quotes

Prayer of a Anonymous Abbess

Margot Benary-Isbert was a German born author of children’s books, who fled her family estate in Germany after the Post-WWII Russian takeover, and became a US citizen in 1957. She wrote realistically and, evidently, with great depth.

“Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:

Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.

Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples’ affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.

Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.

Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains — they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.

I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn’t agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.

Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint — it is so hard to live with some of them — but a harsh old person is one of the devil’s masterpieces.

Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so.

Amen”
― Margot Benary-Isbert

On A Saturday Afternoon

innerchurch2

“The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, It produces love. The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life.”

~ Saint Thomas Aquinas

innerchurch

“We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God´s compassionate love for others.”

~ St. Clare of Assisi

“Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”

“It is love alone that gives worth to all things”

~ St. Teresa of Avila

I don’t know that these quotes have anything to do with these pictures, but they’re certainly great quotes, and they happen to be on my desktop at the moment.

St. Jane is a beautiful little Church, and it’s surprisingly not as small as it looks. And it’s a very loving and friendly community.

Off into the weekend ~~~ Pax Christi.

On a Wednesday, in the 6th Week

?”The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.” ~ Pope St. Gregory the Great
St. Leo

Who, dear brother, is capable of describing the great joy of believers when they have learned what the grace of Almighty God and your own cooperation achieved among the Angles? They abandoned the errors of darkness and were bathed with the light of holy faith. With full awareness they trampled on the idols which they had previously adored with savage fear. They are now committed to Almighty God. The guidelines given them for their preaching restrain them from falling into evil ways. In their minds they are submissive to the divine precepts and consequently feel uplifted. They bow down to the ground in prayer lest their minds cling too closely to earthly things. Whose achievement is this? It is the achievement of him who said: My Father is at work until now and I am at work as well.

God chose illiterate preachers and sent them into the world in order to show the world that conversion is brought about not by men’s wisdom but rather by his own power. So in like manner God worked through weak instruments and wrought great things among the Angles. Dear brother, in this heavenly gift there is something which should inspire us with great fear and great joy.

For I know through your love for that people, specially chosen for you, that Almighty God has performed great miracles. But it is necessary that the same heavenly gift should cause you to rejoice with fear and to fear with gladness. You should be glad because by means of external miracles the souls of the Angles have been led to interior grace. But you should tremble, lest on account of these signs, the preacher’s own weak soul be puffed up with presumption; lest, while seeming externally raised aloft in honour, it fall internally as a result of vainglory.

We should remember that when the disciples on their joyous return from their preaching mission said to their heavenly master: Lord, in your name even devils were subjected to us, he immediately retorted: Do not rejoice about this but rather that your names are inscribed in heaven.

I love these quotes from Gregory, and consider that they speak to the readings this day, this week. God makes a covenant with Noah after the epic flood, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is working miracles amongst the people and being tested by the Scribes and Pharisees. He tells those healed not to go into the village, not to tell anyone; he warns the disciples against the leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees.

Despite the signs and wonders, the call is always to interior conversion, which will lead to an outward manifestation of that conversion.

On The Feast of Catherine

192576st-catherine-of-siena-posters

 I love St. Catherine of Siena, and here are some quotes to live by:

“To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his right and left hand. He uses both.”

“Strange that so much suffering is caused because of the misunderstandings of God’s true nature. God’s heart is more gentle than the Virgin’s first kiss upon the Christ. And God’s forgiveness to all, to any thought or act, is more certain than our own being.”

Pax Christi…

The Rev. Kenneth Allen