If you are cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you see o.k.? John Mendoza.
A teen who has fallen in love asks her mother, "Do you think I should marry him?" "Go ask your father," she replies. "He made a smarter decision in marriage than I did."
Sometimes I think I use these opening quotes just to help me wrap my brain around difficult concepts.
What would you do to overcome the greatest difficulties of your life? To make the darkest night light? The worst pain tolerable? The hardest loss one you can bear?
Preacher Larry Moyer once spoke on the five biggest problems we have in life: worry, lack of rest, lack of direction, uncertainty about the future, and fear.
And how do you know you are on the right track in facing the difficult challenges of life? It may help to look at the greatest success stories around us.
Sydney Crosby got one goal and one assist in the first period of play after ten months off hockey as he led the Penguins to a 5-0 victory November 21. Then there is Taylor Swift who took Artist of the Year, Country Album and Female Artist of the Year in the American Music Awards this November.
They are the best at what they do and they celebrate God's gifts to them. You have heard, "Be the best that you can be". I say, "You are the best you on earth!" No one plays you better. Now how do you become that super-star?
There is a simple formula to follow to be the best spiritual you possible. St John of the Cross, a sixteenth century mystic, said all created life has a center. "We need to become aware of that interior center of ourselves for that is where God gives us the wisdom for life," Fr. Brendan McGuire says. "That wisdom is available to every single one of us [in that center within us]," McGuire continues.
"I know you have heard me say time and time again, the only way I know that we can prepare [for the coming of Christ] is by being people of prayer. We need to learn how to seek that profundo centro within ourselves," McGuire says. "There is no other way.
"we need to temper our lives and spend some timein solitude, with our Godto listen to his wisdom with our own heartI promise you that any minutes you spend in prayer each day will be given back to you thirty, sixty, a hundred fold in the wisdom and the patience and the kindness you will receive in those few moments in quietness and stillness with the Lord.
"when we seek and find that profundo centro within ourselves, the darkest night is never dark, the worst pain is never bad enough that we cannot get through it, the hardest loss is never too much to overcome when we know our God is inside with us each and every day. It is like a light that burns within our own heart that no darkness can ever overcome.
"That light is within every single one of us but we must be willing to spend some time insolitude and temperance seeking and finding the God of wisdom, the God who is Christ, the God who is within us in the profundo centro of our lives."
With thanks to Father Brendan McGuire's "Be Prepared, Be People of Prayer".
