CowPi Journal

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1. I have to tell a very dear friend a very hard truth very soon and I’m very scared. Can you offer me any words on the matter?

   ∼ πλ · 30 August 2005, 2 am · by Rhoda ¬

2. Mark, There are none who can say they have not stumbled in this walk. Fact is: we “miss the mark” almost daily in one way or another. It is not in our failures that we lose, but in losing a hunger for His voice that we fail. As long as the cry of your hear is to know him, as long as there indeed IS sorrow over our human tendency to err, there is joy to be found in His grace. God speaks through you here in marvelous ways. Kneel at the oasis, drink from His well, and allow His peace to equip you for the journey……..

   ∼ πλ · 30 August 2005, 6 am · by Jim ¬

3. Please pardon the great length of this comment, but last year I read much of “Spiritual Despondency and Temptation” by Rev PJ Michel, S.J., published by Roman Catholic Books. Spiritual despondency is called, “Nearly everybody’s unspoken spiritual problem”. Here are some excerpts that I found helpful for me:

   
   “How frequently, fearing the labor we encounter in fighting against our evil inclinations, we ask God to free us from them, but it would seem that the conditions are that He is to do all and it is to cost us nothing. We aspire to the miracle performed for a St. Paul. It sems as though we said: ‘If this inclination be displeasing to God, why does He not deliver me from it? Why does He not change the feelings of my heart? He has changed others in a moment.” Waiting for this miracle to be performed in our favor, we, meanwhile, do nothing ourselves, and do not heed the voice of God whispering to our soul. Such dispositions, as you must see, are not apt to draw down upon us the mercy of God. Whosoever expects to serve God without doing violence to himself, contradicts the words of Jesus Christ.
   
   Others, again, are free from such foolish presumption, and are kept back in the path of virtue fromtheir over-anxiety about their difficulties, and from their deep conviction that they can in nothing obtain merit; their whole mind is absorbed by this, and their only petition to God is to change their state. They hesitate to follow the lights and pious inclinations which God gives them, because not finding in themselves the particular graces which they are bent upon obtaining, and which they persist in asking for, they fear they are deceive…Did they only profit by those graces, although not such as they asked for, they would soon obtain what they desire, but which they cannot expect so long as they resist God.
   
   It is always from want of instruction, or from inattention to that which we have received, that we are led to form unreasonable expectations…There is no doubt that the Almighty can perform miracles, but He has promised them to no one. Therefore have we no reasonable right to expect them, either to help us in our wants or to guide us in our actions.
   
   *
   
   God, who is the tender Father of all His creatures, has taken every means to remove that excessive fear which would draw them from Him. To prevent the soul that has become sensible of its ingratitude and terrified at the view of its repeated relapses into sin, after so often obtaining pardon for them —to prevent such a soul from losing all hope and daring no longer cry out to Him from the abyss into which it has again fallen, not only does He assure it, by the mouth of the Psalmist, “That those who hope in Him shall never be confounded,” but He expressly declares the positive law of His mercy, and commands us to hope in Him.
   
   Ah! we little know the boundless tenderness of that divine Heart, if we judge of it by our own, or if we imagine that it ever ceases to care for us. So long as we are in this life we are under the law of mercy, and of that mercy we can ever avail ourselves.
   
   Let us then never fear to have recourse to the merits of Jesus Christ. We honor them when we make use of them to obtain that which helps which we need, since it was for this that Jesus Christ vouchsafed to acquire them and to give them over to us…It would be a singular way of honoring them, the not daring to make use of them; it would be going directly against the end which our divine Savior proposed to Himself. In turning from His gifts as useless, we should not be evincing our esteem for them, but only proving our indifference.”

   ∼ πλ · 31 August 2005, 9 am · by TSO ¬

4. That song has been very important to me. I actually blogged about it once some months ago. I too find myself falling into the trap of self-pity. I also spend a lot of time paralyzed by fear. Neither are what God wants for us. I’m convinced of that. Thanks for the reminder Mark!

   ∼ πλ · 31 August 2005, 10 am · by Deb ¬

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