Daily Archives: 2012/06/08
Q: “D’ya wanna be a saint?” A: “I don’t want what I want!” [& Flowers for the Immaculate Conception]
Look: If you want what you want in the spiritual life, you’ll never have a spiritual life, because you’ll only end up with your own imagination of your own desires. Not much spiritual with that now, is there?
Forget about having goals in the spiritual life. We can’t get there from here. The Lord has to draw us out of here from there. I think I wrote a something about this using the horrifically “nice” imagery of wild-eyed Salvador Dali to bring this point home some time ago. HERE! YIKES!
I mean, I don’t know what it is to be a saint, do I? Do I know what it means to have total un-self-serving respect and love for another? Do I know what it means to behold God our Heavenly Father face to Face, to know as I am known, through, with and in Jesus, by the firey firey firey enthusiastic unity of the Holy Spirit? Do I know what it means never ever to even be tempted to project what rubbish I perceive in myself unto others but instead to see their good as my own good because that good is my good because that Good is God Himself? Do I know what it means to totally love the entire Mystical Body of Christ in all of its members throughout the ages from Adam until the last of us is conceived and love precisely all the members as the Body of Christ, of Him who said what you have done to the least of these you have done to me? Well, do I?
Nah. As soon as I look to myself for what it takes, I sink to the point of drowning. What a storm! Lord! Save me!
So, I know I can’t get there from here, but have to be drawn by Him out of here from there. So, with utter simplicity, with humble thanksgiving, I just end up doing what it strikes me Jesus Himself must have done for His Immaculate Mother: pick her a few flowers! Here’s today’s bouquet, reflecting all sorts of different kinds of saints, starting off with that which is a bit bold:
…and followed by the more refined:
…and followed by the glorious:
…and the stalwart:
Filed under ., florae, Spiritual Life
STARTING 8 JUNE – Saint Michael teaming up with the Immaculate Conception
I’ve been asking you readers for prayers for this and that intention. These prayers have been answered most spectacularly. It makes me think that The Emergency Chaplet of the Immaculate Conception makes our Lady smile!
I have one continuous intention that has now taken on significance for the Church world-wide. I’ve been asking ye all to pray the Saint Michael Prayer daily, once for that intention and then once for all who are saying this prayer. There are many of you, and start any time if you haven’t already. I would ask you to continue those prayers and, please, for the next nine days, add The Emergency Chaplet of the Immaculate Conception. I would not ask this of you if it did not have grave significance for the entire Church throughout the world.
Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio;
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli
esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis,
satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute in infernum detrude.
Amen.
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness
and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.
Filed under .
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
