Tag Archives: Mercy

Seeing God

By | May 10, 2012

I have been praying to be able to simply look at the face of Christ, so the psalm from the third Sunday of Lent, “Lord, let your face shine upon us and we shall be saved” (Psalm 4:2), really meant something to me. Reading scripture, the popes, the saints, the liturgy – I feel like they all points towards this mysterious and real encounter with the face of Christ. For a while, I didn’t even know where to begin. God is beyond this world, not comprehensible to the human mind…

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Divine Mercy

By | May 8, 2012

On this past Divine Mercy Sunday, I imagined the blood and water flowing out of Christ’s side and over me like a waterfall of mercy. After Christ won for us salvation on the cross, the soldiers pierced his side, and flowing forth came blood and water. Jews during that time would immediately connect the blood and water flowing out of his side to the blood and water from animal sacrifices that flowed out of the temple into the Kidron Valley. The blood of animal sacrifices were used to purify

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Look at What’s Crippling You

By | April 13, 2012

Sometimes I feel unworthy and think, “Who am I to witness after all the times I have sinned and betrayed God?” When these thoughts come, the shame cripples me in fear. It’s very subtle and creeps in most of the time without me even realizing it. The effects of sin – shame, isolation, and fear paralyze us and keep us from moving forward towards God. That’s just what the devil wants. If we don’t feel worthy, good enough, or knowledgeable enough, then we won’t spread the gospel: we’ll turn in on

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Lord, I’m Not Worthy to Receive You

By | February 4, 2011

Over the past few years, I’ve dealt with a lot of interior struggle when it comes to receiving the Eucharist. There’s been many a Mass where I’ve spent a good majority of the liturgy fighting an inner battle over whether or not I should receive when it came time for Holy Communion. The drill usually goes something like this: I start to think of all of the sins I’ve committed and then think, “Wow, maybe I shouldn’t receive; I’ve really failed in a lot of ways.” Then, that voice goes

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Lawd Have Mussy!

By | December 9, 2009

So, recently, I’ve been leafing through another book, “I Believe in Love.” Now, wait a minute before you judge it. If I didn’t have it sitting right in front of me or hadn’t started reading it, I imagine that I would assume it was some sort of cheesy self-help book and write it off.  That, though, is the cynic in me and I don’t want to be a cynic. Even if it weren’t an awesome spiritual book based on the teachings of St. Thérèse (which it is!), what’s so wrong about a book on love?

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