calledtobeasaint

[calledtobeasaint]

My uncle is not doing well, with a number of health issues. He's in the hospital, and his condition isn't looking great.

If you could pray for him and his family, I would be very grateful.

[calledtobeasaint]

Do you ever have this impending feeling that everyone you love secretly hates you and it's only a matter of time before they leave you

[calledtobeasaint]

"Okay but does tumblr have an algorithm? :(" "How will I know who to follow? :(" Fear not. Tumblr has the best algorithm of all social media it is called tapping somewhere by accident on your phone and now you follow someone new. Enjoy your new friend on your dash :)

[calledtobeasaint]

An excerpt:

"But let's not give up, cheer up my pretty friend!! Our gaze in Heaven, even if we are just encouraged by the thought of seeing each other again there some eternal day. I believe that when we get to Heaven others will say" Who are those two restless souls that do not stop fluttering? That upon arrival they went in search of the other, and together they sing all day, without rest, the Mercies of the Lord?". Well "so be it", hahaha, I say it jokingly, but we will see each other!! However, let it be HE who moves us to long for this Sweet encounter of our soul with God."

My friend, who is a novice in a carmelite monastery, just answered all my emails from the last six or seven months today. I always cry when she replies.

I am so incredibly grateful to God for her, for bringing us together before we both went to the monastery.

When I left the monastery I was worried we wouldn't be able to connect because we didn't have that in common anymore. Turns out our sufferings are still the same, our hearts are even more together now than before.

I miss her so so much, but I know we meet every mass, I love being Catholic.

[calledtobeasaint]

The summons of Lent

Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. The beginning of Lent.

One of the great mistakes of my life has been to waste far too many Lents.

In years past, I wasted it by ignoring it entirely. More recently, I’ve wasted Lent with meaningless abstinences and half-hearted devotions. Or by using it for self-improvement.

All of which miss the point of Lent entirely.

I want so badly for this year to be different. I’ve been reading, praying, preparing. So I don’t waste this Lent.

To make sure that this time, I get the point of Lent – repentance.

The thing that’s done me the most good? “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis.

It’s really helped me to get clear about the point of Lent. Especially this,

“Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.

Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of the “hole.”

This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all.

It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death.”

This is something we cannot do on our own. This is something we can only do with Him.

This is the summons of Lent.

Today’s Readings

[calledtobeasaint]

A large part of housecat vocalisation toward humans isn’t goal-directed communication, but rather, affiliative signaling: a simple call-and-response protocol which establishes that the participants are part of the same social unit. Amongst themselves, most housecat affiliative signaling is non-vocal, but humans aren’t really physiologically equipped to respond to such signalling in a feline fashion, and cats, well, they’re adaptable.

Which is to say that when your cat yells, and you yell back, so the cat yells again, and so forth, what you’re really saying to each other is “hiiiiii~”.

[calledtobeasaint]

Given that Pope Francis's papacy has so emphasized the sacredness of human dignity and the need to fight against the "throw-away culture" that sidelines people once their "usefulness" has ended, I sure hope that everyone speculating about his death, wondering whether he'll resign, or predicting who the next pope will be remembers that the Chair of Saint Peter is occupied by a living, breathing, suffering human being in need of support and prayers right now

[calledtobeasaint]

if i had a nickel for every time an english king named henry appointed his good friend thomas as lord high chancellor and then had him martyred after his Catholicism superceded any blind obedience to the throne, i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

[calledtobeasaint]

all the “peer pressure is bad” education we give kids is practically useless because all it cares about is telling them that Drugs Are Evil rather than the much more useful lesson of ‘the person who responds to you saying you don’t drink by telling you they’ll find a way to get you to is also going to be shitty about all your other boundaries’.

[calledtobeasaint]

If there’s anything I’ve learned in life it’s that being confident and having self respect will sometimes evoke some of the most irrational obsessive hatred and anger in other people. Particularly if you’re perceived as someone who doesn’t “deserve” to feel that way about yourself there’s a very specific type of anger that comes from people who can’t understand why someone who they think should hate themselves doesn’t

[calledtobeasaint]

[calledtobeasaint]

[calledtobeasaint]

Humanity is just amazing

[calledtobeasaint]

Not where you grew up. Not where you’ll be living soon. Where you’re living right now.

[calledtobeasaint]

Did you see about the new canonizations?

[calledtobeasaint]

“can mutuals dm you?” my mutuals can fire me from a cannon through a brick wall, looney tunes style. as long as we’re all having fun