Way

Your way laid open before me

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Image, Ion Chibzii from Chisinau. , Moldova., CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
 
The way You have laid open before me is an easy way,
    compared with the hard way of my own will
    which leads back to Egypt and to bricks without straw.
If You allow people to praise me, I shall not worry.
If You let them blame me, I shall worry even less.
If You send me work, I shall embrace it with joy.
    It will be rest to me because it is Your will.
 
Only save me from myself.
Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge 
   to change everything, to act without reason, 
   to move for movement’s sake,
   to unsettle everything that You have ordained.
 
Let me rest in Your will and be silent.
Then the light of Your joy will warm my life.
Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory.
This is what I live for.  Amen, amen.
 
Thomas Merton, 1915 – 1968, American Catholic writer and Trappist monk
 
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Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

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leaving everything to follow You

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Jerusalem Alley by Joshuasy from Pixabay 
 
Agreeing to lose everything for you, O Christ,
in order to take hold of you,
as you have already taken hold of us,
means abandoning ourselves to the living God.
Centring our life on you, Jesus Christ,
means daring to choose:
leaving ourselves behind so as no longer to walk
on two roads at the same time:
saying no to all that keeps us from following you,
and yes to all that brings us closer to you,
and through you, to those whom you entrust to us.
 
Brother Roger, 1915 – 2005, Swiss monastic, founded the Taizé Community
 
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You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. 
The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. 
But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.

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salvation confession

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
 image / Lawrence OP / flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
 
I don’t remember Who – or what – put the question, I don’t know when it was put.  I don’t even remember answering.  But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self surrender, had a goal.
 
From that moment I had known what it means “not to look back,” and ” to take no thought of the morrow.” 
 
Led by Ariedne’s thread of my answer through the labyrinth of Life, I came to a time and place where I realized that the Way leads to a triumph which is a catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which as triumph, that the price for committing one’s life would be reproach, and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation.  After that, the word “courage” lost its meaning, since nothing could be taken from me.
 
As I continued along the Way, I learned, step by step, word by word, that behind every saying in the Gospels stands one man and one man’s experience.  Also behind the prayer that the cup might pass from him and his promise to drink it.  Also  behind each of the words from the Cross.
 
Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905 – 1961, Swedish diplomat, UN Secretary General
 
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Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. 
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
 
 

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