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Jesus Asks for Some Small Effort
Persuading Our Families to Love God
Turning Mother's Work into Holy Work
A Dictatorship of Relativism - Affecting Mothers?
Ask Whatever You Will, and It Shall be Done...
Children Belong to Themselves...and to God
Children Are Terribly Intuitive
Trained in the Way They Should Go...
Holiness Thru the Very Performance of Our Tasks......
Suffering and Sanctity
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Copyright ©2004 Sophia Institute
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Welcome to "Thoughts for Moms"
Dear Friends,
"Thoughts for Mom" is a special place to receive spiritual
sustenance related to the vocation of motherhood. Here I will post
various reflections — from popes, saints, and Catholic writers,
to my thoughts and yours — to help us better live our mission
as Moms, and to help us give our vocation the depth of meaning God
intended it to have.
Once
more, you and I both have something to share, so please join me
in adding meditations and personal insights in the comments section
under each post, or contacting me at holly@mothersruleoflife.com
with your own reflection to add.
God Bless,
Holly Pierlot
Possessions & Spiritual Bonding
"...for us wounded human beings, possessing [something] imperceptibly slips into [our] being possessed. No sooner do I have a watch of some quality than I begin to be reluctant to part with it, even if someone needs it more than I do. This means that it, a mere thing, has taken a hold on my heart. It is not only the miser who is possessed by his money. He is merely a stong case of all of us... One of the most rapid ways to upset a man is to suggest that he ought to part with the superfluous material things he enjoys. Rare too is the woman who takes readily to the idea that her jewellry or extensive wardrobe should be disposed of for the benefit of the poor. Having wealth is damaging to the pursuit of the kingdom becuase the very having does something to one's inner life, one's very ability to love God for his own goodness and others in and for him..."
Fr Thomas Dubay, in "Happy Are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom", Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2003, p59
posted by Holly at 8:21 AM
3 comments
Recognizing Sloth in Our Lives
"Sloth in general... is a voluntary and culpable repugnance to work, to effort, and consequently a tendency to idleness, or at least to negligence... Sloth is not the languor or torpor in action which comes from poor health; it is an evil disposition of the will and of the sensible appetites, by which one fears and refuses effort, wishes to avoid all trouble... It has often been remarked that the slothful man is a parasite, who lives at the expense of others, as tranquil as a woodchuck when he is undisturbed in his idleness, and ill-humored when an effort is made to oblige him to work. This vice begins with unconcern and negligence in work, and manifests itself by a progressive dislike for all serious, physical and mental labor.
When idleness affects the accomplishment of the religious duties necessary to sanctification, it is called acedia... It is an evil sadness: opposed to spiritual joy, which is the fruit of generosity in the love of God. Acedia is a disgust for spiritual things, a disgust which leads one to perform them negligently, to shorten them, or to omit them under vain pretexts. It is the cause of tepidity.
This sadness, which is radically opposed to that of contrition, depresses the soul and weighs it down because it does not react as it should. Then it reaches a voluntary disgust for spiritual things, because they demand too much effort and self-discipline. Whereas devotion, which is the promptness of the will in the service of God, lifts the soul up, spiritual sloth weighs down and crushes the soul and ends by causing it to find the yoke of the Lord unbearable and to flee the divine light, which reminds it of its duties. St. Augustine says: "Light which is so pleasant to pure eyes, becomes hateful to infirm eyes which can no longer bear it."
This depressing sadness, the result of negligence, and this disgust, which is at least indirectly voluntary, are quite different from the sensible or spiritual aridity which, in divine trials, is accompanied by true contrition for our sins, by fear of offending God, by a keen desire for perfection, by a need of solitude, of recollection, and of the prayer of simple gaze."
from "The Three Ages of the Interior LIfe" by Fr Garrigou Lagrange, Online book found at
http://www.christianperfection.info/tta41.htm#bk2
posted by Holly at 10:01 AM
1 comments
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