"To hear the words of God is a serious matter. At Mount Sinai, the people of Israel prepared themselves for three days before God spoke to them the words of the covenant. In the Mass, we prepare ourselves for this holy encounter with God’s Word through the Introductory Rites— the sign of the cross, the Confiteor, the Kyrie, and the Gloria. Having marked ourselv…
Read more"Regarding this problem of time, we should make an act of faith in Jesus’ promise: 'There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or land, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time!' (Mk 10:29). It is legitimate to apply this to chronological time as well: whoever giv…
Read more"It is God who by His presence creates the holy ground which man discovers by recollecting himself and where, having done so, he stands. God shows man the place where he really belongs, where he will find himself and his true world; where the call can reach him and where he must answer it. Recollectedness, therefore, is the condition which enables man to say, …
Read more"We have mentioned here the 'night of the spirit,' the great trial of passive purification, by means of which God works in the very depths of the soul, and thus prepares her for the supreme ascent and final transformation. This trial is a terrible one, a veritable purgatory here below, according to St John of the Cross, who has described the angu…
Read more"And a fourth and last meaning: to recollect oneself is to awaken. With people who are not recollected there is always something tense, some preoccupation; and as soon as this preoccupation and tension lessens, they become all of a sudden empty and listless. When there is no object which draws them, no motive which pushes or stimulus which agitates them, then t…
Read more"To imitate Jesus is no longer copy Jesus, but to be transformed into Jesus, to become Jesus. It is no loner to bring out in herself the features of the beloved Model, but to allow Christ to develop and reproduce himself in her. It is the imitation ab intra . There is no question of becoming merely like Jesus, but of being one with Jesus, the God-Man... …
Read more"No sooner has he started to pray than conjured up by his inner unrest, all sorts of other things clamor for attention: a task at work, a conversation, an errand, a newspaper, a book. All these suddenly appear most important, and prayer seems a sheer waste of time. But no sooner has he stopped praying than there is plenty of time, and he fritters it away with …
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