When you're feeling down

[silentstar]

1. spend time outside; the weather is great right now.
2. look at art books.
3. English musician John Tavener composed The Protecting Veil (cello and strings) which is about a vision of the Virgin. He is (Russian) Orthodox, but I find his music compatible with a Catholic perspective. A related piece is the Last Sleep of the Virgin (string orchestra and handbells). They are together on a CD on itunes called Tavener: the protecting veil and last sleep of the virgin.

The last sleep refers to what the Orthodox call the Dormition, obviously the Assumption to Catholics. I had never heard a piece of music composed for this before. The music is sad but I have been missing someone and this helps me remember her without feeling the despair I used to feel, so I can enjoy this time of year more.

1. spending time with my husband.

 

[EasterJoy]

In support of those who vote in favor of prayer, a quote from John XXIII (boldface mine):
(For the laity: “Nothing is better for enlightening and encouraging the adoration of Jesus than to meditate upon Him and invoke Him in the threefold light of the Name, the Heart and the Blood”)

LETTER OF POPE JOHN XXIII
“IL TEMPIO MASSIMO”
TO WOMEN RELIGIOUS

July 2, 1962

…
…The life offered to the Lord entails difficulties and sacrifices like any other form of coexistence. Only prayer gives the gift of happy perseverance in it. The good works to which you dedicate yourselves are not always crowned with success. You meet with disappointments, misunderstanding and ingratitude.

**Without the help of prayer you could not continue along on this hard road. And do not forget that a wrongly understood dynamism could lead you to fall into that “heresy of action” which was reproved by our predecessors. **Having overcome this danger, you can be confident that you are definitely co-operators in the salvation of souls, and you will add merits to your crown.

All of you, whether dedicated to a contemplative or an active life, should understand the expression “life of prayer.” It entails not a mechanical repetition of formulas but is rather the irreplaceable means by which one enters into intimacy with the Lord, to better understand the dignity of being daughters of God and spouses of the Holy Spirit, the “sweet guest of the soul” Who speaks to those who know how to listen in recollection.

Your prayer draws nourishment from the sources of a deep knowledge of the sacred Scriptures, particularly the New Testament, and from the liturgy and the teachings of the Church in all its fullness.

The holy Mass should be the center of your day, so much so that every action converges on it as a preparation or as a thanksgiving. Let Holy Communion be the daily food which sustains, comforts and strengthens you.

Thus you will not run the risk, as happened to the foolish virgins of the parable, of leaving the lamp without oil. You will always be ready for everything: for glory or for ignominy, for health and for illness, to pursue your work and to die. “Behold the Bridegroom is coming, go forth to meet Him!”(5).

It would be fitting at this point to recall to you that practice, repeated on many occasions, of the three devotions which We consider fundamental also for the simple faithful of the laity: “Nothing is better for enlightening and encouraging the adoration of Jesus than to meditate upon Him and invoke Him in the threefold light of the Name, the Heart and the Blood” (6).

The Name, the Heart and the Blood of Jesus: this is the substantial nourishment for a sound life of piety.

The Name of Jesus! In reality “nothing is sung more sweetly, nothing heard more joyfully, nothing more gently contemplated than Jesus the Son of God” (7).

The Heart of Jesus! Pius XII of venerable memory, in the encyclical Haurietis Aquas, of May 15, 1956, which we recommend for attentive meditation, teaches thus:

“If the arguments on which the worship given to the wounded heart of Jesus are rightly weighed, it is clear to all that we are dealing here, not with an ordinary form of piety which anyone may at his discretion slight in favor of other devotions, or esteem lightly, but with a duty of religion most conducive to Christian perfection” (8).

The Blood of Christ! “This is the highest mark of the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus, which is renewed mystically and really in the holy Mass, and gives sense and orientation to Christian life” (9)…