Comments for Lent, Pascal, and the American Dream at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 2 out of 2 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sat, 25 May 2013 08:04:50 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/lent-pascal-and-the-american-dream.html#comment-10279 I've carried in my wallet the prayer to St. Jude for healing and have recited it often and although it has never "worked," I like the words. Maybe I'll try Pascal's prayer but it is hardly "brief," Bob. - Grump Wed, 07 Mar 2012 04:52:59 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/lent-pascal-and-the-american-dream.html#comment-10278 Thanks, Dr. Royal, for a beautiful reflection that sets things in perspective. I have found -- haven't we all? -- that when I really do offer it up, the burden does get lighter and joy increases. These days I am very mindful of the wisdom Gandolf offers Bilbo Baggins, "We don't choose the times we live in, but we do choose how to use the time we are given." My prayer is that at the end of my life I will have accomplished in the main the mission and tasks that God has set before me to do so as to merit to hear the "well-done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy prepared for you." And time teaches us all that if the just man sins seven times a day, how many more times do so those who are only on the path to becoming truly just. I've been thinking much of late that the central drama of life revolves around the facts that we all want to have our cake and eat it, too; that we can't; that much sorrow arises from those attempts and those failures; and that this sorrow can lead us to bitterness or to joy, in the latter event provided we recognize our abject impossibility to "fix" ourselves and our messes and to rely upon the good Lord for the wisdom and strength we need to do what is in our power and to offer up our many incapacities. Thank you too for those last paragraphs! Somewhere in the musings of the American Church of the last decades we lost that we are all called without exception to the heights of holiness (though the Council explicitly taught this); that God gives the means to each and every one of us to scale those heights and to reach the holiness he has prepared for each one of us; and that the only way to do this is by the narrow gate and the hard path that has few on it. In the end the President, his Administration, and the Senate may have handed the Church the biggest gift they could have by putting this persecution squarely to us. Now all of us who understand the mandate for what it is will have to pay the cost of discipleship and face the consequences that arise from it. Now all of us have to face the possibility of martyrdom, even if only white martyrdom; and so now all of us have before us the possibility of the greatest grace God gives to his children here below. Not that we should seek it, never, no: but should it come, we will have been truly blessed. God grant that we be equal to these tasks so that our contemplation of our mortality fills us with peace and hope rather than with dread. - Dave Wed, 07 Mar 2012 03:36:03 +0100