Sour Sweet Days

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And my sour sweet days
I will lament, and love.


- George Herbert

Hard to Get


Rich Mullins
Psalm 77:7-13, Isaiah 53:4, Isaiah 55:8-9
Matthew 5:4, Matthew 6:11, Luke 22:41-45
Romans 7:18-19, Romans 7:24-25


You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt

Do you remember when You lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread
Did You forget about us after You had flown away
Well I memorized every word You said

Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While You're up there just playing hard to get

You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was
Still we do love now and then

Did You ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat

Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?

And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained

And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I figured this, somehow
All I really need to know

Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can't see what's ahead
And we can not get free of what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret

I can't see how You're leading me unless You've led me here
Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so You've been here all along I guess
It's just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get

The only way we can avoid being a burden is to avoid being lovable.... My children have been a burden to me, and bearing that burden has been the only substance of my life. It's made me feel alive and well and necessary and needed. Bearing the burden of their parents' deaths should make children feel just as alive and necessary and needed. ~Thomas Lynch

The magnificent For All The Saints, words by William Walsham How (1823-1897) with the tune Sine Nomine by Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958) and published in The English Hymnal, 1906.

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

~ from The Confessions of St. Augustine

My Jesus, I believe that Thou art present in the most holy sacrament. I love Thee above all things, and I desire to receive Thee into my soul. Since I cannot now receive Thee sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace Thee as if Thou wert already there, and unite myself wholly to Thee: never permit me to be separated from Thee. Amen.

- Saint Alphonsus Liguori

Dom Chapman: "Pray as you can, not as you can't"

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung, possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping your heart, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it up carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all personal entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

~C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

"We crucify ourselves between two thieves: the regret of yesterday and the fear of tomorrow."
~quoted by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

St. John of the Cross:

Like a blind man [the Christian] must lean on dark faith, accept it for his guide and light, and rest on nothing of what he understands, tastes, feels, or imagines. All these perceptions are a darkness that will lead him astray. Faith lies beyond all this understanding, taste, feeling, and imagining. (Ascent of Mount Carmel 2/4/2)

Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. ~Isaiah 50:10

The third enemy is fear... No man --and especially no Christian who remembers Gethsemane-- need try to attain a stoic indifference about these things, but we can guard against the illusions of the imagination....There is no question of death or life for any of us, only a question of this death or of that-- of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later. What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. Certainly when the moment comes, it will make little difference how many years we have behind us. .... Does it decrease our chances of dying at peace with God? I cannot believe it. If active service does not persuade a man to prepare for death, what conceivable concatenation of circumstances would? Yet war does do something to death. It forces us to remember it... War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. I am inclined to think they were right. In ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us knows. We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. ...If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon.

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, "Learning in War Time," 1939

A fate worse than death?

from Kairos

Random thought: for a Christian, every fate is worse than death. Only at death are we finally granted the Beatific Vision that makes all the suffering, pain, and agony worth having been endured.

Losing a child and being rich are really much of a piece in a metaphysical but nevertheless real sense, along with living in the suburbs and undergoing torture. All of them offer opportunities for salvation or damnation, and even the happiest human existence is a horrible thing to have to endure compared to what comes next. I don't make light of suffering; I merely remind that even "the good life" is a fate worse than death.

In all circumstances of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, let us aim at having CHRIST in our inmost heart. ~John Henry Newman

The first duty of charity is to try and enter into the mind and feelings of others. ~John Henry Newman

"The times are never so bad that a good man cannot live in them." ---St. Thomas More

With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty. We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event.
~John Henry Newman

"Worry is the misuse of imagination."

I am repulsed by all suffering involving letting go of loved ones.

Million Dollar Smile

Melinda Ruley on her skin cancer and sense of loss:

I remember walking across a pasture once, and coming upon a fox sunning itself in the grass. The animal was young, a pup, really, taking time out from the grim business of survival to daydream in the still heat. A carpenter bee droned nearby, and stalks of Queen Anne's lace held their doily faces to the sky. Standing perfectly still, watching, I knew that in the wide distances between our species--the fox, the bee, the wild carrot--there was a sun soaked intersection, a common pleasure.

This, I think, is the greatest loss in this the age of broad-spectrum titanium-dioxide. Not the demise of the all-American tan, but of the faith that, like the fox in its pelt, we were after all made for this world. That no matter how bleak things get it is possible to lie in the sun, to drowse and to dream.

One day after my surgery, when my stitches were itching and I was feeling especially cranky about it all, a friend told me, rather unhelpfully I thought, that I was just feeling my mortality, and to get used to it. From here on out, he said, it's Death Valley, in Technicolor.

THE THIRD EPISTLE OF ST. IGNATIUS

CHAPTER VII.

And my love is crucified, and there is no fire in me for another love.
I do not desire the food of corruption, neither the lusts of this world.
I seek the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ;
and I seek His blood, a drink which is love incorruptible.

St. Augustine's Prayer to the Holy Spirit


Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy.
Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.

"I say that we are wound
with mercy round and round
as if with air: the same is Mary, more by name
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers His providence.......
Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.
Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin........
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled
Fold home, fast fold thy child."
~G. M.Hopkins

We began with the mystery, not just of suffering but of suffering in a world supposedly created by a loving God. How to get God off the hook? God's answer is Jesus. Jesus is not God off the hook but God on the hook. That's why the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is crucial: If that is not God there on the cross but only a good man, then God is not on the hook, on the cross, in our suffering. And if God is not on the hook, then God is not off the hook. How could he sit there in heaven and ignore our tears?

There is, as we saw, one good reason for not believing in God: evil. And God himself has answered this objection not in words but in deeds and in tears. Jesus is the tears of God.


~Peter Kreeft

Death is the deepest place, and it enables love to speak its word de profundis, from the depths, from the deepest place of all. It adds a basso profundo to love's soprano, and all things work together in ultimate harmony.

Let us sing.

~Peter Kreeft in Love is Stronger than Death

THE CONVERT

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

~G. K. Chesterton

“Worry is the misuse of imagination."

Why have 800,000 Afghan people returned home? Because there is no place like HOME. Everybody wants to go home. I want to go home, even when I am there.

"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the
one great thing to love on earth, the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find
romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the one true way of all your loves on
earth, and more than that."
~J.R.R. Tolkien

"There are certain eternal accomplishments that make even happiness look like trash"
--Dorothy Sayers

"God's speech is the effect He produces in the soul."
~ John of the Cross

"Too much of a good thing is still a good thing."
~G.K. Chesterton

"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."
~G.K. Chesterton


"It is so easy for someone ...to make a reckless assertion; and away it goes round the world in seven-league boots, and one can only plod slowly after it with a lot of heavy clumping facts and etymologies and dates and references, wearisome to assemble and still more wearisome to read."
~Dorothy Sayers
Quoted in , Literary Converts, Joseph Pearce p.288.
Footnote 21 on p. 291 says: "Letter from Dorothy L. Sayers to Hugh Ross Williams, 21 May 1948, courtesy of Julia Ross Williamson.


"There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life
is to ours as the life of a gnat. ...Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself,
your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses."
- C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

We witness conversions for which we cannot account. Grace often works very slowly. We may trace the successive stages in a soul's progress toward truth, but there is always a starting point that we cannot grasp, a sudden movement of grace before which there is apparently nothing.
~Louis Veuillot

From St. John of the Cross

These three streams flow their eternal course,
Unrivalling and mutual in their force
Even now in the night's hush.
The eternal tide flows hid in living bread
That with its heavenly life we too be fed
Even now in the night's hush.
And here it calls to all, and here we will
Our craving voids mysteriously fill,
Even now in the night's hush.
This living stream for which I thirst and long,
Provides my sup, my surety and my song
Even now in the night's hush.

~St John of the Cross


YOUR voice (the Church) speaks:

Great God of my life,
I will praise Thee on the three shores of Thy one light.
I will plunge with my song into the sea of Thy glory:
with rejoicing into the waves of Thy power.


Golden God of thy stars,
loud God of Thy storms,
flaming God of Thy fire-spewing mountains,
God of Thy streams and of thy seas,
God of all beasts,
God of all the cornfields and of wild roses,
I thank Thee for having awakened us,
Lord, I thank Thee to the choirs of Thine angels.


Be praised for all that lives.


God of thy Son,
great God of Thine eternal compassion,
great God of thine erring humanity,
God of all them who suffer,
God of all them who die,
brotherly God on our dark spoor:


I thank Thee that Thou hast delivered us,
I thank Thee to the choirs of thine angels.


Be praised for our blessedness!


God of Thine own Spirit,
flooding in Thy depths from love to love,
Seething down into my soul,
Rushing through all my chambers,
bringing fire to every heart,
Holy Creator of thy new earth:
I thank Thee that I may thank Thee,
Lord, I thank Thee to the choirs of Thine angels.


God of my psalms,
God of my harps,
God of my organs,
and of my mighty music,
I will sing Thy praises on the three shores to Thy One Light.
I will plunge with my song into the sea of Thy glory:
with shouts of joy into the waves of Thy power.

~Gertrude von le Fort, Hymns to the Church