The Stained Glass Buffalo: our biggest fear

28 November 2011

our biggest fear

Every Easter we renew our baptismal vows, because that dying-to-rise is the essence of the Christian life. And that's what we fear. More than we fear death, we fear life. I don't mean the hard-shelled routine that passes for life, but the real thing, fresh and free, foolish in the world's eyes, stripped of the trappings of worldly honor and wealth and power, naked as a little child - or as Christ on the cross, clothed only in obedience and love.

We shy away. Who knows whether that other thief, the unrepentant, had a moment when he too could have caught at dying to live again, but feared, and turned away with a jest?

Jesus calls us to save our lives by losing them. In him we are that corn of wheat that falls into the ground and dies, to bring forth much fruit

Praying With St. Paul
Anthony Esolen

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It is Jesus

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
--Pope John Paul II

Carlo Carretto:

How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful. Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face - and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too - where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church. No, I am old enough, I know better.