No token of the toil

 “Build me a grave beside the sea”

by J.R.R. Tolkien

Build me a grave beside the sea,

Heap the brown earth over me

Upon a cliff above the sea.

Build it broad and high my mound,

That ships hereafter homeward bound

May mark afar my seaward mound:

A cavernous enclosed pit,

Sad heavy earth piled over it —

Of memory a symbol fit,

A fitting and a final end,

For now there’s no more tale to spend,

This is the end, this is the end!

Raw at first and torn and red

As though the earth had with me bled,

Slowly the green shall hide the red,

And, as your tears shall slowly dry,

And as you one by one shall die

And your springing songs of me shall dry

Till gently my name new men forget

The rains and dews shall the barrow wet

And greener and smoother it will get,

While Earth by stages slow unseen

Dissolves it, reshapes it to what has been,

Till nothing unkindred to the cliffs is seen,

No token of the toil and death of men,

Scarce a swelling of the grass — what then!

What if the Earth is filled with unknown men!

Paracleted

In the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:4), Jesus teaches that those who grieve and mourn will be comforted. The Greek actually says “paracleted.” The Holy Spirit anoints the brokenhearted, if we will allow ourselves to abide in our heartache and receive divine remedy. He brings comfort, encouragement, and peace. God’s love heals.

This healing does not mean that the heartache goes away! It brings love and truth, meaning and purpose into the midst of what had seemed to be only chaos and absurdity. Jesus reveals himself as Lord even in the darkest places of our heart. I find, in fact, that the more glimpses and tastes I receive of the goodness of God, the more I will suffer in aching for more. I see the same experience in the lives of the Saints and the prayer of any great mystic in our spiritual Tradition.

So what does happen when others kindly witness my heartache, and the Holy Spirit anoints me in my grief? The most important change is that I am no longer alone. What once was trapped in isolation and fragmentation is now set free. What was frozen begins to thaw (which sometimes hurts!). What was rigid and inflexible can now flow and move toward wholeness and connection. I begin to experience love and communion in places which (I thought) love could not possibly enter. Only love did enter. That’s the entire point of Jesus’ rescue mission – to become flesh and go to the deepest places of human agony, conquering with a love that is both human and divine. Jesus duped the devil, concealing his glory in human flesh and bringing his love into the depths of sin and death.

Without Jesus’ suffering, death, and burial, the dark side of our human existence is indeed unbearable. Now, however, no matter how deep I go into my own heartache or the heartache of another, I will discover that Jesus is already there. He’s already descended deeper. He’s already issued the summons to come to the heavenly wedding celebration, in which all God’s scattered children, and all the scattered fragments of our hearts, will be gathered at table for the feast. Then, at long last, there will be no more weeping and no more death. -excerpt from Spiritual Direction

Abundant breasts

Isaiah 66:10-11

Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her,

all you who love her;

exult, exult with her,

all you who were mourning over her!

Oh, that you may suck fully

of the milk of her comfort,

that you may nurse with delight

at her abundant breasts!

"Be consoled in the time of trial and say with the bride: "Draw me after you; we shall run in the odor of your ointments." This will keep your hopes buoyant in times of hardship, and give you foresight when fortune favors you. You will ride above the vicissitudes of good and evil times with the poise of one sustained by values that are eternal, with that enduring, unshakeable equanimity of the man of faith who thanks God in every circumstance. So even amid the fluctuating events and inevitable shortcomings of this giddy world you will ensure for yourself a life of durable stability, provided you are renewed and reformed according to the glorious and original plan of the eternal God, the likeness of him in whom there is no such thing as alteration, no shadow of a change. Even in this world you will become as he is: neither dismayed by adversity nor dissolute in prosperity. Living thus, this noble creature, made to the image and likeness of his Creator, indicates that even now he is re-acquiring the dignity of that primal honor, since he deems it unworthy to be conformed to a world that is waning. Instead, following Paul's teaching, he strives to be reformed by the renewal of his mind, aiming to achieve that likeness in which he knows he was created...So let us run and run, but in the odor of your ointments, not by trusting in our own worth. We pin our hopes for the race, not in the durability of our powers but in the abundance of your mercies. For although when we ran we did so willingly, it depended not upon man's will or exertion but upon God's mercy. Let mercy but return and we shall run again." -St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 21

In the lactation of St. Bernard, we learn the feminine genius to which all bridal souls are called.

Pater

Researchers observed that, during the first few weeks of life, a father’s brain undergoes a reorganization. Areas primarily associated with the perception and processing of stimuli gradually give way to those linked to empathy, emotional regulation, attentiveness to the child, and the ability to interpret the child’s needs. This progressive adaptation of the father’s brain focuses on the demands of parenting and on the child, prioritizing them over personal concerns. After the first few weeks of fatherhood, connections between regions responsible for empathy, affection, and emotional understanding increase, and the neural network dedicated to infant care becomes consolidated; according to researchers, this process, reflected in daily involvement in child-rearing, transforms the male brain. The authors note that children trigger specific biological, emotional, and neuronal adaptation processes in mothers, but fathers also undergo hormonal and brain changes; they are not merely auxiliary participants in the child’s development, as they must adapt to meet the new demands of fatherhood. Evidence of these changes in men is seen in endocrine adaptations occurring both before and after the birth, specifically, lower testosterone levels and higher prolactin levels compared to men who are not fathers. This fosters paternal attachment.

A Man’s Brain Changes (For the Better) When He Becomes a Father: Findings Revealed by the Nature Review | ZENIT - English

Marian to the Max

 Please join me in praying the 14-day consecration with St. Maximilain Kolbe

Priorities

"Consider a different calculus. The house that's a little smaller, a little farther from the trendy part of town, the one that doesn't photograph as well – that house might also be the one where a parent can be home when the school bus arrives. The vacation that doesn't make anyone jealous might be the one the kids remember longest. The family that looks, from the outside, like it 'settled' might be the one that figured something out the rest of us are still chasing.

This is not an argument against ambition, or careers, or the legitimate desire of men and women to build professional lives that matter to them. It is simply a suggestion that the cultural machinery pushing Americans toward bigger and 'better' may have a cost. And that cost is sometimes paid in the very currency that three-in-four Americans say they value most: time with the people they love, their family."

-Nexus article on why a second income may not be vital, here

Blessed Solanus Casey

 O God, who in your Providence
conformed Blessed Francis Solanus to the image of your son,
making him tireless in service to the poor,

by his intercession and example, 
grant also to us the same generosity and joy
in giving of ourselves in service to our neighbor,

through our Lord Jesus Christ!

We get to celebrate him in our Diocese now on his feast day.
He is buried near the graves of my ancestors. 

Logistics

 "A parent cannot shuttle four children to four different extracurricular tracks every afternoon and evening without the household becoming a logistics company. The modern extracurricular world quietly assumes a small family: parents who can spend evenings driving, weekends at tournaments, summers arranging camps, and workdays adjusting around appointments. The college track makes the same assumption in financial form. A family cannot reasonably be expected to save separate college funds for four, five, or more children if every child is expected to follow the same expensive four-year path. And the workplace often makes the same assumption in time: that a mother can have a baby, take a short maternity leave, return to full-time employment, and then somehow repeat the process several times while also carrying the domestic life of a growing household. Something has to give.

Right now, what often gives is the third or fourth child."

-from a substack article Modern Parenting Does Not Scale

Hammertime

 “The word of God is a light to the mind and a fire to the will. It enables man to know God and to love him. And for the interior man who lives by the Spirit of God, through grace, it is bread and water, but a bread sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, a water better than wine and milk. For the soul it is a spiritual treasure of merits yielding an abundance of gold and precious stones. Against the hardness of a heart that persists in wrongdoing, it acts as a hammer. Against the world, the flesh and the devil it serves as a sword that destroys all sin.” -St Lawrence of Brindisi, pray for us!

Little Cloud

 Elias saw in a prophetic vision

The little cloud of Mary rising free

Out of a bitter sea.

It is to Mary as a cloud that I

Today address my cry.

Over me hangs the searing sun of God,

Earth will not take my roots, and on this shore

The heat of summer solstice walks once more.

Until I am acclimated to love

And know its weathers sometimes must be made

To burn the fertile heart and blind the brain,

My need is urgent for a little cloud

To shield me with its shade,

And in that shade to cover me with rain.

— Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D. (Jessica Powers)

The Little Cloud of Mary

Forget Me Not

"What God is most concerned with is not that we forget small details of the law, but that we so easily forget the wonderful things He has done for us. For indeed, He rescued them from slavery, parted the Red Sea for them, fed them with manna, and gave them water in the desert. He led them forth and settled them in the promised land. But how easily and quickly they forgot His saving deeds!

God’s lament is not about His ego needs to be thanked or repaid for his goodness. God is not vain like man. It is essential that we remember. To remember is to have a healing knowledge.

What does it mean to remember? To remember is to have deeply present in our mind and heart what God has done for us such that we are grateful and different. Grateful people are more hopeful, confident, trusting, and serene. They are more generous, forgiving, and joyful. They are this way because they have not forgotten; they remember how good God has been to them." -the incomparable Monsignor Pope

Old to New

 The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual.

John is born of an old woman who is barren; Christ is born of a young woman who is a virgin. That John will be born is not believed, and his father is struck dumb; that Christ will be born is believed, and he is conceived by faith. ...

John, it seems, has been inserted as a kind of boundary between the two Testaments, the Old and the New. That he is somehow or other a boundary is something that the Lord himself indicates when he says, The Law and the prophets were until John. So he represents the old and heralds the new. Because he represents the old, he is born of an elderly couple; because he represents the new, he is revealed as a prophet in his mother’s womb. You will remember that, before he was born, at Mary’s arrival he leapt in his mother’s womb. Already he had been marked out there, designated before he was born; it was already shown whose forerunner he would be, even before he saw him. These are divine matters, and exceed the measure of human frailty. Finally, he is born, he receives a name, and his father’s tongue is loosed.

Zachary is struck dumb and loses his voice, until John, the Lord’s forerunner, is born and releases his voice for him. What does Zachary’s silence mean, but that prophecy was obscure and, before the proclamation of Christ, somehow concealed and shut up? It is released and opened up by his arrival, it becomes clear when the one who was being prophesied is about to come. The releasing of Zachary’s voice at the birth of John has the same significance as the tearing of the veil of the Temple at the crucifixion of Christ. If John were meant to proclaim himself, he would not be opening Zachary’s mouth. The tongue is released because a voice is being born – for when John was already heralding the Lord, he was asked, Who are you and he replied I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

-St. Augustine, from Happy Catholic blog

I will also being sharing the parallels listed here: 

https://catholicstand.com/looking-at-the-new-testament-through-the-lens-of-genesis/

Living Water

"Our Lord became a spring of Living water for us so that we should not die of thirst among all the miseries that surround us." -Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew

St. Photina, pray for us! St. John the Beloved, pray for us!