#cardinal virtue

[littleflowerofchrist]

If your father, according to the flesh, attempts to draw you away from God, tell him that you have a Father in heaven.  And if your mother or sister tries to oppose you, answer them: 'You are but mortals and subject to error.  He who has created me will Himself guide me.'  To one who serves God, no good thing will be lacking. Commend all your friends to God, praying that they amend their lives and ever be on guard against sin, lest they, for the sake of earthly things, offend God and lose those of heaven.  Too frequent visits of friends brings much disquiet to the heart.  'The world passes away and the desire thereof'; [footnote: 1 John 2:17] you, too, will pass away and all your friends with you.

Thomas à Kempis in his book Bountiful Goodness: Spiritual Meditations For A Deeper Union With Christ, section “A Little Garden of Roses,” Meditation 2 “On Fleeing the World and the Devil’s Snares,” pages 24-25

[littleflowerofchrist]

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will he opened.”

Matthew 7:7-8 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

[littleflowerofchrist]

“Thus says the LORD of hosts:

This people says:

"The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD."

(Then this word of the LORD came through Haggai, the prophet:)

Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses,

while this house lies in ruins?

Now thus says the LORD of hosts:

Consider your ways!

You have sown much, but have brought in little;

you have eaten, but have not been satisfied;

You have drunk, but have not been exhilarated;

have clothed yourselves, but not been warmed;

And whoever earned wages

earned them for a bag with holes in it.

Thus says the LORD of hosts:

Consider your ways!

Go up into the hill country;

bring timber, and build the house

That I may take pleasure in it

and receive my glory, says the LORD.”

-Haggai 1:2-8 New American Bible, part of the First Reading for the Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

[littleflowerofchrist]

Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded upon rock.  And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.

Matthew 7:24-27 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

[littleflowerofchrist]

There is only one way to recover from the evil humanity does to itself: overcome it.  It’s like my mother said at dinner the other night: we can only be responsible for what we ourselves do.  Bad things happen in this world, and we are judged on how we respond.  Do we take part in evil, or do we fight against it with all we have?

Diana Peterfreund in Chapter 16 of her book Across a Star-Swept Sea spoken by her character Persis Blake

[littleflowerofchrist]

Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, yet my reward is with the LORD, my recompense is with my God. For now the LORD has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him; and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD, and my God is now my strength! It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

Isaiah 49:4-6 New American Bible (NAB), part of the First Reading for the  Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist - Mass during the Day

[littleflowerofchrist]

Nothing worth doing is easy.

my best friend to me regarding the difficulty of applications

[littleflowerofchrist]

The sad thing is that many people who are passive are not inherently evil or bad people.  But evil is an active force, and passivity can become an ally of evil by not pushing against it.  Passivity never pays off.  God will match our effort, but he will never do our work for us.  That would be an invasion of our boundaries.  He wants us to be assertive and active, seeking and knocking on the door of life.            We know that God is not mean to people who are afraid; the Scripture is full of examples of his compassion.  But he will not enable passivity.  The ‘wicked and lazy’ servant was passive.  He did not try.  God’s grace covers failure, but it cannot make up for passivity.  We need to do our part.             The sin God rebukes is not trying and failing, but failing to try.  Trying, failing, and trying again is called learning.  Failing to try will have no good result; evil will triumph.  God expresses his opinion toward passivity in Hebrews 10:38-39: ’“But my righteous one will live by faith.  And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back."  But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.'  Passive 'shrinking back’ is intolerable to God, and when we understand how destructive it is to the soul, we can see why God does not tolerate it.  God wants us to 'preserve our souls.'  That is the role of boundaries; they define and preserve our property, our soul.               I have been told that when a baby bird is ready to hatch, if you break the egg for the bird, it will die.  The bird must peck its own way out of the egg into the world.  This aggressive 'workout’ strengthens the bird, allowing it to function in the outside world.  Robbed of this responsibility, it will die.                This is also the way God made us.  If he 'hatches’ us, does our work for us, invades our boundaries, we will die.  We must not shrink back passively.  Our boundaries can only be created by our being active and aggressive, by our knocking, seeking, and asking (Matthew 7:7-8).

Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend on page 101-102, Chapter 5: Ten Laws of Boundaries subsection “Law 9: The Law of Activity” of their book Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life