Quote of the day, 22 June: Venerable Maria Lucia

I am going to reveal the secret of my first confession. After listening to me, the good priest said these few words:

“My child, your soul is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Keep it always pure so He will be able to carry on His divine action within it.”

On hearing these words, I felt myself filled with respect for my interior, and asked the kind confessor what I ought to do.

“Kneel down there before Our Lady and ask her with great confidence to take care of your heart, to prepare it to receive her beloved Son worthily tomorrow, and to keep it for Him alone.”

In the Church there was more than one statue of Our Lady. But, as my sisters took care of the altar of Our Lady of the Rosary, I usually went there to pray. That is why I went there on this occasion also, to ask her with all the ardor of my soul to keep my poor heart for God alone.

As I repeated this humble prayer over and over again, with my eyes fixed on the statue, it seemed to me she smiled, and with a loving look and kindly gesture, assured me that she would. My heart was overflowing with joy I could scarcely utter a single word.

Discalced Carmelite nuns of Coimbra

Chapter I, The childhood of Lucia

Note: Join the Carmelites in praying for the beatification of Venerable Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart. Tap here to read the official prayer.

https://twitter.com/VaticanNews/status/1671838387483836417

Carmel of St Teresa 2015, A pathway under the gaze of Mary : biography of Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart O.C.D., Colson, J (trans.), World Apostolate of Fatima USA, Washington NJ.

Featured image: Lucia dos Santos in 1917. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

#purity : freedom from contaminants

- French: pureté

- German: die Reinheit

- Portuguese: puridade

- Spanish: pureza

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Word of The Hour's Annual Survey @ https://wordofthehour.org/r/form

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him."
Dhammapada

#happiness #action #purity #equity #Jung

Quote of the day, 25 May: St. Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi

The ecstasy [Saint Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi] had on the 17th of September of the same year, 1587, was very wonderful and effective.

Being fiercely attacked in the virtue of chastity, as was related, and forbidden by her confessor and her mother prioress from again throwing herself among thorns, or doing any other injury to her body, she, by way of compensation, gave herself up to prayer with redoubled fervor, imploring above all the assistance of the Queen of virgins.

On the same day, it happened that, having withdrawn to a remote chamber, by prayers of a most suppliant devotion and by most touching tears, she turned to the most pure Mother of God, that she might obtain for her such a victory over the impure temptations, that her virginity would not be stained in the least thereby.

Having just made the request, the Blessed Virgin appeared to her in the form of a noble and tender mother, and, consoling her, told her to be calm, as in all such temptations she had never offended God; nay, by her courageous fight with the impure spirit, she had come out completely victorious, and, as a reward therefore, the Blessed Virgin put on her a pure white veil, and told her, moreover, that in the future she would not again have to suffer the temptations or suggestions of impurity.

At this moment, Mary Magdalen interiorly felt as if all appetite of carnal concupiscence was being reduced, and that all the disordered fire of sensuality had been extinguished in an ineffable manner.

In fact, during all her life, this angelic soul was not again molested by a desire of the flesh, nor even by any imagination or the least thought contrary to holy purity.

The Rev. Father Placido Fabrini

Chapter XIV

Note: Father Fabrini’s biography is based on the 1611 biography of St. Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi, which was written by her spiritual director, Fr. Vincenzio Puccini.

Fabrini, P. & De’ Pazzi, M.M. 1900, The life of St. Mary Magdalen De-Pazzi: Florentine noble, sacred Carmelite virgin, translated from the Italian by Isoleri A., [publisher not identified] Philadelphia.

Featured image: This detail of a portrait of Saint Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi receiving the white veil from the Virgin Mary was painted by Bernard de Bailliu (Flemish, 1641–1694) and another unidentified artist; it is an oil paint illumination of an engraving attached to a panel (17th or 18th c.). The work is part of the collection in the Museo del Convento de Santa Teresa, Arequipa, Peru. Photo: Franz Grupp / PESSCA 2921B Image credit: Ojeda, A 2005–2023, Project for the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art (PESSCA), PESSCA, viewed 25 April 2019, https://colonialart.org/.

»The quest for purity is pursued by rejection.
It follows that when purity is not a symbol but something lived, it must be poor and barren. It is part of our condition that the
purity for which we strive and sacrifice so much turns out to be hard and dead as a stone when we get it.«

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger

#anthropology #culture #purity

Purity crusades lead nowhere good - even from the best intentions of delivering justice to the oppressed

As someone who’s combative and self-righteous myself, I get those folks, honestly. I could very easily be a crusader in their vein. The ever-ongoing escalation against those who think they can ‘get away’ with just a little bit of assistance towards bad causes? “Fuck them! They deserve nothing! Humiliate them, ostracize them, cast them out!” The voice of God in your head is overwhelmingly, and it feels good to do so, to beat back every little inkling of evil trying to worm its way into normality.

On the other hand, that’s exactly why I try to police my own worldview for that. I’m tetchy and still largely insufferable on politics on a personal level, but that level of insufferability and tetchiness is more… universal to my character, than particular to my political views. Wish I could say I’m working on it, but the truth is I’m just trying to make it through the next day at this point, lmao.

And the truth is, there is some point to that voice - tolerating things normalizes them. But if your idea is to tolerate no evil views in the people you talk with, you will very quickly end up in the same situation as religious monastics and hermits - or inquisitions. You have to pick which evils, and what intensity, are worth going nuclear on, instead of whiting out massive groups with a broad brush, unless you’re willing to do what monastics, hermits, and inquisitions do. And I would venture to say that… none of those are particularly good or moral choices.

Once you let that combative self-righteousness dictate how you see the world, everyone becomes an enemy, and that’s not productive, healthy, or moral. It becomes a self-feeding isolation, an ouroboros of purifying and intensifying hatred, and… honestly, my entire ideological journey has been away from that, save an acquired hatred for libertarians around 2017. I had a taste of that self-righteous spiral early on in coming-of-political-age, thrill and all, and I still didn’t like where it went. It’s not good for anyone.

At the end of the day, I get their core point, that there are some things that you have to draw the line on - the idea of total tolerance or total left unity is a pipedream; injustice to the oppressed. But at the same time, so is total purity and correctness.

At some point your worldview has to account for the fact that most people are just trying to keep their heads down and get by, and so are you. The notion of infinite heroism, of infinite struggle against injustice, infinite wisdom, infinite discernment of good and evil, feels good, but is incoherent, impossible, and itself, unjust. You have to see that people are capable of being wrong, even horrifically wrong, but not always fundamentally broken so much as just trying to keep themselves afloat in the horrific melange that is our upbringing, our lives, and our environments.

I’ll brawl with folk all day long over issues I think are important, and I think they’re distinctly wrong over. More than I should, honestly, and almost certainly more savagely than I should. I absolutely go bare-knuckles on every point I feel is important, and that… sometimes leads to asymmetric views, where I can view someone as “Good fellow, sometimes has bad views that need to be confronted without softballing the implications, but don’t we all?”, because what’s a little vicious disputation between gentlefolk and scholars? And they view me as “Insufferable foul-mouthed aggressive shithead”, not necessarily incorrectly, lmao.

But shutting out people entirely has to be dire, a matter of values - or at least information hygiene. Take the learning moments where you can. Most people may not be directly convinced by an argument or ten, but their trajectory can be shifted by exposure to more correct views.

And for that matter, we should hope ourselves to be shifted to more correct views wherever we may be wrong.

Oskar is such a bundle of love.. gracing the groomroom with his sweetness today. 🤗💞🐾

#love #wins #dogsofmastodon #dogs #rock #doglife #dog #days #today #news #purity