This Artistry

Painting: Gunnar Bach Pedersen, 'Admission of Holy Clare to the monastery in 1212'

An Abyss of Love

'This divine heart is an abyss filled with all blessings, and into it the poor should submerge all their needs. It is an abyss of joy in which all of us can immerse our sorrows. It is an abyss of lowliness to counteract our foolishness, an abyss of mercy for the wretched, an abyss of love to meet our every need.'  St. Margaret Mary

'Since there is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ which moves us to love one another, therefore it is fit and proper that we should consecrate ourselves to His most Sacred Heart - an act which is nothing else than an offering and a binding of oneself to Jesus Christ, seeing that whatever honor, veneration and love is given to this divine Heart is really and truly given to Christ Himself.' Pope Leo XIII

'O Sacred Heart of Jesus, fountain of eternal life, Your Heart is a glowing furnace of Love. You are my refuge and my sanctuary. O my adorable and Loving Savior, consume my heart with the burning fire with which Yours is aflame. Pour down on my soul those graces which flow from Your love. Let my heart be united with Yours. Let my will be conformed to Yours in all things. May Your will be the rule of all my desires and actions.'   St. Gertrude the Great

'Every time I hear anyone speak of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or of the Blessed Sacrament, I feel an indescribable joy. It is as if a wave of precious memories, sweet affections and joyful hopes swept over my poor person, making me tremble with happiness and filling my soul with tenderness. These are loving appeals from Jesus Who wants me wholeheartedly there, at the source of all goodness, His Sacred Heart throbbing mysteriously behind the Eucharistic veils. I love to repeat today 'Sweet Heart of Jesus, make me love You more and more.''  Pope St. John XXIII

'Do not let the past disturb you, just leave everything in the Sacred Heart and begin again with joy.' St. Teresa of Calcutta

As Often as I Draw Breath

Love in the Smallest Things

'Only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things 
out of great love - love, and always love.'

St. Faustina

Where Love Must Start

Painting: Winslow Homer, Pumpkin Patch, 1878

Pause a Minute and Say

Painting: Jules Breton

Fiery Conversations

'If you wish to advance in the love of God, speak of it; 

for pious conversations are to charity what the wind is to the flame.'

St. Ignatius of Loyola

Desiring the Fullness of Good

 Painting: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, St. Francis in Ecstasy

How Shall I Love God?

"If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." (Colossians 3:1-2)

"Don't be afraid to call Our Lord by His Name, Jesus, and to tell Him that you love Him." (St. Josemaria Escriva)

"Love Him totally, Who gave Himself totally for your love." (St. Clare of Assisi)

"The more we love God, the more we will want to love Him." (St. Joaquina)

"Some torment themselves seeking ways of discovering the art of loving God. These poor souls do not know that there is no method of loving Him other than doing what is pleasing to Him." (St. Francis de Sales)

"Because we start with the Person of Christ, the basis of our obedience is not fear, it is love. You cannot love dialectical materialism, but you can love a Person. Between our Lord and us there is the bond of love. These two are inseparable."(Venerable Fulton Sheen)

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength... you shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:30-31)

"The love of God consists in this:  that we keep His commandments." (1 John 5:3)

"You will live in My love if you keep My commandments, even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and live in His love"' (Jesus, in John 15:10)

"What is the mark of a love for God?  To keep His commandments for the sake of His glory." (St. Basil)

"Love of God is acquired by resolving to work and suffer for God and to abstain from all that displeases Him when the temptations arise. The better to do this in great things, one must grow accustomed to it in little things." (St. Teresa of Avila)

"I do not have any other means to prove my love to You, but to throw flowers. That is, to let no sacrifice, no look, no word pass, to take advantage of all the littlest things and to do them out of love... Hence, I pluck every flower I find on my way, for Jesus." (St. Therese of Lisieux )

Paintings:   'Faith' by Federic Leighton
                 'Carità' by Schedoni
                 'By Grandmother's Sickbed' by Michael Ancher
                 All in US public domain due to age

A Personal Love

How much does God love us... each individual one of us.... personally?

He gives us some clues in the writings of His saints.
 
'God's love for us is freely given and unearned, surpassing all we could ever hope for or imagine.' (St. John Paul II)

'He loved us personally.. centuries before we were born.' (St. Peter Julian Eymard)

'Eternal beauty! You act as if You could not live without Your creature, even though You are life itself....You have fallen madly in love with what You have made!' (St. Catherine of Siena)

'There is no limit to God's love. It is without measure and its depth cannot be sounded.' (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta)

'When did God's love for you begin? When He began to be God. When did He begin to be God? Never, for He has always been without beginning and without end, and so He has always loved You for eternity.' (St. Francis de Sales)

'You, God, made Yourself lowly to make us great!' (St. Catherine of Siena)

'God is more lenient than you because He is perfectly good and therefore loves you more. Be bold enough then to believe that God is on your side, even when you forget to be on His.' (Venerable Fulton Sheen)

'Jesus offers His lifelong, faithful, and personal friendship, embracing us in tenderness and love.' (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta)



Painting: James Tissot

THIS Much

"How much does Mommy love you?" I often asked my children when they were toddlers. It was my own variation on the "how big are you?" question, the one asked of little ones who respond with arms held wide as a parent cries: "Sooooo big!!"

"How much does Mommy love you?" I would ask. Oh, how I loved it when a little one threw chubby arms out as far as he could reach, trying to baby-chant along with my joyful proclamation of "Thiiiiis much!!"

I wanted my children to realize how much I loved them. I just wanted them to know.

Such knowledge could provide, I knew, a hedge around those days when these little ones would be tempted to doubt their parents' love, especially when they got old enough to need guidance through discipline. And what about when peers, long in the future, pushed my teens to join in activities of which Mommy and Daddy wouldn't approve?  ("mean old parents, only out to keep us from having fun; everything we want to do they say NO to. They must not care about us at ALL"). As a parent, I wanted them to be well grounded in the security that, even when Mom and Dad said "no," they were loved.

Sometimes I've doubted the love of my own Parent. I've allowed myself dark moments of wondering if my heavenly Father could really love a sinner like me. When such doubts come, I'm vulnerable to a particular kind of peer pressure - the kind that whispers (generally not in words) that my heavenly Father is distant from my little life, that He doesn't really care.

If that happens, I know where to turn.  To (of course) the grillwork. To what God Himself assures me in Scripture and Church teaching.  He loves me, and He loves you: that is the truth.

How much does He love us?

This much.....

"Love, then, consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and has sent His Son as an offering for our sins." (1 John 4:10)

"It is precisely in this that God proves His love for us:  that while we were still sinners. Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

"He who obeys the commandments he has from Me is the man who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I too will love him and reveal Myself to him." (John 14:21)
 
"By embracing in His human heart the Father's love for men, Jesus 'loved them to the end,' for 'greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' In suffering and death, his humanity became the free and perfect instrument of divine love which desires the salvation of men. Indeed, out of love for his Father and for men, whom the Father wants to save, Jesus freely accepted His Passion and death." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 609)

"St. John goes even further when he affirms that 'God is love.' God's very being is love. By sending His only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange." (Catechism no. 221)

"God loves each of us as if there were only one of us." (St. Augustine)

"Our Lord loves you and loves you tenderly." (St. Pio)




Text not in quotes© 2015 Nancy Shuman. 
thecloisteredheart.org    



Painting at top: Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Master Baby (detail)
Crucifix photo from Pixabay

Ordinary Actions, Extraordinary Love

'While not neglecting other duties,
these seek above all things
to learn to know Jesus...
and endeavour to live always
in union with Him
Who is ever in the
chapel of their hearts....

This is, indeed, the perfect practice of devotion
to the Sacred Heart
beating in the Tabernacle on the Altar
and in the living tabernacle of our hearts -

thus did the Saints love!  Many
of these friends of God
never did very wonderful things
during their years on earth,
but they loved much
and did ordinary things
with extraordinary love.

St. Rita was a cook;
St. Benedict Joseph Labre, a beggar...
and an endless list of others who did no more than the ordinary actions that go to make up the warp and woof of our daily lives. Yet they scaled the heights of sanctity by the ladder of loving aspirations of prayer.'

(from "Listening to the Indwelling Presence," compiled by a Religious, Pellegrini, Australia, 1940, pp. 44-45)

Painting:  Edgar Degas, Woman Ironing

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My Holy Valentine

It's a grand time for written expressions of love.  Letters, notes, valentines bursting with verse and humor and pop-up-song.  I love every one of them.  On Valentine's Day, give me hearts, give me roses, give me rhyme. 

As a preteen, collecting valentines to line up on my dresser, I would count the cards and sort them and arrange.  Valentines from friends were put where I could see them readily; ones from boys I liked were given pride of place.  It was not unheard of for a girl to receive two or more valentines from the same young man:  a definite sign of not-so-secret love. 

"The Bible is a letter from Almighty God to His creatures,"  wrote Pope St. Gregory.

What a missive!  The length of it, the poetry, the repeated declarations of total and absolute LOVE. 

"I have loved you with an everlasting love... I am constant in My affection for you."  (Jeremiah 31:3)

"Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, My love shall never leave you."  (Isaiah 54:10)

"My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow Me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.  No one shall snatch them out of my hand."  (John 10:27-28) 

I can turn page after page of Scripture and find such love.  Love that would suffer and die for me, declaring itself over and over and over - a definite sign of not at all secret Love.

This is Love that deserves first place in my heart.  This Valentine's day, I shall (anew) accept it.  And I pray for grace to give love in return.

Through prayer, through acts of charity, through aspirations of love and praise, I hope to give Our Lord a number of "valentines"... repeated declarations of a not-so-secret love.  

This was originally posted on my blog The Breadbox Letters, 2012

Samuel Melton Fisher painting
 
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A Framework of Gifts

"All things in this world
are created 
out of God's love, 
and they become 
a framework of gifts, 
offered to us 
so that we can know God 
more easily 
and make a return 
of love 
more readily." 

St. Ignatius Loyola













Painting:  Jules Cyrille Cave, The Flower Girl, 1897



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Give Me Special Grace

                      'O my loving God!  Most Blessed Trinity!
                      Give me special grace to keep You
                      always in the sanctuary of my soul.
                      Wound the very core of my heart
                      with the dart of Your love.
                      Inebriate my spirit with a great personal love for You...
                      Unite me so intimately to Yourself
                      that I will not think or say or do anything
                      without first consulting You.'

                      (from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 217)

  
                             Painting:  Schurig Im Gebet, 1889 


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                        'There are not as many souls who go astray,
                        as there are souls who go through life
                        half-perfected,
                        half-formed,
                        half in love with God.
                        There are not as many crosses and trials
                        trampled down and cast back into the face of God,
                        as there are inspirations of grace unheeded,
                        and invitations to intimacy with God
                        declined.'

(from In Love With The Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, Pelligrini, Australia, 1934, p. 52)

Painting: Otto Karl Kirberg, 1918 

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The One Sure Cloister

                                      
                            'The one sure cloister is the cloister of the heart,

                            where Jesus and the soul live their love-life together, 

                            untroubled and undisturbed by all the riot and tumult of the world.

                            With every movement of memory, mind, and imagination stilled, 

                            every desire quelled, there in the silent cloister of the heart,

                            the soul is flooded with the calm tranquil peace of perfect love...' 

                                       
                            'The outward cloister matters little; the inward cloister matters much.'

(from "Listening to the Indwelling Presence," compiled by a Religious, Pellegrini, Australia, 1940)

If Love is Great

'Whether we pass our life in prayer before the Altar of God; whether we gather around us souls eager for knowledge, or minister to the sick in hospitals and city slums; whether we are nailed to the Cross of Christ, or are spending our days in humble domestic duties, we cannot be hid..

'We have joined the great Army of relief that reaches to the uttermost parts of the world, unseen by the human eye, but making its way into the souls of men, enlightening, strengthening, encouraging, in proportion to the union existing between us and the Divine Guest of our souls...

'It matters not to Him what our occupation may be.  It matters not to Him whether our days are spent in cooking, washing, ironing, sweeping, teaching, nursing, suffering, provided we are ever within hearing of His voice.  For all is great if love is great."

(from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952)

Mary Cassatt painting, 1879

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He Loves Me!

God loves me.  The Creator of the universe loves ME.  He tenderly, genuinely cares about ME! 

Do I ever doubt this?  Then maybe it's time for me to have another look through the grille.

"I am the Lord, your God, who grasps your right hand.  It is I who say to you 'fear not, I will help you.'" (Isaiah 41:13)

"I am the Good Shepherd.  I know My sheep and My sheep know Me, in the same way that the Father knows Me and I know the Father; for these sheep I will give my life."  (John 10:14-15)

"Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for you."  (1 Peter 5:7)

"The Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from the snare."  (Psalm 3:26)

"My sheep hear My voice.  I know them, and they follow Me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.  No one shall snatch them out of My hand."  (John10:27-28)

"He who obeys the commandments he has from Me is the one who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father.  I will love him, and reveal Myself to him,''  (John 14:21)

"It is precisely in this that God proves His love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

"I am sure of this much:  that He who began the good work in you will carry it through to completion, right up to the day of Christ Jesus."  (Philippians 1:6)

"By His wounds, you were healed."  (1 Peter 2:24)

"God is love."  (1 John 4:16)

"Arise, My beloved, and come!  For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone...." (Song of Songs 2:10-11)

"Ah, you are beautiful, My beloved, ah, you are beautiful!"  (Song of Songs 4:1)

Painting:  Cima da Conegliano, God the Father

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The Singing Heart

'The human heart
is the true singer
of the canticle
of sacred love;
it is itself
both harp
and psaltery.'

 
         St. Francis de Sales,
           Treatise on the Love of God,
           Book 9, Chapter 9











 
Painting: Gerard van Honthorst, Kind David Playing the Harp