Contemplative Haven

I know I’ve been out of touch for quite a while, but this is just about the most joyous thing I’ve read in a long time:

Her Love Endures Forever, at Jerome’s blog, Living Monstrance.

I guess I’ll be smiling all day…

I came across a great site recently as I was searching for some Catholic music: SpiritandSong.com, which was developed in association with its sister organization, OCP Publications (Oregon Catholic Press).

SpiritandSong.com describes the site as,

…a virtual faith community, a place where Christians of all ages can experience faith-building music, online prayers, devotions and much more.

Offering the latest releases by both big-name artists and emerging new talents, spiritandsong.com is THE place for contemporary Catholic music. Link and listen online anytime with streaming audio, download songs, and get updates on new releases through our newsletter. spiritandsong.com also gets you closer to the artists – and supports them in their ministry – with full-length profiles, concert and event listings and booking opportunities.

There’s so much to choose from at spiritandsong. There is free music to download, lovely playlists in the left-hand sidebar, links to various artists’ websites and podcasts, little videos by the artists, a “Song of the Week” as well as a “Song of the Week Archives” (I love that the artists have written their own pages where they share their faith and talk about what influenced them to write the songs), a free Liturgy podcast, an online store where you can purchase CDs or tracks, thoughtful reflections on a variety of Catholic topics, and much more.

Here is a beautiful song, new to me, that I just love:

“Empty“, from Tom Booth’s CD entitled “Captured”. The song was co-written by Robert Feduccia.

Direction For Our Times (DFOT) and the Lay Apostolate of Jesus Christ the Returning King sent out an email yesterday to let us know that Anne is very ill, and has had to withdraw from certain engagements scheduled for July and August.

They write: “We are thankful to all of you who continue to keep Anne’s health and this mission in your prayers.”

Direction For Our Times YouTube Channel to hear The Messages, followed by discussions with Anne and Dr. Mark Miravalle.

I thank you for your prayers as well.

Edited to add:  If you would like to hear the Message for July 1, 2010 I have posted it here at Consecrated to Mary.

Our herbs…

Our visitor…

Our Lady…

What I really want for my country can only come to pass if individual hearts change. Let us practise the presence of God.  Having trouble finding Him?  Why don’t we get away from the computer, turn off the iPhones and iPads and iPods, unplug whatever is distracting us a little more often than not?  What a gorgeous country He’s given us.  Let’s enjoy it.  He’s all around – in it and through it, His creation…  Not to say He doesn’t Himself enjoy a little hide-and-seek sometimes…but the game doesn’t last long once you step outside.  

Go by Brooks

Go by brooks, love,
Where fish stare,
Go by brooks,
I will pass there.

Go by rivers,
Where eels throng,
Rivers, love,
I won’t be long.

Go by oceans,
Where whales sail,
Oceans, love,
I will not fail.

[Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968]

Ooh la la, we had an earthquake here (and beyond) this afternoon.  Thankfully our offices held up and there were no injuries.  At home, one hat fell off a shelf; pretty good for a magnitude of 5 or 5.5, I’d say.  Teenage son tried to convince me that the state of his bedroom was caused by the quake, but you have to get up pretty early to pull the wool over my eyes, and he’s not a morning person. 

Sometimes it’s difficult to know how best to pray for others, but it is a natural desire to want to do so.  I remember when my mother was first diagnosed with cancer, eight months before she died.  She told my siblings and me about it but didn’t want anyone else to know, not even her own brothers and sisters.  We respected her wishes for as long as we could until her family knew something was terribly wrong.  It was painful to respect her wishes in this case.  Two things about it troubled me greatly:  I felt her family would be very hurt by her not allowing them the intimacy of sharing in her troubles, and I was devastated by the knowledge of all the prayers that could have been offered for her health right from the beginning but never were, because nobody knew.

Sometimes our prayers for a person who is ill change from hour-to-hour or day-to-day depending on the news.  Sometimes they change over a period of months or years depending on the progress of the illness or the recovery.  Many times we are in complete confusion – we pray for a miraculous recovery; we pray for strength and courage for the patient; we pray for the grace that they won’t lose their faith or fall into despair; we pray for pain-relief; we pray for a proper diagnosis if one hasn’t been made, or new discoveries if there is no known cure for what has already been diagnosed.  We do positive healing visualizations of the person in which they are glowing with health and filled with the Divine Light.  On and on it goes.

We pray for God’s Will to be done, but are often torn apart as we do so – we know that God’s Will did not originally include pain, illness or suffering and so we do not want to pray, Lord, please heal this dear one, if it is your Will; yet we also know that a person’s acceptance of illness and suffering, united to Christ’s Passion, gains many graces for the conversion of souls and is part of God’s plan of redemption.

Toward what looks like the end of a person’s life on earth or at anytime during the painful process of an illness, we may also feel that our prayers for their recovery may be contrary to their desires – that they may indeed wish to be released from their earthly sojourn and return Home.

Some time ago Terry, of The Road To Kingdom Come, posted a prayer he had written himself during his physical/mental sufferings.  I printed it out and placed it in my little sacred space at home.  It’s a beautiful prayer, and I feel relieved and released from “prayer decision-making” by it.  I know it comes directly from his own heart.  I can pray it both for him, knowing I am not going contrary to his desires, and on his behalf at a time when he doesn’t have the strength to pray it for himself.

Please join me.  We are his brothers and sisters, and Terry has always asked us for prayer.

Terry’s Prayer

“Jesus, my Lord, please hear the prayer of your son. Grant me peace and let me know that you are fully present and participating in this challenging time. I thank you for all of your blessings and apologize for any seeming ingratitude. Help me to persevere and surrender all things to you for you to manage and arrange according to your will. Provide the grace that I will require to accept all from you regardless of the situation or circumstance. Help me to truly believe that all things work for the good for those that love you.

Blessed Mother, through your Immaculate Heart, I ask that you take all of these concerns to your Son and lay them at his feet. Ask him to bless everything with the healing power and grace of the Spirit. Help me to embrace all things as part of the providence and saving plan of the Father for me and my family.

Grant us peace.”

Pia recently linked to a video of our beloved Father Barron in a fiesty mood, speaking of “dumbed down” Catholicism. I just came across this passage from 1958 from Caryll Houselander’s, The Risen Christ [pg. 76], along the same lines and with a similar tone…so I thought I’d share… 

We are constantly told that “Catholics are not allowed to think,” and the strange, tragic thing is that there are many people outside the Church today because they believe it, and presumably many Catholics fail to disillusion them. At the same time, if they are challenged, it transpires that though they are allowed to think, they don’t, and don’t want to; and should they encounter the formidable Catholic who does think, and who offers them, let us say, the Blessed Trinity to start thinking about, they hastily retire, and take cover under the plea that they are “only a very simple person.”

Another reason why the mind is seldom raised to God is because nine out of ten people are unable to use their minds at all, or at all events to concentrate them at all on the invisible world.

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I’ll be away for about a week, so I have to close the comments again until my return. Light, love, peace and safety to you all…

Excerpt from:  The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood: Mother Louise Margaret Claret de la Touche, pg. 182:

Depth! Let us go to the Heart of Jesus. Through the wide opening which the lance has made in It, let us look into this abyss of divine Charity; let us seek to sound its depths. But no! Thy soul is seized with dizziness before this abyss of Love. One must shut one’s eyes, abandon every support, and let oneself fall, fall, fall without end in these divine depths, without seeking to understand, without wishing to explain: Love is not explained! It is desired, it is wished for, it is tasted, we are inebriated with it, we live on it, we die of it: we do not understand it. O the depths….!
 

This is Father Steve Sinn, SJ, of the Catholic Parish of St. Canice, Elizabeth Bay, Australia.  It is his first video, and I’m certainly looking forward to many more. 

Excerpt from Heart of the World, by Hans Urs von Balthasar, pgs. 80-81:

I am the vine, you are the branches. You have blossomed forth from me. Are you then surprised if a drop of my Heart’s blood trickles into your every thought and deed? Are you surprised if the thoughts of my Heart quietly infiltrate your worldly heart? If a whispering takes wing in you and day and night you perceive a low, beckoning call? To a love that wants to suffer, to a love that, together with mine, redeems? Are you surprised if the desire comes upon you to risk your life and all your strength and put them in jeopardy for your brothers? And to complete in your own body what is still lacking to my sufferings, what must still lack as long as I have not suffered my Passion in all my branches and members?  For, to be sure, none of you is redeemed by anyone save myself; but I am the total Redeemer only united with each of you. Do you want to accomplish the great change with me and build up the Father’s Kingdom? Do you want to live my mind, the resolve of one who did not hold on to his form of God convulsively and clutchingly, but who broke it and emptied it out so that it began to flow as the courage to serve and as lowliness, became obedient even unto death on the Cross? Are you willing? For my work must be perfected in you and it will be brought to term only when my Heart beats in yours, only when all hearts, now submissive and docile, beat for the Father together in my Heart. Are you willing?