Valentine's Day

"So I gave them up to the hardness of their hearts; they walked according to their own counsels” -- Responsorial Psalm (81) for today's Mass.

Are there sadder words in all the Psalms? Imprisoned in the self?

"If only my people would hear me..."



Pray especially today for all those who must bear things, seemingly alone. May their True Lover comfort them.

Be still, and know that I am God. (Psalm 46)

 "He was filled with a sense of peace that was all the keener for being so brief--all the power of existence, all the delight of going nowhere, of asking nothing, desiring nothing, just to stand there the whole night long, blessedly, blissfully, as trees stand, catching the snowflakes."

--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, translated by Thomas P. Whitney

For the arrows of the Almighty are within me…The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. (Job 6:4)

Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause,

Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number...

To set up on high those that be low; that those which mourn may be exalted to safety. (Job 5:7-9, 11)
 

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. (Job 5:17)

Two Francises

"Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure."  (St. Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun, tr. by Bill Barrett)

"Try to make yourself more agreeable and humble every day...and work gently toward salvation." (St. Francis de Sales, whose feast day is today.) "Salvation"-- yours and theirs. Win-win.

                      "He left Nazareth and went down to live...by the sea." (Matthew 4:13)

"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel...Thou wilt show me the path of life." (Psalm 16)

Epiphany

 

Behold, in me long-vanished generations still kneel, and out of my soul many pagans shine toward the infinite;

 

 I lay hidden in the temples of their gods, I was darkly present in the sayings of their wise men;

 

I was on the towers with their star-gazers... 

 

 --Gertrude Von Le Fort, Hymns to the Church