SIGNS

From a monk friend::

“The church bubbles along. The Pope sure is getting a lot of favorable press. he is striking a responsive chord with a lot of people. I do not harbor any hopes for great change in the structure. It is just too big for on pontificate to make any massive changes. But I think that Francis has put the church on a new and good path. The world each of us inhabits is immediate, very close at hand. I remember reading an interview with Neil Young in Rolling Stone Magazine not too long ago. He said that he went through a phase wherein he felt a need to change the world He felt the weight of the world on his shoulders and slowly started to go crazy. His wife was the one who gently told him that the world would take care of itself and that the only world he needed to care about was the one he lived in. So he calmed down and cut his cares to more manageable proportions. There is some wisdom to that. I suppose we all go through periods when we are looking for the BIG solution, when we want to find it and attack the world with it. But we are limited to small, maybe insignificant actions. And the ultimate outcome is really beyond our control.”

From Catherine de Hueck Doherty, contemplative mystic, writer, founder of Madonna House:

“This vision of the whole is really staggering. Through the motley crowd that we are, filled as we are with all sorts of emotional and other wounds, the Lord wishes to restore his Church. Perhaps restore is too big a word. But nevertheless, it seems he is moulding us, shaping us, healing us, blessing us, guiding us toward that end.

How is anyone to achieve this miracle of grace? How can it be done? The same answer comes again and again, unmistakably: through prayer. What is impossible to man is possible to God and man. Prayer brings together, in a mysterious way, the mystery of the person and the mystery of God. Above all, there is a place to which we must go to replenish ourselves. To be filled with the strength of the Lord, we must go to the house of the Lord which is the Church. There we will participate in the Last Supper. There we will receive the Christ of passion and glory, of death and resurrection. There we will enter into communion with Christ.”