Feast of Saint John Bosco

Everything and everyone is won by the sweetness of our words and of our works.

--Saint John Bosco

Show me your heart

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen 

Sunshine

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you will never see the shadow.”

--Helen Keller

Prayer

Prayer is an end to isolation. It is living our daily life with Someone: with Him who alone can deliver us from solitude.

--Georges Lefevre

Time for tea

“Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones - the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically.”

--Rabindranath Tagore

Cheerfulness Taught by Reason

I THINK we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint ?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints ? At least it may be said
' Because the way is short, I thank thee, God. '
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A book

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.  
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Prayer

In the war upon the powers of darkness, prayer is the primary and mightiest weapon, both in aggressive war upon them and their works; in the deliverance of men from their power; and against them as a hierarchy of powers opposed to Christ and His Church.
--Jessie Penn-Lewis

Be at peace

“Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.”
--Saint Jerome

Friends

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.  
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Feast of Saint Agnes

He lifts me to the golden doors;
The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strows her lights below,
And deepens on and up! the gates
Roll back, and far within
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,
One sabbath deep and wide--
A light upon the shining sea--
The bridegroom with his bride!

--from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Saint Agnes' Eve

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Kindness

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.  
--Mark Twain

Consolation

If there were no tribulation, there would be no rest;
if there were no winter, there would be no summer.
--St. John Chrysostom

Woods

 Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though; 

He will not see me stopping here 

To watch his woods fill up with snow.
--Robert Lee Frost

Present blessings

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

--Charles Dickens 

Peace

Peace is the first thing the angels sang. Peace is the mark of the sons of God. Peace is the nurse of love. Peace is the mother of unity. Peace is the rest of blessed souls. Peace is the dwelling place of eternity.
--Pope Saint Leo the Great

To Mary

”Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that Our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to her as He gave to His Apostles.”
--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Friend

"The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another." 
--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated by Stuart Gilbert

Brave and patient

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

--Helen Keller

Nothing

"A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
--Blessed John Henry Newman

Snow forest

“There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.”

--William Sharp

When he spoke

“When he spoke, what tender words he used! 

So softly, that like flakes of feathered snow, 

They melted as they fell.”

--John Dryden

Feast of the Holy Family

Giving

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

--Robert Louis Stevenson 

Best day

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Its own beauty

“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Saint Andre Bessette

“It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” 
--St. André Bessette
Saint Andre, pray for us.

Two years

The days have turned to years

And flown away like birds 

Who, seeking shelter from the cold,

Take to their wings and soar

To warmer climes.

I would fly away with them

But, for now, my work is here.

And though I am not sad, 

I have known happier times:

Yet Spring will soon return, 

And I will know them once again.

 
(It was two years ago today, on the Feast of the Epiphany, 2008,  that I first began "A Trail of Flowers," though it sometimes seems a lifetime ago. I am grateful for all of you, dear readers, dear friends, who walk with me on this journey through life. May Almighty God bless you and Our Lady protect you. And may you always have a friend to walk beside you.--Kindred Spirit)

Feast of the Epiphany

Your friends

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

--Richard Bach 

Doors

“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.”

--Flora Whittemore

Resolution

This gift is mine to hold but for a while; then I must return it to the One who gave it to me. It is such a treasure, more precious than all of the riches of the world, and what will I do with it in the time which is left for me to possess it? My eyes are just beginning to see its beauty, my mind is just beginning to grasp its worth. The days pass so quickly, and my life is such a wonder. May I never waste another moment of it.

The Holy Name of Jesus

 

I will praise Thee, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify Thy Name forever; for Thou, O Lord, art sweet and mild: and plenteous in mercy to all that call upon Thee, alleluia.

--Ps. 85.12,5 from the Offertory of the Mass of the Holy Name of Jesus

Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord

"On the day that the divine Infant was circumcised, He received the name of Jesus, which signifies SAVIOUR, which had been given Him by the angel before He was conceived. That name, so beautiful, so glorious, the divine Child does not wish to bear for one moment without fulfilling its meaning; even at the moment of His circumcision He showed Himself a SAVIOUR by shedding for us that blood a single drop of which is more than sufficient for the ransom and salvation of the whole world."
--Father Alban Butler