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POETRY: Love Came Down At Christmas by Christina Georgina Rossetti

January 4, 2019

Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, love divine; Love was born at Christmas, Star and angels gave the sign. Worship we the Godhead, Love incarnate, love divine; Worship we our Jesus: But wherewith for sacred sign? Love shall be our token, Love shall be yours and love be mine, Love to God and to all men, Love for plea and gift and [...]

VIRTUES: Freedom From Within (Detachment) by Gary L. Thomas

November 9, 2017

From: The Glorious Pursuit If you desire to undertake a devout life, you must not only cease to sin, but also cleanse your heart from all affections to sin. Souls that are recovered from the state of sin, and still retain these affections, eat without joy, and drag themselves along rather than walk. They do good, but with such a spiritual heaviness that it takes away all the grace from their good exercises. (Francis de Sales) For me, the saddest flowers in all the world will always be yellow roses. The last time I purchased them was twenty years ago, after the fifth or sixth breakup with “Sharon.” Yellow roses were her favorite. Sharon and I were involved in a tempestuous relationship during high school, and, try as we [...]

VIRTUES: Resting In The Current (Surrender) by Gary L. Thomas

October 5, 2017

From: The Glorious Pursuit The Man who wishes to offer a pure mind to God but who is troubled by cares is like a man who expects to walk quickly even though his legs are tied together. (John Climacus) Lisa and I wanted to move back to Washington State to be close to our children’s grandparents, but the situation looked bleak. When we discussed our options with a realtor, his scenario stunned us. “Best case scenario is that you’d have to bring $10,000 to settlement.” We’d have to pay to sell our home, assuming we could find someone willing to buy it. “How long would we have to stay here to break even?” Lisa asked with the tone of a patient discussing a very painful procedure. “To walk [...]

VIRTUES: The Beautiful Spirit (Humility, Part Two) by Gary L. Thomas

September 7, 2017

From: The Glorious Pursuit Humility is the bloom and the beauty of holiness. (Andrew Murray) Unless we make the increase of humility our study, we may find that we have been delighting in beautiful thoughts and feelings, in solemn acts of consecration and faith, while the only sure mark of the presence of God – the disappearance of self – was all the time wanting. (Andrew Murray) Following the stunning victory at Yorktown, the American colonies seemed determined to clutch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Many assumed the Revolutionary War was over, but since George Washington was well aware that the British forces on North American soil still outnumbered the Continental Army, the American soldiers weren’t let go. The [...]

VIRTUES: Living Where You Are (Humility, Part One) by Gary L. Thomas

July 30, 2017

From: The Glorious Pursuit Saints agree they are sinners; only sinners think they are saints. (Peter Kreeft) The truth is this – pride must die in you, or nothing of Heaven can live in you. (Andrew Murray) “So how’d your morning work go?” My wife, Lisa, asked me. “I lost a good bit of it. My computer crashed.” She looked at me with astonishment. “I can’t believe you’re taking it so well.” I shrugged. “I’ve written by hand and I’ve written on computers. Over the long run, computers have saved me a lot of time. I can’t complain if they take a little time back now and then.” “But your attitude,” Lisa sad. “I think I’d be [...]

POETRY: Marie Magdalene by George Herbert

July 12, 2017

When blessed Marie wiped her Savior’s feet (Whose precepts she had trampled on before) And wore them for a jewel on her head, Showing his steps should be the street, Wherein she thenceforth evermore With pensive humbleness would live and tread; She being stained herself, why did she strive To make him clean, who could not be defiled? Why kept she not her tears for her own faults, And not his feet? Though we could dive In tears like seas, our sins are piled Deeper than they, in words, and works, and thoughts. Dear soul, she knew who did vouchsafe and deign To bear her filth; and that her sins did dash Ev’n God himself; wherefore she was not loath, As she had brought wherewith to stain, So to bring in wherewith to wash: and yet [...]

MYSTICISM: The Need Of Retreat by Evelyn Underhill

July 12, 2017

From Light of Christ A first retreatant lately told me that when she confessed to her husband what she intended to do, he took his pipe from his mouth and said earnestly: “Go my dear. Go, by all means! You’re just about due for a spot of re-birth.” That man, it seems to me, had a very clear idea of one function of a retreat: its power of causing the re-birth of our spiritual sense, quickening that which has grown dull and dead in us, calling it out into light and air, giving it another chance. Most of us are bitterly conscious of the extent in which we are at the mercy of our surroundings: which grow ever more and more insistent in their pressure, their demands on our attention and time; less and less suggestive of [...]

VIRTUES: The Glorious Pursuit by Gary L. Thomas

June 29, 2017

From: The Glorious Pursuit Grace, we must learn, is opposed to earning, not to effort. (Dallas Willard) If Godliness is not from deep within you, it is only a mask. (Jeanne Guyon) Imagine that one night God wakes you from a dream and offers you the golfing ability of Tiger Woods. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Or imagine being bestowed with the computer or entrepreneurial capabilities of Bill Gates: “You can create the next Microsoft,” God says. “Interested?” Or maybe you’re more the cultural type, and your heart would beat faster if God enabled you to sing like Pavarotti, to write like Jane Austen, or to paint like Rembrandt. We could get lost all day in fantasies such as these, but, in [...]

VIRTUES: The Holy Bridge, by Gary L. Thomas

June 15, 2017

From: The Glorious Pursuit This life therefore, is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on. This is not the end but it is the road; all does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified. (Martin Luther) It had been an exhausting week for me, with two or three more hard weeks ahead. I was flying from coast to coast, so I requested an aisle seat. I needed the room to get some work done. “Sorry, sir,” the agent said, “all that remain are center seats.” “Are you kidding me? The plane’s full?” [...]

VIRTUES: Getting Your Life Back by Gary L. Thomas

June 1, 2017

From: The Glorious Pursuit Once you let God into you, you have God in you. And God is a dynamo. (Peter Kreeft) On August 20, 1949, a rather bizarre headline appeared on the front page of the Washington Post: “Priest Frees Mount Ranier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” Though the exorcism took place in St. Louis, the story made top billing in the Post because the thirteen-year-old boy was a native of Mount Ranier, Maryland, a small town in the shadow of Washington, DC. The boy, “Robbie,” had developed a close relationship with a spiritualist aunt. After the aunt died, objects started flying around the room in Robbie’s presence. Robbie’s family turned to their priest, Father Luther Miles [...]

HOMILY: Towards Holiness by Josemaría Escrivá

July 31, 2016

We are deeply moved, and our hearts profoundly shaken, when we listen attentively to that cry of Saint Paul: This is God’s will for you, your sanctification. Today, once again, I set myself this goal and I also remind you and all mankind: this is God’s will for us, that we be saints. In order to bring peace, genuine peace, to souls; in order to transform the Earth and to seek God, our Lord, in the world and through the things of the world, personal sanctity is indispensable. In my conversations with people from so many countries and from all kinds of social backgrounds, I am often asked: What do you say to us married folk? To those of us who work on the land? To widows? To young people? I reply systematically that I [...]