Saints and Prayers and Thoughts

I enjoy reading the quotes that you can find in a Franklin Planner. I like the ones that help me to focus on being a better person. As I grow in my spirituality, I am looking at these quotes with a different eye. Some of these quotes are turning out to be very self-centered; my world can be a better place because of what I can do. But there are also quotes that are speaking from God’s point of view, whether the speaker realized that or not.

For example, Hosea Ballou has a quote “Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.” Now I had no idea who Hosea was. He was a preacher in the Universalism church in the 1800’s. So what ever was his intent of this comment or the context of it, I don’t know. But his comment is quite profound in that true happiness can only be found with God. The counterfeit happiness is secular/society driven and is very empty indeed. In today’s society people are always searching for something more, that little bit of something that will make them happy. A lot of people don’t seem to realize that that little bit of something is Jesus.

While there is nothing really terrible about this next quote, it just borders on that self-centeredness. “Through imagination, we can visualize the uncreated worlds of potential that lie within us” said by Stephen R. Covey. Our imaginations are the source of all of our potential according to this quote. We must have the will to persevere in our endevers, but most of our potential is a gift from God.

So I will continue to read the quote-ables of the world, but now I will appreciate those who appreciate our Creator and how he impacts our lives.

I’m listening to the EWTN lecture series on Contemplative Prayer right now. Like they said in the series, most people think it’s only for saints. But we’re all called to live holy lives, live our lives according to the Gospel. The more we live a Gospel focused life the closer we’ll get to that contemplative state in prayer.

 In my early Catholic learning (which wasn’t that long ago) I kept hearing God’s will and how our will needs to be in sync with his will. I was like, but how do we get there? How do we know what God’s will is? It’s the same with contemplative prayer. We need to live the Gospel. Everything we need to know is in there.  We just have to read it, learn it, and live it. Yeah, “just”.

 So as I learn and understand more, I’ll post it here.

I’ve had some thoughts rolling around in my head, and hopefully I will soon have some of them in BlogLand.