Tag: Love

We can’t give what we do not have.  To grow in love is to open ourselves to God, the all-consuming Ocean of Love, and allow him to heal us and bring us into relationship with him through the sacraments, through the teachings of the Church and through prayer.  Each of us has been given unique gifts and abilities that God wants us to share with others and yet we are loved not for what we do, but for who we are in Christ. We are the beloved of God! 

Lord, teach me to love myself.

You gave me this life. You blessed me with this temperament.

You formed me, and I am loved by you unconditionally.

In my eyes, I have many faults.

I am constantly beating myself up about something.

I question the purchase I made, the work I’ve chosen, the clothes I wear.

Lord, help me to rise above myself, doubt.

In reality, your love is all that matters, and you love me as I am.

Bless me with the gift of loving myself as you love me… as I am.

_{From Talking to God, Julie Dortch Cragon}

We all need words at times to encourage us and to help guide us. May this prayer help us be grounded in God’s love. 

God of love – I feel like I am lost but your word says that you will always guide me. You do not leave me wandering through life but you are with me during every moment of every day. Help me to follow your ways when I feel weary and frustrated and help me to experience joy in life. May I be like the well-watered garden which thrives because the roots are firmly planted in your love.  Amen

Do you believe the deepest mystery of the gospel… That God’s grace elevates us to share in his own divine life?

As we live in the Easter season, let’s reflect on why God became man in Jesus Christ. To reconcile us with God; so that we might know God’s love; to be our model of; and to make users of the divine nature.

Christ atoned for all sin and by this action, we are raised up to become adopted children of God, to share in his very nature. Christ united himself to our humanity so that we might share in his divinity. 

Today I pray….

May your journey toward the cross and encounter with the empty grave slow you down and reawaken you to God’s mercy and redemptive power.

May you take time to behold glory at work in each co-worker, loved one and stranger; may you find your faith renewed in the beholding.

May you pause long enough to be awed by creation that you cannot help but lose yourself to a higher perspective.

May you allow eternal love to draw you into the divine inhale and exhale where your whole soul may flourish.

And may you find your place with all the saints proclaiming an unending “Alleluia” until all people on the earth know healing and wholeness through the hope of the Resurrection.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen

In this Easter Season and in the joy of the Resurrection, let’s live as Easter people helping do God’s work of renewing the face of the earth in love, mercy and compassion. 

Creator God,
Because of your abundant love
you chose to bring light and order into the formless void,
to create a world of unsurpassed beauty
and you saw that it was good.
We ask that you continue to recreate the world
with that same attentive love,
to bring light into today’s ever increasing chaos and darkness
where we have failed to be stewards and carers of your creation.
Replenish our hearts
so that we too can renew the face of the earth.

Amen.

Prayer by Kieran O’Brien/CAFOD

Taking refuge in the Lord, the Good Shepherd, requires us to face our own powerlessness, our limitations, and our need to follow someone if we want to experience true fulfillment in our life. Unlike literal sheep, we are aware of the risk that our Shepherd takes: a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. With this understanding, we see what love the Father has bestowed on us! More than merely knowing the Shepherd’s voice, we know his name, the name that saves us. We agree to be sheep, God’s children, adopted, secure and loved beyond measure.

A Prayer to the Good Shepherd

Where are you pasturing your flock, O good Shepherd, who carry the whole flock on your shoulders? (For the whole of human nature is one sheep and you have lifted it onto your shoulders). Show me the place of peace, lead me to the good grass that will nourish me, call me by name so that I, your sheep, hear your voice, and by your speech give me eternal life. Answer me, you whom my soul loves.

I give you the name ‘you whom my soul loves’ because your name is above every name and above all understanding and there is no rational nature that can utter it or comprehend it. Therefore your name, by which your goodness is known, is simply the love my soul has for you. How could I not love you, when you loved me so much, even though I was black, that you laid down your life for the sheep of your flock? A greater love cannot be imagined, than exchanging your life for my salvation.

Show me then (my soul says) where you pasture your flock, so that I can find that saving pasture too, and fill myself with the food of heaven without which no-one can come to eternal life, and run to the spring and fill myself with the drink of God. You give it, as from a spring, to those who thirst – water pouring from your side cut open by the lance, water that, to whoever drinks it, is a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

If you lead me to pasture here, you will make me lie down at noon, sleeping at peace and taking my rest in light unstained by any shade. For the noon has no shade and the sun stands far above the mountain peaks. You bring your flock to lie in this light when you bring your children to rest with you in your bed. But no-one can be judged worthy of this noonday rest who is not a child of light and a child of the day. Whoever has separated himself equally from the shadows of evening and morning, from where evil begins and evil ends, at noon he will lie down and the sun of righteousness will shine on him.

Show me, then (my soul says), how I should sleep and how I should graze, and where the path is to my noonday rest. Do not let me fall away from your flock because of ignorance, and find myself one of a flock of sheep that are not yours.

Thus my soul spoke, when she was anxious about the beauty that God’s care had given her and wanted to know how she could keep this good fortune forever.

By St Gregory of Nyssa