Showing posts with label Lenten Meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lenten Meditation. Show all posts

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Holy Season of Lent - 2020


“Be converted to Me with all your heart, in fasting, in weeping, and in mourning. . . . Blow the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, gather together the people, sanctify the Church” (Joel ii).


May this Holy Season of Lent bring about for you a time of true and salutary penance; may it lead you to forsake the false joys of earth and to be converted to God with all your heart; may your fasting take the place of feasting, your weeping take the place of mirth, and your mourning the place of joy; may your abstinence lead to a great expiation for sin and be practiced in obedience to the spirit of the general law of the Church.

May you follow not only the example of the penitent Ninevites, who, by a penitential fast, averted the destruction with which God had threatened them, but follow also that example of the Innocent Lamb of God, Who, prior to His Mission among men, was pleased to undergo a rigorous fast of forty days and forty nights in the wilderness.

May the holy fast be to you a spiritual springtide; may you polish your spiritual armor, may you breast the waves of evil passions, may you set out like a traveler on his journey heavenwards, and may you prepare like an athlete for the combat.

May you enter on the road which leads to heaven, the rugged and narrow road, and travel along it by buffeting the body and bringing it into subjection.

May your penance consist not merely in mortification of the body, but also in that of the soul, for sin is committed by the will, and therefore it is just that the will, as well as the body, should make atonement.

May you repress the waves of foolish passions and repulse the storm of wicked imaginations, so that your deeds may yield good and fruitful results. If you see a poor man have pity on him, if you see an enemy be reconciled, if you see a friend in good reputation, regard him without envy.

May you fast not only by your mouth by forbidding it to utter tales of slander, but also with your eyes by averting them from unlawful sights, and with your hands by restraining them from deeds of violence, and with your feet by not entering places of pernicious amusements, and with your ears by stopping them from listening to gossip and detraction.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

~~Taken from The White Paradise (1952)
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Mortification of the senses by a strict rule of life, mortification of intellect and will by obedience, mortification of the whole man by solitude – these are the ramparts and fosses behind which he entrenches himself, who has been chosen by Grace. The three practices thus briefly indicated make up what is usually called “Carthusian penance.”
 
To be sorry for the life one has lived; to be converted, that is, to turn from the world and direct one’s way toward God: this is the first step in the Carthusian life, as in every religious life; with this act we begin this life. Those whom the divine Voice calls to the solitude of our cloisters have heard the words of the Gospel: “Do penance”; and “Go, sell whatsoever thou hast.” Above all, they have set before themselves the task of detaching themselves from all created things, of breaking the chains of our bondage.
 

The acts of detachment, strictness toward oneself, and submission are and always have been required of a life dedicated to the worship of Him Who has naught to do with things that are not. To live by God alone and for God alone, that is the heart of our secret and the true essence of our solitude.
 
There are not many souls that have the power to recognize the beauty of the Absolute, thus set forth; so deep have the children of Adam fallen. Rare are the souls intrepid enough the acknowledge their very nonentity. Rare are the souls which really dare to be nothing, and which, in that very act, are humble enough to be content to be divine and to be sons of the Most High, to be in short crucified and glorified in Him.

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Without doubt, these things will seem like madness to the world’s wisdom, for the world lives upon the passing shadows of things, while we tell you of reality, pure and eternal. The world has not the power to know either our life or our love.
 
For our life is God; and our love is God again; and our sure, certain and perfect victory is nothing else than God Himself. God is exactly what the world knows not. Therefore, the world can neither estimate the extent of our victory nor gain the slightest inkling of the victory of Christ in us. “Have confidence, I have overcome the world.”