Remembering Christ's words to Saint Francis: Rebuild My Church

[Trishie]

Heavenly Father in Jesus, we implore You and trust You to send Your Holy Spirit to renew Your Church through grace and human labour. We ask You to inspire an escalating influx of authentic vocations to priestly, religious and lay apostolates.

Protect and build up Your Church through mutual love and spiritual wisdom, so that the gospel is witnessed and received amongst our families, our communities, and our world.

Overcome that decline (in many of us) of worship and service into token observance, religiosity or neglect. Our world has clung to materialism, sensuality and ease, thereby punishing us by their tenacious hold upon our lives. This strangles peace of soul and impoverishes human relationships, fostering discord and injustice amongst us. Please send the Holy Spirit to inspire us with faith and mutual charity.

We have clung to our own will and preferences, thus punish ourselves by inability to rise above our limited selves into the freedom of Your love. We choose worldliness—even many of us who are consecrated to You—rather than to commit ourselves to Your love with unconditional trust. Please help us to wholeheartedly live the gospel and the Sacraments in love, grace and witness.

Liberate us from imbalance regarding human appetites so that we respond to relationship with gospel love. Overcome in us the influence of immoral and unchristian values normalised by convenience, by custom, by literature and by media. Let us recognise our true relation to You and to each other as children of God. Thus, imbue us with reverence towards the sacredness of human life from conception to enfeebled old age, for we live in a society corrupted by accepted forms of injustice and murder.

Let Christ’s forgiveness, healing and peace flow through us. Rescue us from our apathy, agnosticism and atheism and from our search for instant miracle where You desire patient trust. Convert those who live religiously but without genuine faith or profound dedication. To those who do believe, grant deepening faith that leads us into generous commitment and loving service.

Allow Your Holy Spirit to purify and strengthen us in love, faith, hope, in justice and harmony, granting us true conversion within Your Mystical Body. Thank You for Your gift of each other in Church, our God.

(from my “handful of wildflowers”)

 

[Roseeurekacross]

…Amen . …

 

[pianistclare]

And plenty of weed repellent.

oops. Did my real feeling show there?

Thanks for posting this Trish, we love you!

 

[stpurl]

I couldn’t help but LOL at the weed repellant. But I agree completely, what Trishie said was beautifully expressed.

 

[tawny]

Amen, thanks for the post.

 

[Trishie]

Clare, my hubby knew I’ve always loved Saint Therese, often called “the Little Flower”, and that I really do try to be good.
I don’t remember what precisely caused him to say it, but one day he whimsically called me, “Trish, the little weed!” He often makes me laugh with his play with words, and I him. It’s one of our ‘things’.

There is a weedy reason why I call my journal “a handful of flowers”. Perhaps I should just have called it 'weedflowers" but poetry and all that. It is because my little boys used to bring me handfuls of wilting weed-flowers in their warm little hands, clover flowers, dandelions, field daisies, and I accepted them for the love they signified and popped them in small vases, as we mothers do. (So put away the week killer, Clare!!!) And in that period I found I often felt compelled to write prayer and meditations, I thought of my ‘stuff’ as like those weed flowers, held out to God as some sort of gift to Him.

Anyway, a nod to topic. Saint Francis loved nature.

 

[pianistclare]

OH, I didn’t realize those were of your own compostition!!! I thought they were the usings of a saint!

 

[Trishie]

I wish, Clare, but my answer to your kind thought is in the words of Saint John of the Cross:

“A spark of pure love is more precious before God, more useful for the soul, and richer in benedictions for the Church than all other works taken together.”

and in the introduction to my journal:

"This journal is wildflower of my quest for God and for fruitful intercession and love of others.
I recognise the subjective, limited nature of my search, except as God’s pursuit of me. No one is more aware of my limitations or of the fragility of my good intentions than are God and I. Saint Therese of Lisieux, Carmelite contemplative nun, places my writings in perspective.

“Believe me,” Therese told her sister Celine, “the writing of pious books, the composing of the most sublime poetry, all that does not equal the smallest act of self-denial.”
Thus, a small act of unselfish love for others surpasses all effort of such pages as these.
Yet however insignificant my journal, perhaps amid the verbiage someone may find a small handful of wildflowers."