From Today's Office

We do not lose heart, because our inner being is renewed each day even though our body is being destroyed at the same time. The present burden of our trial is light enough, and earns for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. We do not fix our gaze on what is seen but on what is unseen. What is seen is transitory; what is unseen lasts forever.

Indeed, we know that when the earthly tent in which we dwell is destroyed we have a dwelling provided for us by God, a dwelling in the heavens, not made by hands but to last forever. We groan while we are here, even as we yearn to have our heavenly habitation envelop us. [ ] God has fashioned us for this very thing and has given us the Spirit as a pledge of it.

—From chapter 15 of the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians and from the Office of Readings for the Office for the Dead.  For the victims of tornadoes in Shawnee and Moore, Oklahoma.

All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading you back into fear, but a spirit of adoption through which we cry out “Abba!” (that is, “Father!”). The Spirit himself gives witness with our spirit that we are children of God. But if we are children, we are heirs as well: heirs of God, heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so as to be glorified with him.

—From Chapter 8 from the letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans and from the Office of Readings for today’s Solemnity of Pentecost.

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may, at any moment, become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself: “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? God is love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship to each other. We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved…. When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, his son, in us and loves us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it.

Dorothy Day

—(via mshedden)

The highest heavens cannot contain God whom you carried in your womb.

—A responsory from the Office of Readings from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The Common may be used to celebrate today’s Memorial of Our Lady of Fatima.

pegobry:

So here’s my pitch for Christian faith, in the most succinct and accessible form I can think of. It’s a pitch. It argues some things, and postulates others, and you may not agree with all, or any, of these postulates. But it tries to be clear about what it postulates, and what it postulates, I…

The best prayer is to rest in the goodness of God, knowing that that goodness can reach down to our lowest depths of need.

—Julian of Norwich (via denisehess)

“You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you. But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will leave me desiring even more. When you fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow famished for your light. I desire above all to see you, the true light, as you really are…

Eternal Trinity, Godhead, mystery as deep as the sea, you could give me no gift greater than the gift of yourself. For you are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being … By this light, reflected as it were in a mirror, I recognize that you are the highest good, one we can neither comprehend nor fathom. And I know that you are beauty and wisdom itself.

—From the dialogue On Divine Providence by St. Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor of the Church and from the Office of Readings for her memorial celebrated yesterday.   

O search me, God, and know my heart.
O test me and know my thoughts.
See that I follow not the wrong path
and lead me in the path of life eternal.

—From Psalm 139 and from Vespers for Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter.

My soul, give thanks to the Lord,
all my being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord
and never forget all his blessings.

It is he who forgives all your guilt,
who heals every one of your ills,
who redeems your life from the grave,
who crowns you with love and compassion,
who fills your life with good things,
renewing your youth like an eagle’s.

—From Psalm 103 and from the Office of Readings for Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter.

That a dead man should begin to live again is not, in the world of the Bible, an entirely unique occurrence. But it is not, in any case, what the Resurrection of Jesus expresses. The meaning of the Resurrection lies, rather, in Jesus’ passage to a form of existence which has left death behind it once for all, and so has gone beyond, once for all, the limitations of this aeon in God.

—Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale (via invisibleforeigner)