Daily Thought

A Christian Is..... A Christian is: a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, and a hand through which Christ helps. St. Augustine

Don't Get Discouraged — God Is Patient! Don't get upset with your imperfections. It's a great mistake because it leads nowhere - to get angry because you are angry, upset at being upset, depressed at being depressed, disappointed because you are disappointed. So don't fool yourself. Simply surrender to the Power of God's Love, which is always greater than our weakness. St. Frances de Sales

How Pride Works Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness seem all the more extraordinary, whose poverty can be tormented and exacerbated by a display of her wealth. This infernal serpent, pervading the human heart, keeps men from reforming their lives, holding them back like a suckfish. St. Thomas More

Living Waters He is like a tree planted near running water. (Psalm 1:3) What a glorious promise—especially to the Jewish people who would have prayed this psalm! Remember, the Holy Land is a more arid region than where most of us live. The thought of lush vegetation growing along the banks of a babbling stream would have seemed almost exotic to them. So to say that the one who follows the Lord is like one of those trees is to say something powerful indeed! While it’s true that most of us live in more temperate climates, our spiritual environments can be far more arid. The world around us may not be as hospitable to our spiritual life, which means we should drink as deeply as we can when we are in the presence of Jesus’ living waters. And nowhere do these waters flow more abundantly than at Mass. What is one of the first things you do when you enter a church? You bless yourself with holy water. You recall your baptism, when you were first plunged into the water of life. Then...

Faith Is Not Like Bottled Water Faith is not like bottled water but like rain. Its destiny is not just to be kept and held but to make something visible grow. Peter Kreeft

Partnership With God Pray daily as though your future were entirely dependent on God; and then proceed to work for your reasonable needs and intelligent desires as though their fulfillment depended entirely on you in proportion as you see your daily life as a partnership with God, you will find life’s inadequacies, insecurities, and anxieties less confusing to the mind, less oppressive to the body and less frustrating to the spirit. Your inadequacies will be counterbalanced by your supernatural faith in God's divine plan for you. (Matt 25:14-23) Your natural sense of insecurity will find strength in Christ’s sermon on His Father’s divine providence for His children (Matt. 6:25-34). Finally, your spontaneous anxieties will find solace and peace in the good news of your Redemption. (John 1:1-14) This large perspective will make anger and hostility less necessary to you, since your fulfillment will no longer be restricted to the narrow fulfillment of an hour, day or year. Rather, ...

The Gift of Perspective As your perspective grows in breadth and depth, you will find yourself acquiring a keener awareness of God’s presence in your daily round of occupations. Your religious sense gradually becomes so intertwined with your natural interests and concerns, that nature and grace are seen as two hands of God embracing you and sustaining you. With perspective your passing earthly activities become steps not only toward your natural self-fulfillment in this life, but also toward your unending, all satisfying self-fulfillment with God in heaven. You will see your personal life on earth as your share in the evolution of God’s original act of creation. Whether your personal gifts and opportunities be great or small in the eyes of worldly men, you will see them as part of God’s overall plan to draw all things back to himself in due time. The more your balanced perspective develops, so much the more will you realize why true self-development is the work of a lifetime. It ...

Judging Others Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Sea of Faith Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon It will keep you free - not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you. Flannery O'Connor

You Can Do Everything - In Christ! Start being brave about everything. Drive out darkness and spread light. Don’ look at your weaknesses. Realize instead that in Christ crucified you can do everything. St. Catherine of Siena

Courage To have courage for whatever comes in life - everything lies in that. St. Teresa of Avila

The Splendor Of God In Creation Listen to the sermon preached to you by the flowers, the trees, the shrubs, the sky, and the whole world. Notice how they preach to you a sermon full of love, of praise of God, and how they invite you to glorify the sublimity of that sovereign Artist who has given them being. St. Paul of the Cross

No One Has Ever Hoped In The Lord And Been Confounded Men may deprive me of property and honour; sickness may take away my strength and other means of serving You; I may even lose Your grace by sin; but never, never will I lose my hope in You. I will cherish it unto that dreadful moment when all hell will be unchained to snatch my soul away. "No one has hoped in the Lord and has been confounded." St. Claude de la Colombière

Let Us Always Be Mindful of Christ's Love If Christ Jesus dwells in a man as his friend and noble leader, that man can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. He is a true friend. And I clearly see that if we expect to please him and receive an abundance of his graces, God desires that these graces must come to us from the hands of Christ, through his most sacred humanity, in which God takes delight. Many, many times I have perceived this through experience. The Lord has told it to me. I have definitely seen that we must enter by this gate if we wish his Sovereign Majesty to reveal to us great and hidden mysteries. A person should desire no other path, even if he is at the summit of contemplation; on this road he walks safely. All blessings come to us through our Lord. He will teach us, for in beholding his life we find that he is the best example. What more do we desire from such a good friend at our side? Unlike our friends in the wor...

The Starting Point — Consenting To Our Poverty      At the beginning…we are ready to make radical sacrifices.  We would like to leave everything, give everything.  But, very quickly, we discover that God always asks of us something that we had not thought of, sometimes even apparently insignificant things of which we are incapable of letting go.”      We discover “all those secret attachments, those unconfessed refusals, those secret wounds.  We would have liked to leave everything, we were aspiring to freedom, and here we discover, with a sort of disillusionment that can sometimes lead to despair or turn into cynicism, that we are caught in our own trap…following Jesus, leaving everything for him, is beyond our capacity. We then realize that, despite all our efforts and our good resolutions, in fact we have not yet really begun!”      “But paradoxically, this realization of our resistance, our inability to respond to his...

This Is "Notable" How will the Tower of Babel be undone? How will we understand each other in Heaven? Will we all speak English or Dutch or Latin? No, we will speak music. Peter Kreeft

The Importance Of Witness Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses. Blessed Pope Paul VI

God Is Like The Sun God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else. G.K. Chesterton

The Worst Disease of All There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. St. Teresa of Calcutta

How God Helps Us Forgive I knew that my heart and mind would always be tempted to feel anger--to find blame and hate. But I resolved that when the negative feelings came upon me, I wouldn't wait for them to grow or fester. I would always turn immediately to the Source of all true power: I would turn to God and let His love and forgiveness protect and save me. Immaculee Ilibagiza (Author of Left To Tell - Discovering God Amidst The Rwandan Holocaust)

Give Us An Open Heart Ready To Act We should strive to keep our hearts open to the sufferings and wretchedness of other people, and pray continually that God may grant us that spirit of compassion which is truly the spirit of God. St. Vincent de Paul

The Joy of Faith Faith brings into our lives such freedom, such love, such peace, and such joy that there are no words in any language that can explain it. You have to have it in order to know it. You have to experience it in order to understand it. Faith liberates. It liberates love and hope. If I am free to love and free to hope, what more do I want of life? Catherine Doherty

A Great Prayer To Start The Day Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name! Blaise Pascal

A Glimmer Of Hope Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernable as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today. Alfred Delp, SJ