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