Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

He gave up thoughts of suicide
to be of help to souls
after a cannonball shattering his knee
taught him something of the world,
and legends read during recovery
pierced those places where sinew joins bone:
finding God in agony first,

but then in stars by night
and later at day in a blade of grass,
an orange leaf.
He began his mornings with
"What shall we do for God today?,"
letting the Spirit blow through his soul
as wind through a field of poppies.
- by Fr. James Janda
Archdiocese of Salt Lake City

Dear Saint Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.

(Happy 10th Heavenly anniversary, dear Thomas Edmund.)

Miracle

“This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.”

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Feast of Saint Martha

"Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father's love--difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul's miseries, her burdens, her needs--everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness."
--Abbe Combes from The Spirituality of Saint Therese

Saint Martha, pray for us.

Letter-writing

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives. 

~Anatole Broyard

Tears

Tears are the summer showers to the soul.

-- Alfred Austin

Key Ingredients of Love and Marriage That Last

 How beautiful this is! Love is so simple, and so easy, for those who know the secrets. (To find the secrets, click on the third word of this post.)

For every beauty

“For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.”

--Ivan Panin

Love

Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year - it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul.
-- Author Unknown

Feast of Saint Anne

Good Saint Anne, pray for us.

No words

Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

 --Dag Hammarskjold

Three Favourite Prayers

Originating in Great Britain at Mac's blog address at http://mulier-fortis.blogspot.com/, there is a prayer meme making the rounds of  this virtual world for which Father John Abberton has "tagged"yours truly: it is an honour for which I thank him.  The rules of the meme are these:
"Name your three favourite prayers, and explain why they're your favourites.Then tag five bloggers - give them a link, and then go and tell them they have been tagged. Finally, tell the person who tagged you that you've completed the meme. The Liturgy and the Sacraments are off limits here. I'm more interested in people's favourite devotional prayers."
 Here are my three choices:
1) Written by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who is very dear to me, as a meditation on the immensity of the Love of God:
Suscipe
'Receive, O Lord, all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or hold, You have given me; I give it all back to You and surrender it wholly to be governed by Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.' (Spiritual Exercises, #234)

2) Saint Raphael is another one of my favorite saints. Here is a prayer to ask his help:
O Raphael, lead us towards those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us! Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for! May all our movements, all their movements, be guided by your Light and transfigured by your Joy.
Angel Guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the Feet of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of earth, we feel the need of calling to you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, so that we may not be as strangers in the Province of Joy, all ignorant of the concerns of our country.
Remember the weak, you who are strong--you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene, and bright with the resplendent glory of God. 


3) Since I have a great love for Our Lady, this prayer of Saint Maximilian Kolbe is one of my favorites:
My life, my every moment, my death,
Where, when and how it will befall me,
My entire eternity:
It is all Thine,
O Immaculata!
Take everything into Thy hands,
as it pleases Thee.

The five bloggers I tag to carry on this meme are:
Dymphna at http://dymphnaswell.blogspot.com/
Magister Christianus at http://bedlamorparnassus.blogspot.com/
John Whitehead at http://onceiwasacleverboy.blogspot.com/   
David Werling at http://arsorandi.blogspot.com/
Andrew at http://recusantcorner.blogspot.com/

Another one of my favorite prayers, one to my Guardian Angel,  is posted below. May God bless you and Our Lady protect you all.



  

Go forth

Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Miracles

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

--C.S.Lewis 

Feast of Saint Mary Magdalen

"Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can floods drown it; if a man shall give all the substance of his house for love,  he shall despise it as nothing."
--from the Lesson from the Book of Wisdom for the Mass of Saint Mary Magdalen
 Saint Mary Magdalen, pray for us.

(Happy sixteenth birthday, Stephen.)

Happiness and peace

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

--C. S. Lewis 

Blessing

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. 

--Henry David Thoreau

Forgive

'Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive.

--John Sheffield

Friendship

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel, drop by drop, there is at last a drop that makes it run over:  so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

-- James Boswell

Dreams

"Keep true to the dreams of thy youth."

--Friedrich von Schiller

Without love

"Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing."
 --Saint Therese of Lisieux

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

"He Whom the whole world could not contain enclosed Himself within thy womb, being made man."
--from the Mass for the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.

Two words

Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope'.

--Alexandre Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo

Understanding

Our most difficult task as a friend is to offer understanding when we don't understand.  

~Robert Brault

The shell

“Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego”

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

On the shore

"I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought."

--Helen Keller

That best portion

That best portion of a good man's life,
his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

--William Wordsworth

Tears of joy

"Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams."

--Hosea Ballou

Friend

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.  

~Donna Roberts

Saint Elizabeth of Portugal

"Who shall find a valiant woman?  Far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her.  The heart of her husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils.  She will render him good, and not evil, all the days of her life."
--Wisdom, 31, from the Mass of Saint Elizabeth

Dear holy patron Saint Elizabeth, pray for us.

Letter

To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.  

--Phyllis Theroux

Garden

"God almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures."

-- Francis Bacon

Truth

“Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.”

--Claude Adrien Helvetius

Secrets of the heart

"The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking
confess the secrets of the heart."
--Saint Jerome

Blue sky

"And they were canopied by the blue sky, 
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in Heaven."

--Lord Byron

Sea

"And then, the unspeakable purity - and freshness of the air! There was just enough heat to enhance the value of the breeze, and just enough wind to keep the whole sea in motion, to make the waves come bounding to the shore, foaming and sparkling, as if wild with glee."

--Anne Bronte in Agnes Grey

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

"My soul doth magnify the Lord; and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior."
--the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin, Saint Elizabeth

Yearn

"Yearn to understand first and to be understood second."

--Beca Lewis

The true liturgy

"Fish live in the sea and are silent. Terrestrial animals cry out, but the birds, whose vital space is the heavens, sing. Silence is proper to the sea, crying out to the earth, and singing to the heavens. Man, however, participates in all three: he bares within him the depth of the sea, the weight of the earth, and the height of the heavens; this is why all three modes of being belong to him: silence, crying out, and song. Today...we see that, devoid of transcendence, all that is left to man is to cry out, because he wishes to be only earth and seeks to turn into earth even the heavens and the depth of the sea. The true liturgy, the liturgy of the communion of saints, restores to him the fullness of his being. It teaches him anew how to be silent and how to sing, opening to him the profundity of the sea and teaching him how to fly, the nature of an angel; elevating his heart, it makes that song resonate in him once again which had in a way fallen asleep. In fact, we can even say that the true liturgy is recognisable especially when it frees us from the common way of living, and restores to us depth and height, silence and song. The true liturgy is recognisable by the fact that it is cosmic, not custom made for a group. It sings with the angels. It remains silent with the profound depth of the universe in waiting. And in this way it redeems the world.”
--from the writings of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI
(Thank you, Father Tim, for your post @
http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2010/06/different-kinds-of-silence-at-mass.html)

The Feast Of The Most Precious Blood Of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Worthy art Thou, O Lord, to take the book, and to open the seals thereof:  because Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God in Thy Blood.

--Apoc. 5. 9