How do we fulfill our duties as Christians in the modern world? How do we apply the maxims of the Gospel to the surge of modern life? What are our obligations to society? To our neighbour? To ourselves? And above all, to God? Where, in an unhallowed world, do we find a halo?
These fundamental questions pose themselves to each and everyone of us. And in reply, the Saints tell us that unless we have a clear understanding of the answers and moreover, resolve to apply ourselves diligently in the attainment of these answers, which they freely give, we are in effect walking backwards upon the road that leads to Life. God wills that you sanctify the world, mine and your everyday life.
Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society. - Saint Francis of Assisi - (1181 - 1226)
LIFE well employed consists in a faithful correspondence to grace and a good use of the talents given. There is no other religion than this and the rule life is the same for all. - Blessed Theophane Venard - (1829 - 1861)
ALL of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life-work may be. - Saint Francis de Sales - (1567 - 1622)
IF we wish to make any progress in the service of God we must begin everyday of our life with new ardour. We must keep ourselves in the presence of God as much as possible and have no other view or end in all our actions but the divine honour. - Saint Charles Borromeo - (1538 - 1584)
CONSIDER everyday that you are then for the first time - as it were - beginning; and always act with the same fervour as on the first day you began. - Saint Anthony of Padua - (1195 - 1231)
We need no wings to go in search of God, but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us. - Saint Teresa of Avila - (1515 - 1582)
IT is God's way to give much for little. Our Lord does not attend to how much we give, but to the generosity of our will and for this reason He makes much of a little. - Saint John Chrysostom - (347 - 407)
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You give it to the poor and God receives it. - Saint Augustine of Hippo - (354 - 430)
BY prayer, man/woman gives God the greatest glory possible. - Saint Peter Julian Eymard - (1811 - 1868)
BY humble and faithful prayer, the soul acquires, with time and perseverance, every virtue. - Saint Catherine of Siena - (1347 - 1380)
IT is essential to begin the practice of prayer with a firm resolution of persevering in it. - Saint Teresa of Avila - (1515 - 1582)
PRAYER ascends and mercy descends. High as are the heavens and low as is the earth, God hears the voice of man/woman. - Saint Augustine of Hippo - (354 - 430)
THE EXAMINED LIFE - The Confessions changes focus at this point and becomes more philosophical and theological. Here we begin to hear the self-examination of the Bishop of Hippo - Saint Augustine - and his interpretation of the nature of knowledge and of creation itself.
- Page 14 - There is another evil of the day, which I wish were sufficient unto it. For by eating and drinking we repair the daily decays of the body, until you destroy both food and belly, when you shall slay by emptiness with a wonderful fullness, and clothe this corruptible with an eternal incorruption. But for the present, necessity is sweet to me, and I fight against this sweetness lest I be taken captive by it, I carry on a daily war by fasting, often bringing my body into subjection. And my pains are expelled by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are, in a manner, pains. They burn and kill like a fever unless the medicine of nourishment comes to relieve us. Since they are readily at hand from the comfort we receive through your gifts (with which land, water and air serve our weakness), our calamity is called pleasure.
This much you have taught me, that I should train myself to take food as medicine. But while I am passing from the discomfort of emptiness to the satisfaction of fullness, in that very passage the snare of lust lies in wait for me. For that passage itself is pleasurable; there is no other way to pass to that state of fullness, and necessity forces us to pass. And although health is the reason for eating and drinking, yet a dangerous delight accompanies it, and frequently tries to control it in order that I may do for enjoyment's sake what I say I do, or wish to do, for health's sake. Health and pleasure do not have the same limits. What is enough for health is too little for pleasure. And it is often questionable whether it is necessary care of the body which still asks nourishment, or whether a sensual snare of desire wants to be served. In this certainty, my unhappy soul rejoices and prepares in it an excuse to shield itself, glad that it is not clearly apparent what would suffice for the moderation of health, so that under the cloak of health it may conceal the business of pleasure. These temptations I try to resist daily, and I call your right hand to my aid, and refer my perplexities to you, because as yet I have no clear resolution in this matter.
I hear the voice of my God commanding, Let not your heart be overcharged with immoderate indulgence and drunkenness. Drunkenness is far from me; you will have mercy that it may never come near me. But over-eating sometimes creeps up on your servant; you will have mercy that it may depart from me. For no man can be continent unless you give it. You give us many things that we pray for, and whatever good we have received before we prayed, we received it from you. Yes, we received it from you that we might afterward know that we received it from you. I was never a drunkard, but I have known drunkards who were made sober by you. It was from you, then, that they who never were drunkards might not be so, and it was your gift that both might know that it was from you.
I heard another voice of yours: "Do not follow your lusts and refrain yourself from your pleasures." And by your grace I have heard that which I have greatly loved: Neither if we eat are we the better; nor if we do not eat are we the worse. Which is to say, neither shall the one make me abound, nor the other make me miserable. I heard another also: For I have learned in whatever state I am, therewith to be content; I know how to abound and bow to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. See there a soldier of the heavenly camp - the dust as we are. But remember, Lord, that we are dust, and that of dust you have made man, and he was lost and is found. He [Paul] could not do this by his own strength, because he whom I so love who said these things through the breath of your inspiration, was made of the same dust. He says, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Strengthen me, that I may be able; grant what you command and command what you will. He confesses to have received, and when he glories, he glories in the Lord. Another person I have heard begging that he might receive: "Take from me," he says, "the greediness of the belly." From this it appears to me, O my holy God, that when that is done which you command, it is by your gift that it is done.
You have taught me, good Father, that to the pure all things are pure; but that it is evil to the man who gives offence in eating. And that every creature of yours is good, and nothing is to be refused which is received with thanksgiving; and that food does not commend us to God, and that food does not commend us to God, and that no man should judge us in food or drink; and that he who eats should not despise him who does not eat; and that he who does not eat should not judge him who eats. These things have I learned, thanks and praise be to you, my God, my Master, knocking at the door of my ears, enlightening my heart, delivering me out of all temptation. I do not fear the uncleanness of food, but the uncleanness of lust. I know that Noah was permitted to eat all kinds of flesh that was good for food. I know also that Elijah was fed with flesh; that John, endued with a wonderful abstinence, was not polluted by eating locusts alive, which he fed on. I know, too, that Esau was deceived by craving lentils, and that David blamed himself for desiring a drink of water; and that our King was tempted, not by flesh, but bread. Therefore the people in the wilderness deserved to be reproved, too - not so much for desiring flesh, but because, in their desire for food, they murmured against the Lord.
Placed, then, amid these temptations, I strive daily against lust for food and drink. For it is not the kind [of temptation] that I can resolve to cut off once and for all, and never touch it afterward, as I did with fornication. The bridle of the throat, therefore, as I did with fornication. The bridle of the throat, therefore, is to be held moderately between slackness and strictness. And who is he, O Lord, who is not carried in some degree beyond the bounds of necessity in it? Whoever he is, he is a great one! Let him magnify your name. But I am not such a one, for I am a sinful man. Yet I, too, magnify your name, and he who has overcome the world makes intercession to you for my sins, numbering me among the weak members of his body, because your eyes have looked on my imperfect being and in your book shall all be written.
I am not greatly concerned with all the attractions of sweet scents. When they are absent, I do not miss them; when they are present, I do not refuse them, yet am ready to be without them. So I seem to myself, though possibly I am deceived. For that is also a lamentable darkness which conceals my capabilities from me, so that my mind, inquiring into itself concerning its own powers, does not readily dare to believe itself, because even what is already in it is largely concealed unless it is exposed by experience. And no one ought to be secure in this life, the whole of which is called a temptation, so that he who has been made better from worse may also from better be made worse. Our only hope, our only confidence, our only assured promise, is your mercy.
The delights of the ear had more firmly entangled and conquered me, but you have unbound and liberated me. Now, I still find some repose in those melodies into which your words breathe soul, when they are sung with a sweet and trained voice. Yet I do not allow myself to be held by them, for I can disengage myself from them when I wish. But with the words which are the life of such melodies and by which they gain admission into me, they seek a place of some honour in my heart, and I can scarcely assign them a fitting one. For at times I seem to myself to give them more honour than is proper, sensing that our minds are more are more devoutly and fervently inflamed in devotion by the holy words themselves when they are sung this way, than when they are not. I notice that the different emotions of my spirit, by their sweet variety, have their appropriate expressions in the voice and singing, by some hidden relationship which stirs them up. But this gratification of my flesh, which much not be allowed to take control over my mind, often beguiles me. My feelings do not serve reason, so as to follow it patiently, but after having gained admission for the sake of reason, strive to grab the reins and take the lead. Thus in these things I sin without knowing it, but realize it afterwards.
At other times, anxiously shunning this very deception, I err being too strict, and sometimes to the degree of wishing to have every melody of sweet music to which David's Psalter is often sung banished both from my ears and from the Church itself. That way seems safer which I remember having often heard was followed by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. He made the reader of the psalm utter it with such a slight inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing. Yet, again, when I remember the tears I shed at the songs of your Church in the early days of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved not by the singing, but by what is being sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and skillful modulation, I recognize once more the great usefulness of this practice. Thus I vacillate between the perilous pleasure and proved soundness - inclined rather to approve the custom of singing in the church (though not pronouncing it as an irrevocable opinion), so that the weaker minds may rise to the feeling of devotion by the delight of the ears. Yet when I happen to be more moved by the singing than by what is being sung, I confess that I have sinned gravely, and then would rather not have heard the singing. See my condition now! Weep with me and weep for me, you who can so control your inward feelings that good results follow. For you who do not act this way, these things do not concern you. But O my God, hear me and look upon me, and have mercy on me and heal me, you in whose presence I have become a puzzle to myself; and this is my infirmity.
There remain the delights of these eyes of my flesh, about which to make confession in the hearing of the ears of your temple, those brotherly and devout ears, and so to conclude the temptations of the lust of the flesh which still assault me, as I groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with my house from heaven.
My eyes love beautiful and varied forms, and bright and soft colours, Let this not occupy my soul; let God rather possess it, who made these things very good indeed - for he is my Good, not these. Yes, these affect me during the whole walking day. No rest is given me from them, as there sometimes is in silence from music and from all voices. For that queen of colours, the light, flooding all we look upon, wherever I am during the day, gliding past me in various forms, soothes me when I am busied about other things and not noticing it. And it entwines itself so strongly, that, if it is suddenly withdrawn, I look longingly for it, and if it is long absent, my mind is saddened.
O Light that Tobit saw when with his eyes closed in blindness, he taught his son the way of life, and led the way himself with the feet of charity, never going astray........ - Page 14 -
BY SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!
Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 -
If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 -
I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -
Your generous contribution and support is profoundly cherish. I sincerely pray that: God blessing be upon you, always. Amen! Bank transfer: Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah - Public Bank Berhad account no. 4076577113 - Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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