Happy Saturday my friends!   Good morning and good day to all my digital neighbors! We are in the final days of Easter, and it has been a wonderful season. I hope most of them have been days of joy. If you have been checking in on these little musings, you hopefully have found some food for thought or fuel for prayer.  More Thee, and less me leads to days of joy. More love of God, then neighbor and finally myself puts life in the right order. Until that realization and then the commitment to it, life is disordered and a mess. While God can work wonders in the mess, He really likes it when we make straight His way, when we lower the mountains of pride and fill in the valleys of self-preoccupation.  That straight path is the superhighway of holiness and joy. We will always be tempted to wander off the path, to stop when we should have kept going or hurriedly pass by when we were invited to linger. No one listens to the Holy Spirit flawlessly. We all have to constantly overcome the ever-present SELF and its demands.  Only constant discipline will keep us on the path of Discipleship.  There is no discipleship without discipline, the two are inseparable.  I wish I were better at it with a higher degree of constancy. Each day offers that opportunity. It is never too late to begin if you have a day in front of you.   A good prayer for a Saturday and the summer months in front of us.  Have a great day my friends!

Slow me down, Lord!

Ease the pounding of my heart by the quietening of my mind.

Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.

Give me the calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams.

Help me to know the magical, restoring power of sleep.

Teach me the art of taking minute vacations…of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat the dog, to read a few lines from a good book.

Remind me each day of the fable of the hare and the tortoise, that I may know that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than measuring its speed.

Let me look upwards into the branches of the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well.

Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s enduring values that I may grow towards the star of my greater destiny. Amen.

Good morning, Digital Neighbors!   Happy Friday!  Some 4^th century wisdom and an attitude tune up from Roy Bennett.  Have a great Friday my friends.

Second reading
From the treatise On the Trinity by Saint Hilary, bishop
The Father’s gift in Christ

Our Lord commanded us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In baptism, then, we profess faith in the Creator, in the only-begotten Son and in the gift which is the Spirit. There is one Creator of all things, for in God there is one Father from whom all things have their being. And there is one only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist. And there is one Spirit, the gift who is in all. So all follow their due order, according to the proper operation of each: one power, which brings all things into being, one Son, through whom all things come to be, and one gift of perfect hope. Nothing is wanting to this flawless union: in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is infinity of endless being, perfect reflection of the divine image, and mutual enjoyment of the gift.

Our Lord has described the purpose of the Spirit’s presence in us. Let us listen to his words: I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. It is to your advantage that I go away; if I go, I will send you the Advocate. And also: I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine.

From among many of our Lord’s sayings, these have been chosen to guide our understanding, for they reveal to us the intention of the giver, the nature of the gift and the condition for its reception. Since our weak minds cannot comprehend the Father or the Son, we have been given the Holy Spirit as our intermediary and advocate, to shed light on that hard doctrine of our faith, the incarnation of God.

We receive the Spirit of truth so that we can know the things of God. In order to grasp this, consider how useless the faculties of the human body would become if they were denied their exercise. Our eyes cannot fulfill their task without light, either natural or artificial; our ears cannot react without sound vibrations, and in the absence of any odor our nostrils are ignorant of their function. Not that these senses would lose their own nature if they were not used; rather, they demand objects of experience in order to function. It is the same with the human soul. Unless it absorbs the gift of the Spirit through faith, the mind has the ability to know God but lacks the light necessary for that knowledge.

This unique gift which is in Christ is offered in its fullness to everyone. It is everywhere available, but it is given to each man in proportion to his readiness to receive it. Its presence is the fuller, the greater a man’s desire to be worthy of it. This gift will remain with us until the end of the world and will be our comfort in the time of waiting. By the favors it bestows, it is the pledge of our hope for the future, the light of our minds, and the splendor that irradiates our understanding.

It’s important that what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts, and you have negative ones too. Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life.

                                                – Roy Bennett. The Light in the Heart.

Good morning, Digital Neighbors!   Happy Thursday my friends! Joy as a gift, a fruit and choice keeps our focus on joy as something related to happiness but distinct from it.   Happiness is grounded in happenings. The good and wonderful experiences and events of life bring us happiness.  Happiness and joy often coexist and overlap. I know I expressed these ideas earlier in Easter, but it is always helpful to return to the fundamentals of our understanding to deepen and strengthen them.

Joy is the gift of the Holy Spirit bearing fruit from our awareness of God’s profound love for us and the giftedness of our entire life. God owes us nothing, God has held nothing back from us (the lie of the Serpent to Adam & Eve), life is a gift (the greatest) faith is a gift, (the capstone of life and its fulfillment) the promise of eternal life is a gift. (the one yet to be fulfilled in us as we strive to make our lives an offering back to God) Three unmerited gifts that should fuel our attitude of gratitude.

God could compel us completely and we would be happy and satisfied.  His will is our ultimate joy, the same joy shared by the angels and saints, but God does not compel, He does not impose. He invites.  He humbly and subtlety knocks on the door of our experience, provides numerous breadcrumbs on the trail and some amazing moments all meant to draw us deeper into His life and love.

Goodness, truth and beauty are the classic crumbs He scatters throughout the world for all his children, those adopted though faith and those waiting for the knock at the door, the whisper at the cave or that moment of surprise that can only be the presence of someone Other working behind the scenes of life’s happenings. He created all, His Son redeemed all, and Their Holy Spirit is waiting to sanctify all. We will never meet an individual that is beyond that reality.  It does not mean we don’t exercise discretion and caution in a world corrupted by sin, but we have hope for the conversion of all.

One of the nuances at Mass is in the Institution narrative:

Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of My blood,

the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.

The Chalice will be poured out for MANY, not for ALL.  The previous translation was for ALL, but it was not faithful to the nuance in Latin.  While Christ died for ALL, not ALL will respond (at least we don’t think so) and some will be lost due to unrepentant hearts and prideful wills.   I hope only the Fallen Angels are in Hell, but my awareness of sin makes me doubtful.  I hope all are repentant of their sins when they see God.  I often wonder how different the story of Adam & Eve would have been if they had been honest and repentant on the spot instead of lying and blaming others for their sin. But that necessary sin of Adam won for us so wonderful a Redeemer.  It is something to sing about, and we do on Holy Saturday in a church ablaze with the light of the Resurrection.

Anyway, there is so much to be joyful about in life and we haven’t even touched how much discipleship offers the transformation of all of our experiences into joy.    Have a great day my friends.