More serious stuff now ...

Father Alfred Delp, S.J.

Tomorrow evening Yom Ha'Shoah begins.

Yom Ha'Shoah means Holocaust Remembrance Day.  I often think of the Holocaust - aspect of it has more or less formed my spirituality throughout the years.  Like the message of Fatima in many ways.  I used to fast 'concentration camp' style on fast days ... I won't explain what that meant now.  In fact I just mentioned the Holocaust in a comment on one of my posts yesterday.

That said, I just want to share something I came across by Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. from yesterday's meditation in Magnificat.  Delp's witness, along with so many other victims of the Nazis can help us today when we face the difficulties of life in our 'post-Christian' culture - without whining or running away from reality.  Historically, the Jesuits went into the peripheries, as the Holy Father would say, and Alfred Delp was no exception.  I love Jesuit spirituality.

Anyway - people online love memes - but they don't seem to remember them after they post them.  In monastic spirituality there is the term rumination - it is part of traditional Lectio Divina.  The monk ruminates the Word during prayer and throughout the day, he eats it, chews it, and it enters the heart.  Try that with your memes - don't post and walk away and forget what you read or what you posted.

That's a long introduction for the following quote from Alfred Delp, which I found helpful and would like to repeat here - it could be a meme maybe ...

"We all proceed from one failure to another, and after every collapse we come out with less substance and more wounds - all of us.  When we are tired and tempted to give up, instead of blaming fate or circumstances, we should ask ourselves whether we are living sufficiently close to God, whether we have called on him earnestly enough." - Father Alfred Delp, S.J.