Year of Marriage: Search of the Bride-Soul

"When the soul has arrived at this state all the acts of its spiritual and sensual nature, whether active or passive, and of whatever kind they may be, always occasion an increase of love and delight in God: even the act of prayer and communion with God, which was once carried on by reflections and divers other methods, is now wholly an act of love. So much so is this the case that the soul may always say, whether occupied with temporal or spiritual things, 'My sole occupation is love.' Happy life! happy state! and happy the soul which has attained to it!" - St. John of the Cross


It's the Year of Marriage!

Marriage is an absolutely amazing thing, and I'm saying that even without being married. I hope to be married if it's His will, and when I am, I'm going to dedicate everything in  my marriage to God our Lord, just like everything in my life should be (see last week's article). But marriage especially! God gave us marriage so that husband and wife might come even closer to Him by their uniting love for each other and their sharing in the creation of new life, the participation in God's act of creation out of love, and to raise their children for His glory, so that they can love God and be loved by God as well. And, just like almost everything else in the life of the Church, marriage between husband and wife is a reflection of something concerning God our Lord; The heavenly marriage of Christ our Bridegroom and His Bride the Church.

St. John of the Cross wrote constantly about the "bride-soul seeking her Beloved", and whenever he writes about the Beloved, it is always about Christ our Lord. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians that husband and wife must submit themselves to each other just as Christ has submitted to His Bride the Church on the Cross and the Church eternally submits Herself to Christ her Bridegroom. The Church, the Bride, seeks after her Savior, her Beloved Jesus, wanting only to be with Him in complete love for Him, in the total giving of self to Him, and each of us have this desire at our core, often hidden beneath all of our desires of the world. So often desires only distract us from what we really are; the espoused of Jesus Christ our Lord, our Bridegroom, so we need to work hard at getting past those desires to what our soul really wants more than anything, what it searches for in everything around it but can only find at the foot of the Cross.

It's almost half a year since this blog was started, and I heard in prayer that now would be a good time to remind myself and others what it's all about, not just the blog, but life itself; falling more deeply in love with Jesus, loving Him more than anything and letting Him love us and others around us by our gift of self, all so that we can be with Him, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, together with all the Saints and Angels and our Mother, praising God and living eternally in His love. We are the Bride of Christ, and we are being prepared our whole lives for the wedding celebration when we reach Him in Paradise, because what else is there that can make us happy?

So live and love as the Bride of Christ! Go out, especially after this season of His birth, to tell the world that the Divine Lover has asked us to be His own, now and for all eternity, and that "YES!!!" is the greatest thing we can ever do our entire lives.

All of you holy men and women and all of you angelic choirs, please pray for us, that we may always fall more deeply in love with Jesus our Lord and God!

Responsibility: Giving Our Life

"We are at Jesus’ disposal. If he wants you to be sick in bed, if he wants you to proclaim His work in the street, if he wants you to clean the toilets all day, that’s all right, everything is all right. We must say, 'I belong to you. You can do whatever you like.' And this is our strength. This is the joy of the Lord." - Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta


Confession: I have never had a paying job. Neither have I gotten a license yet. I also have for most of my life spent a whole lot of time with video games instead of other more important things and people. Fortunately, I've woken up from all that, thanks be to God, our Lord!

This whole thing has come about rather quickly for me, mostly due to my parents' and my girlfriend's parents' talking with me about it all, as well as the encouragement from my girlfriend herself. Obviously that's not the main reason why I've decided to get on track after so much time; more than anything, I want to glorify Christ, especially since I haven't been doing so for so long. But I want to, I NEED to dedicate myself to Him more than anything, more than time spent with video games, time with friends, and especially time with my girlfriend, since I'm supposed to love her like Christ does, which will always include working for her good. However, again, this must be in the service of Christ our Savior, our Beloved King of Kings Who gave everything to us.

Responsibility is the key term here. It's the key term for the saints, the key term for all of the Church, it's what needs to be our main concern at all times. We owe everything to God, and though we'll never be able to repay Him for anything (that's why it's called mercy), we still need to work with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Luke 10:27), because love requires our own sacrifice, and we sacrifice by our work. Most of us have or will have jobs, we have chores to do, we have bills to pay, we have people to take care of, people to love, and of course the Almighty God to love more than anything. These are our responsibilities, and all the smaller ones are part of loving God. Taking care of the things that need to be done, especially if we do them not when they need to be done but when they SHOULD be done, is necessary to being His servant, which is what we should seek to be.

Obviously we all have things going in our lives everyday, most of which we can't control, and sometimes it may seem like we're prevented from doing our work one way or another. But there will always be things we can do for the glory of God, so that we can give our life to Him more and more, for He asks us to be servants so that we can be happy. Simple duties and bigger duties, all necessary, need to be done and worked at continually so that God can be glorified above all, so that we can be with Him at the end of our earthy lives, and so that we can love Him more than anything - that is our responsibility, simple yet the most difficult ever.

All of you holy men and women, especially St. Joseph, St. Josemaria Escriva, and St. Isidore the Farmer, tied to the prayers and intercessions of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, please pray for us and for the whole world!

All of you readers, please pray for the writers of this page, for each other, and for the whole world!

Love: What is Happiness?

"For love to be real, it must cost - it must hurt - it must empty us of self." - Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta


It's been a month and a day since the last post; please forgive me! It's also unfortunately been a month or so since I've been to Confession; please, please, please pray for me!

I haven't written anything in so long because I haven't known what to write about. Obviously this might be a little strange, especially since we're in the season of Advent, we're in a new liturgical year on marriage which I'm sure you all know by now that I love to write about. But up until now I didn't know what to write about. I asked in prayer, I thought constantly for a while about things I could write about, I racked my brain countless times, and still nothing came... But!

Today has been both a very difficult and a very blessed day for me.It's been difficult because of a situation I found myself in, and even though it's mostly resolved now I still don't quite know what to do except pray about it and offer it up at Mass. However, that's exactly the same reason I'm incredibly blessed today! I was allowed by the grace of God our Lord to love someone today, someone who was very upset and confused, and I'm hoping in God that I helped them somehow, that I loved them properly. Even though I still don't know what's going to happen regarding the situation, I know a few things that make me amazingly happy; First, I know there's nothing to worry about, because God has it all handled. Second, I know that prayer is always 100+% effective! Third, I know that I should always continue to be happy because, as goes my username on here, I have hope in Christ. The One Lord Jesus Christ, God become Man, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords Who died for each and every one of us, loves me even as I am a sinner, even as I can't seem to love Him, the Father, the Holy Spirit, or people around me properly, and really... God is the only One I can get that love from, the only One Who can make me happy, because He wants me to be happy. So I have hope in Christ because He's the only one I can have hope in, in the glory of God the Father and in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

I don't know how to love others properly, I really don't. I don't know if anyone does except for God, Who is Love. In fact, any love that we can give for others is only possible by His grace, by His love flowing through us! This is what He wants, that we "love our neighbor as ourselves"(Mk. 12:31), because only in His love can we be ever happy. We can often think, "I don't know if I love this person anymore, what do I do?" But this thinking is ignorant of what love is; the willing of the good of the other for the sake of the other. This is Who God is (it's a Mystery, I wouldn't try to understand it), and it's who He calls us to be for Him and each other. This is where our earthly happiness may be found; in loving God, in loving others, and, necessarily, knowing that we are loved. "We love because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

I remember a great quote from the movie "Karol" about Pope Saint John Paul the Great, where he's speaking to his ethics class about happiness. One boy asks, "Why do some men act like wild beasts, while others sacrifice their lives for those they don't even know?" and a girl in the class replies to him saying, "People are bad because they are scared and unhappy." Wojtyla tells the class, "Now, there's an interesting subject; happiness and unhappiness, deep down inside each one of us. Descartes: 'Man is in the middle between God and nothingness... And he must choose.'" I feel like the point of this is to show that God is the only source of happiness, God Who is Love. We need to love God and be loved by God, we need to love man and be loved by man, accepting the love of God and the love of man which comes straight from God, or else we will never be happy. God wants us to be happy!

Please pray for the writers of this blog, and please pray for each other!

All of you holy men and women, and all of you angelic hosts, with the intercession of Mary the Mother of God, and St. Joseph her most chaste spouse, please pray for us and for the whole world! Amen.