Persevere

The quotes below are a select few on the subject of perseverance, written by Saint Josemaría Escrivá in his book The Way. You can pick up a copy or read it online here.

Webster's defines persevere as to "persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement." Synonyms include: carry on, persist, hang on, follow through, and knuckle down (my favorite). The opposite of persevere is to give up, quit, surrender, yield, falter, hesitate, vacillate, or waver. It is from the Latin perseverare, from per- through + severus severe. Not ducking the severe; not stopping short of severe; but going forward through severe. To get into severe, look up the definition.

Interesting word, don't you think? And one that is a part of our lives whether we realize it or not. All of us are persevering in some way. But all too often, most of us are doing the opposite. We're giving in. Whether it be to our circumstances that we think we cannot overcome, or the "world"...whatever it may be for us. We yield, we surrender, we quit. Even hesitating is considered the opposite of perseverance, for in that moment we are not carrying on, but are in a sort of "vacuum" where we haven't made up our minds yet whether to move forward or fall back. There is no neutrality when it comes to persevering. You're either advancing or retreating.

Consider for a moment James 1:2-8:

Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. But if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it. But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways.

So welcome your trials as that is how you will learn to persevere. But seek wisdom. Seek it in prayer, in Holy Scripture, and seek it in the writings of the saints. This is the second time in a week I've had the concept of seeking wisdom driven home to me. The other time was in a book I'm currently reading by Andy Andrews called The Traveler's Gift. The book is much like something Og Mandino may have written in that the main character of the story meets seven historical figures at a time of crisis in his life. Each character tells him of a decision he must make each day in order to succeed in life. The second decision is provided by King Solomon: Seek Wisdom. The seventh decision is provided by the Archangel Gabriel: Persist Without Exception.

When we waver, or when we hesitate, we are of two minds. We are unstable. We lose our focus and our ability to persevere. It is something we can ill afford to relinquish. To do otherwise is to be "tossed about by the wind."

Don't tell Jesus that you want consolation in prayer. If he gives it to you, thank him. Tell him always that you want perseverance.

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Persevere in prayer. Persevere, even when your efforts seem barren. Prayer is always fruitful.

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'He spent the whole night in prayer to God.' So Saint Luke tells of our Lord.

And you? How often have you persevered like that? Well, then...

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Discouragement is an enemy of your perseverance. If you don't fight against discouragement you will become pessimistic first, and lukewarm afterwards. Be an optimist.

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You cannot 'rise'. It's not surprising: that fall!

Persevere and you will 'rise'. Remember what a spiritual writer has said: your poor soul is like a bird whose wings are caked with mud.

Suns of heaven are needed and personal efforts, small and constant, to shake off those inclinations, those vain fancies, that depression: that mud clinging to your wings.

And you will see yourself free. If you persevere, you will 'rise'.

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Unshakable: that is what you must be. If your perseverance is disturbed by other people's weaknesses or by your own, I cannot but form a poor opinion of your ideal.

Make up your mind once and for all.

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Oh blessed perseverance of the donkey that turns the water-wheel! Always the same pace. Always the same circles. One day after another: everyday the same.

Without that, there would be no ripeness in the fruit, nor blossom in the orchard, nor scent of flowers in the garden.

Carry this thought to your interior life.

The vision thing

Believe me, I want to like this movie....I REEEAAALLLYYY want to.

I dunno though...I haven't quite caught on to Mel's vision yet.

H/T: Cor Immaculatae

Joshua Michael

"The grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise." -- Quote from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Chapter 9, The Grey Havens.

Regina Doman is one of my favorite authors and writers, having written such beautiful books as Angel In The Waters, which you can read online. Tragically, Regina and her family suffered the greatest trial imaginable, the death of their 4-year-old son, crushed under the wheels of a car they themselves were driving. The family’s five other children witnessed the heartbreaking event.

At Joshua's wake, an overflow crowd watched her stand in front of the congregation with head held high. It was the unassuming strength that comes from true humility. She started out like this, word for word.

“Every parent’s worst nightmare is to lose a child. When you become a parent, when your child is born, you sit there with this tiny, vulnerable infant in your hand and the fragility of life overwhelms you. From that moment on, in every waking moment, you are vulnerable because you care so deeply, so very much about this little life intrinsically connected to your own. Every danger or hurt you encounter yourself is magnified because you see it on some conscious level as a threat to that little being who smiles up at you.”

That’s how much she loved Joshua. This is how much she hurts now.

“What happened to Joshua was, literally, my worst nightmare. The one trial that I prayed that God would spare me from was hitting someone’s child with my car. God, in his strange and mysterious mercy, has not chosen to spare me that trial. Pray for me.”

Those were the only words about her. The rest of the extensive eulogy that followed was about her son. She told story after story about Joshua’s boyish adventures of swords, battles and being a warrior, about his delicate spirit, his love for each one of his brothers and sisters, and even the cute crush he had on the girl next door.

You can read the rest of Regina's beautiful eulogy and touching photographs of Joshua here. A word of caution: have your kleenex or handkerchief handy. But please read this testament to life, love and family. It is something you will never forget, and help remind all of us to hug those we love a little more often and a little longer.

As we went through the pictures of Joshua, I was struck at how many times we caught him in action in his cloak and sword. When he was alive, he was troubled with worries. He was afraid sometimes. He was scared sometimes. But now he will never be worried again. He will never be scared again. He has gone to the country where there is no longer any fear. He is as God meant him to always be.

Just thinking about Joshua makes me smile. I am so glad to have known him, so glad and proud to have been his mom. I will always miss him, and I will never forget him.

"We are fighting to eliminate you."

Perhaps one of the best columnists/writers out there today is Mark Steyn, who's Sunday columns in the Chicago Sun-Times never fails to add clarity to events going on around us. This Sunday was no different as he provides some insights into the motivations and tactics employed by Hezbollah in the past, and where we are headed in the future. A must read.

In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way:

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

I wish more Americans, indeed more global citizens, understood this.

In 1971, in the lobby of the Cairo Sheraton, Palestinian terrorists shot Wasfi al-Tal, the prime minister of Jordan at point-blank range. As he fell to the floor dying, one of his killers began drinking the blood gushing from his wounds. Doesn't that strike you as a little, um, overwrought? Three decades later, when bombs went off in Bali killing hundreds of tourists plus local waiters and barmen, Bruce Haigh, a former Aussie diplomat in Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, had no doubt where to put the blame. As he told Australia's Nine Network: "The root cause of this issue has been America's backing of Israel on Palestine."

Suppose this were true -- that terrorists blew up Oz honeymooners and Scandinavian stoners in Balinese nightclubs because of "the Palestinian question." Doesn't this suggest that these people are, at a certain level, nuts? After all, there are plenty of IRA sympathizers around the world (try making the Ulster Unionist case in a Boston bar) and yet they never thought to protest British rule in Northern Ireland by blowing up, say, German tourists in Thailand.

And this is a group that people are still telling us we need to sit down and "understand" and "reason with". Oh really? That time has long since passed.

Cairo and Co. grew so accustomed to whining about the Palestinian pseudo-crisis decade in decade out that it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella. The Zionists got out of Gaza and it's now Talibanistan redux. The Zionists got out of Lebanon and the most powerful force in the country (with an ever-growing demographic advantage) are Iran's Shia enforcers. There haven't been any Zionists anywhere near Damascus in 60 years and Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.

It's been about Iran since I was in 5th grade in 1979, and probably about Iran before then. I've watched them since I was a child of 11 and have somehow always known it would come back to them. I don't foolishly think I was prescient or alone in this knowledge...just amazed that our leaders and the world's leaders have been unwilling to admit it or do anything about it for over 25 years.

Why do we insist upon dealing rationally with a group of people who do not honor rationality or reason?

What does she tell her three kids who she let live?

Truly one of the saddest stories or attempts at justifying abortion that I have EVER read. And I've read some doozies. Moral blindness being excused as being "adult". Words fail me. 

From Mere Comments:

Donna Schaper says she's a grown-up, a pastor, and a murderer. She claims all three labels, and is not apologizing for any of them.

Rev. Schaper, pastor of Judson Memorial Church in New York City, wrote a recent article for the liberal Jewish monthly Tikkun about the abortion she had nineteen years ago. She says she's "neither bragging nor apologizing."

Schaper says that her abortion was the right choice, since she and her husband had young twins at the time. "Because women are mature sexual beings who make choices," she writes. "Birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history. They allow sex to be both procreational and recreational, for both men and women." As a matter of fact, as Schaper sees it, abortion doesn't have anything to do with babies. "The drama of the abortion battle is not about unborn babies at all," she writes. "Instead it is about women and sex."

But she doesn't really believe that. Schaper spends most of this article writing about an unborn baby. She even names the aborted child, "Alma," which means soul. She also admits that what she did was the taking of a human life. She even calls it murder:

"I did what was right for me, for my family, for my work, for my husband, and for my three children. I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder. I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to. I did what men do all the time when they take us to war: they choose violence because, while they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives."

It is sad and sobering to read this pastor defend abortion by writing: "When I made my choice to end Alma's life, I was behaving as an adult." It is even sadder to read her conclusion that: "It was a human life. That's why we named her, wanted her, but also knew we did not want her enough." This choice empowered Schaper to be a grownup, and that's why legal abortion is, in her words, "the best policy conceivable for men and women and for mature, moral sexuality."