To clasp the hands

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

~ Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Guideposts, 3/05

The moment between

The moment between deciding to pray and actually praying can be the longest moment of one's life.

--Emilie Griffin, Clinging

Picture source.
More at www.flickr.com/photos/phildowsing .

There is no one but us

A blur of romance clings to the notions of "publicans," "sinners," "the poor," the "people in the marketplace," "our neighbors," as though of course God should reveal himself, if at all, to these simple people, these Sunday school watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves in their tattered robes, who are single in themselves, while we now are various, complex, and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, not a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the option that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead...and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready... But there is no one but us. There never has been.

--Annie Dillard, "Holy The Firm"

Picture source.

All of creation

All of creation teaches us some form of prayer.
--Thomas Merton

Picture source.

The Wish to Pray

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.
--Georges Bernanos

It Is Jesus

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness;

He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you;

He is the beauty to which you are so attracted;

it is He who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise;

it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life;

it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

Pope John Paul II
World Youth Day 2000

HT to Happy Catholic