"But God is with us, providing manna for us, moving as a pillar of fire and cloud before us, leading the way, and giving us strength."
Exodus 90, Week 1 Daily Bearings
"Yet even now," says the LORD, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and tear your hearts and not your garments." Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy, and repents of evil. Who knows whether he will not turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him...”
Joel 2:12-14
My Why
I want to serve my Lord with trust in His blessing for me, in abiding faith for His saving power, in hope for the good He has in store for me, and with an unassailable love for Him my creator. Secure in His love, I want to serve my family, all the people God places in my life, and the materially and spiritually poor--with right judgment, gentle patience, and joyful encouragement.
"Thus sin renders the soul miserable, weak and torpid, inconstant in doing good, cowardly in resisting temptation, slothful in the observance of God's commandments. It deprives her of true liberty and of that sovereignty which she should never resign; it makes her a slave to the world, the flesh, and the devil; it subjects her to a harder and more wretched servitude than that of the unhappy Israelites in Egypt or Babylon. Sin so dulls and stupefies the spiritual senses of man that he is deaf to God's voice and inspirations; blind to the dreadful calamities which threaten him; insensible to the sweet odor of virtue and the example of the saints; incapable of tasting how sweet the Lord is, or feeling the touch of His benign hand in the benefits which should be a constant incitement to his greater love. Moreover, sin destroys the peace and joy of a good conscience, takes away the soul's fervor, and leaves her an object abominable in the eyes of God and His saints. The grace of justification delivers us from all these miseries. For God, in His infinite mercy, is not content with effacing our sins and restoring us to His favor; He delivers us from the evils sin has brought upon us, and renews the interior man in his former strength and beauty. Thus He heals our wounds, breaks our bonds, moderates the violence of our passions, restores with true liberty the supernatural beauty of the soul, reestablishes us in the peace and joy of a good conscience, reanimates our interior senses, inspires us with ardor for good and a salutary hatred of sin, makes us strong and constant in resisting evil, and thus enriches us with an abundance of good works. In fine, He so perfectly renews the inner man with all his faculties that the Apostle calls those who are thus justified new men and new creatures."
— Venerable Louis Of Grenada, p. 46 The Sinner's Guide: 16th-Century Classic on Resisting Temptation and Overcoming Sin
(I)n our Ash Wednesday observance(,) God has great things in store for us; he has promised us a life beyond our dreams, and even now he has graces and light for us during this holy season. But there is a condition for our receiving what he wants to give us: we need to remember our true state. If we forget the profound moral wound that has corrupted our minds and hearts—which only God can heal—we will surely get into trouble.
We all deal with the effects of original sin. . .We need to keep remembering, lest we forget it, that the reason the world is so unjust and so full of war, oppression, greed, and selfishness is because people just like us populate it.
The first step toward living in the truth (it’s also the middle step and the last step) is repentance: getting a firm hold of the reality of our need and putting all our hope in God’s merciful desire to forgive our sins and to heal our wounded souls.
Exodus 90, Day 1 Lenten Reflection
