miniZibaldone

Baptism commits Christians to participating courageously in the spreading of the Kingdom of God, if need be cooperating with the sacrifice of life itself. Of course, not everyone is called to martyrdom by bloodshed. In fact, there is a non-bloody "martyrdom" which is equally significant...this is the silent and heroic witness of so many Christians who live the Gospel without compromise, doing their duty and dedicating themselves generously to the service of the poor.  This martyrdom of ordinary life constitutes a particularly important witness in the secularized society of our time. It is the peaceful battle of love. —Benedict XVI

From Oasis journal

To greet, to listen and to support the faith of those simple people From a letter To greet, to listen and to support the faith of those simple people … and, so often, facing the anguish of men and women that want and seek work and do not find it.  I was only able to shake their hands, caress them, look into their tearful pain-ridden eyes, and weep within. Yes, weep, because it is hard in one’s life to come  across a father of a family who wants to work and has no possibility to do so....  But work is so difficult to obtain, especially as we continue to live moments in which the rates of unemployment are significantly high. Bread solves a part of the  problem, but only half of it, because that bread is not the one earned with one’s work. It is one thing to have bread to eat at home and another to bring it home as  the fruit of one’s work. That is what confers dignity....  The wisdom of our people uses a saying to label one who, though able to work, doe...

You’ve said that at both the University of Sydney and the University of Cambridge, you were “a bad student” who consistently read off-course. To the ears of my  contemporaries, reading off-course is the sort of procrastination that qualifies being a good student. Now, with the internet, we have so many distractions that is  almost impossible to stay focused on any one thing at a time, and work is scarcely one of them. Do you worry about the future of literature in this virtual  environment? Literature will win through the way it always has, by being too valuable to be ignored. All you have to do is write something as good as Pride and Prejudice . A  cinch. Finally, do you have any advice for young writers? When the young writers ask me for advice, I give them the same advice as I give my niece: stop right now if you can.

When we ask for work we are asking to be able to sense our dignity and, in this celebration of Saint Cajetan, we pray for that dignity that work confers on us: to be  able to bring bread home. That Work, which together with Roof and Land is in the basic framework of Human Rights. And when we ask for work to bring bread home, we  are asking for dignity. (Francis)

Flying Visits Clive James Postcard from Japan: 1 An Exchange of Views By courtesy of a British Airways Boeing 707 I was crossing in a few hours the same distance that cost Marco Polo years of his life, but the speed of modern travel has its penalties. Among these had been the in-flight movie, which I dimly remember was about bears playing baseball. From the air Siberia looks like cold nothing. The Sea of Japan looks like wet nothing. But Japan itself, at your first glimpse of it, looks like something. Even geographically it’s a busy place. Immediately you are impressed by the wealth of detail – an impression that will never leave you for as long as you are there. Only a tenth of the land is useful for anything. The remaining nine-tenths, when you look down on it, is a kind of corduroy velvet: country so precipitously convoluted that the rivers flowing through it look like the silver trails of inebriated slugs. The useful tenth is inhabited, cultivated and indus...

August 1, feast day of St. Alphonsus Marie Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists and patron of moral theologians. The Glories of Mary by Alphonsus Liguori The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ by Alphonsus De Liguori Preparation for Death by Alphonsus de Liguori