Dear Brothers and Sisters in Carmel,
Ash Wednesday is very close now (March 5th), time to think about and choose our Lenten exercises. I offer two suggestions, I hope they are helpful to you.
For those of us who are ‘on-line’, I can sincerely recommend the Lenten Retreat offered to us each year by the OCD friars of Paris and Austria. It can be found at www.retreat-online.Karmel.at in early March.
Google it… I promise you, you will not be disappointed.
For daily meditation, I would like to share with you “Some Definite Service” by Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman:
God knows me and calls me by my name…
God has created me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission — I never may know it in this life,
but I shall be told it in the next.
Somehow I am necessary for His purposes…
I have a part in this great work;
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work;
I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth
in my own place, while not intending it,
if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.
Therefore I will trust Him.
Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;
In perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be
necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us.
He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life,
He may shorten it; He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers,
He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me —
still He knows what He is about…
Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see —
I ask not to know — I ask simply to be used.
May we all come ever closer to Our Lord and Saviour during these Lenten days.
Christchurch's Peace of Christ Community President