Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity,
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

I didn’t actually make a resolution to be nicer but I probably should have. It’s a good thing I didn’t resolve to be nicer because this quote had me busting a gut this morning. I hope it makes you laugh too. You can be nice later.

There is only one war, and it’s not the rich against the poor, the
blacks against the whites, the Federation against the Borg, or the
Democrats versus the Republicans. It’s those of us who aren’t
complete idiots against those of us who are.

~~Blessed Mother Teresa

~~Thomas Carlyle

Silence and solitude do not refer only to the lessening of decibels. A person, notes Teresa [of Avila], cannot understand the indwelling mystery and fully realize Who is present within until he closes his eyes to the vanities of this world. Were she in our midst at the end of the twentieth century, the saint would no doubt specify that this means a drastic reduction in our exposure to the mass media, especially the electronic media of television, radio and film. If we spill out and drain our psychic energies by the mindless multiplicities of images and sounds, many of them garish and deafening, we just cannot retain the inner stamina for prayer. When we realize that the average home in our society, according to a recent survey, has its television set turned on for seven hours and ten minutes per day, we may not be shocked at what Teresa considers the amount of time everyone should give daily to prayerful solitude:

I do now know, my Creator, why it is that everyone does not strive to reach You through this special friendship, and why those who are wicked, who are not conformed to Your will, do not, in order that You make them good, allow You to be with them at least two hours each day, even though they may not be with You, but with a thousand disturbances from worldly cares and thoughts, as was the case with me.

The saint suggests that even distracted presence to the divine presence is bound to transform one from sin to virtue and eventually from common goodness to heroic sanctity.

Thomas Dubay in Fire Within p. 123 

~~St. Thérèse of Lisieux in Story of a Soul; found in Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with St. Thérèse of Lisieux

One of the really great needs of our own day is silence. Modern life seems to thrive on a fondness for noise, and by noise I mean not only the staccato barbarism of jazz, or the bleating and moaning of saxophone orchestras, but also, and principally, the excessive desire for that which distracts — love of amusements, constant goings and comings, excitements and thrills, and movement for the mere sake of movement. What is the reason for this fondness of noise? It is not due to any inherent love of that which is loud, for people generally prefer that which is soft and refined. Rather the reason is to be found in the great desire on the part of human beings to do the impossible, namely to escape from themselves. They do not like to be with themselves because they are not pleased with themselves; they do not like to be alone with their conscience, because their conscience reproves and carries on an unbearable repartee. The do not like to be quiet, because the footsteps of the Hound of Heaven which can be heard in silence, cannot be heard in the din of excitement; they do not like to be silent, because God’s voice is like a whisper and it cannot be heard in the tumult of the city streets. There are some of the reasons why the modern world loves noise, and that are all resolvable to this: noise drowns God’s voice and stupefies conscience. Dull, indeed, are these distractions, but like the clay used by savages to dull the pain of hunger, they stifle in the soul the hunger for the presence of God. The result is that very few people ever know themselves. In fact, they know everyone else better than they know themselves. That is why so few ever see their own faults…

~~Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Moods and Truths, found in Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with Fulton J. Sheen

~~Blessed Mother Teresa