* (Quoting the Cure d'Ars (St. John Vianney), pictured): We can very well say that the Passion which the Romans and Jews made Christ suffer was almost nothing compared with what Christians make him undergo with their insults and mortal sins ... what horror there will be when Jesus Christ shows us the things for which we have abandoned him!
* To take up the Cross -- the acceptance of sorrow and of the contradictions God permits for our purification, the costly fulfillment of our duties, Christian mortification voluntarily accepted -- is the indispensable condition for following the Master.
* The Christian who journeys through life systematically opting out of sacrifice, who rebels in the face of pain, distances himself from holiness and happiness, which are found beside the Cross, very close to Christ the Redeemer.
* Close to Christ, tribulations and difficulties are not oppressive, they are not burdensome; on the contrary, they dispose the soul to prayer, to see God in the events of daily life.
* Without mortification, the soul remains subject to the thousand and one things which make their demands on and tend to disperse and dissipate the senses: attachment, impurity, tepidity, desires for an immoderate comfort... mortification frees us from many entangling ties and gives us the capacity to love.
* (Quoting JPII, pictured): The loss of the sense of sin is a form or consequence of "the denial of God": not only in the form of atheism, but also in the form of secularism. If sin is the breaking off of one's filial relationship to God in order to situate one's life outside of obedience to him, then to sin is not merely to deny God. To sin is also to live as if He did not exist, to eliminate him from one's daily life.
1 comment:
As us (that'd be pronounced "u-zh"), my sweet Jean-Marie rocks it old school. GOD HELP.
+ lucienne
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