Respect for the Poor

"Assistance to the unfortunate honors when it treats the poor man with respect, not only as an equal, but as a superior--since he is suffering what perhaps we are incapable of suffering; since he is a messenger of God to us, sent to prove our justice and charity, and to save us by our works."

--Frederick Ozanam, quoted by James Patrick Derum in Apostle in a Top Hat

Bear witness to God's love

As Catholic doctors, you know well that there is a very close bond between the quality of your professional practice and the virtue of charity to which Christ calls you. It is precisely in doing your work well that you bear witness of God's love for the world. Charity manifests itself in a particularly meaningful way through your care of the sick and suffering.

--J. Michael Miller, CSB; Courage and the Physician

Companion: Bread-with-Us

The root of human wretchedness is loneliness, the absence of love--the fact that our personal existence is not embraced by a love that makes our existence "necessary." Our misery arises when we live without a love strong enough to justify our existence no matter how much pain and limitation go along with it. What our heart is crying out for is a true companion in whose love we experience how truly necessary and invaluable our existence is.

The very word companion derives from the two Latin words cum, meaning "with," and panis, which means "bread." A companion is literally "bread-with-us"--in other words, everything we need. This literally is the Eucharist! The Eucharist proclaims that God is not a distant fact toward which human beings strive with great effort. "Rather he is Someone who has joined man on his path, who has become his companion" (L. Guissani).

--Father Peter John Cameron, O.P.

This Tremendous Lover

For the heart of the Crucified burned with a more intense love of God than the world has ever known, and the Son's heart was torn by the offenses that men offer to His heavenly Father. And in that same heart there was a fire of love for men, of love for each man and for every man; and the Lover's heart was torn by the thought of the coldness of those whom He loved and the loss they were incurring by their refusal to love Him. On the previous Sunday we heard the lament that wrung tears from the eyes of God: and thou wouldest not; on the cross on Friday the same love wrings every drop of blood from that divine heart. Truly, we must call Him, "This Tremendous Lover."

-- M. Eugene Boylan, O. Cist. R., This Tremendous Lover

With the Impatience of a Lover

When one remembers who our Lord really was, and what infinite power was at His disposal, the whole wonder of His public life is not the marvelous works He actually did, but the many and more wonderful works which He could have done and did not do. And one gets the impression that, throughout all this period, His chief desire was to press on to the final stage of His life -- that the works of His public ministry formed but a small part of His plan, a part perfectly performed, but still something that He seemed to have far less at heart than the final stage, -- the baptism wherewith He was to be baptized (Lk 12:50), -- and to which He hurries on, if one may say so, with the impatience of a lover.

-- M. Eugene Boylan, O. Cist. R., This Tremendous Lover

The Tale of Two Cities

"I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding."
-The Tale of Two Cities, Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapter 20: A Plea

"There is nothing more to do," said he, glancing upward at the moon, "until to-morrow. I can't sleep."
It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he said these words aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressive of negligence than defiance. It was the settled manner of a tired man, who had wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into his road and saw its end.
-The Tale of Two Cities, Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapter 9: The Game Made

"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."
Now, that the streets were quiet and the night wore on, the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them always.
The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death's dominion.
But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.
-The Tale of Two Cities, Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapter 9: The Game Made

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."
-The Tale of Two Cities, Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapter 15: The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

Psalm 106

O give thanks to the Lord for he is good;
for his love endures for ever.
Who can tell the Lord's mighty deeds?
Who can recount all his praise?

Song of Songs 2: 10-12

He says to me,
"Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,
and come!
For see, the winter is past,
the rains are over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth."

Isaiah 54: 10

Though the mountains leave their place
     and the hills be shaken,
My love shall never leave you
     nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
     says the Lord, who has mercy on you.

Extreme Measures, Fr. John Dominic Corbett, O.P.

It is a curious fact that the earliest Christian moralists were hesitant to embrace growth in "virtue" as the goal or description of the Christian moral life. This is because the term "virtue" suggested to them an inner mastery which bordered on self-sufficiency. This attitude of the pagans was always on the lookout for balance and emotional distance, and any unseemly display of joy or grief would have been despised by them as evidence of moral failure. But the mind of the Church has always been that the proper measure of love of God is to love God without measure. We Christians do not or should not silently reprove ourselves for "indiscretions." We mourn, or ought to mourn, our sins as though they were attending our own funeral. Likewise we Christians do not, or should not, give measured and discrete approval to God. Instead, we dance like fools because, against all the odds, we have been invited to God's own wedding feast. A measured response to a social indiscretion or to a job promotion is virtuous because these things are of only relative importance. But if we would see the life and death implications of our yes or our no to God, we would see that nothing less than a dirge or a dance will do.

Rose Round: The fourfold living signs of the soul

Signs of mystery, Theo had said, when he had seen the eagle in the north, before the hard winter and the time he had fallen off the roof. Theo wore an eagle in his ring, on his hand; it was his sign as well as St. John's, the great bird king of the air who flew unblinded towards the sun. But this bull-head was not less his, nor the lion and the man looking west, and Matt felt that they were his own too, and any man's, and in every man they lived.
But bulls are dangerous and wild, Matt thought, and lions too: they were beasts of the forest and the great plains and of desert and mountain, and were they hiding inside people, inside himself? Suppose the bull charged? The lion roared upon its prey? The eagle swooped on its victim? Suppose the man should change his face and become any or all of these, and no longer human? He was suddenly afraid; it was not only dangerous, it was terrifying to be alive, to be someone with all these unknown powers in his heart.
Then he saw Theo come through the western arch on the other side of the fountain, looking at the sun rising, and at him too.
"Theo," he said, holding on to the stone basin with his hands and looking through the falling water. "I was thinking about the bull, and the others, how dangerous they are. Suppose they got loose? I know they're not real animals, but they are sort of real inside, aren't they? Suppose they did?"
"Well, they do sometimes," said Theo, smiling. He came up to the fountain. "They get very wild. Why do you think our world is in such confusion, with nations all quarreling and fighting, and people grabbing everything they can from each other, and making silly excuses to justify themselves? The beasts inside have got loose."
"I don't like them then," said Matt. Yet he had, in fact, felt only wonder and delight when he had seen them, and a kind of awe.
"Yes, you do like them," said Theo. "They are splendid. They are all kings. They are what makes you a king too. You are a man in your mind, an eagle in your spirit, a lion in the courage of your will."
"But the bull?"
"He's in the power of love," said Theo.
Matt said, "But they do go wild, you said so."
"Yes, they go wild," said Theo. "But look at the garden: it's a square, but a square in a circle. It has a center. Don't you remember talking about it on the tower?"
"The sun," said Matt. "The sun is the center."
"The sun is the center outside," said Theo. "It is the image of the one who is inside: Lux umbra Dei."
Matt looked at the golden sun rising. "If he's in the center, all's well with the sacred beasts," said Theo. "The Phoenix is their Lord."
The sun was shining in his nest of clouds, brighter and brighter, like the Phoenix in the rose of fire. Matt looked back at the fountain, the water that sprang up and fell back for ever.
"Then why is it our Lady who is here in the middle of the garden, Theo? Why not him?"
"Because this is our world," said Theo. "He chose to come into it through her. He is too great to fit into the ring of the world, this little pattern of our sun and our hearts, except by becoming her child, and so one of us. And yet if you look at it inside out you will see that all this, the solar circle, the seasons of time, the fountain of life, the fourfold living signs of the soul, and the Lady herself who said yes to the will of love, are all in him, only in him, and we see them clearer when we look at them in him. There are some people who will only see everything in themselves, but don't be one of them. Our selves are only moons to his sun: in his light all things are revealed as they are."

The Heart of True Wisdom, by Dom Guillerand

There is no need to wait for that knowledge which is the result of study before acting in the region of our relations with God. Religion is belief: but above all, it is practice. It is not knowledge. It is a mutual exchange of love, and it is in this exchange that God reveals himself. He reveals himself in the measure in which we love him, not according to our learning, even in the matter of religion. It is not necessary to know precisely all the perfections of God, nor to be able to expound eloquently all the arguments which prove his existence. How many souls pass the whole of their lives without knowing these things, and yet how profound is their knowledge of him, how warm their fervor, and how intensely real their relations with him. These souls look upon God as a Father, who is unceasingly communicating to them his thoughts and desires, and it is by these thoughts and desires they live. He becomes, as it were, their very soul and their innermost life. His Spirit abides in the depths of their spirit, enlightening, encouraging, and directing all the inner resources that they possess. And they love the Father, and hold converse with him. They share with him their joys and their sorrows, and he is the secret confidant of all their hours. He is there, in the depth of their soul, waiting to receive them into his intimate dwelling-place the moment they turn to him. They recognize him, and they know it is he who is calling them, whenever an interior voice invites them to think of him. Their minds meet inevitably, and thus they enter into a relationship at once living, continuous, and full of delight -- a relationship between the soul and its divine Guest, which grows in intensity.

Dom Augustin Guillerand, O.Cart. (died 1945) was a French Carthusian monk and a revered spiritual author.

Work and Love, by Monsignor Giussani

We must always remind ourselves that our first work does not arise from the capacity to create new structures, but rather it is... a sensibility to the common and singular needs that exist: the use of your intelligence and energy to assist in the creation of a more human environment in the situation where you are. Only if the imagination is awakened can new forms of work be invented. This can only spring forth from an amazement, a devotion, a love for what man is. The factory remains a factory, but it's not like it was before. Wherever a presence -- determined by this passion for man -- expresses a generosity, steadfastness, and imagination, and meets with a certain openness, the work environment is not like it was before. I have heard you tell me a hundred times, "Now I go to work with a passion that I never expected, that before I never even dreamed possible," which means that you don't go to the job you used to go to, but you perform a "new work," a more human work that doesn't leave out any aspect, any particular. Nothing is more concrete than love. Outside of love, concreteness is established by developing a preconceived idea into a program, a program into a preconceived idea. That is, by an ideology that is determined to find its own way and exploits everyone it encounters in the process. Instead, a group of people gathered together who try to keep in mind the true sense of man as a creature of God becomes capable of inventing the truly new. Beyond any scheme, it doesn't remain prisoner of the ordinary programs and always finds a space in which a new flower or new leaf may come to life. In those places where people get together in this way they become truly creative, they become real protagonists in the world. This is why we want to become protagonists in the working world, not as the representatives of categories or roles or interest groups, but representatives of man.

Monsignor Luigi Giussani (died 2005) was a priest from Milan, Italy, who was the founder of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation.

Psalm 39: 8-13

Set me free from all my sins,
do not make me the taunt of the fool.
I was silent, not opening my lips,
because this was all your doing.

Take away your scourge from me.
I am crushed by the blows of your hand.
You punish man's sins and correct him;
like the moth you devour all he treasures.

Mortal man is no more than a breath;
O Lord, hear my prayer.
O Lord, turn your ear to my cry.
Do not be deaf to my tears.

In your house I am a passing guest,
a pilgrim, like all my fathers.
Look away that I may breathe again
before I depart to be no more.

Psalm 31, pt. 2

Have mercy on me, O Lord,
for I am in distress.
Tears have wasted my eyes,
my throat and my heart.

For my life is spent with sorrow
and my years with sighs.
Affliction has broken down my strength
and my bones waste away.

In the face of all my foes
I am a reproach,
an object of scorn to my neighbors
and of fear to my friends.

Those who see me in the street
run far away from me.
I am like a dead man, forgotten,
like a thing thrown away.

But as for me, I trust in you, Lord,
I say: "You are my God.
Let your face shine on your servant.
Save me in your love."

Deuteronomy 7:7-8

It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of all nations. It was because the Lord loved you. (Dt 7:7-8)

Complete your work

Complete your work, O Lord, and as you have loved me from the beginning, so make me to love you unto the end.

What He Feels So Bitterly, by Mother Teresa

Hear Jesus your coworker speak to you: "I want you to be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying, and the little children; the poor I want you to bring to me." Learn this sentence by heart and when you are wanting in generosity, repeat it. We can refuse Christ just as we refuse others: "I will not give you my hands to work with, my feet to walk with, my mind to study with, my heart to love with. You knock at the door, but I will not give you the key of my heart." This is what he feels so bitterly: not being able to live his life in a soul...

Isaiah 63:9

It was not a messenger or an angel,
but he himself who saved them.
Because of his love and pity
he redeemed them himself,
Lifting them and carrying them
all the days of old.

What Looks Down, Pope Benedict XVI

What looks down at us from the cross is a goodness that enables a new beginning in the midst of life's horror.