Gerry Straub’s Blog

“Man needs to enclose himself in the inner closet of his heart more often than he needs to go to church: and collecting all his thoughts there, he must place his mind before God, praying to Him in secret with all the warmth of spirit and with living faith. At the same time he must also learn to turn his thoughts to God in such a manner as to be able to grow into a perfect man.”

-St. Dimitri of Rostov
The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology
[London: Faber and Faber, 1966 -page 46]

A Change of Mind

The spiritual life is won or lost
between the ears.
Our minds must be transformed
by Christ.
We need to change the way we think…
we need mind renewal!
We need to put on the mind
of Christ.

In the letter to the Romans, Paul writes,
“Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”
Wow.
That is very radical and extremely tough.
But Paul understands that anything
that cuts against our faith
destroys the unity and fullness of life
created by God and that is God.

Does everything I do proceed from faith?
I think not.
This is trouble.

My faith must move beyond the realm
of my private life.

“We learn to see the face of Christ - the face of Christ that is also the face of a suffering human being, the face of the crucified, the face of the poor, the face of the saint, and the face of every person - and we love each one with the criteria with which we will be judged: ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat.’”

-Oscar Romero

Love Is the Key

Jesus asks us to love as God loves—
without counting the cost
or holding anything back.
Love gives all away.
Love frees us to act for the good of another
rather than for ourselves.
God’s love is unbiased and all-embracing.
It does not ask who we are
or how successful we are at what we do.

Being an instrument of peace requires us
to embrace the enemy in pardon.

To give freely what we have freely received -
namely, God’s love -
is the purest form of evangelization.
Following the example of Christ
will lead us to go poor among the poor,
without power, without purse, without provisions,
with charity and respect for those we encounter.
We must seek peace above all else
and then do good at every opportunity.
If our efforts at sharing God’s love
are warmly received, fine;
if not, we should move on.
Our lives are our sermons,
and our preaching should be benign and gentle,
spoken with meekness and humility

“The more a person wants to live in the absolutes of God, the more essential it is for this absolute to be rooted in the midst of human suffering.”
-Brother Roger of Taize

Organic Living

Our souls are transformed
in the furnace of self-forgetfulness.

We can become holy to the extent
that we cease to live
and Christ lives in us.

Surrendering ourselves to God’s glory
and glorifying God through service to others
is the most organic way
of transforming our lives and spirits.

“St. Teresa of Avila writes in her 8th Spiritual discourse that she feels she has ‘partly lost herself’. Doesn’t anyone feel this who truly prays? He who does not pray belongs to himself. He is responsible for himself and tries to reach his goal by his own efforts. He who prays knows he needs another. Gradually he realizes how much he needs this other to whom he turns in prayer, how he cannot live without him, how he can belong to none other but him who is his whole life. He is radically dispossessed of himself. He feels he has ‘partly lost himself’, he is not his own as he used to be, his treasure belongs to someone else. Everything in him in now open to another, available to another and waiting on him. And in this openness to another, he gives up his independence, only to find true freedom: freedom of believing in a love which expects everything and to which he admits he owes everything. At the centre of prayer there must be faith in that love which created us for itself and which does its own work in us, which satisfies the desire it has given us.”

-Georges LeFebvre, OSB
Courage to Pray
[New York: Paulist Press, 1973 - page 74]

A Glimpse of Eternity

Yesterday morning I was cleaning up some files on my computer, trying to better organize the material. It seemed like a waste of time. Then I came across a file that just contained a few sentences. It was something I jotted down in Peru back in 2005 while I was making my film The Patients of a Saint. The lines did make it into the film…but I have not watched the film in a very long time, and had forgotten them.

As I read them this morning, they hit me with a new force, coming on the heels of my recent time in Uganda.

I do not understand why so many kids suffer from so many dreadful diseases. I shall never understand. But my hunch is that the road to God goes through Chaclacayo, goes through every place on earth where there is suffering. Because God does not like suffering, the road to God goes through humanity, and the road is paved by works of mercy and compassion, acts of love which bring relief to the suffering that all life must bear because of our separation from God. The dinner tables at Hogar San Francisco de Assisi [the home and clinic run by Dr. Tony] ….are altars, and each child is a priest. And within every moment of kindness we catch a glimpse of eternity.

Year in and year out, the suffering continues. And except for the few quiet, everyday saints working in virtual obscurity on the margins of society, year in and year out, we continue to ignore it.

Maybe on this Independence Day we can take a little time to think about how we can help people become free from the dictatorship of poverty and hungry, that they too can become independent and free.

I am growing a bit weary of doing this daily blog. Actually I like doing it, but it does take a little time, and I have so little time. And so few people visit, that, at times, it seems not worth the time and effort.

But I do like the blog I have posted for July 4th.

I hope you take the time to read it.

Gerry

“The more globalized the market becomes, the more we must counterbalance it with a culture of solidarity that gives priority to the needs of the most vulnerable.”

-Pope John Paul II