Byzypriest

by Catherine Doherty What can a person do who tries to love God tremendously? Everything, from turning the lights off to save electricity to refraining from getting new clothes all the time, to not being picky about food, to going where God calls you. Once I know God’s will, I am going to try to do it perfectly. My heart swells and I say, “This also, Lord, for love of you.” I know very well its redemptive value. Here’s another way of putting it: I have empty hands. I consider that I have to bring something to the altar to offer at my next Mass. What can I bring? I can bring clothing washed with great love, understanding full well that because of my attention, these clothes have redemptive value. I can bring hours of conversation or letters written with attention to details. It never occurs to me that I can possibly separate anything from love. For example, I will speak of washing dishes. If I have the attitude that this is a beautiful little thing that I can give God, then washing a cu

Years ago, beyond my memory, my father stood with his arms outstretched. With his words of encouragement, I reached for him, and, with exhilaration in eyes and breath, I took my first steps — from infancy to childhood. Years ago, faded in my memory, my father stood with his arms outstretched. With his words of encouragement, I looked to him, and, with exhilaration in eyes and breath, I caught my first fish by myself — from childhood to adolescence. Years ago, recent in my memory, my father stood with his arms outstretched. With his words of encouragement, I embraced him, and, with exhilaration in eyes and breath, I departed on my own journey — from adolescence to adulthood. Years ago, still fresh in my memory, my father stood with his arms outstretched. With his words of encouragement, I imitated him, and, with exhilaration in eyes and breath, I trusted and submitted to the One-Who-Is — from adulthood to sonship. Love… love… love, never counting the cost. Present now, no need for my me

separated, cold, unhung sit the images shattered floating, drifting with effort, with cause each seeking to be the Whole in its own right. my Author weeps with salty, solicitous streams of His inner Self. Reconciliation of the mass, of that once bountiful state of creation, seems inconceivable; yet, the pericopes of the Masterswork pursue their identity, missing the moment of that which is yearned and feared in the same Breath. February 4, 1989 Michael Winn

Oh, how my heart yearns to hear the stillness of the Voice that speaks to my inner soul. My longing seems unanswered. He comes and the absence is full of completeness. I Am beckons to my cries of anguish and comforts my coldness. The warmth of the Light is the food for my travels. I wander yet am led. I Am, he is the life of my soul. January 10, 1988 Michael Winn

by Thomas Merton Now where the hills of Languedoc are blue with vineyards Swimming to the brows of the low ridges brown as shells, A thousand villages begin to name your night with fires. The flames that wake as wide as faith, Opening their fierce and innocent eyes from hell to hill In the midsummer nightfall Burn at the ageless cross-roads these their Pagan and converted fires. All the dark shocks of the fair summer’s harvest Rise up in the deep fields Where for two thousand years, St. John, Your fires are young among us: They cry out there, loud as was your desert testimony, Out at the crossing of the vineyard roads Where once the wheat sheaves wept with blood In warning to the sickles of the manichees. And in our hearts, here in another nation Is made your deep midsummer night. It is a night of other fires, Wherein all thoughts, all wreckage of the noisy world Swim out of ken like leaves, or smoke upon the pools of wind. Oh, listen to that darkness, listen to that deep darkness, Lis