hocus pocus

I am the Truth

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
-Andre Gide

The Gospel according to St. Luke

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
-Dorothy Parker

grace everywhere

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.
-H. G. Wells

what do you see?

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
-Arthur Conan Doyle

Give us this day...

When God wishes to punish us, he answers our prayers.
-Oscar Wilde

wait for it.

There will be a time when loud-mouthed, incompetent people seem to be getting the best of you. When that happens, you only have to be patient and wait for them to self destruct. It never fails. -Richard Rybolt

When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong — or absolutely right.
-Albert Guinon

sheen

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

-Fulton Sheen

lumen christi

There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
- Leonard Cohen

Here is here. Now!

What an amazing moment it must have been that day in the synagogue when Jesus announced, “Today,this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Imagine the stunned looks on people’s faces, their mouths hanging open in disbelief. Many were expecting the messiah to be a mighty king, a fierce leader who would restore the kingdom of Israel. But the boy next door? The one they remember playing with as children?

And yet, who better to proclaim the good news of God’s reign than someone who is intimately familiar with the daily lives of God’s people? The message that Jesus came to proclaim is just that - that God is near at hand, not far away and indifferent to our needs, but in our very midst, healing us, freeing us and loving us.

You and I are a part of God’s people. Through who we are and what we do, we need to show that God is present and at work in the world, even in all of its brokenness. Through our caring and compassion, our listening and loving, we too proclaim the reality of God’s reign. As we celebrate this Eucharist, may we take to heart the challenging words of Teresa of Avila, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands, no feet but yours.”

- Teresa Whalen Lux, Living with Christ

invitation. rsvp?

Jesus, as a prophet in today’s gospel, challenges His own people to a new way of living, a new way of seeing things. Ironically, they yearn for a new and better existence while rejecting the very means to reach the wholeness, freedom, and peace they desire. How stubbornly they resist Jesus’ prophetic invitation to accept a wider vision of the loving, inclusive reign of God.

Everyone committed to others in Christ, whether parent, teacher, friend, or employer, will at times be called and challenged by God to prophetically confront suffering and division, to help lead the world toward peace and new life. Paul reveals that the key to doing this is love itself. Without love, whatever we do or say will never ring true or move hearts. It is love that enables us to be truly compassionate, understanding, patient, forgiving, accepting of others. Love sustains our courage with the power to endure and carries us confidently through every challenge. The source of that love is God the Father who raised Jesus from death to new life.

-Rev. Michael Traher, SFM, Living with Christ

not by bread alone but...

O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper - and sleep too - than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber.
A.A. Bonar

you can't find what you never lost

How did Paul find joy in prison? He didn’t. He took his joy in Christ into jail with him; therefore, joy was his continual companion. -John MacArthur

the difference

The things of this world must be known in order to be loved, but Jesus Christ must be loved in order to be known. -Blaise Pascal

Eustace

“But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means that I had another smaller suit underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this under-skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

“Then the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

-Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis

look in

"Most people if they really learn to look into their own heart [and that’s what I’m urging you to do right now] most people if they really learn to look into their own hearts would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can ever really satisfy. I am not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or failures of holidays and so on. I’m speaking of the very best possible ones. There is always something we have grasped at. There’s always something in that first moment of longing but fades away in the reality. The spouse may be a good spouse. The scenery has been excellent. It turned out to be a good job. But it’s evaded us."

C.S. Lewis

...and that has made all the difference.

"We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision."
C.S. Lewis, Preface: The Great Divorce

perfection

"‘Make no mistake,’ He says, ‘if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, not let you rest, until you are literally perfect- until my Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less.’"
C.S. Lewis

creation cost nothing. redemption cost the cross.

“ The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable — it is wrong. Jesus’ death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid — God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born — God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering. ” - Tim Keller

creation cost nothing. redemption cost the cross.

“ The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable — it is wrong. Jesus’ death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid — God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born — God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering. ” - Tim Keller