This was a particularly trying weekend for me. I responded poorly to several unwelcome intrusions with anger, anxiety, impatience and doubt. I forgot an essential truth: that whatever was, or would be happening in my life today or anytime in the future, is intended by God for the salvation of my soul. 

I had to trust Him. I had to surrender to God the concerns that were causing me so much angst and which I was unable to resolve on my own. I had to trust God to take care of them. I rushed to an online Adoration site I frequently visit where I could  gaze upon my waiting and loving Lord and seek His assistance. 

On my way there, I rediscovered Sanctify the Moment – The Now Moment written by Ven. Fulton J. Sheen.  It had been some time since I had first read this article. It immediately helped me to put my current challenges into proper perspective.
Hopefully, the good Archbishop's words will help you to do likewise:  

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"[One] remedy for the ills that come to us from thinking about time is what might be called the sanctification of the moment—or the Now. Our Lord laid down the rule for us in these words: “Do not fret, then, over tomorrow; leave tomorrow to fret over its own needs; for today, today’s troubles are enough.”

(Matt. 6:34)

This means that each day has its own trials; we are not to borrow troubles from tomorrow, because that day, too, will have its cross. We are to leave the past to Divine Mercy and to trust the future, whatever its trials, to His Loving Providence.

Each minute of life has its peculiar duty—regardless of the appearance that minute may take. The Now-moment is the moment of salvation. Each complaint against it is a defeat; each act of resignation to it is a victory. The moment is always an indication to us of God’s will. The ways of pleasing Him are made clear to us in several ways: through His Commandments, by the events of His Incarnate Life in Jesus Christ Our Lord, in the Voice of His Mystical Body, the Church, in the duties of our state of life. And, in a more particular way, God’s will is manifested for us in the Now with all of its attendant circumstances, duties, and trials.

The present moment includes some things over which we have control, but it also carries with it difficulties we cannot avoid—such things as a business failure, a bad cold, rain on picnic days, an unwelcome visitor, a fallen cake, a buzzer that doesn’t work, a fly in the milk, and a boil on the nose the night of the dance. We do not always know why such things as sickness and setbacks happen to us, for our minds are far too puny to grasp God’s plan. Man is a little like a mouse in a piano, which cannot understand why it must be disturbed by someone playing Chopin and forcing it to move off the piano wires.

Those who love God do not protest, whatever He may ask of them, nor doubt His kindness when He sends them difficult hours. A sick man takes medicine without asking the physician to justify its bitter taste, because he trusts the doctor’s knowledge; so the soul which has sufficient faith accepts all the events of life as gifts from God, in the serene assurance that He knows best.

Nothing is more individually tailored to our spiritual needs than the Now-moment; for that reason it is an occasion of knowledge which can come to no one else. This moment is my school, my textbook, my lesson. Not even Our Lord disdained to learn from His specific Now; being God, He knew all, but there was still one kind of knowledge He could experience as a man. St. Paul describes it: “Son of God though He was, He learned obedience in the school of suffering.”

(Heb. 5:8)

… to accept the crosses of our state of life because they come from an all-loving God is to have taken the most important step in the reformation of the world, namely, the reformation of the self. Sanctity can be built out of patient endurance of the incessant grumbling of a husband—the almost intolerable nagging of a wife—the boss’s habit of smoking a pipe while he dictates—the noise the children make with their soup—the unexpected illness—the failure to find a husband—the inability to get rich. All these can become occasions of merit and be made into prayers if they are borne patiently for love of One Who bears so patiently with us, despite our shortcomings, our failures, and our sins.

…To accept the duty of this moment for God is to touch Eternity, to escape from time. This habit of embracing the Now and glorifying God through its demands is an act of the loving will. 

… We would all like to make our own crosses; but since Our Lord did not make His Own, neither do we make ours. We can take whatever He gives us, and we can make the supernatural best of it. The typist at her desk working on routine letters, the street cleaner with his broom, the farmer tilling the field with his horses, the doctor bending over a patient, the lawyer trying his case, the student with his books, the sick in their isolation and pain, the teacher drilling her pupils, the mother dressing the children—every such task, every such duty can be ennobled and spiritualized if it is done in God's name."

​I am blessed to be a Lay Dominican. However, the ideas expressed on this blog are my own and do not represent the endorsement of or position of the Order of Preachers as a whole. I am neither responsible for, nor endorse content (e.g. banner ads, pop-up ads, etc.) that may be linked to this blog.

Yesterday was abortion day at our local Planned Parenthood center. Three of us were outside praying for the staff, the parents and the unsuspecting children encased in their mothers’ wombs.
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It was bitterly cold. In fact, this is the first time over the past four years when I ever felt cold enough to wear a hooded sweatshirt and gloves. But it was not just the physical cold and wind that was bothersome. It was the pervasive coldness emanating from this place of death on this particular day. If you ever reverently touched the hand of a loved one or friend while praying farewell at their casket, you know the type of cold I am trying to describe.
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It seemed more women than normal were entering this evil place and fewer were willing to interact with the sidewalk counselor this day. The honking horn and raised middle finger were auditory and visible evidence of the pleasure the evil one takes in using his minions to belittle and demean the handful who engage in this spiritual warfare.

Despair would be such an easy response to this on-going slaughter!

“What good are you fools doing?” one could imagine Satan whispering in our ears. “Look around! Count the number of woman who flock here! Where are your fellow parishioners? Oh, how happy I am when your pastors do not let you post flyers or notices in your Churches about your prayerful vigils. Where are your bishops and priests? How ecstatic I am when no prayer warriors show up!”

“I particularly relish your sense of helplessness and shame,” he might sneer, “when you approach those entering this evil place and they stop, look you right in the eye, and say 'Unless you are able to take care of me and this baby, get our of my way'.”

We have so few resources to offer these women. Why? Aside from the salvation of souls, is there any greater priority our Church should have than the protection of human life?

This is no time to despair or end our efforts to protect the dignity of all human life. We know that God in His perfect timing will end this slaughter of human life. Over the years we know, our prayerful presence has made a difference, not only in those women who have changed their minds and not followed through with a scheduled abortion, not only by the fact that a number of these death camps have closed forever, but also by the affirming words of support shared by other women who stop and let us know that we should never cease our prayerful witness in front of this place of death and deception, tearfully telling us that had we been there several years ago, they would never had aborted their child!

How have we as Catholics and as a society come to so devalue the gift of life? There are many reasons one might offer. But in my mind, the primary one is the same one that is at the source of the crisis in our Church – the lack of belief in the living Author of life, physically present with us until the end of time - His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity hidden behind the Sacred Host.

If we valued His Presence here among us, if we spent time before Him in the Blessed Sacrament, if we allowed Him to nourish and penetrate our souls, we could never be absent from the fight for life.

https://harvestingthefruitsofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2017/09/worth-revisiting-cold-as-death.html#more

​I am blessed to be a Lay Dominican. However, the ideas expressed on this blog are my own and do not represent the endorsement of or position of the Order of Preachers as a whole. I am neither responsible for, nor endorse content (e.g. banner ads, pop-up ads, etc.) that may be linked to this blog.