Devotional Reading - Dr. James Houston

on Devotional Reading by Dr. James Houston 

(Fr. the Book~St. Teresa of Avila edited by J. Houston)

"In Christ we also discover that it is not God's personhood that is vague and intangible. It is our own personalities that are incoherent, bitty and inadequate."


Awakening...

"...we find that life consists of a number of progressive awakenings. When we first study seriously, we are excited by the awakening of our mind's activity to reasoning and understanding in our world. We awaken again in the experience of taking responsibility for our lives when we have to be decisive about major acts or decisions. We awaken also when we are acted upon suffering. For pain is a great awakener to realities that had previously slumbered in our lives. But it is the awakening to the love of God that transcends all other forms of human consciousness"

Today we are in grave danger of politicizing our faith, organizing it to death, and making it a cold ideology. We need once more to stand still and to see God. Then we shall begin to live again more like a child of God than like an entrepreneur before men.

Deep emotions will be reopened.
Memories will begin to be healed.
The imagination will be redirected.
And whole new possibilities will open out of dead-end streets.
Hope will succeed despair
Friendship will replace alienation

For we wake up one morning and discover we really are free to fall in love with God

He quoted from a medieval scholar monk ~(on the fourfould meaning of the Scriptures)


"The letter (Scripture) shows us what God and our fathers did;
The allegory shows us where faith is hid;
The moral meaning gives us rules of daily life; The analogy shows us where we end our strife."


So open the windows of your soul in meditative reading...as Paul prays,
"exceeding abundantly, above all that we can ask or think."

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"tolle, lege" ("take up and read")

"Everyone knows the great influence that is exerted by the voice of a friend who gives candid advice, assists by his counsel, corrects, encourages and leads one away from error. Blessed is the man who has found a true friend; he that has found him has found a treasure. We should, then, count pious books among our true friends. They solemnly remind us of our duties and of the prescriptions of legitimate discipline; they arouse the heavenly voices that were stifled in our souls; they rid our resolutions of listlessness; they disturb our deceitful complacency; they show the true nature of less worthy affections to which we have sought to close our eyes; they bring to light the many dangers which beset the path of the imprudent. They render all these services with such kindly discretion that they prove themselves to be not only our friends, but the very best of friends. They are always at hand, constantly beside us to assist us in the needs of our souls; their voice is never harsh, their advice is never self-seeking, their words are never timid or deceitful."

~ Pius X

"I took (the epistles of Paul the Apostle), I opened, I read in silence; it was as though the darkness of all my doubting was driven away by the light of peace which had entered my soul."

~St. Augustine of Hippo