Category Archives: Spiritual Reflections

Spiritual Reflections

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

St Helena and the Holy Cross

We are celebrating the feast of the cross which drove away darkness and brought in the light. As we keep this feast, we are lifted up with the crucified Christ, leaving behind us earth and sin so that we may gain the things above. So great and outstanding a possession is the cross that he who wins it has won a treasure.

St Andrew of Crete

“When we are overcome by sadness, fear, or suffering; when the pains of loss overwhelm us; when evil seems to have taken power; let us look to the cross and be filled with peace, knowing that Christ has walked this road and walks it now with us and with all our brothers and sisters.”

St Teresa of Avila

“O souls! seek a refuge, like pure doves, in the shadow of the crucifix. There mourn the Passion of your divine Spouse, and drawing from your hearts flames of love and rivers of tears, make of them a precious balm with which to anoint the wounds of your Saviour.”

St Paul of the Cross

There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us. And on the far side of every cross we find the newness of life in the Holy Spirit, that new life which will reach its fulfillment in the resurrection. This is our faith. This is our witness before the world.

St John Paul II

Saint Notburga

Notburga of was an Austrian saint
and peasant from Tyrol. Notburga was born
about 1265 at Rattenberg on the Inn river.
She was a cook in the household of Count Henry
of Rattenberg, and used to give food to the poor.

Notburga then worked for a farmer in Eben Austria.
The farmer came upon her in the field one evening
as she was setting down her sickle.

The bell had rung for vespers and
the vigil for Sunday had just begun.
The farmer wanted her to continue working
but she insisted that no Christian should harvest
during the vigil in good weather.

Perhaps she declared that she should let her sickle decide.
She tossed it in the air and it hung there like a crescent moon,
a harbinger of good weather. And so Notburga went off
to vespers and kept the Sunday vigil.

Abraham Lincoln

our Heavenly Father

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

Abraham Lincoln

Beatification . Archbishop Sheen on September 24

the Beatification . WEB

[The phrase] “Time on my hands” has far deeper significance than is generally envisaged. It could very well be that time is one of the greatest obstacles to happiness, and for two reasons.

Time makes the combination of pleasures impossible. Because we live in time we cannot simultaneously listen to Cicero, Demosthenes and Bossuet; because the clock of our life is wound but only once, we cannot at one and the same moment enjoy the snow of the Alps and the refreshing sunshine of the highlands of Kenya; because the heart beats out the lease on life, one cannot, despite the advertisements, “dine and dance” at the same time.

Because life does not end here, the closing of the doors of time and the burden of the years become bearable—because they lead to something better when properly utilized. That was why St. Paul said that for the sake of Christ he “gloried in his infirmities” and in his anxieties and in his sorrows.

As William James once wrote, “The sovereign cure for worry is religious faith. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold of vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things.” It is only to the extent that timeless existence, or eternity, is brought to bear upon all of our actions in time, that we become liberated from that awful, frustrating anxiety of the temporal.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen . WEB

St Gregory the Great

True Riches

The only true riches are those that make us rich in virtue.

Therefore, if you want to be rich, beloved, love true riches. If you aspire to the heights of real honor, strive to reach the kingdom of Heaven. If you value rank and renown, hasten to be enrolled in the heavenly court of the Angels.

The Holy Bible is like a mirror before our mind’s eye. In it we see our inner face. From the Scriptures we can learn our spiritual deformities and beauties. And there too we discover the progress we are making.

St Gregory the Great

the Land of Eternal Peace

Eternal Life

“O my dear parishioners, let us endeavor to get to heaven! There we shall see God. How happy we shall be” – St. Jean Vianney:

“Our Lord does not come down from heaven every day to lie in a golden ciborium. He comes to find another heaven which is infinitely dearer to him—the heaven of our souls, created in his image, the living temples of the adorable Trinity.” – St. Therese of Lisieux

“There, good will shall be so ordered in us that we shall have no other desire than to remain there eternally.” – St. Augustine

Saint Monica

Eternal Wisdom

Because the day when she ( St Monica ) was to leave this life was drawing near – a day known to you, though we were ignorant of it – she and I happened to be alone, through (as I believe) the mysterious workings of your will. We stood leaning against a window which looked out on a garden within the house where we were staying, at Ostia on the Tiber; for there, far from the crowds, we were recruiting our strength after the long journey ..

We were alone, conferring very intimately. Forgetting what lay in the past, and stretching out to what was ahead, we enquired between ourselves, in the light of present truth, into what you are and what the eternal life of the saints would be like, for Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor human heart conceived it. And yet, with the mouth of our hearts wide open we panted thirstily for the celestial streams of your fountain, the fount of life which is with you.

This was the substance of our talk, though not the exact words. Yet you know, O Lord, how on that very day, amid this talk of ours that seemed to make the world with all its charms grow cheap, she said, “For my part, my son, I no longer find pleasure in anything that this life holds .. One thing only there was for which I desired to linger in this life: to see you a Catholic Christian before I died. And my God has granted this to me more lavishly than I could have hoped, letting me see even you spurning earthly happiness to be his servant.

Shortly afterwards, addressing us both, she said, “Lay this body anywhere, and take no trouble over it. One thing only do I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be”.

From the Confessions of St Augustine