Over My Morning Cup Of Coffee

The virtue of humility is often under-appreciated in a world where success and prestige are so highly admired.
True humility is not putting myself down, or refusing to accept a compliment.
Truly humble people acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses in a realistic way.
Real humility is a witness to the Holy Spirit within me.

When I have acted with pride,
-- and seek repentance.
When I am tempted to misuse my power,
-- let me act for the good of the other.
When I cannot see the good in myself
– show me my own lovableness.

Few are called to be pope, but all of us are called to be servants.

Every morning I arise afresh in my Creator’s light.
Ancient Christian writers warn against “morning demons”: yesterday’s worries and grievances returning to poison the new day.

Our total surrender will come today by surrendering even our sins so that we will be poor.
“Unless you become a child you cannot come to me.”
You are too big, too heavy; you cannot be lifted up.
The knowledge of our sin helps us to rise.
“I will get up and go to my Father.”
-- Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Let me put into God’s hands my heart, my soul, the deep recesses of my being wherein dwell those beliefs and thoughts that govern my actions, so that he may guide me in the ways of the Gospel.

It is sometimes easy to believe that love me when I am feeling satisfied with myself.
It is much more difficult when I know I have sinned.
Evil makes use of shame, a form of inverted pride, to keep me from seeking God out at the very moment when I most need his forgiving love.
Yet it was to save us from our sins that Christ died on the cross.
How can I fear to approach such love?

Peace lies in surrendering to the Lord in trust and living by his love, not in fretting over the wrongs done by others.
Undue concern over evils I cannot mend prevents me from taking true delight in him.

No matter how far I stray and how lost I feel, God the Father is always right there waiting for me with open arms.
I may feel sinful and unworthy of his love, but all I need to do is make a move toward him and he will run to meet me as his beloved son.
Let me run to receive his love.

The commandments are summed up in the command to love.
Love is not mere sentiment

God’s blessing is true light in the mind’s darkness, true rain for the soul’s earth, true life for the seed of everlasting life that lies buried in the soil of the human heart.
With God’s blessing, the earth yields a rich harvest of generous thoughts, kind words, and good deeds.
For today’s harvest, I give thanks and praise.

The unity for which Christ lived and died is not an abstract ideal.
It is the result of hard work: suspending judgment, choosing others before self, forgiving, seeking reconciliation rather than nursing hurt pride.
In other words, it requires that I die to self in Christ.
The fruit?
The blessing of God’s peace.

The notion of one gains freedom by rebelling against God has been popular illusion since Eden.
The paradox is that I am set free from the chains of my own making by choosing to yoke myself to Christ, who burst mankind’s bonds by his own death and resurrection.

If you will only abandon yourselves to the guidance of Providence, God will take care of you; he will lead you by the hand in the most difficult situations.
-- St. Vincent de Paul

Truly humble people are centers of peace because they fear neither their own failure nor other’s success.
Let me pray for the wisdom to judge as God judges:
to look at my own and other’s achievements from God’s perspective.

The penitential psalms very often speak of sin as sickness brought on by the attack of enemies.
Their vivid descriptions of the sinner’s suffering reminds me again and again that the misery of sin is not what God wants for his beloved children.

Human need of every kind cries out to God for healing.
The sharpest cry is the plea of the human hear betrayed and wounded by the sin of self and others.
The Lord hears every call for help and heals by taking upon himself the suffering of all who are impoverished and weakened by failure, sin and death.

Treasure of every kind, material or not, is a gift from God, given to be shared and not hoarded.
Trust in God rather than my own stockpile of personal resources is the source of my salvation.
Wickedness is not always overt: the neglect of simple kindness, great or small, kills as surely as open violence.

The poor are all those who stand in need of my love, my time, my interest, my concern.
My wealth is not necessarily my money.
It is whatever good God has done for me and given to me.

“Avoid all this. Instead, pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience and gentleness.”
(1 Tm 6:11)
Taking St. Paul’s exhortation to heart, let me avoid the pursuit of the kind of selfish hoarding against with the Gospel warns, and let me instead put my energy into pursuing these worthier goals.