yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life (jn. 5.40)

sicut cervus

Tomorrow, the Psalm at mass is Psalm 42: "As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God." Here is what Augustine says:

“It [the deer] destroys serpents, and after the killing of serpents, it is inflamed with thirst yet more violent; having destroyed serpents, it runs to the water-brooks, with thirst more keen than before. The serpents are thy vices; destroy the serpents of iniquity, then wilt thou long yet more for the Fountain of Truth.”

Verse 2: "My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?"

Verse 3: "My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long they say to me, 'Where now is your God?'"

Verse 3 is reminiscent of Ecclesiasticus: "[Wisdom] will feed him with the bread of understanding, and give him the water of wisdom to drink."

So penance is the route to wisdom. Therefore "My tears have been my food day and night" etc.

St. Bonaventure considers the vindication of the wise and penitent soul: "What would I not give to behold the multitude, composed not only of victors from among every tribe of men, but of Angels, of Archangels, of every dignity of the celestial hierarchy? Of these I may speak: of these I can perchance think: but of the King Who is in the midst of them, -- but of the Lamb That liveth, and yet hath, as it were, been slain, what voice of man can say a single word, what heart of man can think a single thought? My soul is athirst for that city which is the dwelling-place of all Angels, all Saints: where eternal salvation abounds as from an overflowing fountain; where truth reigns, where none deceives or is deceived, where nothing that is beautiful can be ejected, where nothing that is wretched can be admitted.”

Amen; I say. Amen.

a life without division

More from A Simple House. Read more. Or read it all.

To live a life without division entails that there is no ‘going home’ or ‘getting off work.’ Although it is helpful to have specific times reserved for prayer, we are also told to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). In the same way, there may be certain events related to evangelization, but we should also constantly evangelize. A Simple House is trying to live ministry and Christianity.

Pope Benedict XVI points out:

For what faith really states is precisely that with Jesus it is not possible to distinguish office and person; with him, this differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office, the office is the person. Here there is no private area reserved for an “I” which remains in the background behind the deeds and actions and thus at some time or other can be “off duty”; here there is no “I” separate from the work; the “I” is the work and the work is the “I”.

And precisely because this being, as a totality, is nothing but service, it is sonship. To that extent it is not until this point that the Christian revaluation of values reaches its final goal; only here does it become fully clear that he who surrenders himself completely to service for others, to complete selflessness and self-emptying, clearly becomes these things – that this very person is the true man, the man of the future, the commixture of man and God.

Jesus calls us to an adopted sonship when he says, ‘whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother’ (Matthew 12:50). A Simple House is an attempt to pursue sonship through complete service.

how would jesus live?

Awesome. Read it all.

At Simple House, as at other Christian intentional communities, the answer demands devotion and sacrifice. None of the missionaries at Simple House has an outside job. Laura earns just $200 a month to minister to about two dozen families in Southeast, doing everything from delivering food to helping a couple deal with their daughter's suicide attempt. She and her housemates have taken vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. They pray every morning and evening and attend Mass daily. In their rowhouse on T Street NW, they have no TV. No Internet. No alcohol inside the house. And no sex. Ever. What the young women lack in amenities, they make up for in sightings of rats and roaches.This is what it looks like to reject careerism and affluence in pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. This is what it looks like to become a modern-day radical.