PARADOXICAL

Never give way to the desire to be liberated from your difficulties. This is a privilege, which is from God in order to make you perfect in every virtue. It is a reward and not a punishment, make no doubt of this. God desires that you bear this burden patiently, with complete surrender to His holy good pleasure. - St. __ de Chantal.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. - Philip Brooks

Someday everyhing will make perfect sense. So for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the ters, and keep reminding yourself that everything happens for a reason.

_________

Comment: The first one initially struck me as masochistic whi8le giving a picture of God who's a sadist. When I thought it through, though, I suspected it contained an important truth: That when you are with God and still you suffer and there seems no way out, God must have sent the suffering to you for a reason, and you should see it as a privilege, offering each moment of pain instead for this or that intention. Suffering can indeed be a special blessing to those who are chosen to go through it, not out of their own choice or as a consequence of their past actions. Besides, suffering in the name of love is no longer suffering, but sacrifice.

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:01 PM 0 Comments

The simplification of anything is always sensational. -G.K. Chesterton

If you really love someone, you give that loved one the power to hurt and pain you in a way nothing else can. Hanah Hurnard, in Hinds Feet on High Places

The soul that has sufficient faith accepts all the events of life as graces from God in the serene assurance that God knows best.

posted by Resty Odon  # 1:06 AM 0 Comments

We can't eliminate so-called negative forces of afflictive emotions. The only way to work with them is to encounter them directly, enter their world and transform then. They then become manifestations of wisdom. Our weakness becomes our strengths, the source or our compassion for others on the basis of our awakened nature. - J. Halifax.

The paradox of transformation

We need light for our journey but we also need darkness.

Exploded version:

Be thankful that you don't have everything you desire. If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful for the difficult times. It's during those times that you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for your mistakes. They will teach you valuable lessons.

Find a way to be thankful for you troubles, and they can become your blessings.


Why did you so dignify us? With unimaginable love, you looked upon your creatures within your very self, You fell in love with us. - St. Catherine of Sienna


I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience. The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish. - Rabindranath Tagore.


Real poverty is feeling yourself to be nothing because you possess nothing. Poverty is the shape of humility, the outward garment of humility. - Carlo Carretto


Love slays what we have been that we may be what we were not. St. Augustine

Bearing one another's burden helps make the burden bearable. "Bear one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. - Gal. 6:2 (Isn't the "law of Christ" the law of love? -B.H.)

Lord, as the day ends, may we never forget the wake-up calls you send us. They may be deafening or at times still and quiet. Grant us the grace to listen and experience you more deeply.

God has given us two gifts: one is choice and another is chance. Choice is to select a good one and chance is to have the best one. I wish you always make the right choice and always have the best chances.

posted by Resty Odon  # 1:27 AM 0 Comments

"What it's like with faith... You know everything and you know nothing; it's darkness, but it's bright darkness. It's the greatest wonder of our relationship with God." (From Letters to Dolcidia (?))

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:21 PM 0 Comments

"Isnt it amazing that the same God who is unchanging is also the same God who is new everyday? His ways of loving and mercy are constant yet new every morning."

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:18 PM 0 Comments

Mother Teresa on Love:

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving.
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:17 PM 0 Comments