Corrine, Week 2

This is long…..there is sooo much in her journal that I want to remember!  What a woman!
Elisabeth keeps mentioning us getting ourselves in order and God brings the end product.
Get ourselves in order:
Pg.5 “Let each one of our words and deeds contain a principle of life that…will communicate light and strength and will reveal God to them.”     Pg.7 We must “face action” she says after we’ve drawn strength from God so that we can undertake the “hour by hour work that should belong to every Christian: the moral and material salvation of his brothers.” 
Then she mentions what can end up being my excuse….How can “I” take on the evil and indifference we are facing!  I guess that is the same as Moses and Jeremiah and others …and God’s response is…I will be with you.  Here Elisabeth says “What can be done against evil and indifference by such an obscure creature as I? Nothing of myself, no doubt; but all by and with God.”     BUT we can’t sit and just wait for God to do it.  We have our part to do.

A step is (Pg. 8) “must ask God to fill us with an intense charity…such love could save the world.”  She mentions zeroing in on individuals instead of the masses.  Each human then radiates out to the one next to him and so on…the ripples spread.  The opposite is also true….our sin affects those around us as pointed out in Pope John Paul II Apostolic Exhortation: Reconciliation & Penance…parag. 16 Consequently one can speak of a communion of sin, whereby a soul that lowers itself through sin drags down with itself the church and, in some way, the whole world.           The motto that Elisabeth wrote on her book endpaper: “Every soul that uplifts itself uplifts the world? is in that parag. 16 also "every soul that rises above itself, raises up the world."  No footnote though.  Interesting.

 Pg 10 she states the goal of all human existence – “to do each day, humbly, and so that God alone may see it, all the good that one can do; always to seek out all the misery and grief within reach in order to relieve them; to cultivate in oneself a lively sympathy for everyone; and to do all this for God alone.”  This goal surely takes one who is not selfish and into themselves and the “oh, I’m too worn out”, which I feel guilty of. 

 

Elisabeth says to accomplish this we have to purify and strengthen our soul for many days.  Scripture surely fills her being.  Jesus would go out to the desert to fast for 40 days before a big decision.

New year of 1901 Elisabeth saw need of “gratitude for God’s gifts, a stronger turning to Him, an ardent desire to increase His Kingdom within me.”  I need to tune into the gifts God has given…and express my gratitude for one thing.

 God throws the veil aside:

Again she reiterates……that arguing and lecturing is not the way, but bearing witness as a Christian.  That word “witness” sure has been lost in the past 50 years I think.  And again she expresses….it is God’s doing… “Only God, with a divine gesture, may throw aside this veil, then the true life shall begin for these souls.”

Must work on myself, Elisabeth says (pg 19). “When I have done this, God will do the rest. We pray, suffer, and labor in ignorance of the consequences of our acts and prayers. God makes them serve His supreme plan; gradually they take their effect, winning one soul, then another.”  We have to make sure we have ourselves ready and willing…so our actions and prayers can work into God’s plan.  Work on self but still have eyes open toward others.

 
As far as marriage challenge/s:    My husband is very patient and kind with everyone and goes to Mass on Sundays.  He supports me in my spiritual “high maintenance” needs…adoration, bible studies, daily Mass, other spiritual enrichment.  But him going to those extra things would be like me going to a class on tractor transmissions…..so far anyway.  I think a marriage challenge is…..which is part of my examination of conscience….Philippians 2:3  “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves.”  That is a life challenge.