The Mini-Miracle

On June 14th, 2019, I returned home from Mayo Clinic, radioactive.  I found my bedroom transformed into a beautiful, peaceful, flower-filled spa room, and heard tales of my friends gathering in prayer to bless the space, and the healing to take place there.    Here are what the daisies looked like on that day:

Well, here it is, over a month later, and you know what???  Here is what those daisies look like after five weeks:

What the WHAT??? 

Cut flowers do NOT last 5 weeks, people.  They just don't.  I'm lucky if I can get something to stay fresh for a week.  

I believe that all that grace that filled my little spa room spilled over onto these daisies.  And THAT is a really good sign.  Obviously my room was filled with life and love!

On Virtue

"Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.’ Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong ... God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them. Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult ... We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity—like perfect charity—will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."

C.S. Lewis

Meditation of the Day

"My great God, you know all that is in the universe, because you yourself have made it. It is the very work of your hands. 

You are omniscient, because you are omnicreative. You know each part, however minute, as perfectly as you know the whole. You know mind as perfectly as you know matter. You know the thoughts and purposes of every soul as perfectly as if there were no other soul in the whole of your creation. 

You know me through and through; all my present, past, and future are before you as one whole. You see all those delicate and evanescent motions of my thought which altogether escape myself. You can trace every act, whether deed or thought, to its origin and can follow it into its whole growth and consequences. You know how it will be with me at the end; you have before you that hour when I shall come to you to be judged. 

How awful is the prospect of finding myself in the presence of my judge! Yet, O Lord, I would not that you should not know me. It is my greatest stay to know that you read my heart. Oh, give me more of that openhearted sincerity which I have desired. Keep me ever from being afraid of your eye, from the inward consciousness that I am not honestly trying to please you. 

Teach me to love you more, and then I shall be at peace, without any fear of you at all."

St. John Henry Newman

Jesus Shock

Peter Kreeft is one of my favorite theologians and authors.  I just re-read the book "Jesus Shock" for I think the third time, but the first time in several years.  Needless to say, I got out my little pencil and was underlining EVERYTHING in there.  He is utterly correct.  HOW can we claim to be Christians and go on about our every day lives as if that's no big deal?  If what we're confessing to believe is TRUE, how does that not impact every little thing in our lives?  How can our lives be boring or plain or typical, if this is true????

I have to admit, I am blessed with many friends and family with a sincere faith, and I am incredibly thankful for that.  But I also have to admit feeling frequently like "the crazy one", the one who "takes this religion thing a little too far".  Like it's a hobby I'm obsessed with, and not the reason for existence.  Not that I am any holier than anyone else.  Not that.  Just... if it's TRUE, then why are we not all "the crazy ones?"  If we truly believe what we say we believe, how can we be NORMAL?  Because it is 99.99999999999999% unbelievable, this Christianity thing, and yet, we all claim to accept it like it's not a big deal, when it TOTALLY IS.  And that should generate a whole lot of passion, not platitude.  Not comfort. Not normalcy.   It should be wholly UNCOMFORTABLE, and discombobulating, and off-kilter.  It should change EVERYTHING!  Kreeft gets that.  And revels in it.  And reminds me of this fact, every time I read this book.

Kreeft says something in the book that sticks with me every time I read it.  He talks about how we shouldn't just know about Jesus.  We shouldn't just believe in Jesus.  It's not all theology.  It's not all dogma.  We should know Jesus, body, blood, soul and divinity.  Not just spiritually as "my personal Lord and Savior," although He is that.  But concretely, in the matter in which He gives Himself to us in the Eucharist.  Mind blowing.

GO FORTH, and get thee "Jesus Shock" by Peter Kreeft, fellow kindred spirits! Or borrow mine!
And feel free to make your own little notes in the margins.....