Patriarch Athenagoras

This day, Patriarch Athenagoras enters the life of eternity.  With him we lose a man of the same prophetic vein as John XXIII.  He had no lack of trials in his final years...  Nevertheless, he was always optimistic.  "In the evening, when I retire to my room," he told me once, "I close the door on all my cares, and I say:  Tomorrow!"

Br. Roger of Taize, written July 7, 1972

Autumn harvest

Gather everything that happens, trivialities included, without reservation, regret, or nostalgia, in inexhaustible wonder.  Step out, forward, one step at a time, from doubt toward faith, not worrying about the impossible ahead.  Light fire, even with the thorns that tear you.

Br. Roger of Taize

Endurance

Be steadfast of heart, and keep going forward!

Sirach 2:2

Hope for the Future

God has plans for a future of peace for you, not of misfortune; God wants to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

Learned Ignorance

We do not know what we would really like... and yet we know that there must be something we do not know towards which we feel driven.

Spe Salvi 12

Imagining Eternal Life

To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality -- this we can only imagine.

Spe Salvi

Desire

Desire for vision: Faith.
Desire for Possesion: Hope.
Desire for love: Charity.
By expectation, God increases desire.
By desire, he empties out souls.
In emptying them out, he makes them more capable of receiving him.”

Augustine, Commentary on 1 John