"Seek to know the path of spiritual childhood, without forcing yourself to follow this path. Leave works to the Holy Spirit," The Way #852, St. Josemaria Escriva.
Hadn't heard from him in a while, and I read this one at my desk when I got to work this morning. He is so excellent.
"Great sanctity is
in the completion
of the little duties
of each moment,"
St. Josemaria Escriva,
The Way #816
"Receive communion. It is not a lack of respect. Receive even today, when you have just gotten out of that snare. Do you forget what Jesus said, A physician is not necessary for the healthy, but for the sick?"
The Way, 536.
"Silence is like
the porter into the
interior life,"
St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way #281.
"Do not make a decision without holding
yourself back to consider the affair from
the perspective of God,"
St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way #266.
"There are many people - holy people - who do not understand your path. Do not get bent on making them understand: you will waste time and make room for indiscretions," (The Way #650).
"To persevere. A child that calls at a door calls once... twice... many times - loud and at length - and without shame! And someone who goes to open the door in a huff is disarmed before the simplicity of the inconvenient little creature. So it is for you with God," The Way #893
"Gluttony is the vanguard of impurity," The Way, #126.
Fundamentally, gluttony is about satisfying all our desires, particularly for food, drink, comforts, and the finer things of life. Indulging our cravings for these things without restraint makes us weak, soft, and self-centered. Our hearts become mixed and cluttered with all sorts of desires that will sidetrack us from following God. Gradually, our minds and hearts confuse even people with property, with what is ours to please us. We begin to use others, even in the most perverse ways. What is lust but the extension of the gluttony principle to include persons, treating persons as mere things to satisfy our desires?
"Without holy purity it is not possible to persevere in the apostolate," The Way, #129.
Purity ensures a love that is unmixed with selfish desires, unchained by our own limitations. This kind of love comes from God alone, through the sacraments, nurtured in prayer.
I am going to start posting aphorisms periodically, from St. Josemaria Escriva's The Way. I am not involved with Opus Dei myself, but highly recommend it for almost any other working stiff layman out there. The translations are all my own, from the original Spanish text of Camino, so forgive me if it doesn't match your translation at home.
"The more they exalt me, my Jesus, all the more humble me in my heart, making me know what I have been, and what I will be, if you leave me," (The Way, #591).
Ryan Matthew Haber
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