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Here are this week’s must-reads:
+ “While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him and was deeply moved…” (from The Prodigal Son) // Maybe we all begin Lent “a long way off,” but think of the Father and how He has been waiting for this. He’s been waiting for you. 💙🙏 I like to think of a house with a porch and the Father sitting on the porch, standing to see His son in the distance, and running towards him immediately.
+ “I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.” — Fr. Henri Nouwen
+ “At the end of this Lent, we want to be able to do something that we cannot currently do. We want to be someone that we currently are not. The Goal of Lent is not to become slightly holier, or slightly healthier, or to have fewer bad habits. The goal is to look like Jesus. And I currently don’t look like Jesus – I currently don’t think like Jesus, I currently don’t love like Jesus… In order to do something I currently cannot do, I have to begin to do something I have not yet done.” — Fr. Mike Schmitz
+ “Some saints are privileged to extend to us their patronage with particular efficacy in certain needs, but not in others; but our holy patron St. Joseph has the power to assist us in all cases, in every necessity, in every undertaking.” (St. Thomas Aquinas)
Here’s a look at what’s featured in this week’s newsletter. Everything’s under $60. Sign up for it here – and you’ll also get access to last year’s best-sellers!
+ “When we look at our Mother, we see that suffering doesn’t have to destroy us. It doesn’t have to define us. When we’re living for the Lord, suffering still hurts. But even in that anguished moment, that pain can be transformed into the joy and peace and surrender of this Alaskan Pietà. With Mary, we can say, “Yes, Father,” we can choose to praise him and find a sense of the peace that comes of knowing how wildly we are loved.” — Meg Hunter-Kilmer
+ “God is served first.” This was the motto of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, inspired by St. Joan of Arc, and it shaped every aspect of their marriage and family life… This mindset influences how we start our day, the choices we make for our families, and even how we handle tough decisions (like which commitments to say yes to—sports schedules, activities, social plans—God is served first).” — Kristen Combo
+ The Liturgical color for most of the season of Lent is purple, which symbolizes penitence — as well as Jesus’ royalty as King of Kings. Incorporating purple into your home decor during Lent can be a powerful reminder of the season and God’s invitation to return to Him. Perhaps, too, it can be a reminder that the crown of thorns is temporary, and replaced by an eternal crown in heaven.
+ How Jesus Responded in the Desert
1) Notice that the devil tempted Jesus after forty days.
He waited until Jesus had been weakened by hunger, drained by thirst. This is how he tempts us as well — when we are weak, vulnerable or overwhelmed. And its in these moments that we should ask God for strength, and remain vigilant in this season of Lent.
2) Jesus responded to the tempter with the Word of God.
Jesus did not engage in a conversation with the devil, but quoted and proclaimed God’s Word. We too should turn to the Word of the Lord and engage with God when we are tempted, or suffering or worried. Study God’s Word and keep it in your heart, proclaiming it to yourself and others.
+ “The desert is a place of life not of death because speaking to the Lord in silence gives us life again.” — Pope Francis
+ “This is what it means to honor mystery. It means in the face of disappointment, we get comfortable simply saying, “I don’t know.” It means we learn to be comfortable sitting in the middle of mystery and not offering an explanation – to ourselves nor to others. We allow ourselves to simply say, “I don’t know why this happened, but I know who God is, and I refuse to create an explanation that will detract from who He reveals Himself to be.”
“This doesn’t mean we deny our pain or sugar-coat situations or make excuses for God. We most certainly have permission and the need to wrestle with the discrepancies, to feel what we’re feeling, to cry and grieve and lament. But honoring mystery means not pursuing an explanation if God isn’t revealing one. We cannot force mystery to unveil. But we can sit, attentive to it, honoring it… and drawing close to God. We can seek His presence over answers. In the midst of our pain, we can seek the presence of the Comforter for our healing, rather than the illusion of comfort in the form of answers.” — Jonna Schuster
+ “It is not our goodness that earns His love, but His boundless compassion that calls us back…” // Psalm 6: “Heave mercy on me, Lord, I have no strength; Lord, heal me — my soul is racked with pain… But you, O Lord… how long? Return, Lord, rescue my soul. Save me in your merciful love…” — here
+ “(Years ago), I remember agonizing over my Lenten observances– whether I’d done enough, or whether I had paid enough attention during this or that prayer. One memorable year, I fixated on fasting — by Easter, I had made a ‘one serving only’ rule for meals, cut out all meat and sweets, and was eating less than three full meals every Friday. I lost so much weight that my friends started commenting on it.
This is not who God is, and it is not how He wants us to see Him. He wants us to trust that He loves us, and to trust in His mercy (to the point of mentioning it several times in the Gospel, and appearing several hundred times to a Polish nun in the 1930s saying as much and commissioning a painting via said nun to prove the point)…” — Emily Hess
+ One of my favorite prayers is at the end of the Divine Mercy Chaplet where we pray: “Eternal God, in whom *mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible* (love that!), look kindly upon us, and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments, we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence, submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.” What a powerful reminder and prayer!
+ “To repent is not to look downwards at my own shortcomings, but upwards at God’s love; it is not to look backwards with self-reproach but forward with trustfulness, it is to see not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I might become.” — St. John Climacus
More Finds in this week’s Newsletter, which you can read through here.
