Category: Words of Wisdom

“Simon, are you sleeping? Couldn’t you watch one hour?” – Mark 14:37, WEB

If we can’t give our loved ones our precious hour, how could we even promise them our lives? What is so important in your schedule that you can’t give an hour of attention to someone you love?

There are people who are so oppressed in both time and money that their lives seem no longer theirs to give. There are many also who sacrifice so much just to give good things to those they love.

But there are those who seem to forget that the most important thing they could give are not their gifts, but their very presence. And there are those who fail to find time not because there isn’t any, but because there is not much will to find a way.

You may never truly know how precious that single hour of your presence could be for another person. To someone who is grieving, that hour could be an hour of great consolation. To someone who is lonely, that hour could be the only hour he meets a friend. To someone who is lost, it could be the very hour he is saved.

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world. – Mother Teresa

“Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.” – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Fear is a natural response to something that might destroy us. Courage is our God-given ability to face our fears when it is more beneficial to fight rather than to run away.

What’s wrong with us is to fear the wrong things and to not find courage for the things worth fighting for.

We fear being lonely, but we’re not afraid of being with someone who disrespects us. We fear sickness, but we’re not afraid of death. We fear losing our pride, but we’re not afraid to lose our dignity.

We have to know what to fear and what to fight for. We have to know when to run away and when to keep on holding on.

Don’t be afraid of being responsible for your actions. But fear betraying others just to satisfy your desires. Don’t be afraid of making a sacrifice for the ones you love. But fear your own selfishness and using other people just to feed your pride. Don’t be afraid of suffering that comes naturally in this life. But be afraid that your heart loses compassion and your soul loses its very life.

So if your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away! It is much better for you to lose a part of your body than to have your whole body thrown into hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away! It is much better for you to lose one of your limbs than to have your whole body go off to hell. – Matthew 5:29-30, GNT

Perfect joy could not be joy alone but must be a joy that somehow contains our past grief and sadness and longing. – Jessica Mesman Griffith, Love and Salt

To really grieve for something is to have truly valued it, for if we grieve not for a thing lost, we have not found that thing at all.

We can console ourselves by saying that what’s truly important is the journey, and the time of togetherness, but deep within our hearts, we ask, “What good is our time of meeting if sooner or later, we must part?”

Those who say it is but sufficient to love for a moment have not truly loved, for love always desires to last forever. It isn’t enough to have loved for a single day. It isn’t enough to love for a lifetime. It isn’t enough to love for ten thousand years. If we truly love, we want to love without end for only in love is there life.

Grieve if you must, for it has shown that you have loved. We grieve as much as we have been made happy. We grieve as much as we have been made alive.

Grief is our bridge towards joy – joy that has passed, and joy that is to come. Only those who grieve desire to hope, for hope is our only consolation in our time of parting. With God, we know that we do not hope in vain for time shall surely come when our grief shall turn to joy again and that joy can never ever be taken away!

Therefore you now have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. – John 16:22, WEB-BE

You are the light of the world. A city located on a hill can’t be hidden. Neither do you light a lamp, and put it under a measuring basket, but on a stand; and it shines to all who are in the house. Even so, let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. – Matthew 5:14-16, WEB-BE

We can either multiply goodness or we can multiply what’s bad. We can be channels of positive energy, or we can be channels of negative emotions.

We can start the day whining and spread feelings of discontent all around us. Or we can start it with cheerfulness and inspire others with our smile.

Quite often we may feel powerless to change the world. And we use this as an excuse to withdraw our contribution. Yet whether we are aware of it or not, we are always contributing something to our environment.

We cannot know for certain, but right where we are, we can already be either promoters of despair, or we can be models of perseverance. Other people may be catching our sarcasm or they may be catching our faith.

Given the chance, what would you like to pass on that will make ever increasing ripples around you? I hope you choose to multiply what is good.

The sin which we have in us emerges from us and spreads outside ourselves, setting up a contagion of sin. Thus, when we are in a temper, those around us grow angry… But at the contact of a perfectly pure being there is a transmutation, and the sin becomes suffering. Such is the function of the just servant of Isaiah, of the Lamb of God. Such is redemptive suffering. All the criminal violence of the Roman Empire ran up against Christ, and in him it became pure suffering. – Simone Weil

“Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”
-Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy

Whenever we see true beauty, there is a desire deep within our souls to keep it. We want it to last. Such is the power of beauty. It transcends time and sends us forth towards eternity.

Somehow, there is a part of us that protests against something beautiful fading away. It just doesn’t seem right for a beautiful thing to die.

Why must something beautiful be brought to decay? Why must something that took us away from our sorrowful pre-occupations be lost forever, never to be found again? Where is comfort to be found?

When we see eternity in the beauty of a rose, we find comfort in knowing that though the rose itself may wither, its beauty remains forever in our hearts. And with this we wonder that perhaps there could really be an immortal soul. For if the soul itself cannot contain all memories of the beautiful, where must all such beauty go?

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts… – Ecclesiastes 3:11, WEB-BE