newman

[If anyone still follows this blog in rss or whatever, don't think it's really back.]

Heart speaks to heart -- so the several banners at today's beatification mass in Birmingham proclaimed. I don't know my own soul well enough right now to know its state; I know that I've recently moved, recently begun classes, recently been thrown into ecclesiastical limbo, and in all of it I feel more powerless, more overwhelmed, than I ever felt moving between continents.

And so this card that I got earlier today as a commemoration of Blessed John Henry Newman... I heard them earlier with no notice, but this time the words went straight to my heart:

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission--I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me--still, He knows what He is about.