Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

"In the sacrament of Ordination, of Priesthood, Christ who multiplied loaves and fishes to feed us when he walked the earth, has multiplied himself because of love for us. Each priest is another Christ, ordained to feed us with God’s word andwith his Body and Blood under the form of bread and wine; to preach God’s truth; to conduct spiritual direction; to bind and unbind; to dispense his sacraments; to be a guide to lead souls to Christ who thirsts for them, to lead them to the heart of Christ. “Sitto!” he says—“I thirst!” No one is more relevant than a priest who understands his role as the servant of the Word, as one who can give us God under the form of bread and wine." ~ Catherine Doherty

Nonviolence is normative

"Jesus counseled 'love your enemies' and then modeled that behavior for his followers. In so doing he revealed the nature of God. Jesus demonstrated that God shows unending, non-coercive patients with humanity . . . The fact that God acts toward humanity in this way and Christ expects us to forgive as God has forgiven us points to a nonviolent way of life as normative for Christ's followers." ~ Terrence J. Rynne

Holding you in my heart,
Friar Rex

Propmtings from Paradise

Hello _________.

The Lord give you peace.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to walk with you on your journey of faith for however long the "One Who presides over us all" allows.

As I pointed out to you last night, God has made the first move in the divine relationship to which you are being called. The relationship that is your life through, with, and in God. You are responding to what someone has called "promptings from Paradise." Stop for a moment and consider that it is God in search of you which is causing you to search for God. Indeed, if God had not already found you, a beloved creation by nature and a beloved son by baptism, you would not be searching for God at all. Such is the mystery of mercy and grace.

Blessings,

~ Friar Rex

Sea of Fire, Sea of Love

"Every baptized Christian is called to be a proclaimer of the gospel, through ordinary, nitty-gritty life. We are prophets if we allow the fire of Christ that burns within us to spread through the ordinariness of our lives. The Liturgy is the center of our life, a sea of love, a sea of fire into which we plunge and come out burning, ourselves a fire, ready to light fires of love even in the most wretched situations of our day. . . . " ~Catherine Doherty, founder of Madonna House Apostolate

Holding you in my heart,
Friar Rex

Open Me

Open Me

Would You open up my eyes, so I can see
Would You open up my ears, so I can hear
Would You open up my mind, so I can know
Would You open up my heart, so I could love You more

I want to serve You, my God
I want to give all of Me,
I want to serve You, my King, yeah
I want to serve You, my Lord
I want to give You everything, yeah

Would You open up my eyes, so I can see
Would You open up my ears, so I can hear
Would You open up my mind, so I can know
Would You open up my heart, so I could love You more

I want to serve You, my God
I want to give You everything
I want to serve You, my King, yeah
I want to serve You, my Lord
I want to give You everything, Yeah

Here I am with my arms open wide
Asking for You to come up, up inside
Won't You make me new, won't You make me true?
Jesus, won't You make me like You?

Touch my eyes, so I can see
Touch my ears, so I can hear
Touch my mind, so I can know
Touch my heart, so I could love You more

Won't You open me
Won't You open me, open me
Won't You open me, open me
Won't You open me

~ by Shawn McDonald

Blessed Feast of St. John the Baptist!
~Friar Rex

Solitude

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it. ~Thomas Merton

Holding you in the solitude of my heart,

~ Friar Rex

Feast of St. Thomas More

"Give me, Lord, a full faith, a firm hope, and a fervent love, a love for you incomparably above the love of myself. There things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me your grace also to labor for." ~ St. Thomas More

"Say your prayers and shuffle your feet." ~ Anonymous

Enjoy your day unless you've made other plans,
~Friar Rex

Art in the Agony

We plot, we plan, we assume things are going to go
A certain way and then they don’t and we find ourselves
In a new place, a place we haven’t been before, a place
We never would have imagined on our own,
And so it was difficult and unexpected and maybe even
Tragic and yet it opened us up and freed us to see
Things in a whole new way
Suffering does that—
It hurts,
But it also creates.
How many of the most significant moments in your
Life came not because it all went right, but because
It all fell apart?
It’s strange how there can be art in the agony…
~ Pastor Rob Bell, Mars Hill Church

Love demands presence

"Love demands presence. God shares divine life with [us] in order to be present to [us] as a lover to the beloved. God's self-revelation, above all in Jesus Christ, gives [us] an inexhaustible answer to [our] questions about the meaning and purpose of life, freedom from [our] sins, and a sharing in divine life and love." ~Fr. Alfred McBride, O. Praem.

Holding you in my heart,
~ Friar Rex

A Full and Thankful Heart

“Another exercise that I practice is to try for a full inventory of my blessings and then for a right acceptance of the many gifts that are mine - both temporal and spiritual. Here I try to achieve a state of joyful gratitude. When such a brand of gratitude is repeatedly affirmed and pondered, it can finally displace the natural tendency to congratulate myself on whatever progress I may have been enabled to make in some areas of living. I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know.” ~Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous

Holding you in my "full and thankful heart,"
Friar Rex

Talk is cheap

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions. ~Dorothy Day


Hold you in my heart,
~Friar Rex

Today is the day; there is no other!

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” ~ Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Holding you in my heart,

Friar Rex

Ask for whatever you want. God will give you only what you need

"Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not know who he is himself: for he does not know his own need of God. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this." ~Thomas Merton

For Christ I sing and I dance

"A heart that constantly celebrates the will of God and the life it gives is like a choir singing. It becomes a clarion call to all who are seeking and not finding, to all who have long ago ceased to sing and who have abandoned any kind of dance."
~ Catherine Doherty

Supporting this ministry

Hello Dear Hearts.

The Lord give you peace.

Good heavens! I can't believe I have not posted a thought since one month ago today! What has gotten into me? Old age is setting in, I guess.

The weather here in Maine is beginning to warm up. It may even reach 70 before fall arrives!

Some of you have emailed asking how you might contribute to the upkeep and ministry of Little Portion Hermitage. There are three possibilities. I'll list them below in order of importance.

1. Spiritually: There is nothing more powerful in all the world than prayer. If we took prayer seriously; if we we understood that prayer always changes hearts (primarily our own) and sometimes changes outcomes, we would make prayer an absolute priory in our lives. So, pray for that I might faithfully live out the vocation to which Our Lord has so graciously called me.

2. Financially: In addition to prayer you can support the upkeep and ministry of Little Portion Hermitage f you are willing and able to offer financial support to the hermitage and it's ministry, please email me for more information about where to send your donations.

3. Temporally: In addition to prayer you can support the hermitage and ministry by contributions of temporal goods. If you are geographically close enough to the hermitage, you can always drop off food, house keeping supplies, toiletries, etc. But let me know you're coming ahead of time.



Holding you in my heart,
~Friar Rex