 Corinthians 12.  I never really understood it until recently the pronoun My was placed in front of power and if you place your in front of weakness, it may click more for you:  "for My power is made perfect in your weakness..."

Sometimes you can just read right over things and not notice them.  Other times, you read it; don't get it; try hard to get it several times, but still don't get it.  Then, sometimes, God makes it all work!

I sort of relate it to a good King who, of course has power just because he is King, but that power means nothing if he doesn't use it to help feed or take care of the peasants.  God expects us to rely totally on Him, yet He gave us free will.  Often when we start to rely too much on ourselves, He wakes us up to our complete need for Him by some humiliation or trial so that we have to say, "I can do all things in Him who makes me strong," or "without Him I can do nothing."  Trust Him; everything works for His glory if you only try to offer it all back to Him whether it seems good or bad to you.  There was an example of birds needing air resistance and lift to fly; we need that resistance sometimes!

Christian Perspective and the World

It's interesting that I never before noticed my prayer book had so many illusions to the state of the country and the world.  Now that our religious liberties are at stake, those comments seem to pop up a lot.  It's also fascinating that over 30 years ago Pope John Paul II was saying such relevant things as these:

Practical materialism is "now aggressively imposed on everyone in subtle ways. The most sacred principles that were a sure guide of individual and social behavior - the sanctity of human life, the indissolubility of marriage, the authentic significance of human sexuality, the upright use of material goods made available by progress - are being displaced by false pretexts of freedom."  ---  JPII, Address, 29 September 1979.

About 6 months later he said, "On one hand the almost exclusive orientation towards the consumption of material goods robs the human life of its deepest meaning.  On the other hand work often becomes an alienating experience, a constraint for man, subjected as it is to collectivism, since it is precipitously separated from prayer and deprived of its supernatural dimension."

However, he does express the "bright side" -  "... as the third millennium as of the Redemption draws near, God is preparing a great springtime for Christianity and we can already see its first signs."  ---  JPII, Redemptoris missio, 7 September 1990

It rather goes with today's Gospel - go and give the Gospel to others and you will receive your due in return.  We must evangelize, not just hear and read the Word of God, but PROCLAIM IT!  It is the task and responsibility of everyone to do this in whatever ways possible, ie:  detachment, good example, generosity, caring for the elderly/infirmed, etc.  ---  ICWG, vol. 7, p. 10

Complaining about it doesn't get the job done.  Tiny steps do add up in the long run.  "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."  ---  ancient proverb.

"I see dawning a new missionary age which will become a radiant day bearing an abundant harvest, if all Christians, missionaries and young Churches in particular, respond with generosity and holiness to the calls and challenges of our times."  ---  JPII, Redemptoris missio, 82

Be that light to the world today and always...

The Friend and the Beloved

The friend told his Beloved that He should pay him the amount due for the time he had served Him.  The Beloved took into account the thoughts, desires, tears, dangers and toil that the friend had suffered for love of Him.  Then the Beloved added eternal bless to the account and gave Himself as payment to His friend.  --- R. Llull, The Book of the Friend and the Beloved

Detachment

We must be thoroughly detached from ourselves, from our intellectual talents, our health, our good name, our noble ambitions, our triumphs and our successes.  I would also include ... the high ideals that lead us to seek only to give glory to God and to praise Him.  We can ensure our detachment by tailoring our will to this clear and precise rule:  "Lord, I want this or that only if it pleases You, because, if not, I'm not the slightest bit interested."  By acting in this way we are dealing a mortal blow to the selfishness and vanity that lurk in every consceince.  At the same time we will find true peace of soul through this selfless conduct that leads to an ever more intimate and intense possession of God. --- St. Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God, 114.

In God's eyes a single soul is of greater value than the whole universe and the marvels that God works in the secrecy of our lives are, by far, more extraordinary than all the splendid wonders of the material cosmos. --- M. M. Philipon, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit, p. 249.
That is pretty AWESOME if you stop to consider your favorite nature items - the full, harvest moon, the distance stars, the sun that provides life, the seahorse, the giraffe, the spider's web, whatever... and not just that one thing, but ALL of creation - and then to realize that one human soul is greater to God than ALL of that cool stuff!  See, I am Awesome cuz He made me that way!  And YOU are Awesome, too, cuz He made you that way!!!

Happy & Safe Fourth!  God Bless America!!!

Light and Salt

"Christians are to the world what the soul is to the body." ---Epistle to Diognetus

Like the first Christians, do you give good example and help others move closer to Christ by your sobriety, unquenchable cheerfulness, by keeping your word, by living justice with your subordinates and peers, by the way you spend money, by doing your work well, by doing works of mercy and never having a bad word to say about anyone at all?  --- ICWG

Well... I have a few things to go work on!

Happy Sunday!