Nowhere other than looking at himself in the mirror of the Cross can man better understand how much he is worth.
— St. Anthony of Padua
Mirror of the Cross
◊ Saint Methodius I, pray for us
◊ Saint Methodius I, pray for us
Nowhere other than looking at himself in the mirror of the Cross can man better understand how much he is worth.
— St. Anthony of Padua
◊ Saint Bede, the Venerable, pray for us
Jesus warns us [that] charity is not genuine if it seeks human praise (Matthew 6:2-3). Our actions are ‘beautiful’ when they reflect the light of God, so it is therefore right that the merit and praise for this light go to him.
— Blessed John Paul II
◊ Saint John I, pray for us
What then is it all about? In a brilliant sentence, Benedict carefully explained the broad sweep of our being to us: “God made the world so that there could be a space where he might communicate his love, and from which the response of love might come back to him.” This passage emphasizes the central purpose of creation. For God to communicate His love, some beings capable of loving in return had to exist. Since such beings could not themselves be gods, they needed a place in which they could live. There, they were invited to “respond.” They could choose not to do respond, otherwise there could be no true and free love. What Augustine called the City of God and the City of Man are involved in this drama.
Benedict added a further astounding fact. “From God’s perspective, the heart of the man who responds to him is greater and more important than the whole immense material cosmos.” Such a sentence puts things in proper perspective from considerations of abortion, to sinners, to the evils we experience in history. Each person is thus made in the “image” of God, with intelligence, will, and a space in which to decide what he will be. The parable of the lost sheep in the Gospels comes to mind. God searches for what is lost, but He cannot “force” men to choose Him. They have to love him because He is loveable. The playing out of these human responses is, as Benedict stated in Spe Salvi, what constitutes the judgment of the living and the dead, as we see also in the Creed.
— Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., “The Purpose of Creation”
◊ Saint Isidore, pray for us
Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor—
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes—
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.
— Dorianne Laux, What We Carry
◊ Saint Joan de Lestonnac, pray for us
I remember this night like it was last night.
In the midst of all the crying and pain and pleading with God, I heard the words, “Not yet.”
Two simple words. Peace enveloped me. Healing from the depression progressed over the next 6 months.
Five years later, as I was reading the first part on hope by Thomist philosopher Joseph Pieper in Faith, Hope, Love, these same words came back to me. We are status viatoris, meaning “one on the way” (which brings up another set of connotations).
The state of being on the way is not to be understood in a primary and literal sense as a designation of place. It refers to the innermost structure of created nature. It is the inherent “not yet” of the finite being.
…
This becoming-ness of the creature is especially evident in the concept of status viatoris; in the “not yet” of man’s being on the way , the whole span of the creature’s “becoming-ness” (Przywara) is revealed, as in a concave mirror, between the shores of being and nothingness.
…
The “way” of homo viator, of man “on the way”, is not a directionless back-and-forth between being and nothingness; it leads toward being and away from nothingness; it leads to realization, not annihilation, although this realization is “not yet” fulfilled and the fall into nothingness is “not yet” impossible.
For the individual who experiences, in the status viatoris, his essential creatureliness, the “not-yet-existing-being” of his own existence, there is only one answer to such an experience. This answer must not be despair—for the meaning of the creature’s existence is not nothingness but being, that is, fulfillment. Nor must the answer be the comfortable certainty of possession—for the “becoming-ness” of the creature still borders dangerously on nothingness. Both—despair and the certainty of possession—are in conflict with the truth of reality. The only answer that corresponds to man’s actual existential situation is hope. The virtue of hope is preeminently the virtue of the status viatoris; it is the proper virtue of the “not yet”.
Status viatoris, one on the way, a journey. Christian hope is not wish; it is the “not yet” of the fulfillment of God’s promise.
(This also recalled a David Whyte poem to mind.)