Category: The Daily Decade

In sorrow are we made saints, in struggle are we made holy, in adversity and persecution is our weakness perfected into strength. In the Cross is our Resurrection.

God by becoming man shared our sorrow and pain in His experience of compassion, but His chief lesson to us teaches us how to see past the sorrows of the world to His glory and the joys of His Kingdom.

With every worldly joy, we are reminded that it is only a small reflection of the great joy we have in Heaven, and so always with a reminder that our truest happiness is not here, but with God.

Christ offers us a Kingdom, the authority in which comes from our giving of ourselves in this land we are in for a short time. He offers us a simple, though not an easy, path to Him.

God reaches out to us by taking on our flesh, and He gives us the means to reach back up to Him by the fire of the Holy Ghost – purity for purity, sanctification for sanctification.

A personal relationship with Jesus cannot be selfish, or it is no relationship. We do not try our friends’ patience, make ourselves burdensome to them, or purposely do things we know are contrary to their good will – so why would we do these things to God?

The life of man on Earth is war, but we are taught that we fight not as one beating the air, neither do we run for a corruptible crown, but rather we know all our struggles have meaning in Christ.

In the midst of our battles with the flesh and the devil we will be tempted to imagine ourselves alone; but God anticipated this, and has left us reminders of His presence.

Just as Christ seeks respite in the desert place of the garden, so too the Blessed Mother responds to her special mission by going out of her daily life and serving in a remote place, where Elizabeth had reserved herself for the duration of her pregnancy.

For the duration of Lent, Christ calls us to His Garden retreat to kneel beside Him in His Agony, that we might unite our resistant humanity to his longsuffering divinity.