Memento Mori 🙏🏻

[cissypc]

[randomreasonstolive]

Reason to Live #14351

To be a better person

  – Guest Submission

(Please don't add negative comments to these posts.) 

[randomreasonstolive]

Reason to Live #14352

Seeing my beautiful daughter go to 1st grade

  – Guest Submission

(Please don't add negative comments to these posts.) 

[randomreasonstolive]

Reason to Live #14353

To live longer than my teenage self thought I would

  – Guest Submission

(Please don't add negative comments to these posts.) 

[gulistan-blog]

㋡🥀

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Camillus de Lellis

1550-1614

Feast Day: July 18

Patronage: the sick, physicians, nurses, hospitals, doctors

Saint Camillus de Lellis was an Italian soldier that overcame his gambling habit and other vices to become a Capuchin Priest. After he received permission from his confessor, St. Philip Neri, he founded the Camillian order to minister to the sick and wounded soldiers, building hospitals and the first field medical units in the battlefield. The red cross symbol was their sign of charity and service. After years of suffering from a battle wound, he died in Rome.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia (St. Ella)

1864-1918

Feast Day: July 18

Saint Elizabeth of Russia was born a German princess and granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England. In 1884 she married Grand Duke Sergei of the Russian Imperial Court. She had a happy loving marriage and converted to the Russian Orthodox faith in 1891. In 1905 Sergei was assassinated whereupon she forgave the killer, sold her personal possessions and started the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary in Moscow, that served the poor, suffering and orphans through prayer and action. In 1909 she formed the Sisters of Love and Mercy. In 1918 she and others from the Imperial Family were murdered in a mineshaft with grenades by the Bolsheviks.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[litany-of-trust]

That not knowing what tomorrow brings is an invitation to lean on You…

Jesus, I trust in You.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Emanuel Krescenc Liška (Czech, 1852-1903) Christ on Mount Olive (Thy Will Be Done!), 1886 National Gallery Prague “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). - The Bible.

[randomreasonstolive]

Reason to Live #14348

I want to raise a family. I want to give them everything I needed.

  – Guest Submission

(Please don't add negative comments to these posts.) 

[randomreasonstolive]

Reason to Live #14349

So I can be there when my loved ones need someone

  – Guest Submission

(Please don't add negative comments to these posts.) 

[darklynoon-deactivated20170407]

Reblog if you’re 30 or older

This is an experiment to see if there really are as few of us as people think.You can also use this to freak out your followers who think you’re 25 or something. Yay!

[moethh]

where do you live on the internet and how can i get there

[momentsbeforemass]

Mercy

It’s easy to be good to people who are good to us.

It’s so natural that it’s expected. It’s just assumed that’s what we’ll do. To the point that we instinctively call out someone who isn’t good to people who are good to them.

“That’s how you thank him? After all he’s done for you?” “She couldn’t have been kinder to you and look what you did to her!”

It makes perfect sense. We should be good to people who are good to us. But there’s a subtle danger in all of this.

That – without really meaning to – we’ll drift into being good to people, only because they’re good to us. Only if we’re getting something out of it. That we’ll be good to people, but only because we want something from them.

That we’ll treat them like vending machines.

By the way, if you’re looking for a way to isolate yourself from people? And from God? This works. Extremely well.

It’s the point that Jesus is making in today’s Gospel. When He says, “If you knew what this meant, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned them.”

So what does it mean? Sacrifices are a classic feature of ancient religions – a transaction system. If you wanted your god to do something, you made a sacrifice.

The point Jesus is making is that’s not the relationship that God wants to have with them. As their insert-sacrifice-get-stuff vending machine.

You want to have a real relationship with God? Start with the right foundation for that relationship. Start with mercy. 

But understand this – mercy is unearned. Mercy is not about merit. Or about who deserves it and who doesn’t. Mercy is a gift.

God doesn’t need anything. So if we’re going to give mercy, we’re going to have to give mercy to someone else.

Someone who hasn’t earned it. Someone who doesn’t deserve it.

Otherwise it isn’t mercy.

Here’s the odd thing about mercy. When we give mercy to someone else, we start to see ourselves in them. We see how much we take for granted.

What we think of as ours? What we think of as what we deserve? It’s really just God’s mercy poured out on us.

Understanding that we don’t deserve any of it?

It’s the only way to lose the vending machine mindset.

And the only sure foundation for a real relationship. With God or anyone else.

Today’s Readings

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Hedwig of Poland (also known as Jadwiga Królowa)

1379-1399

Feast Day: July 17

Patronage: Queens

Saint Hedwig or Jadwiga, the daughter of King Louis I of Hungary, ascended the throne at age thirteen to become Queen of Poland. She married Jagiello, a non-Christian Prince of Lithuania, for political reasons and eventually converted him, and then actively promoted Christianity in Lithuania. Throughout her life, she was known for her generosity to all, especially the sick and poor, and for a revision of the laws to help the poor. She died in Kraków on July 17, 1399.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[litany-of-trust]

That Your love goes deeper than my sins and failings, and transforms me…

Jesus, I trust in You.

[momentsbeforemass]

The God we know

People have a lot of ideas about God.

Some of them aren’t too bad. Some of them are just odd. Some of them are toxic.

Most of us (myself included) share a source for some of our worst ideas about God – people.

Whether it’s other people weaponizing their version of “God” and using it against us.

Or someone telling us that something utterly horrifying is “God’s judgment” on someone.

Or even us. Telling ourselves that God has abandoned us. When we’re stuck in the worst part of grieving a loss. And we can’t feel God, or much of anything else.

Which is why it’s so important to shake off those ideas about God. Even when they’re our ideas.

Left unchecked, they will lead us away from God. Either to a version of “God” that bears little resemblance to the real thing. Or to give up entirely.

After the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis struggled with the damage that his ideas about God were doing to him. How they were hurting him. How they were keeping him from grieving the loss. He came to understand that,

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. God shatters it Himself…the incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of God in ruins.”

Which means? That you and I need to get away from our ideas about God, to ground ourselves in who God really is. And the place to do that is the incarnation Himself, Jesus.

A good place to start is today’s Gospel. Where Jesus shows us who He really is,

“Come to me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

No matter how far you and I wander off, this is the God who is calling us back.

No matter what we’ve done, this is the God who still loves us.

When all our ideas about Him are shattered, this is the God we know.

Today’s Readings