Sacrifice

"What is sacrificed is never lost."

Education

From the book, "Blue Highways: A Journey into America":

"I want to show them that there's only one place they can get an education - in the school of thought. Learning rules is useful but it isn't an education. Education is thinking, and thinking is looking for yourself and seeing what's there, now what you get told was there. Then you put what you see together." (390)

Let us keep that mind. Look around, see the world around you. Learn about it, educate yourself. Life is where the real education begins.

The Prayer of St. Francis

This is a good reminder of how to live life:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Using Your Gifts

All of us have been given certain talents and gifts in our lives. Sometimes we recognize them early on, sometimes we don't realize we have them until later in life. No matter, when we know what they are, we should work hard to utilize them to make others lives better.

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." - Steve Prefontaine

If we do not give all that we can, or use our gifts as best as we can, we are sacrificing the gifts that we have been given. We are then not becoming the people that we can and should be.

For example, if your talent is writing, but you never write (not even letters to friends), you are not using that gift for all that it could be. Even if you are giving your best to enriching the lives of others through writing personal letters, you are using your gift. If your gift is music but you never play, you are sacrificing your gift.

This quote, I believe, can bring about good reflection. What is your gift or gifts? Are you using them? In what ways could you use them even more?

Remembering Our Dreams

I am reading a book called "Your Money or Your Life" (which I very highly recommend!) and there is a great part in the book where it talks about fulfillment and dreams. I will quote from the book (all emphasis mine):

"For many of us, however, 'growing up' has meant outgrowing our dreams. The aspiration to write a great book has shrunk to writing advertising copy. The dream of being an inspiring preacher has evolved into being an administrator and mediator between the factions of the congregation. Instead of really knowing who their patients are, how the patients live or the challenges in their lives, doctors today are plagued with back-to-back fifteen minute patient visits and malpractice suits. The dream of traveling around the world becomes two weeks a year of hitting the tourist traps. Living a fulfilling and meaningful life seems almost impossible, given the requirements of simply meeting day-to-day needs and problems. Yet, at one time or another practically every one of us has had a dream of what we wanted our lives to be.

Wherever you are, take a few moments now to reflect upon your dreams. So many of us have spent so many hours, days and years of our lives devoted to someone else's agenda that it may be hard to get in touch with our dreams. So many of us have whittled away at our uniqueness so that we could be square pegs in square holes that it seems slightly self-indulgent to wonder what kind of hole we would be inclined to carve for ourselves. Indulge yourself now. Stare out a window. Shut your eyes. And envision what would be a truly fulfilling life for you. To help you get started on your journey, ask yourself the following questions:

- What did you want to be when you grew up?
- What have you always wanted to do that you haven't done yet?
- What have you done in your life that you are really proud of?
- If you knew you were going to die within a year, how would you spend that year?
- What brings you the most fulfillment - and how is that related to money?
- If you didn't have to work for a living, what would you do with your time?" (109-110)

I think those are powerful thoughts, powerful questions.

Spend some time thinking about them. Not only right now, but tomorrow, and next week, and periodically throughout your life. Focusing on these things, and how to make them a reality, can change your life in amazing ways.

Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Some quotes by one of the greatest Presidents our country has seen - Theodore Roosevelt.

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"Believe you can and you're halfway there."

"Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike."

"Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage."

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

"Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind."

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."

"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."

"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."

"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

"The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything."

"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."

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It was said that Teddy Roosevelt would read a book a day... what an inspiration!

More great quotes here!

"If" by Rudyard Kipling

Just a great poem!

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

Destroy Your Enemies

The title of this post is obviously a bit misleading from what most people would think "destroying your enemies" would mean, but when I hear the phrase I like to think of the Abraham Lincoln quote:

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

The quickest way to like somebody is to get to know them. Everybody has positive things about them, and everybody has something to offer. If we focused on the positive instead of the negative of people, then we would have no enemies. If you don't like somebody, get to know them better.

Often we make a hasty judgment about a person, and then it can be difficult to change our first opinion of them. At least this is the case for me. Sometimes it seems like within 30 seconds of meeting somebody (sometimes even before I even hear them speak!) I have made a judgment about a person, and it may be tough for them to change my opinion of them. This is not their fault, it is mine. This is not a shortcoming of theirs, it is a shortcoming for me.

I am reminded of a story I read about Mother Teresa. In her personal writings, she talked about a fellow sister with whom she didn't personally like all that much, and with whom she did not feel much of a connection. However, when asked about their relationship, that sister said that they were very good friends. Such was the depth of Mother Teresa's love for those around us.

Even if we do not have any "enemies," everybody has those people in their lives with whom they don't really get along with well, who they don't like all that much, and whose personalities do not click well. Now, with how many of them would the other person think you are close friends? For me, the answer is zero.

Destroying your enemies and making them friends does not mean everyone that you "hate"... it means all of those people in our life who we have a hard time making a connection with or loving. Those are the people we should strive the most to love.

John Wooden's Three Rules

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article which contained a video of John Wooden speaking about his definition of true success. In the same talk, he also said he had three rules that he practically almost always followed and gave to his players and students. They were:

1. Never be late
2. No profanity
3. Never criticize a teammate

Certainly, whether you are looking at these rules from sports or in life, the practical application is there. If you follow these rules, you will likely be more successful, more liked, and more respected than if you do not.

Being on time, often, is a matter of respect. By not being late, you are respecting that other people have things to do and places to be, and they do not like waiting for you because you are running late. In life, there are few quicker ways to lose respect than being late.

Never criticizing is another issue of respect and teaching. There is no good that will come out of criticizing someone else. It is not constructive, and often the person on the receiving end of it is not actually getting anything out of what you are telling them, they are upset about being negatively chewed out.

This is not a comprehensive list of ways to live your life, but it is certainly a start. If you follow these rules, you will be treating others with respect, and in turn they will treat you the same.

Little Acts of Kindness Matter

I watched a video of a speech by a volunteer firefighter, who told of a couple key lessons he learned from going into a burning building.



One thing he learned was that you should never wait to make a difference in someone's life. There is no need to wait to give until you can "afford" to... if you are waiting for the perfect time, it will never come. Give what you can, it will be enough.

The other important message is that little acts of kindness really do matter. We may think that when we do something little to help another person that it is not actually helping, but that couldn't be further from the case. A little act of kindness can go a long way.

As the saying goes and as we know is true, kindness is contagious. When you perform a kind act or send a smile someone's way, they are more likely to do the same for someone else. They will be put in a better mood, and they will put others in a better mood because of it.

The time is always right to help out another person, whether it is with a big act or a small act.

John Wooden on True Success

The other day I came across this talk by John Wooden on what he sees as true success... it is a great video of the inspiring and wise old coach, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone.



In the video, Wooden gives his definition of success. He says that success is:

"Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you're capable."

Notice that his definition of success has nothing to do with achieving more fame or money than another person, a point which he makes in the talk. Instead, it is concerned with doing the best that you are capable of, and being satisfied with yourself and the life that you are living.

People see success as being in competition with other people, but Wooden says, "Never try to be better than anyone else." Rather, be the best you that you can be. At the end of the day, you need to be able to look yourself in the mirror and be satisfied, and that will not happen over the long-term if you are reaching for more fame, money, or popularity than other people. Those goals are fleeting, and are concerned with pride, not the true sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that comes from real growth as a person.

What is your definition of success? You need to evaluate that first, because that is what you will judge yourself on. If you have a warped sense of what being successful means, chances are you will be focused on the wrong things, and this will severely stunt your growth as a person.

Wooden had it right with his definition of success. True success is becoming the best person that you are capable of becoming. It has nothing to do with so many of the earthly things that we usually judge success on. If we truly are able to embrace this definition of success and live our life based on it, how much happier we would be.

No Margin of Error

For everyone, there are people that we might not get along with, or simply might not enjoy their company. Sometimes we might not really care about making them a better person, or acting nicely towards them. There are people we might see as lost causes, or as being beyond redemption.

However, in the eyes of Jesus, there is nobody that matches that description. A reflection I once read said:

"There is no margin of error that's acceptable to Him, no percentage of lives that don't matter. He makes an astonishing claim: It's not God's will that even one soul be lost. Everyone counts. Everyone. So the next time it seems expedient to write off somebody, or some group, as not worth our time, resources, and compassion, remember the percentage that interests Jesus when it comes to salvation: 100%."

I don't think anyone would read this and be shocked by what it says, but I doubt there are a lot of us that are really living this out. We don't go the extra mile for those we don't care as much about, and generally are only interested in them so far as we can get something from them.

How different the world and people would be if they saw each soul and each person as a unique person created by God to be loved and known. If we treated everyone with the respect that we would treat those we most admire.

How do we treat others?

The Comings of Christ

When we think about the coming of Christ, we think about his first coming, being born in Bethlahem, and the Final Judgment, but there are other, hidden, important comings of Jesus.

"St. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of three 'comings' of Christ: as the child of Bethlahem and the final Lord of history, as well as the quiet daily arrivals of grace in which we recognize the face of Jesus."

We must be constantly alert and aware of the comings of Jesus in our everyday lives, whether it is through things like the friendship of others, the beauty of the earth, the fulfillment of a goal, or any of the number of other things that could help lead us closer to Christ.

Being aware of these comings of Christ can help us recognize the way that He works in our lives, which helps us to grow in virtue and appreciate the gifts and blessings and graces that we receive on an everyday basis.

This can also help us to do as Jesus would do, and to live our lives like He did, treating everyone we meet with love and respect. When we are aware of the arrivals of grace that Jesus brings to us, we can't help but grow in virtue as we know that Jesus is with us always, helping us and supporting us.

How has Jesus come to you today?

On The Death of Bin Laden

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Being a Disciple of Christ

We are all called to be Disciples of Christ, to place him first in importance and follow Him. But how do we do that? I once read a quote that sheds some light:

"Discipleship only makes sense without a road map, a prenuptial agreement, or a money-back guarantee. If we put our trust in Jesus, that means falling behind Him wherever the road goes. Scary? Leaving home and the familiar always is. Necessary? You bet your life."

Many of us try to have our priorities the opposite... we think that when life is in order, when we are at a good place, then we can start following Jesus, and doing things like going to Mass, Confession, or tithing on a more regular basis. First, we have to get our own life in order, then all of these things will come. Or so we tell ourselves.

However, the rub is that if we are waiting for that perfect time, it will never come. There likely will always be something else that you think should be demanding your time, money, and attention. If we place the safety in first priority, Jesus will not fall in line next, He will slip off the page.

If we are at a place of disorder in life, all the better to start becoming a Disciple of Christ. When you have nothing or have lost everything, that is the perfect time. That is the time to establish routines and beliefs that we will carry with us.

Tithing is a perfect example, I think. Let's say you make $100/week (just throwing out numbers)... if you can't tithe $10 out of that, do you think you will really tithe $100 when you make $1000 per week? I doubt it, but this is what people tell themselves.

If you follow Jesus and become a disciple of Him, it could take you scary places, or cause you to make decisions that will be uncomfortable at the time. That is OK. I am guessing Peter, John, and the rest of the Apostles wrestled with the same decisions that we still face today.

Jesus is the way to get your priorities and life straight. If you wait until you have those things secure before you follow Him, you will keep Him waiting a long time.

Do Not Judge

I got this little story in an email forward, but thought it was pretty cool, so decided to post it here!

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A young couple moved into a new neighborhood
The next morning while they were eating breakfast,
The young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
'That laundry is not very clean,' she said.
'She doesn't know how to wash correctly.
Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.'

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry,
The young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband:

'Look, she has learned how to wash correctly.
I wonder who taught her this.'

The husband said, 'I got up early this morning and
Cleaned our windows.'

And so it is with life.

What we see when watching others
Depends on the window through which we look.

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Do not judge, but only look at others through the eyes of love. Lord, Give Me Your Eyes.

"Mere Christianity" Quotes By CS Lewis

In following with my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity, here are quotes from Mere Christianity.

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- "But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man." (28)

- "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' This is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic - on a level of a man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (52)

- "But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die." (57-58)

- "The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because 'it's easy for grown-ups' and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no 'unfair' advantage), it would not get on very quickly." (58-59)

- "But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can only do it if He becomes man." (58)

- "There is a different between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man." (79)

- "But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a 'virtue,' and it is this quality or character that really matters." (80)

- "When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

- "Love in this second sense - love as distinct from being 'in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit' reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love enables them to keep this promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

- "A Christian society is not going to really arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to fully want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward - driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home."

- "If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditures excludes them." (86)

- "That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the result;s which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it." (91)

- "Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-state of mind." (122)

- "Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride." (123)

- "In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all." (124)

- "Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all." (128)

- "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." (131)

- "Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of." (132)

- "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." (134)

- "Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither." (134)

- "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." (136)

- "All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, 'You must do this. I can't.'" (146)

- "Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be Sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has - by what I call 'good infection.' Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." (177)

- "When you are not feeling particularly friendly, but you know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we all have noticed, you will be feeling really friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already." (188)

- "If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of ways, not only through what we think our 'religious life.'" (190)

- "But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God." (193)

- "The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience with demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, 'live for others,' but always in a discontented, grumbling way - always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr or yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish." (197)

- "For what we are trying to do is remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good.' We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centred on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do." (197-198)

- "When he said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hardly but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible... May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else." (198-199)

- "In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (199)

- "And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you mmake tomorrow to do the simplest duty... every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." (202-203)

- "I think many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one of two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. As we say 'I never expected to be saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.' And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble." (203)

- "We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania, it is obedience." (204)

- "That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us." (204-205)

- "Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are 'rich' in this sense to enter the Kingdom." (214)

- "If you are a nice person - if virtue comes easily to you - beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contended with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an Archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above a chimpanzee." (215)

- "If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that matter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?" (217)

- "The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more ourselves we truly become." (225)

- "Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishesevery day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." (226)

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Do any of them speak to you?

Go And Play

I once read this story in a reflection:

"Recently I read an account of one of those martyrs, St. Saturus, who lived in the third century. Just before his death he had a vision of heaven. Saturus describes an intense light, a garden of lush flowers, tall majestic trees, angels in white robes, and the chanting of heavenly voices. In his vision Saturus actually kisses the face of God who touches the saint's face with his hand and then says, "Go and play."

I loved this story when I heard it. So often we take our lives so seriously... work, work, work, and we never think we have any leisure time or time to enjoy life. But this vision tells us that these things are important.

We need to take time to recreate, to enjoy our leisure time, and to enjoy the beauty of the earth. These activities relax our minds and bodies, and allow us to focus on the simple pleasures of life.

It is my belief that the better we can appreciate and enjoy the simple things in life, the better people we will be, and the happier people we will be.

So, go and play!

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Living A Perfect Life

This is a post from my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

This will be the last post in the series, and it involves what I think is the most important lesson in the book, as well as one of Lewis' main themes from the book. That lesson is living a perfect life, or, perhaps more accurately, seeking to be like Christ and to follow His example in all things that we do.

Lewis says that this is the purpose of Christianity - sharing in the life of Christ. The way that we can do that is by doing the will of God, and following His example in all things, no matter how difficult.

"Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be Sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has - by what I call 'good infection.' Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." (177)

Of course, we know that achieving such perfection is an impossible task in our earthly life. We will, no matter how holy we become, no matter how hard we try, fail to live up to the perfect standard of Jesus at some point in our life. However, that should not stop us from trying.

"But when a thing has to be be attemped, one must never think about the possibility or impossibility. Faced with an option question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very perfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone." (101)

We may also be intimidated by the enormity of the task, and feel like if (and) when we fail, we will be letting God down. However, it is of course not how many times you fall, but how many you get back up. If you are a great sinner, God is especially pleased with you when you repent and seek perfection, for He knows how far You have come. He can see in your heart - even if you fail, God will know if You are trying to do His will.

"And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you mmake tomorrow to do the simplest duty... every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." (202-203)

In my life, I find that I simply focus on trying to be "good," and hopefully it won't interfere with the things I really want to do and the things I really want to accomplish in my life. It seems to me that my natural way of thinking is that these things are in opposition somehow - who God wants me to be and who I think I am meant to be. Of course, this could not be further from the truth. God wants us to become the best that we can be and fulfill our purpose in life. If we find what we think our purpose in life is to be at odds with what direction God is pulling us in, well, chances are He is not the one that is confused. We must give up this way of thinking, that we will do God's will just enough to be "good," and then keep the rest for ourselves. In the end, that doesn't work.

"The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience with demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, 'live for others,' but always in a discontented, grumbling way - always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr or yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish." (197)

"For what we are trying to do is remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good.' We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centred on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. (197-198)"

No matter how much progress we make, we are still going to encounter hardships and troubles in our quest for heaven. However, we should not let that get us down or discourage us or think that God is displeased with us and our feeble efforts. He may be merely calling us to a higher level, to a change and holiness we may have never thought possible.

"That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would not be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us." (204-205)

In the Book of Matthew, Jesus tells us to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Most people don't really take that literally, or they skip over that passage, but it is vitally important.

"When he said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hardly but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible... May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else." (198-199

"In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (199)

This leads us to the final, overriding theme of this... we should seek perfection and to be Saints. Striving for anything else is not what God intends for us, it is not a proper use of our gifts. I will let Lewis say it, because I believe these are some of his most powerful, most challenging, most poignant lines in the entire book.

"I think many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one of two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. As we say 'I never expected to be saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.' And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble." (203)

"We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania, it is obedience." (204)

This will never be an easy task... we will always experience difficulties. But if we always strive for sainthood and to perfectly do the will of God, we can't help but became closer to Him and grow in holiness. If we can do this, we can enjoy eternal life with Him.

Amen.

"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom Quotes

Mitch Albom's books The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie are very well-known and well read. I personally, at the risk of sounding an elitist, didn't care all that much for Tuesdays With Morrie (it was ok but certainly not life-changing), but I liked The Five People You Meet in Heaven more. Here are some selected quotes from the book:

- "'Strangers,' the Blue Man said, 'are just family you have yet to come to know.'" (49)

- "You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father." (93)

- "Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behavior. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God, or a woman, a boy will devote himself to a father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation." (106)

- "Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand." (126)

- "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." (141)

- "Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it." (173)

Do you have any favorite quotes from the book? Have you read the book? What did you think of it?