Courageous Resolution

By: enigma Date: October 2, 2011 Categories: Carreer, Emotional, Family, Fatherhood, Financial, Intellectual, Physical, Social, Spiritual

Here’s a commitment I think all men should make; it’s from the Courageous movie:

“”

I DO and solemnly resolve before God to take full responsibility for myself, my wife, and my children.

I WILL love them, protect them, serve them, and teach them the Word of God as the spiritual leader of my home.

I WILL be faithful to my wife, to love and honor her, and be willing to lay down my life for her as Jesus Christ did for me.

I WILL bless my children and teach them to love God with all their hearts, all of their minds, and all of their strength.

I WILL train them to honor authority and live responsibly.

I WILL confront evil, pursue justice, and love mercy.

I WILL pray for others and treat them with kindness, respect and compassion.

I WILL work diligently to provide for the needs of my family.

I WILL forgive those who have wronged me and reconcile with those I have wronged.

I WILL learn from my mistakes, repent of my sins, and walk with integrity as a man answerable to God.

I WILL seek to honor God, be faithful to His church, obey His Word and do His will.

I WILL courageously work with the strength God provides to fulfill this resolution for the rest of my life and for His glory.

“”

(http://www.courageousthemovie.com/)

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The resolution above says “I WILL”, but I would replace that with “I DO”.

Men, we don’t have to wait until we’re married to do this.

Start NOW and become the strong men that our families need us to be!

ALL men are called to be Fathers.  Our wife is the the woman God created for us or the Church who is one with Love.  Our children are the beautiful images of God that God creates with our participation or the beautiful images of God we adopt spiritually.

Guys, our goal is to be fathers.  When we order our lives with God in the highest place and take responsibility for ourselves and others we become men.  When we are fathers to ourselves and for others, we are men of honor.

Saint Joseph, PRAY FOR US!

 

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Blessed Mother Teresa: some awesome quotes

By: enigma Date: September 5, 2011 Categories: Spiritual

“Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. … You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society — completely forgotten, completely left alone.”

~ Blessed Mother Teresa

 

“People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.”

~ Blessed Mother Teresa

 

‎”Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.”

~ Blessed Mother Teresa

 

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”

~ Blessed Mother Teresa

 

If I ever become a Saint—I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth .”

~ Blessed Mother Teresa

 

 

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Engineers

By: enigma Date: August 24, 2011 Categories: Carreer

“Engineering, done right, is an invisible art. Doctoring and lawyering done right are intensely personal activities, service businesses with one-on-one human attention. Good engineers fade into the background. Engineers make objects and the objects speak for themselves. You probably can’t name the engineer who recorded and mixed the sound on your favorite new record. You almost certainly can’t name the engineers who designed all your local bridges and rail systems. We don’t even know how many people designed, say, the smart cover for the iPad 2. All of this is by design. Engineers also rip and mix and burn and create things that are the sum total of a lot of individual efforts. I don’t even know if I’m the engineer responsible for the test software that tested the wafer that spawned the chip that went into your cell phone that filters the RF frequencies in your cellular radio. There are very good odds that I am: I wrote such software, and last I heard it was still running and my old company is still selling chips. Again, this is how proper engineering works. Many of the best people you’ll ever meet work outside the spotlight, quietly making their corner of the system better. Engineering is a worldbuilding activity. The objects become famous, not us, but even the objects’ fame is fleeting. The marvel of one age is the boring infrastructure of the next. But, hey, at least you get to change the world. Fame isn’t everything.”

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The Four Loves

By: enigma Date: November 24, 2009 Categories: Emotional, Fatherhood, Intellectual, Spiritual

“Even if it were granted that insurances against heartbreak were our highest wisdom, does God Himself offer them? Apparently not. Christ comes at last to say “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to become vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safely in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless space, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

“Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it. ”

-text culled from CS Lewis’ book

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This might help..

By: enigma Date: July 22, 2009 Categories: Emotional, Family, Fatherhood, Intellectual, Spiritual

Imagine the person you love most
Imagine the person who gave you life, perhaps a parent
Imagine the person who protects you, perhaps a brother
Imagine the person who takes care of you, perhaps a sister
Imagine the person who is always there for you, perhaps a good friend
Now imagine you with a hammer
Imagine you with a spike
Nailing this person to a cross!
Whoa! Yikes!
Imagine that this pain could be quantified, multiplied by three, and then a few billion times
Oh the immense suffering!
Yet God loves us even more than this!

Have you ever been cheated on?
Have you ever been rejected by the one you love?
Have you ever had unrequited love?
Have you ever been stabbed in the back by your loved ones?
Humiliated for the sake of good?
Unfairly treated?
Unappreciated?
Unrecognized?

Consider how we injure the one who sustains every moment of our life, the one who protects us, the one who cares for us, and is always there for us! Should we not be moved with compassion as we would with our dearly beloved! Should we not be grateful! What is our measly suffering compared to God’s? What should we fairly deserve? What should we hold back from God? Why are we complaining?

God all powerful, all knowing, infinite, mightier than the mightiest.. more than the scanty finite human minds could comprehend. What could he possibly ever need or want? Yet! He _chooses_ to enter this fallen world as a human, so fragile and so humble. He said that there is no greater love than for a man to die for a friend. And! He, all righteous, suffered and died for us! What profound love! What an example for us to live by! He establishes the One True Church to teach His Truth so that the human race can be freed from the slavery of sin.

What could we ask of God that he doesn’t already know? Why should we love God any differently in adversity vs prosperity? What if suffering is a gift from God? What can we do to return love to him?… Is the highest form of love incompatible with Relativism? Where can we learn of these Truths? Would God come down to our level to bring us the Truth but not give us any way to follow his example? Love is an action, a choice. What can we sacrifice to return our love for God?! Why would I choose to be sad over frivolous miniscule irrelevants? I can be in pain, but still be full of joy. What is happiness? What is joy? What is right and what is wrong? At the end of our lives what is most important?

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Liberty – some things worth pondering..

By: enigma Date: July 5, 2009 Categories: Intellectual, Social, Spiritual

“[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”
– John Adams

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
–Thomas Jefferson

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”
– George Washington

“…The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ ”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Were my soul trembling on the wing of eternity, were this hand freezing to death, were my voice choking with the last struggle, I would still, with the last gasp of that voice, implore you to remember the truth: God has given America to be free.”
– Patrick Henry

“And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribed for our motto: ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,’ and exclaim, ‘Christ first, our country next!’ ”
– Andrew Johnson

“We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity.”
– Franklin Roosevelt

“Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
– Ronald Reagan

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An analogous story

By: enigma Date: May 27, 2009 Categories: Emotional, Family, Fatherhood, Spiritual

“””
The daughter of a very able physician and surgeon, who knew that her father loved her perfectly, lay in continual fever and said to one of her friends: “I feel a great deal of pain, but I never think about any remedies, for I do not know what could bring about a cure. I might desire one thing, whereas another would be needed. Do I not gain more by leaving all this in my father’s care, since he has the knowledge, the ability, and the will to do for me whatever is necessary for my health? I would be wrong to give any thought to such things, since he will think of enough things for me. I would be wrong to want anything, for he will determine in sufficient measure all that will help me. I will only wait until he wills to do whatever he judges expedient. When he is with me, I will be content to look at him, show him my filial love, and make known my perfect confidence in him.”

After these words she fell asleep, while her father, who had decided that it was necessary to bleed her, arranged whatever was required. He then came to awaken her, questioned her as to how she had slept, and asked her if she was willing to be bled as a cure. “Father,” she said, “I am yours. I do not know what cure to wish for myself. It is for you to will and do for me whatever seems good to you. As for me, it is enough for me to love and honor you with all my heart, as I do.” Hence her arm was tied and her father himself applied the lancet to the vein.

While he made the incision and the blood flowed forth, his loving daughter never looked at her pierced arm or at the blood spurting from the vein, but kept her eyes fixed on her father’s face. From time to time she softly said only this: “My father loves me dearly, and I am wholly his.” When all this was finished, she did not thank him but only repeated once more those same words of filial affection and confidence.

Tell me Theotimus, my friend, did not this daughter show a more thoughtful and solid love for her father than if she had been very careful to ask him about remedies for her malady, watch him as he opened the vein and the blood flowed out, and say many words of thanks to him? There is no doubt whatever about it. If she had been thinking about herself, what would she have gained except unneeded care, since her father had care enough for her? What would she have gained from looking at her arm except fear? By thanking her father, what virtue but gratitude would she have practiced? Was it not better for her to concern herself entirely with the demonstration of her filial love, which as infinitely more pleasing to her father than every other virtue?

“My eyes are always toward the Lord, for He will free my feet from the snare” (Ps. 24:15) and from the nets. Have you fallen into the snare of adversity? Ah, do not look at your mishap or the snare in which you are caught. Look upon God and leave everything to Him, for He will take care of you. “Cast your care upon the Lord, and He will support you” (Ps 54:23) Why do you disturb yourself with willing or not willing the events and accidents of this world? You do not know what you ought to will and God will always will in sufficient measure all you could will for yourself without putting yourself in trouble.
“””

(“Seek perfection in the submission to God’s will” pg 133-35 in “Finding God’s Will For You” by St Francis de Sales)

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