God is everywhere. There is no place God is not… You cry out to Him, ‘Where art Thou, my God?’ And He answers, “I am present, my child! I am always beside you.’ Both inside and outside, above and below, wherever you turn, everything shouts, ‘God!’

In Him we live and move. We breathe God, we eat God, we clothe ourselves with God. Everything praises and blesses God. All of creation shouts His praise. Everything animate and inanimate speaks wondrously and glorifies the Creator. Let every breath praise the Lord!

- Joseph the Hesychast 78th Letter

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"To deny oneself means to give up one’s bad habits; to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad thoughts or desires; to suppress every evil thought; not to desire to do anything out of self love, but to do everything out of love for God."

- St. Innocent of Alaska

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"Let your modesty be a sufficient incitement, yea, an exhortation, to everyone to be at peace on their merely looking at you."
-St. Ignatius Loyola

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A short reflection on Hannah's prayers and actions in 1 Samuel 1

Hannah prays to the LORD for a child:

In her bitterness she prayed to the LORD, weeping freely,11and made this vow: “O LORD of hosts, if you look with pity on the hardship of your servant, if you remember me and do not forget me, if you give your handmaid a male child, I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life. No razor shall ever touch his head.”

At first glance, this looks like she might just be promising to bring him up as a faithful follower of God.

But no, when she has the child, she takes him to the temple:

She conceived and, at the end of her pregnancy, bore a son whom she named Samuel. “Because I asked the LORD for him. The next time her husband Elkanah was going up with the rest of his household to offer the customary sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vows, Hannah did not go, explaining to her husband, “Once the child is weaned, I will take him to appear before the LORD and leave him there forever.”Her husband Elkanah answered her: “Do what you think best; wait until you have weaned him. Only may the LORD fulfill his word!” And so she remained at home and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

She literally takes her son and leaves him in the temple, forever. She gives him up. And this was her idea; she prayed to the Lord and said, "I will give him to the LORD..." 

From a modern point of view, this whole exchange looks weird. Why would she pray for a child after longing for one for so long, and then just give him up almost immediately? Why would she suggest consecrating him to the Lord? If you give me a baby, Lord, I'll give him right back? I mean, she still doesn't have a son she can raise now. For all intents and purposes, she's still childless. 

So why?

Perhaps the answer is that her understanding of motherhood is much more loving and mature than my gut reaction. 

Her reward lies not in having a child to hold but in being allowed to participate in the bringing forth of new life, to participate with God in creation. 

She willingly gives him up as soon as she has him, because the point was never to "have" him. The point was for him to exist, for his life and hers to bring glory to God.

There is also a parallel between Hannah and Mary. Both call themselves the handmaid of the Lord, and both willingly give their children completely into the service of the Lord, although Mary raises Jesus in her home rather than leaving him in the temple. Hannah asks for the Lord to look with pity on his servant. Mary proclaims that God has looked with favor on his lowly servant. And for both of them, the primary cause of their joy was not that they had a baby to hold or a male heir. Their joy was in participating in the love of God, in fulfilling His will. 

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"If you love me, you will keep my commandments." - John 14:15 (Today's Gospel)

I heard a really great homily today in which the priest told us that the "commandment" of Jesus was not, "Love thy neighbor" or the Golden Rule. His commandment, His constant commandment is "Do this in memory of me."

If we love Jesus, we will celebrate the Eucharist, eat and drink of the New Testament, the new covenant of His sacrifice.

Thinking back on Fr. Baker's homilies, though, I realized that if the commandment Jesus refers to here is to receive the Eucharist, then the commandment is really to accept His sacrifice, to accept His love. Or, in Fr. Baker's phrasing, to BE LOVED.

If you love me, you will accept my love. If you love me, you will allow yourself to be loved. You will let me love you.

The first and foremost commandment we receive from Christ is not to do anything at all, really. It's to surrender ourselves to His love, to be with Him and to allow Him to love us. When we accept His love, we love Him in return and we are capable of loving others.

This is made even clearer by the ending of today's Gospel:

"And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him." - John 14:21

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“Mary is a “woman of the Eucharist” in her whole life. The Church, which looks to Mary as a model, is also called to imitate her in her relationship with this most holy mystery.”

— St. John Paul II

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"We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls." -- Mother Teresa

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But Ruth said, “Do not press me to go back and abandon you!

Wherever you go I will go,

wherever you lodge I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people

and your God, my God.

Where you die I will die,

and there be buried.

May the LORD do thus to me, and more, if even death separates me from you!”

- Ruth 1:16-17

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We now begin to discern a first vague outline of the attitude signified by the word “credo” [“I believe”]. It means that man does not regard seeing, hearing, and touching as the totality of what concerns him, that he does not view the area of his world as marked off by what he can see and touch […] it signifies, not the observation of this or that fact, but a fundamental mode of behavior toward being, toward existence, toward one’s own sector of reality, and toward reality as a whole […] belief signifies the decision that at the very core of human existence there is a point that cannot be nourished and supported on the visible and tangible, that encounters and comes into contact with what cannot be seen and finds that it is a necessity for its own existence.By Josef Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity

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“The one who listens attentively to the Word of God and truly prays, always asks the Lord: what is your will for me?”

— Pope Francis on Twitter : http://ift.tt/TD2UYF

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"Without the Way, there is no going. Without the Truth, there is no knowing. Without the Life, there is no living." - Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ 

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“What if, instead of expecting God to love you and make you feel happy, you love Him and try and make Him happy? Because when we choose to reach out, we will be surprised, because we will see that He has been reaching for us all along, when we were just too busy looking at our own needs and desires.”

— T.B. LaBerge // Jesus, His Grace and the Gospel

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“Man’s maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.”

— St. Augustine

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“Reason ought to guide, since it alone has understanding of truth. Will ought to obey reason and guide the emotions, since it is free and, therefore, responsible. The emotions ought to be neither served nor avoided, but formed, since they are the raw material for the work of the will guided by the reason.”

— Catholic Christianity, p. 176, by Peter Kreeft

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"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man." - G. K. Chesterton

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"Anxiety is one of the greatest traitors that real virtue and solid devotion can ever have. It pretends to warm us to do good works, but doesn’t and we grow cold; it makes us run only to make us trip. One must be careful of this on all occasions particularly at prayer. And to better succeed it would be well to remember that graces and the consolations of prayer are not waters of this earth, but of Heaven, and that therefore all our efforts are not sufficient to make them fall, even though it is necessary to prepare oneself with great diligence, but always humbly and tranquilly; one must keep ones heart turned to Heaven and wait from there the heavenly dew."

—St. Padre Pio

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“A man who has just come out of the hospital, having nearly died there, and having been cut to pieces on an operating table, cannot immediately begin to lead the life of an ordinary working man. And after the spiritual mangle I have gone through, it will never be possible for me to do without the sacraments daily, and without much prayer and penance and meditation and mortification.”

— Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain

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St. Augustine's Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy. Amen.

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“A saint is someone who knows he’s a sinner.”

— G.K. Chesterton

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“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

— C.S. Lewis

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"May the reign of the Eucharist come about more and more. For too long impiety and ingratitude have been allowed to hold sway over the world! Adveniat regnum tuum. Thy Kingdom come." - St. Peter Julian Eymard

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“St. Anselm says that “wherever there is the greatest purity, there is also the greatest charity.” The more a heart is pure, and empty of itself, the greater is the fullness of its love towards God. The most holy Mary, because she was all humility, and had nothing of self in her, was filled with Divine love, so that “her love towards God surpassed that of all men and Angels,” as St. Bernardine writes. Therefore St. Francis de Sales with reason called her “the Queen of love.””

— St. Alphonsus Liguori

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"When Teresa of Avila was asked what she did in prayer, she replied, ‘I just allow myself to be loved.’" - Anthony de Mello, Sadhana, a Way to God

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