One Day...

God-willing, I will come back to this blog. It's more... quiet? A bit more personal.

For the time being, I am still going to keep posting onto www.phillymustardseed.com as I continue to do the work that God is currently calling me to. If it strikes up controversy, I hope you will have mercy on me.

My heart continues to be grateful for my friends & family that have been so generous with their prayers. God is good, and He has stretched me a great deal this past year. He continues to open my eyes to new wonders. The blessings have been abundant.

Please continue to carry me in your hearts for when you go to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. As I continue to mature in this life, I am still learning to not seek the consolations of God, but rather the God of consolation.

Deo gratias!

"Feel your stillness and your natural state of being. Allow yourself to be brought into the wine cellar of love. Let yourself drink randomly, without reason or plan, from the divine wine of love. Say yes to whatever you are given. Place any fear to the side and keep drinking of the love. Let an old self die….let a new self be born. Say yes to this paradise of delights.” - Saint Teresa of Avila

Chosen

One cannot desire freedom from the Cross when one is especially chosen for the Cross.
- St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy

"Trials help very much in detaching us from the earth. They make us look higher than this world. Here below, nothing can satisfy us. We cannot enjoy a little rest except in being ready to do God's Will..." - St. Therese

My days seem to operate with the Liturgical Year. If I am supposed to be in joyous expectations then why have I been so anxious over my trials? Corporal suffering seems sweeter than to be faced with the weakness of my humanity, and when my human will is being tested for virtue & whatever love I possess is frailing... sometimes I just want to just runaway like a maniac from what I perceive as a holy drilling for sanctification. Sainthood just seems like this gigantic mountain to climb, and Heaven seems like it is only a dream.

The misery of my self-pity said that I must be the only one that seems sorrowful at this time of the year. By the grace of God, I came across this article written by a Poor Clare Nun. I need to just let go & let Him love me & let Our Lady guide me:

"SALVE REGINA, Mater misericordiae.
Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve."


On the threshold of Advent many of us begin to experience a sense of anticipation and excitement as we look forward in expectation to the happiness and joy that we hope Christmas and its festivities will bring to us and our families.

The reality, however, is that for many of us --- and for reasons that seem to multiply with our years --- it may well come to us not as a road to the fulfillment of our dreams (and so often our illusions), but as an avenue through a Vale of Tears. Even our joy, however brief, whispers somehow that it is the harbinger of sorrow. We find this echoed in the beautifully written Catholic hymn, Salve Regina, in which our voices are raised to the Queen of Heaven to whom "we cry, poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears"--- or more literally, "to thee we breathe out (suspiramus) our sighs...!"


"Ad te Suspiramus, gementes et flentes ..."


Sometimes the pain within us swells up like a bitter-sweet anthem, as painful in its beauty as it is sorrowful in its sound ... and the last note uttered is ever a protracted sigh. At such times, we can do only this, breathe out our sighs to God and to His Holy Mother. And in the quiet of that shallow breath, how often we empty our souls of all hope...


"in hac lacrimarum vale. "


But Mary is our Advent hope ... whose heel, even now, is on that serpentine sorrow! She is our Mother in our motherlessness, our Queen in our broken servitude to sin, and she is our hope in the looming despair which would crush us under both: our sin and our sorrow.

Yes, even the joy of anticipation in Advent so often comes to us commingled with sorrow. The festooned lights of our frail hope span the gulf of our grief and we are led to a passing; a passing within ourselves through a passing of all things. We are sojourners only, pilgrims withal, and exiles in longing. It is the fabric of our being --- as long as it is a being-apart-from-God. In Advent, then, we come to a twilight, and know not whether it precedes the dawn or the dark. How obscure is this valley, as fraught with hope as it is with impending despair!

But there is one who dwelt in this twilight before us.

How little she, too, understood, comprehended, perceived! How anxious her heart upon the threshold of the impossible; how obscure the way through which God would become man, and how meekly she questioned, even as she did not doubt, what was proffered by God! ... "How can this be?"

She knows our twilight, our consternation, our fear. "How can this be?", we ask of the promises of God --- "how can this be?" ... that this valley of tears will lead us to the summit of Paradise? That our sins without number will be numbered no more? Will the salt of our tears become the salt of the earth? And will this dust of the earth be raised up unto God? "Quomodo fiet istud?" "How can this be?

"Et Verbum caro factum est!", we affirm with our lips, embrace with our hearts each Sunday at Mass: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us!" The Light came into this world, not in the day, but in the darkness!

It is Mary, then, whom we first find in this valley, "The Woman" who preceded not God, but "The Man" Whom God assumed in His Son.

Mary ... the paradigm of the possible, in all that is impossible to man, but is possible to God.

Yes, Mary is the Mother of hope!

"Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria. "


"And after this our exile, show unto us the Blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus, O Compassionate , O Holy, O sweet Virgin Mary "

Pray with Mary this Advent; not simply to her ... but with her, for her heart's desire is precisely what you ask of God: to lead you through this vale of tears that, at Christmas, she herself may show you, in the manger of your own poverty, the fruit of all hope, "the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus."

I humbly offer this reflection to you with sincere prayers for a blessed and fruitful Advent --- especially for all who still dwell in a darkness.

- A Poor Clare Nun

Veni Jesu

Suffering is a great favor. Remember that everything soon comes to an end . . . and take courage. Think of how our gain is eternal.

-------St. Teresa of Avila

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So, I heard a Christian song recently that said "If everything comes down to love, then what am I so afraid of?" True love requires to suffer & to sacrifice. It goes beyond the measure of emotion.

He continually strips me of my attachments in order to keep me close to Him, and selfishly, sometimes I fight that grace. I don't get everything my way. I'm stretched out of my comfort zone. I don't like the idea of my world changing around me, and virtue of charity quickly flies out the window. And what do I do but question why He is doing it. Well, I know that the answer is pure & simple. It is because of Love.

However, if everything does come down to love, what am I so afraid of? I'm afraid of the pain of bearing my cross patiently, that's what it is. I lack the courage to go beyond myself & my selfish comfort zone. It's a lesson in love every day for me to deny myself for the sake of Christ. It's the only real way for someone to remain humble, I suppose.

I fail to recognize that I am permitted suffer because of His great love for me. In the spirit of Advent, please pray that my heart may be made into a place of dwelling for the Christ Child. My heart needs to be melted & sanctified by Love through the means of suffering.

the people living in darkness
have seen a great light - Mt 4:16

O, my soul, what more do you want?!

As I was preparing for work the other morning, I was taking notice to my bouquet of lilies that sit by my window sill. Some people do not realize that in order for a lily bud to bloom, the other lily that did bloom previously must be cut off. Failure to do this would cause that entire stem to die. It dawned on me that there is much of a parallel of the lily to the spiritual life.

How often must be die to ourselves in order for growth to take place? We have to let go of such things in life that we have may grown attached to or comfortable with at times in order to progress with God's work in us. We give thanks to God for how much He has given us and for what He will give us, entrust it to His Mercy & Providence and embrace with humility that all is His and that none is truly accounted to our efforts. Deo Gratias!

I was able to contemplate on this during a recent trip with my girls in the youth group to the Poor Clare Monastery (www.poor-clares.org) in Barhamsville, VA. Many dramatic changes have taken place in my life since my last major visit to the monastery over a year ago. I thought of the many times that I tried to fight the will of God and realized how much of a great distance it would have placed between me and my Lord if I did not eventually lovingly conform. I would have been like that dying lily of no growth. Our sanctification is the beauty of our souls that Our Almighty God wishes to take place. It just amazes me that as humans we fail to see the Love of God when permitting us to suffer and how we will viciously fight the Cross which is our salvation. We fight against Love when we do not unite our will to the will of God. Is that not just baffling to think how we are in our human weaknesses and just how greatly the Grace of God is necessary for us to overcome ourselves? We seek things, desires & plans outside of God. I know it silenced me when I questioned who I am to fight against the Love of which saves me.

It is like a quote by St. John of the Cross:

What , more do you want, 0 soul! And what else do you search for outside, when within yourself you possess your riches, delights, satisfactions, fullness, and kingdom -your Beloved whom you desire and seek? Be joyful and gladdened in your interior recollection with Him, for you have Him so close to you. Desire Him there, adore Him there. Do not go in pursuit of Him outside yourself. You will only become distracted and wearied thereby, and you shall not find Him, nor enjoy Him more securely, nor sooner, nor more intimately than by seeking Him within you.

My soul, what more do you want?!

More of an external matter, I will be moving outside of Philadelphia to take up an internship with the Theology of the Body Institute (www.tobinstitute.org). Oh dear, am I eager?! The big move takes place the day after Christmas. Please pray for me! Thank you to the friends who have prayed and assisted with housing, and for those who have been encouraging me.

Please also keep my very good friend, Philip Gerard Johnson, in your prayers for his health. He keeps his blog well updated too: www.philipgerardjohnson.blogspot.com