More True Devotion to the Holy Spirit

Behind all our problems is always the problem of the heart, for love, that noble and kingly sentiment, is the first and foremost affection in the soul. All other affections we know are related to love: hope is love that longs for union with the beloved; sadness is separation from the beloved...

Lit Choir Woes

"One note I would watch is the F natural on the fourth page for the Sopranos. It's a little fuzzy."
"It's going sharp, Fred?"
"It's a little fuzzy, which would be fine if it was a teddy bear, but it's not. It's a note."

(Fred the Recording Specialist and Andrew J. McShane)

True Devotion to the Holy Spirit ~Martinez

For God, the immeasurably wise, infinitely good God, loves us. With wonderful power, but exquisite gentleness, He leads us through the winding, painful paths of this world until we reach our home. Then there will be an end of trouble, our tears will be dried, and we shall no longer need consolations, for the heavenly Sun of celestial happiness will shine forever in all its fullness.

White bread

"Well, white bread is such a strong temptation!" -- Tim

Guess who.

"You all know in what way the community of believers has been wounded in recent times by the attacks of evil, by the penetration of sin in the interior, in fact in the heart of the Church. Do not take this as a pretext to flee from God's presence; you yourselves are the Body of Christ, the Church! Carry intact the fire of your love in this Church every time that men have obscured her face. "Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord" (Romans 12:11).
When Israel was in the darkest point of its history, God called to the rescue no great and esteemed persons, but a youth called Jeremiah; Jeremiah felt invested with too great a mission: "Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth!" (Jeremiah 1:6). But God did not let himself be misled: "Do not say, 'I am only a youth'; for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak" (Jeremiah 1:7)."

Cliff notes #1

"There are laws and there are laws. The Law of Grace is the law of personal relationship with God."

"Grace is not a thing; it is a relationship with Him."

"It is not because we are not ax murderers that we are suddenly in a healthy relationship with the Lord."

"If you want it for me, Lord, it is for my own good."

"Each one is just as holy as he wants to be. He already is giving us sufficient grace for holiness. It isn't a matter of divine favoritism [that some become canonized saints]. Do we want to cooperate with His grace?"

"If we give Him only a little freedom of movement, that is all He has."

"Fear of God is not like fear of dogs."

Gregory Jennings, Jr.

To God be the glory.

I have just one word.

Dallas, Texas, Superbowl, baby!

Two from Belloc

These are the advantages of travel, that one meets so many men whom one would otherwise never meet, and that one feeds as it were upon the complexity of mankind.

* * * * *

Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night; it is already morning.

Indian restaurants are now one of most popular places to eat out in Britain. However it is best to avoid those called "A Taste of the Raj" because instead of serving you food you will be beaten with long sticks and forced to build complicated railway systems.


(BBC - I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue)

My Poem for the month

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,-- Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,-- Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,-- A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,-- An army, which liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,-- Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed; A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,-- Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestous day. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI)

Anyone who expected that Christianity would now become a mass movement was, of course, disappointed. But mass movements are not the ones that bear the promise of the future within them. The future is made wherever people find their way to one another in life-shaping convictions. And a good future grows wherever these convictions come from the truth and lead to it.

-- Preface to the 2000 edition of Introduction to Christianity

καὶ ἡ θάλασσα οὐκ ἔστιν ἔτι

As for the statement, "And there shall be no more sea," I would not lightly say whether it is dried up with that excessive heat, or is itself also turned into some better thing...For then there shall be no more of this world, no more of the surgings and restlessness of human life, and it is this which is symbolized by the sea.

Quod autem ait: "Et mare iam non est:" utrum maximo illo ardore siccetur an et ipsum vertatur in melius, non facile dixerim....Iam enim tunc non erit hoc saeculum vita mortalium turbulentum et procellosum, quod maris nomine figuravit.

-- St. Augustine, City of God, 20.16