The devil and anxiety

St Francis de Sales tells us that "anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall us, sin excepted... when we are troubled and restless we lose our power to maintain the virtue that we have acquired."

However the devil uses anxiety not merely to remove virtue from our souls-- this is his side entertainment.  What he is really after is our loss of faith and confidence in our Lord, for this makes our prayer impotent.  Our prayers are answered according to our faith; if our anxiety eliminates our confidence and faith in God, then the devil has succeeded in cutting us off from grace.  We must in moments of anxiety begin our prayer with a statement of confidence in God, for it is our faith that allows Him to act in us.  What is the power that maintains virtue? It is God's grace.  If we are no longer open to the grace, if our anxiety has caused us to no longer trust that He is Mercy and Love, we have lost our power.  Losing virtue is the result of impotence of anxious, faithless prayer.

The Bridgroom Adorns His Bride

"The loss of a sense of His presence, the loss of His inner reassurances, and the loss of the joys of His service may be sent to us to ensure that we love Him and not His gifts, to ensure that we are indeed stripped and poor and naked and are not pretending to ourselves that we love Him when in reality we love only ourselves" --Fr Gerald Vann, O.P.

God chooses to adorn His bride with many graces and blessings. He laid down His life that He might present her to Him spotless and without blemish (cf Ephesians 5). How glorious this graces are when He lavishes them upon us, His bride, that we may be found pleasing to Him! We must never turn away from these graces, no matter how overwhelming or undeserved; our love for Him must be so complete that we abandon ourselves to His whims to be made pleasing to Him, trusting that He is Goodness and Mercy.

If God will remove these graces to ensure that we love Him and not His gifts, how much more so will He remove them to prove to us that He loves his bride, not His gifts!!!!!!!!!! This is the immeasurable blessing of spiritual dryness: that we can KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt, that He loves us as we are, weak and miserable. So much so that He adorns us with His grace that He may unite us to Himself and give us His perfect Joy and Love!!

This is true then also in marriage; the fading of the honeymoon "love" allows man and wife to truly love the other, and not themselves. A true Christian should rejoice at this first opportunity in marriage to ensure a true, holy love that is an act of total self-donation to the other without self-love intermixed, thanking God for the privledge of the opportunity to love each other as He loves them, weak and miserable.

The Dignity of Man

Work gives dignity to the human person. We were not put upon this earth to languish in the sunlight, but rather given charge to tend creation. The fall introduced the pain and tedium of it, but work itself was created as a good. Let us never forget the dignity of any moral work-- no matter how little or unimportant it may seem.

Falling in love

Falling in love is like falling at the top of a mountain. You keep tumbling and tumbling... at first it is grassy and the sun is out and you are frolicking... then you start to hit the rocks and trees, and see the cliffs coming in the distance... but we must trust in the Lord, for every bit farther you roll, the love grows deeper and deeper, and you fall more and more in love not in spite of but as a direct result of the painful experiences. For it was that painful passage that brought you farther down the mountain, deeper into love. And after the first cliff, the pebbles feel like down from a chick.

"The heavens melted at the presence of God" Ps 68

Lord, if even the heavens melt at the presence of Love, what chance do we stand? It is no wonder that even imperfect human love has such power over us. For truly-- if Love is so powerful that it can cross the chasm between Creator and created and unite them, there is NOTHING that it cannot overcome. Most especially between man and wife, who are no longer two, but one!!

"This is the work of God, that you believe in the one He sent" Jn 6:29

It is our pride and self-love that seeks to compare the greatness of one calling over another. The Lord calls each of us to the task for which we were created-- the SAME vocation-- to love our Lord, our God, with all our heart, mind soul. To believe in Jesus. To believe is to obey--for if you truly believe, what else is there for you to do but obey? And this is all out of love and total self-abandonment, for again, if you believe you can do nothing else!!

"Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself"

Jesus invites us when we are afraid to look at his hands and his feet. We need never be troubled--He has given all, suffered all, that something better may come: new life for us all! Whatever the situation may be that troubles us, all we need do is look to our risen Lord--for even His wounds were redeemed when He broke the chains of death.

When you ask for a grace...

A young man recently asked me: "If you pray for courage, does God give you the grace to be courageous just like that? Or does He give you opportunities to be courageous?"

How insightful!! For yes, God will give us the grace-- but so often He first offers an opportunity to practice that virtue we seek, and when we turn to him in complete trust He will grant us the grace to attain the virtue.

Man the Warrior

We must always remember, women, that men were created to be warriors-- to fight for what they believe in. It would follow then, that we must not expect them to be flexible and readily admit where they are wrong, for how then would they be good warriors? We must with patience and love show them the way to the truth about themselves and their beliefs through our own love and flexibility. We were made to flex and bend to bring forth children and to love all our children equally at all times. We must do the same to give birth to man's sanctity.