Misael Galdámez > Recent Status Updates

“True knowledge of God always goes hand in hand with a painful self-knowledge…

As the wood burns, it becomes blackened, it cracks and steams, and all the knot holes and flaws are exposed…

The process is painful but it is the mark of real growth in union with God. That is why good souls who are making real progress often feel they are regressing and getting further from God.”

“In the first place, we can speak of techniques for coming to quiet, for bringing ourselves to that stillness in which the voice of God can be heard. Secondly, we can speak of techniques for positively disposing ourselves to encounter the Lord.”

“The [daily] office is…primarily…a way of coming to quiet before the Lord-of being reminded of his love and providence at certain pivotal moments of the day…”

“A second basic rule of discernment for the beginner is the following: for those who are sincerely seeking to serve and love God, he always works in peace, and usually slowly?

Why in peace? Because, as St. Ignatius explains it, the soul seeking to serve God is basically attuned to him and, while there may be things in such a soul that God wants changed, he does not want to create turmoil…”

“…love and friendship are not means but ends, and hence prayer, which is our love-relationship to God, cannot be relevant in the sense that we simply use it, whether to change the world or to achieve peace of heart”

“Christian prayer is grounded in a very specific conception of God: a personal God who encounters his creatures in love.”

“As Teresa of Avila says in the Interior Castle, "The important thing (in prayer) is not to think much but to love much."" The goal of prayer is the encounter with God in love.”

“As we learn to listen with attention and sensitivity, all the events of our lives become encounters with the Lord, become prayer…Ignatius speaks of the mature apostle as a contemplative in action, someone who can "seek God in all things." It is in this sense that everything-work, play, and rest-becomes truly prayer for the mature pray-er.”

Favorites: A Folklore for My Generation (on longing/desire/can’t change the past)

The Seventh Man: On what tragedy takes from us

“Eating is about hospitality and intimacy. When we appreciate that the whole of creation manifests God's primordial hospitality, God making room for the world and then nurturing it into life, then we can also see that the many dimensions of our eating can be a daily testimony to the love of God.”

Paul Evdokimov writes: "In the immense cathedral which is the universe of God, each person, whether scholar or manual laborer, is called to act as the priest of his whole life - to take all that is human, and to turn it into an offering, a hymn of glory." Schmemann thinks similarly, stating that "to offer food, this world, this life to God is the initial 'eucharistic' function of man, his very fulfillment as man."

“The point is not simply to see that everything has its cause in God, "but also that everything in the world and the world itself is a gift of God's love, a revelation by God of his very self, summoning us in everything to know God, through everything to be in communion with him, to possess everything as life in him."”

“John of Damascus claimed that God's invitation to Adam and Eve to eat from every tree meant that God could be tasted as the One who is "all in all." John imagines God to be saying, "Through all things, ascend to me the Creator; from every tree harvest one fruit, namely me who am the life. Let all things bear the fruit of life for you: make participation in me the stuff of your existence"”

“The experience of delight is indispensable beeause it opens our minds and hearts so that we can sense ereatures in their relationship to God."

“The experience of delight begins when love joins perception. In his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, Aquinas wrote "Where love is, there is the eye.””

“In his death he shows that life is ultimately about giving oneself completely to others: "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.””

"The essence of the Eucharistic ethos...is the affirmation of the Other and of every Other as a gift to be appreciated and to evoke gratitude"

“The goal of life is to enact relationships with each other so that the life people experience here and now can share in the divine, Trinitarian life that creates, sustains, and fulfills creation…Jesus reveals that the Father created the world out of love and wants the whole creation to participate in this divine love through the inspiration and agency of the Spirit.”

“Creation is an immense altar upon which the incomprehensible, self-offering love of God is daily made manifest…Because there is no life without sacrificial love, and no love without surrender, the destiny of all creatures is that they offer themselves or are offered up as the temporal expression of God's eternal love."

“Creation is an altar on which creatures are offered to each other as the expression of the Creator's self-giving care and provision for life. To be made in the image of this Triune creator is to be invited to share in the shaping of the world as an offering of love. The passage from death to genuine life is a loving movement of self-offering in which people lay down their lives for others...”

“Today's economies, in other words, are planned. They depend on founding myths or assumptions that. need to be seriously questioned if we are to make significant changes in the way we live.
Of these founding assumptions, one of the most important would have to be self interest as the major driving force of economic life.”

“Sin is a refusal of relationship and a refusal of responsibility for the well-being of others. Consider Lash's formulation: "All things exist as expressions of God's knowledge and love; as finite refractions of the absolute relation - eternal utterance, inexhaustible donation - that God is. Sin is refusal of relation, self-enclosure in a futile search for safety.'”

“…ln many respects God's relationship to creation is like the relationship gardeners have with their gardens. By participating in the gardening work God does, people are put in a position to sense and appreciate God's life-building ways...

The human task is to live a life reflective of God's intentions in the world. This is what it means to be made in the image of God.”

“[God’s rest] has to do with the intense joy and peace, the supreme delight and contentment that followed from God's life-giving work…For God, rest is best understood as God's complete entrance into life and as God's availability to and joy in the beauty and goodness that is there…God rests because there is no other place God would rather be.”

“Eating isn't simply reminder of God's love. It is, instead, our immersion within it, and our participation in God's self-offering life. To eat in a God-informed way is to extend to others and to places God's life-creating, life-honoring ways.”

“[Eating] is about extending hospitality and making room for others to find life…it is invitation to enter into communion and be reconciled with each other.”

“Not only did Jesus come to free us from the bonds of sin and death, he also came to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life…He came to lift us up into loving community with the Father.”

“Boredom, resentment, and depression are all sentiments of disconnectedness. They present life to us as a broken connection. They give us a sense of not-belonging. In interpersonal relations, this is experienced as loneliness…

Jesus responds to this condition of being filled yet unfulfilled, very busy yet unconnected, all over the place yet never at home. He wants to bring us to the place where we belong.”

“…food was not just a huge part of my life; it basically was my life. Food at once grounded me and took me to other places. It comforted me and challenged me. It was part of the fabric that made up my creative self and my domestic self. It allowed me to express my love for the people I love and make connections with new people I might come to love.”