Featured Post

SHADE // Brother Isaiah (updated 2 August 2020)

From the CFR facebook page: "SHADE" is a new acoustic series featuring the music of Brother Isaiah, CFR. Brother Isaiah offers si...

Friday 27 August 2010

God's Love




"I know my own and my own know me" (Jn 10:14)
God knows me, he is concerned about me. This thought should make us truly joyful. Let us allow it to penetrate the depths of our being.

 http://www.benedicteveryday.com/

Sunday 22 August 2010

Discipline/Suffering

"All discipline, at the time we get it, seems to be a matter for sadness rather than joy - but later on it produces fruit that yields peace and righteousness in those who have been trained by it. Therefore brace up your drooping hands and your weakened knees, and make straight tracks with your feet, in order that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather cured." (The letter to the Hebrews 12:11-13, freshly translated by Fr Nicholas King, SJ)
I was struck when I read this passage this morning. It seemed to be saying to me that I should submit to the sufferings of this life so that they can bear fruit. That if I were to fight against them, then all the good that could come from the "training" would bear less fruit as the healing would not be proper. The author of the letter urges us to accept any suffering with the correct disposition so that it may bear much fruit. How difficult this is! Humanly, impossible, but with God's help it can be done.
Suffering is a divine thing indeed, as witnessed by Jesus and many Saints who have managed to heed the advise given in the letter to the Hebrews. May God help us to appreciate this gift He imparts in the understanding that training can cause pain. But, as we often hear, and I apologise for using such a crude colloquial phrase: "No pain, no gain."
One last thought from St Faustina: "If the angels were capable of envy, they would envy us for two things: one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering." (Divine Mercy in My Soul, Saint Faustina)

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Fwd: A Shongwe Angel

Enough said. Thank you to Matseliso and Fanile for giving us this beautiful baby girl Nonhle in 2010

Sunday 15 August 2010

Christianity is joy (from Benedict XVI)

When one has to resist evil it's all the more important not to fall into a gloomy moralism that doesn't allow itself any joy but really to see how much beauty there is, too, and to draw from it the strength needed to resist what destroys joy. Faith gives joy. When God is not there, the world becomes desolate, and everything becomes boring, and everything is completely unsatisfactory. It's easy to see today how a world empty of God is also increasingly consuming itself, how it has become a wholly joyless world. The great joy comes from the fact that there is this great love, and that is the essential message of faith. You are unswervingly loved. Christianity is joy. Joy not in the sense of cheap fun, but joy that exists together with a difficult life and also makes this life liveable because of the hope of the life to come.

Most popular