Hosea XV

Who Whispered to Eve? Who Whispers to You?

February 15, 2025

Like the Rock in Horeb

February 13, 2025

Poems

Hearts and the Holiness of Humility

February 11, 2025

St. Edith Stein (Sister Benedicta of the Cross) at Vatican News Service.

Prayers

Prayer of St. Edith Stein

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

Prayer

O Prince of Peace, to all who receive You, You bright light and peace. Help me to live in daily contact with You, listening to the words You have spoken and obeying them. O Divine Child, I place my hands in Yours; I shall follow You. Oh, let Your divine life flow into me.

I will go unto the altar of God. It is not myself and my tiny little affairs that matter here, but the great sacrifice of atonement. I surrender myself entirely to Your divine will, O Lord. Make my heart grow greater and wider, out of itself into the Divine Life.

O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will open before me and I shall met with peace.

How wondrous are the marvels of your love, We are amazed, we stammer and grow dumb, for word and spirit fail us.

Prayer for Hosea XV

July 5, 2024

Prayers

The Best Penance – St. Peter Damian

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

“The best penance is to have patience with the sorrows God permits. A very good penance is to dedicate oneself to fulfill the duties of everyday with exactitude and to study and work with all our strength.”

“I scourge both flesh and spirit because I know that I have offended in both flesh and spirit.”

“Do not be depressed. Do not let your weakness make you impatient. Instead, let the serenity of your spirit shine through your face. Let the joy of your mind burst forth.”

St. Peter Damian

Covered or Filled by the Blood of Christ?

How the Saints Endured Loneliness

Like the Rock in Horeb

February 13, 2025

Poems

An abandoned hunger

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

Loneliness — Photo by Conrados on Freeimages.com

An abandoned hunger
The need to belong
Growls in its grave
Deep within.

Yet empty the tomb of
Echoes of spirit
The voice of the word
Is hushed at the door.

With scream of a beast
Plead to the darkness
Ebony emptiness scornful.

Loneliness overwhelmed
Choking on nothingness
Breathe but do not live.

But he will hear.
He will hear.
Know he will.

He will knock and
Hunger abandon.

Many saints experienced loneliness. Sometimes this loneliness even included feeling abandoned by God.

For those willing to seek further, The Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross, may be a next step.

Summary of The Dark Night of the Soul.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022623.cfm

Who Whispered to Eve? Who Whispers to You?

Posted on February 15, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

Who whispers to you? It must be someone to whom you are especially close, since physical closeness is required. Anything less would usually be described as my granddaughter would, “That’s creepy!”

The one who whispers to you is the one who loves you. Brides and grooms whisper their shared hope and joy as the reception whirls around them. Husbands and wives murmur to each other of their dreams coming and going. Parents speak softly with their children when it’s quiet enough to do so. The long, long married whisper as they share their memories, the ones that were always sweet and those which sweetened with time. We whisper near our dead beloved, for the formal love that is reverence, and a motherly and fatherly love for a newborn.

You know, though, it isn’t a good thing when you whisper about someone, or they whisper about you. The Bible is filled with warnings about that.

God whispers to you.

What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim on the housetops. –Matthew 10:27

Who whispered to Eve long before housetops?

It was the creature which is always depicted as having a whisper for a voice. But his whispers are never spoken in light. They never carry words of love unless they suggest that to love yourself is the greatest love of all. That’s how he feels, and he fell from Heaven because of it. When he whispers in your ear, it’s not really for you to hear. You are nothing to him. Rather, through your ears the Devil whispers to God His Creator, as the liar and coward he was since the beginning.

And when their eyes are opened, Death is all around. Death enters the world on a whisper.

Jesus went into the desert, which had once been a garden. Satan whispered into his ear as well, but now he faced the New Adam, the Son of God.

The word of God provides me with everything. I have no need of stony bread or forbidden fruit. I do not fear death. If I don’t yet understand it, I trust that He knows for me. I need nothing you say you can give me. I need to serve Him who made all and to whom all belongs.

Then Jesus dismissed him as someone who is nothing. “Get away from me, Satan!” He introduced the Devil to the Serpent inside, and the liar and coward from the beginning ran away.

Many consider Satan to be the greatest of evil geniuses. But he is a simpleton. What else could explain the psyche of an angel thinking he could depose his Creator? But his lack of creativity and sanity has served him well.

Every diabolical temptation follows the same script.

“What do you have?”
“What do you want?”
“What would you like to do?”
“Then go ahead!”
“Nothing bad will happen to you.”

And then on a whisper, Death enters the world.

Jesus tells those who refuse to believe him:

Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot hear my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. — John 8:43-44

Covered or Filled by the Blood of Christ?

Hearts and the Holiness of Humility

February 11, 2025

God is love - St. Charbel Maklouf

February 6, 2025

The Rock of Horeb: Exploring its History and Significance

Poems

Like the Rock in Horeb

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

I am like the Rock in Horeb,
an island in the gray sea
of the wasteland of Sin;
unmoving, unhidden,
stubborn to the stars.
Strike me, break me open
at the dry fractures
where spiders spin lace
around dry husks,
and the whirling grain of sand
births no pearl.
Let life flow from the fissures,
washing me clean of Amalek
until I am like a pebble
shining in the sparkling garden stream,
dancing though still
through shadow in light.

You are like the Rock in Horeb,
an island in the sea of sin;
the source I seek
as I die in the desert,
stubborn to the stars.

Covered or Filled by the Blood of Christ?

The Best Penance - St. Peter Damian

February 19, 2025

Reflections

With My Pockets Full of Olives

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

I was walking to The University, taking the long way for the wonderful views of endless pastures, and fresh woods. Soon, a growling in my belly distracted me enough to remember that I hadn’t packed a lunch. I kept walking down the road, hoping to find something to eat along the way.

Eventually, I came to a place of stony ground higher than the land around it, with the road winding among large, gray rocks the size of houses. Here, amid the boulders, I found an olive tree, ancient and alone, whose aroma sweetly blessed the breeze in that rugged place. Sitting under the tree was an old man dressed like a Baptist, leaning against the gnarled trunk and watching me with an amused smile in his eyes and on his lips.

“Can you tell me where I might find something to eat?” I asked him. “I am traveling to The University, and I forgot to pack my lunch.”

The old man whispered something I missed, and when I didn’t answer, he chuckled. He looked up into the olive tree for a few moments. Then he intentionally bumped the back of his head with some force against its trunk. A shower of ripe olives came down and, before they finished falling, I gathered up a few. But with a gesture, the old man insisted that I gather up all I could find. So after several minutes, and with stuffed pockets and a nod from him, I set off down the road.

Taking one olive out of my pocket, I wondered how to eat it. It was so beautiful, oval and deep green, and smelled wonderful, like the memory of my grandparents. But I was used to olives in jars and cans. It was just too difficult to decide how to eat it, and the olive was just too beautiful to let go.

So with my growling belly I continued down the road to The University, with my pockets full of olives, to a sparkling stream from which, without a cup, I found it impossible to drink.

Articles/Reflections

Hearts and the Holiness of Humility

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

You can’t help but feel smothered by hearts these days. Red hearts, pink hearts, fuzzy hearts, marble hearts. Hearts in silver, gold, and jewels. Hearts on clothing, cards, and commercials. Of course, none of them look like the real thing, and I suppose we can be grateful for that.

Yet, despite its stylized omnipresence, and its seeming omnipotence as a marketing tool, we all know deep inside our own just how fragile and ephemeral a thing it really is. How often do we wish we could have a heart of stone that could bear with the trials and sufferings we face in our world and our lives? I know that I have sometimes prayed that God would carve a stone heart for me.

It takes an real act of humility to admit that I already have a heart of stone, and that it is not a good thing.

A namesake of the Archangel Michael, whose name means “Who is like God,” once described how a particular piece of marble already contained the form that he would merely uncover with his mallet and chisels. It’s mind boggling to imagine how Michelangelo, through the pounding of metal on stone, could reveal the liquid smoothness of David’s tense muscles or the tenderness in the peaceful face of Mary holding the body of her Son. If a man can accomplish such wonders, what can God do?

God can do so much more, of course, and He is doing it. It’s the very pounding of God’s mallet against which we struggle, praying for a heart of stone, rather than opening our eyes to the wonder He is working in us through what we selfishly see as the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from which we so desperately try to escape.

It is God who sees the form we are to take, who knows the heart we are to have.

He knows we already carry stony hearts, and he chips and pounds them to reveal what is within. But He doesn’t carve to make us a heart, like Michelangelo made us a Pietá, by releasing it from the stone. No, God whittles until His material gives in to His will, and allows itself to be carved into dust. This is the cracking of pride. This is the dust of humility. It is in that empty space, if we allow Him to make it, that He puts His own Sacred Heart; one not made, but eternally His and forever to be ours. The heart that loves because it is Love.

This is why Saint Francis called his suffering “perfect joy.” This is why the saints endured their trials smiling. This is why death itself is the door to eternal life. This is what Jesus came to show us, to pour out for us, and to give us.

So, God, in this time of valentines give me the real thing. Carve it from the Rock that is You. And to make room for it, in this time and place of man-made hearts, please take my own stony heart, Lord, and break it.

Covered or Filled by the Blood of Christ?

Who Whispered to Eve? Who Whispers to You?

February 15, 2025

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

February 9, 2025

God is love - St. Charbel Maklouf

February 6, 2025

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-5-launch-super-heavy-booster-catch-success-video

Articles/Reflections

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Mauro Bruno / 0 Comment

Watching the SpaceX rockets returning to earth vertically, accurately, and so gently into the arms of their launch tower is like witnessing a science fiction dream come true. I think I was about five years old when I decided, “I want to be an astronaut when I grow up.”

Within a few years and the first Moon landing, that desire had solidified. There was nothing I wanted more. My walls were covered with NASA photos. My shelves were filled with books about space travel. In my mind, I saw the world through a space suit helmet’s visor. My heart thrilled at the thought of riding that pillar of fire and smoke to other worlds and to come back to tell about it.

Like the pillar of smoke that chases the rocket into space, my dreams of being an astronaut faded into the blue sky so gradually that I can’t tell you when it was finally gone. The fire turned to mist, the passion cooled to indecision, the sureness dissipated into uncertainty. In my surest moments since, there has always been at least a shadow of a doubt, and I recognize it as yet another consequence of original sin. To paraphrase Saint Paul, the confidence I would have, I have not; the doubt I would avoid, I have.

As “grown ups,” our lack of clarity and certainty is what makes the world such a cloudy, unpredictable place. A place of the uncertain speech of diplomacy.

Clarity is a thing for the very young.

For children, every day is cloudless, everything is possible. Doubt has no place in the child’s heart. And, inasmuch as we return to childhood when we grow old, clarity is also for the aged and wise. Every day is valued, what will be will be. True words are a trumpet blast, and doubt itself fades from a crippling whisper to an inconsequential breeze.

Like everyone, as I have gotten older my body has given me even less reason to be confident.

Circumstance and experience teach that one of the few things that is certain is uncertainty itself. But these lessons are to be a blessing since, having more reason to doubt what we can do, we may turn to the grace that allows us to see what God can do, and wants to do, and will do, even with us.

And what is that? It is certainly not a thing He hides. In scripture, it is in the beginning, in the law, in the psalms and stories. It is in Jesus’ first words, “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15) and in his last words, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” and in every word in between.

It’s in the Church’s liturgy, which doesn’t tell us what to do, but what we should be, and names example after example. It is in our history, in the life of the Church shown in the lives of the saints. And when the day comes that we stop doubting, we follow the pillar of fire and smoke to the heavens through a wilderness of sky.

When we put aside the fear of becoming what we are to be, we break through the clouds and return home to tell the tale, with all the confidence of prophets and sages, and all the certainty of children of the heavenly Father. Because one day we had decided, “When I grow up I want to be a saint.”

Hearts and the Holiness of Humility

February 11, 2025

God is love - St. Charbel Maklouf

February 6, 2025