There will be a storm of issues. Worries will surround you, and maintaining your Christian life will not be easy. But don’t worry. God will help you. Do what is within your power. Can you pray for five minutes a day? Then pray. And if you can’t manage five minutes, pray for two. The rest is God’s affair. Contrary to our expectations, there is no ‘must.’ Such a word does not exist within the Christian life. The idea that something ‘must’ be, or ‘must’ take place, is a product of the intellect,…a logical conclusion….But the word ‘must’ has never moved anyone to do anything. On the contrary, it makes you feel like a slave and discourages you from moving forward.
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Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness -
In a short time, a man can cut off ten such desires. He takes a little walk and sees something. His thoughts say to him, ‘Go over there and investigate,’ and he says to his thoughts, ‘No! I won’t,’ and he cuts off his desire. Again, he finds someone gossiping, and his thoughts say to him, ‘You go and have a word with them,’ and he cuts off his desires and does not speak. Or again his thoughts say to him, ‘Go up and ask the cook what’s cooking?’ and he does not go, but cuts off his desire. Then he sees something else, and his thoughts say to him, ‘Go down and ask, who brought it?’ and he does not ask. A man denying himself in this way comes little by little to form a habit of it, so that from denying himself in little things, he begins to deny himself in great without the least trouble. Finally, he comes not have any of these extraneous desires, but whatever happens to him he is satisfied with it, as if it were the very thing he wanted. And so, not desiring to satisfy his own desires, he finds himself always doing what he wants to. For not having his own special fancies, he fancies every single thing that happens to him. Thus, he is found, as we said, to be without special attachments, and from this state of tranquility he comes to the state of holy indifference.
—Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings -
A Smile, A Gaze…
Love without limits employs the simplest means to establish contact between persons. Words are not needed. If they are pure and true, a smile or a gaze will suffice.
A smile, a gaze… Two means of infinite expression: a deep and silent expression of ourselves. Thereby a communion is created with those to whom we may never speak a word or whom we may never see again.
Whether or not you are known to me, I look at each of you attentively—you whom God has placed on my pathway. Silently, and in my presence, God makes of you living souls. He makes you present to me. In your eyes I behold your soul, just as my gaze conveys my soul to you.
We can, then, become immersed in other persons: “I am in you and you in me.” Between us there grows a living communion. Its heart, its ultimate fulfillment, is the Face of God, that Face we behold through the transparency of each other’s faces.
We smile at each other. That smile relaxes lips that previously were closed. It opens teeth that before were tightly clenched. A door has opened. Something has begun between us, something whose future we leave entirely in the hands of God.
You who have given me today a smile or a gaze that is both pure and true, and who have received from me a smile or gaze, pure and true (I stress these words, “pure and true”): I bless you in silence.
I pray to the Lord of Love that the wordless meeting of our souls will allow a brilliant light to illumine this day!
—Lev Gillet, Love Without Limits -
For instance, a spouse who demands to be treated according to their own “love language” and disregards that of their partner practices an imperfect, selfish love; likewise, a child who expresses frustration in their parents’ failure to understand them while denying them the opportunity to understand them, or even a parent who exerts their own preferences on their child without attempting to understand their child and their differences from them, similarly practice an imperfect love. The expectations of what another “should do” in a relationship, or what one “deserves” from a relationship, ought not be divorced from the kind of love which God both instructs us to establish and exemplifies in His relation with us.
Imperfect Love: Struggling to Love Like God
Hilana Said -
Do you know what your dad’s fears are? Maybe you are also blaming your dad for being unavailable (or being emotionally unavailable), and you didn’t know that he had fears. That Baba (dad), who was supposed to be our wall or pillar of iron. He’s got fears, He didn’t know what he was, especially if he immigrated, he’s in a new country, if he loses the job that he’s kind of been secure in I don’t know if anyone’s gonna, like, take me in in the next company. It’s not like I’m competing against all the people that were born here and the young students. That’s a lot of pressure.
—Fr. Paul Girguis -
The Christian concept of parents as being the delegates of God carries with it the inference that they are to be treated with peculiar respect. Children incur the guilt of grievous sin who strike their parents, or even raise their hands to do so, or who give them well-founded reason for great sorrow. The same is to be said of those who put their parents in a violent rage, who curse them or revile them, or refuse to recognize them.
Delany, J. (1911). Parents. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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When did she pain her parents even by a look?
SO GOOD QUOTES 