Want to be loved? Then Love others.

You and I, each of us needs and wants to be loved.  At a very deep level we all have a selfish need to be loved.  When we are not loved, or at least, we do not see how we are loved, we feel abandoned and alone.  We misbehave in all sorts of ways, drink, drugs, sex, violence, anger.  Our so called ‘developed’ modern society, with all it’s technology, consumerism and busyness hides and does not serve our basic human needs, especially our need for company and love.

We will never find the solution in science or human cleverness.  We must return to a more natural way of life, a simpler way, an old fashioned or traditional, a time tested way.   I am not condemning the marvellous achievements of the medical profession or engineers, but building a better widget does not heal a broken heart or a lonely person.

You and I must eschew the world and focus on the things that are God’s.  We live in God’s creation, he know’s what we need.  We need to relax, let go and let God.  Trust God.

We must not be like Oliver Twist asking for more.  Whether, or not, we are asking for food, computers, cars, or more faith as in the gospel.  Where the apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith'. Luke 17:5

We are asked to  “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ... and to ...‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” Matthew 22:37

If you and I love a little, we will soon see the love showered on us by God, and all the love around us.  We would start to heal society.  This week Pope Francis said the Roman Catholic Church must strip itself of all "vanity, arrogance and pride" and humbly serve the poorest in society. Pope Francis

He also said "The Church, all of us should divest ourselves of worldliness. Worldliness is a murderer because it kills souls, kills people, kills the Church."
"Without divesting ourselves, we would become pastry-shop Christians, like beautiful cakes and sweet things but not real Christians,"

You and I can put aside our "vanity, arrogance and pride" and love a little, find more love in doing so and help heal this world we humans are destroying.  We can bring others to feel love too.

St Francis of Assisi

St Francis of Assisi (1181 - 1226)

Today we remember Francis was the son of a prosperous cloth merchant in Assisi. When his father objected to having his goods sold without his consent to pay for the restoration of a church, the bishop commanded Francis to repay the money. He did. He also renounced his father and gave back everything he had ever been given, even his garments. He began a life of perfect evangelical poverty, living by begging and even then only accepting the worst food that people had to give. He preached to all the love of God and the love of the created world; because, having renounced everything, he celebrated everything he received, or saw, or heard, as a gift. A rich man sold everything and joined him in living next to a leper colony; a canon from a neighbouring church gave up his position and joined them also. They looked into the Gospel and saw the story of the rich young man whom Jesus told to sell everything; they saw Jesus telling his disciples to take nothing with them on their journey; they saw Jesus saying that his followers must also carry his cross. And on that basis they founded an order. Francis went to Rome himself and persuaded the Pope to sanction it, though it must have seemed at once impractical and subversive, to set thousands of holy men wandering penniless round the towns and villages of Europe.

  Because Francis was wearing an old brown garment begged from a peasant, tied round the middle with string, that became the Franciscan habit. Ten years later 5,000 men were wearing it; a hundred years later Dante was buried in it because it was more glorious than cloth of gold.
  There is too much to say about Francis to fit here. He tried to convert the Muslims, or at least to attain martyrdom in doing so. He started the practice of setting up a crib in church to celebrate the Nativity.
  Francis died in 1226, having started a revolution. The Franciscans endure to this day.

Pray for the pope who has dedicated his papacy to Francis,  this his work have as much impact as Francis.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1873 - 1897)

Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon, in France, on 2 January 1873. Her mother, who already had breast cancer, died when Thérèse was four, and the family moved to Lisieux. She became a nun at the Carmelite convent there at the age of 15, after a long battle against the superior, who insisted that 16, or even 21, would be a more sensible age. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 24, and that was that. Another forgotten nun: born, was good, died. Holy, no doubt; but nothing much to write home about.

In 1895 Mother Agnès of Jesus, the prioress, had commanded Thérèse to write her memoirs. Writing “not to produce a literary work, but under obedience,” Thérèse took a year to fill six exercise books. She presented them to the prioress, who put them in a drawer unread. A year after Thérèse’s death, the memoirs were published in a small edition of 2,000: the first spark that ignited a “storm of glory” that swept the world. Miracles started to happen: conversions, cures, even apparitions. “We must lose no time in crowning the little saint with glory,” said the Prefect of the Congregation of Rites, “if we do not want the voice of the people to anticipate us.” The beatification process opened thirteen years after Thérèse’s death. She was canonized in 1925, the Pope having suspended the rule that forbids canonization less than 50 years after someone’s death.
  When Thérèse was 17, she confided to a visiting Jesuit her hope of becoming a great saint and to love God as much as the Carmelite Saint Teresa of Ávila. The Jesuit thought he found traces of pride and presumption and advised her to moderate her desires. “Why, Father?” asked Thérèse, “since our Lord has said, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” 100 years after Thérèse’s death, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church, joining St Catherine of Siena and St Teresa of Ávila.
  The very storm of glory that propelled Thérèse into sainthood makes her a difficult saint for many of us to stomach. The late 19th century was a highly sentimental period, and much of the literature about Thérèse has taken that quality and made it sweeter and sicklier still, to the point where you feel like brushing your teeth after reading every page. There are antidotes. One is raw Thérèse: The Story of a Soul is still in print in most languages. Another is a clear and astringent biography such as that by Guy Gaucher, Bishop of Meaux (which may be hard to find but is worth looking for).
  What makes St Thérèse so special?
  We have grown used to the idea that just as there are people with talents for sport or scholarship, and the rest of us can only admire them without trying to keep up, so there are people with a talent for holiness and heroic virtue, and the rest of us can only bumble along as best we can. We can’t do better because we’re not designed to do better, so there’s no point in trying. We sink into a consoling mediocrity.
  Thérèse wrecks this. She was physically weak and psychologically vulnerable. For her the great saints were giants, they were inaccessible mountains, and she was only an “obscure grain of sand;” but she was not discouraged. St John of the Cross taught her that God can never inspire desires that cannot be fulfilled. The Book of Proverbs told her, “If anyone is a very little one, let him come to me.” If you only look, Scripture is permeated with images of our littleness and weakness with respect to God, and of his care for us in our insignificance.
  Thérèse’s “Little Way” means taking God at his word and letting his love for us wash away our sins and imperfections. When a priest told her that her falling asleep during prayer was due to a want of fervour and fidelity and she should be desolate over it, she wrote “I am not desolate. I remember that little children are just as pleasing to their parents when they are asleep as when they are awake.”
  We can’t all hug lepers or go off and become missionaries and martyrs. But we all do have daily opportunities of grace. Some of them may be too small to see, but the more we love God, the more we will see them. If we can’t advance to Heaven in giant strides, we can do it in tiny little steps. Our weakness is no excuse for mediocrity.

More info on Therese

Please pray for Doctor Edward Fairley R.I.P.  who was devoted to Teresa