Regularity in Private Prayer

“It is very easy to be religious by fits and starts, and to keep up our feelings by artificial stimulants; but regularity seems to trammel us, and we become impatient. This is especially the case with those to whom the world is as yet new, and who can do as they please. Religion is the chief subject which meets them, which enjoins regularity; and they bear it only so far as they can make it like things of this world, something curious, or changeable, or exciting. Satan knows his advantage here. He perceives well enough that stated private prayer is the very emblem and safeguard of true devotion to God, as impressing on us and keeping up in us a rule of conduct. He who gives up regularity in prayer has lost a principal means of reminding himself that spiritual life is obedience to a Lawgiver, not a mere feeling or a taste.”

– John Henry Newman

Private Prayer

File:John Henry Newman by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt.jpg
John Henry Newman by Sir John Everett Millais

“It is easy to see why [private prayer] is irksome; because it presses upon us and is inconvenient. It is a duty which claims our attention continually, and its irksomeness leads our hearts to rebel; and then we proceed to search for reasons to justify our own dislike of it. Nothing is more difficult than to be disciplined and regular in our religion. It is very easy to be religious by fits and starts, and to keep up our feelings by artificial stimulants; but regularity seems to trammel us, and we become impatient.”


– Bl. John Henry Newman

Source

For Whom Does This Bell Toll

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were:

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

– John Donne

Lord Of The Living And The Dead

“This is one of the things I noticed when dealing with old people.

They get to a stage at which more of their loved ones are dead than are living. The folks who have only ever focussed on the things of this world become trapped in this world. They become bitter and their lives in old age become smaller and smaller because there is less and less left. Maybe they end up sitting around playing checkers or watching daytime TV and being sad.

But there are other folks who have lived for the Lord, and so they continue to do so, but it seems more of their time is spent on “the other side”. They develop a kind of calm and radiance, as if the are already there, but just biding their time here. Its like they are dwelling with their friends on the other side and the curtain between this world and the next for them is very thin.”

“Christ is the Lord of the living and the dead, and because of the resurrection the difference between the living and the dead is increasingly immaterial. The dead are not really dead. They are alive in Christ, and the more we live in Christ the more we are in communion and union with them.”

– Dwight Longenecker

Source

Shadow Over My Soul

“Toward the end of the first year of my novitiate, darkness began to cast its shadow over my soul. I felt no consolation in prayer; I had to make a great effort to meditate; fear began to sweep over me. Going deeper into myself, I could find nothing but great misery. I could also clearly see the great holiness of God. I did not dare to raise my eyes to Him, but reduced myself to dust under His feet and begged for mercy.”

– St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in My Soul

Ideologies or the Adventure of Faith

“In the end, every ideology is begun, continued and ended in pride. It is the pride of the person who believes they have found the true path and that they must keep to it and bring as many others to follow it as possible. This pride cannot bear correction, and it is the direct antithesis of faith. Faith, on the other hand, is always seeking, always learning, always laughing at itself, always searching for the beauty, truth and goodness in the world, in others and in God himself.

Faith, if you like, is the great adventure.

An ideology is staying at home and locking the door.”

– Dwight Longenecker

Source

Papal Infallibility

“Infallibility is not the last word, it is the next word. Infallibility means what is taught is without error, but it doesn’t say that what is taught is necessarily the complete and final truth of a matter, nor does the teaching cover every aspect of the subject being taught.”

– Dwight Longenecker

Source