Status Updates From The Gift of Faith, Fourth E...

Agape is love that creates, that loves you not because you are worthy of being loved, but to make you worthy of it. Agape desires to create an ever-increasing good in you.

There was Christ, "wasting" thirty years in Nazareth... Then Jesus retreated & went into the desert. Thus we are again confused & cannot understand Jesus' attitude at all. We would like to take Him aside & rebuke Him as Peter the Apostle once did. We would say, Lord, what on earth were You doing? Multitudes were waiting, & yet You went off to pray again. Have You not already prayed for so many years?

Selection from the book, Nocturnes, by Henri Daniel-Rops about a mosaic from the fourth century AD in the Bardo Museum in Tunis. You wouldn't think something so insignificant could be so moving, but it was because it hearkened back to the earliest days of the church and how 'Mother Church' has been our mother ever since as evidenced by this little mosaic. Made me want to check out this book.

Beautiful vignette about St. Therese praying for the conversion of an apostate Carmelite priest who although he never made a formal confession, apparently read and was deeply moved by her Autobiography and called out to Jesus before he died.

True peace is not so much the evidence of achievement, but the result of choice. If there are idols in your life - attachments and enslavements that hamper you - there will be no peace.

Supernatural humor allows us to see the human and divine realities in the proper proportion. It allows us to gain greater distance, greater detachment, and greater freedom. ... It allows us to avoid being extremely absorbed - to avoid excessive problems and inundation of work - in order to hear Christ's call that there is need of only one thing (cf. Lk 10:42)

It's difficult to believe, but it's even harder not to believe. Try to realize as often as possible that you are not alone. Christ who has redeemed you, is with you. With a childlike feeling of your own helplessness, try to oppose those fears that depress you. Say to Jesus, I know that You want to cleanse me from this leprosy; I know that You have already redeemed me from it. You could be witness to a miracle.