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"O Jesus, I see this new year as a blank page that your Father is giving me, upon which He will write day by day what He has arranged for me in His divine pleasure. With full confidence I am writing at the top of the page from now on: "Lord, do with me what you will." And at the bottom I have already put my "Amen" to every disposition of Your divine will. Yes, O Lord, I say "yes" to all the joys, to all the sorrows, to all the graces, to all the hardships that you have prepared for me and which You will be revealing to me day by day. Let me "amen" be the Paschal AMEN, always followed by the ALLELUIA, uttered with all my heart in the joy of perfect giving. Give me your love and your grace and I shall be rich enough." - Sister Carmela of the Holy Ghost
Time passes and does not return. God has assigned to each of us a definite time in which to fulfill His divine plan for our soul, the time of our life on earth. For each of us this is "the acceptable time…the day of salvation" (2 Cor 6:2), in which we must work diligently to cooperate with the grace given us for our sanctification; we have only this time and shall have no more. Time ill spent is lost forever. Our life is made up of this uninterrupted, continual flow of time, which never returns. In eternity, on the contrary, time will be no more; we shall be established forever in the degree of love which we have reached now, in time. If we have attained a high degree of love, we shall be fixed forever in that degree of love and glory; if we possess only a slight degree, that is all we shall have throughout eternity. No further progress will be possible when time has ended. St. Paul urges: "Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men" (Gal 6:9-10). Each passing year is a warning to treasure each present moment and to sanctify it with charity. "We must give each moment its full amount of love, and make each passing moment eternal, by giving it full value in love." (Sister Carmela of the Holy Ghost)
Charity sanctifies every action, even the most trivial and indifferent, and confers upon it a value for eternal life. In fact, "love urges us to live more intensely for Him who died for us and rose again. We strive, therefore, to please the Lord in all things…Thus when we have finished the one and only course of our earthly life, we may merit to enter into the marriage feast with Him and to be numbered among the blessed" (Dogmatic Constitution of the Church). By living in this manner we carry out the divine plan for our soul, and reach that level of love that God expects of us, and with which we shall love and glorify Him for all eternity.
We have only the short day of this earthly life to grow in love and if we wish to derive from it the greatest possible benefit we must apply ourselves not only to doing good works, but to doing them with our whole heart, and with all the generosity of which we are capable, overcoming the inertia and pettiness which always makes us inclined to the least effort. The love will grow immeasurably and we shall be able to give the Lord the beautiful witness of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus: "Your love…has grown with me and now it is an abyss, he depths of which I cannot fathom."
But what are these good works we must each accomplish? Those which are pointed out to us through the will of God; only these can sanctify. Jesus used to say: I "must work the works of Him who sent me, while it is day. Night comes when no one can work" (John 9:4). This is why He became man: "I have come to do your will, O God" (Heb 10:7); this is why He lived: "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Lk 2:49). Life has one single purpose for Jesus, one single obligation: the will of His Father, the interests of His Father, the glory of His Father.
To be one of Jesus' followers means trying to relive His conduct fully, realizing that only one thing matters: "attending to the Father's business." Instead of this, how many times our lives are dispersed in all directions and in so many useless activities, in passing things that disappear with time and only reflect the vanity of the world. Only the time that is dedicated to God and to fulfilling His Will will endure; being fixed in God makes man participate in His immutability. Then the passage of time will not cast a shadow of sadness on our lives, but rather fill our hearts with joy because it brings our eternal meeting with God the closer. Mary each passing year be a step forward toward our true home, and each day be marked with yearning for the Lord: "Come Lord Jesus." (Rev 22:20).
- Divine Intimacy by Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen O.C.D.
Salvete all!
Happy New Year to all! 2016 was quite the year, eh? I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! Just a quick life update:
1.) If all goes as planned, this should be my last semester of undergraduate studies. (AND THEN I SHALL AT LAST BE DONE!!!! HOOORAAAY!!!) I'm taking a Watercolor class, a Color Theory class, and some class about "Religions in Dialogue" or something like that to finish up my Minor requirement. We'll see how that goes. I will be very happy to be done and to have some more time to work on art.
2.) In the way of New Years Resolutions, I'm thinking I might try and read St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae this year. I don't know if I can read it all in a year, but we'll see what happens. It's definitely been on my bucket list of book(s) to read. I'd also like to actually finish William of Tyre's History of Deeds done beyond the Sea but I slowed down tremendously once I started trying to outline and take notes on the whole thing, so I'm only at the part right after they capture Antioch, which is about halfway through the first volume. Gah.
3.) Finally finished Skyrim's main quest-line after all these years. Very...anti-climactic, though by the time I finished it my character was at, like, level 60 or something. Also finished the Dawnguard DLC but not the Dragonborn one. I'm a little Skyrimed out, but I'll probably go back and finish up that expansion too.
4.) And a very happy 125th birthday to Professor J.R.R. Tolkien!
5.) My life is exciting, I know. Definitely keeping busy, though it certainly doesn't seem like it much on paper.
Pax Vobiscum!
Valete!
~Omnes ad Iesum per Mariam~
Your Sister in Christ,
* ~ Theophilia ~ *
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A glance back at 2023 and a proposal for artists
Early Snow - Vasily Polenov (1891) “There is such a thing as hunger for more than food, and that was the hunger I fed on. I was poor, my work unknown; often without meals; cold, too, in winter in my little studio on the West Side. But that was the least of it. When I talk about trouble, I am not talking about cold and hunger. There is another kind of suffering for the artist which is worse than anything a winter, or poverty, can do; it is more like a winter of the mind, in which the life of his genius, the living sap of his work, seems frozen and motionless, caught—perhaps forever—in a season of death; and who can know if spring will ever come again to set it free? It was not only that I could not sell my work—that has happened to good men, even to great men, before—but that I couldn’t seem to get through, myself, to the things that were bottled up inside me. No matter what I did, figure, landscape, still-life, it all seemed different from what I meant—from what I knew, as surely
New Year 2023
"Mother of God" (1901) - Viktor Vasnetsov "Thou art a Vineyard newly blossomed out. Tender, beautiful, planted in Eden, Aloe-scented from Paradise. God adorned thee, no one deserves praise as thou, and thou art thyself a brilliant sun." ~ Shen khar Venakhi Salvete my Friends! I hope you are all doing well and enjoyed a blessed :holly: Christmas :holly: and a lovely start to the New Year! I thought it was about time to do my (seemingly annual) journal update. I have to say, I love that we always begin the New Year under the patronage of the Mother of God. :aww: First things first, 2022 was kind of a strange year for me. Strange, because it was a year of both personal frustration and a lot of promise and potential. I'd never had artist block before, and it took me a long time to realize what it was. I always thought artist block (or any other kind of creative-block) was when the well of inspiration dried up. That didn't happen to me; in fact, quite the opposite. I found myself
AI Generated Art? Thoughts?
Théåtre D'opéra Spatial, Jason Allen (Source) So I've been seeing a number of AI-generated uploads around dA lately...has anyone else noticed an up-tick in that trend? I have to say...I find it kind of irritating and grating. I come to dA to find original artistic creations, and my feed is suddenly flooded with all of these samey-looking AI-generated images. I was noticing this for the past few weeks and kept wondering why I was seeing so much of it, and then today I happened to come across several different AI-generated articles all quite independently of each other, so I thought, "Ah heck, why not make a post about it?" I came across this article this morning about how the first graphic novel illustrated entirely by AI-generated images is being released this year. What's the text of said graphic novel? Why, C.S. Lewis' essay The Abolition of Man of course. Ironic, though I'm sure the text was chosen for that very reason. Then there's this article (that's where the picture at
2021, Epiphany and Tolkien's Birthday
The Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano (1423) "Today the Bridegroom claims His bride, the Church, since Christ has washed her sins away in Jordan's waters; the Magi hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice, for Christ has changed water into wine, alleluia." ~ Antiphon from Lauds for the Solemnity of the Epiphany Salvete All, Well, I don't know about you, but I am not terribly sad to see old 2020 go. It's definitely been a hard year, but there's also been a lot of (painful growth), and I think I can say with most everyone else, that this past year is not one we'll quickly forget. Here's hoping that 2021 is a better year for us all. The quote that best sums up my feelings for everything going on right now comes from Wilfrid Sheed: “I find absolutely no grounds for optimism, and I have every reason for hope.” I have a couple of artistic New Years Resolutions for this year. I want to do a sketch or drawing everyday in my sketchbook
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You may already be aware but, if you are going to tackle the Summa Theologica it is incredibly important to understand the terminology St. Thomas Aquinas uses. A priest I am acquainted with heartily recommends The One and the Many by Norris Clarke for getting a grasp on Thomism before diving into the Summa Theologica. Congratulations on nearing the end of your college studies I was so relieved to be done with mine. And from what I have seen on deviant art you do good work keep it up!