Ponder: "the secret of thanksgiving"

“If the soul very early learnt to say, ‘thank God,’ its troubles would be almost at an end.  There is a homely principle, if a motor skids, turn it in that direction.  If when troubles come, we turn them into thanksgiving our soul returns to balance at once. There will be sweetness, strength, honey in the mouth of the lion. There is no greater secret than the secret of thanksgiving, even thanksgiving for everything except our failures.  Even then, we may thank God for the humiliation failures bring.”

Vincent McNabb, OP, The Craft of Suffering (1936), 56.

Ponder: "withdraws itself for our good"

"But sometimes, whilst the mind is sustained with the plenitude and richness of a gift so large, if it enjoys uninterrupted security in these things, it forgets from what source it has them, and imagines that it derives from itself, which it sees to be never wanting to it.  Hence it is that this same grace sometimes withdraws itself for our good, and shews the presumptuous mind how weak it is in itself.  For then we really learn whence our good qualities proceed, when, by seemingly losing them, we are made sensible that they are never preserved by our own efforts.  And so, for the purpose of tutoring us in humility, it very often happens that, when the crisis of temptation is upon us, such extreme folly comes down upon our wisdom, that the mind, being dismayed, knows nothing how to meet the evils that are threatened, or how to make ready against temptation."
Gregory the Great, Morals in Job, II.78.

We Have Failed, But He Has Triumphed

“He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

Hebrews 9:26

Yesterday, the government of Singapore hosted a historic meeting between Xi Jinping, the president of Mainland China and Ma Ying-jeo, the president of Taiwan.  Technically, China and Taiwan are still engaged in a civil war, and it was the first meeting between the leaders of the countries in sixty years.  Many people are hoping for reconciliation.  China and Taiwan share a common language, history and culture.  Both are important economic powers, and there would be advantages in trade and security cooperation.

But with a bloody war and decades of hostile rhetoric behind them, it’s almost impossible for the leaders to know how to speak with each other.  They agreed not to call one another president, because that would suggest that both lead legitimate governments.  No flags can be displayed.  Neither president has the freedom to promise another meeting or to make substantial proposals for common action.  The words they do use must be chosen with extreme delicacy, because anything either leader says could call up old associations and deeply offend the other, perhaps touching off internal scandals that would only make things worse.  In its impotency, its nervous gesturing, what it most reveals is just how far off the goal of normalized relations really lies.