Antoine de Saint-Exupéry est mort un 31 juillet

Écrivain, poète et aviateur français né le 29 juin 1900 à Lyon, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry disparu en vol le 31 juillet 1944 au large de Marseille. Sa mémoire est célébrée solennellement à Strasbourg le 31 juillet 1945. En 1948 il est reconnu « Mort pour la France ».

Quelques citations :

 On est frère en quelque chose et non frère tout court. Le partage n’assure pas la fraternité. Elle se noue dans le seul sacrifice. Elle se noue dans le don commun à plus vaste que soi. 

         Pilote de guerre (1942)

 

Je préfère que l’on vende cent exemplaires d’un livre dont je ne rougis pas, que six millions d’exemplaires d’un navet. C’est de l’égoïsme bien compris, parce que les cent exemplaires auront autrement de pouvoir que les six millions. 
                 Écrits de guerre (1939-1944)

 

Je ne puis rien acheter avec de l’argent qui vaille plus cher que le plaisir d’avoir dit ce que je voulais dire. 
              Écrits de guerre (1939-1944)

 

Le temps qui étale, c’est le temps de l’historien. Celui qui ajoute, c’est le temps de la vie. Et rien de commun entre les deux, mais on doit pouvoir user de l’un comme de l’autre. 
               Les carnets (Publié en 1953)

 

Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé. 

                 Le petit prince (1943)

 

L’éducation passe avant l’instruction, elle fonde l’homme. 

        Les carnets (1953)

 

La vie crée l’ordre, mais l’ordre ne crée pas la vie. 
            Lettre à un otage (1944)

 

Les échecs fortifient les forts. 
        Vol de nuit (1931)

 

Fais de ta vie un rêve, et d’un rêve une réalité. 
               Cahiers 

 

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple : on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. 
            Le petit prince (1943)

 

 

 Je suis de mon enfance comme d’un pays. 
           Terre des hommes (1939)

 

Être un homme, c’est sentir, en posant sa pierre, que l’on contribue à bâtir le monde. 
             Terre des hommes (1939)

 

On est récompensé par un sourire, on est animé par un sourire. 
                Lettre à un otage (1944)

 

On risque de pleurer un peu si l’on s’est laissé apprivoiser. 
       Le petit prince (1943)

Prière de saint Ignace, fêté aujourd’hui

Anima Christi, sanctifica me.

Corpus Christi, salva me.

Sanguis Christi, inebria me.

Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.

Passio Christi, conforta me.

O bone Jesu, exaudi me.

Intra tua vulnera absconde me.

Ne permittas me separari a te.

Ab hoste maligno defende me.

In hora mortis meae voca me.

Et iube me venire ad te,

Ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te. In saecula saeculorum. Amen

Sufletul lui Cristos, sfinţeşte-mă 

Trupul lui Cristos, mântuieşte-mă.
Sângele lui Cristos, aprinde-mă de dragoste.
Apa coastei lui Cristos, spală-mă.
Patima lui Cristos, întăreşte-mă.
O, bune Isuse, ascultă-mă.
În rănile tale ascunde-mă.
Nu lăsa să mă despart de tine.
De vrăjmaşul cel rău apără-mă.
În ceasul morţii mele cheamă-mă.
Şi porunceşte-mi ca să vin la tine,
Ca să te laud cu sfinţii tăi.
În vecii vecilor. Amin.

 

Il est né au Pays basque, à Loiola

Le Sanctuaire de Loyola, situé dans le quartier de Loiola à Azpeitia, est un complexe monumental de style baroque churrigueresque (xvii^e et xviii^e siècles) construit autour et englobant le manoir natal de saint Ignace de Loyola. La « casa santa » et l’église, élevée au rang de basilique mineure en 1921, forment ensemble le sanctuaire de Loyola.

 

En mémoire de saint Ignace, un peu d’information basique

Wikipedia

Ignace de Loyola est né en 1491. Il a passé son enfance dans une maison-tour anciennement fortifiée (fin du xiv^e siècle) au bord de la rivière Urola, au hameau de Loiola (Loyola), à la sortie d’Azpeitia sur la route d’Azkoitia. C’est également dans cette maison que, en convalescence après avoir été blessé en défendant la ville de Pampelune contre les Français (15 mai 1521), il se met à lire des vies de saints (faute de trouver d’autres lectures…) qui le conduisent à une conversion spirituelle profonde et un changement radical de vie (1521).

Ignace blessé, ramené chez lui (statue à l’entrée du manoir)

Il fait une dernière visite à Loyola – sans accepter de loger dans la maison familiale – pour y régler des affaires de famille et d’héritage personnel après avoir fait vœu de pauvreté (avril 1535). Venant de Paris, où il avait terminé ses études, il préfère être hébergé à l’hôpital de la Madeleine, à l’autre extrémité de la ville d’Azpeitia, pour y rendre service aux malades et y donner le catéchisme. Ignace reste trois mois à Azpeitia avant de repartir pour Venise où il recevra l’ordination sacerdotale.

All in All

By R. Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation, for Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Mysticism is not all ecstatic visions. People who have endured great suffering and let it open them to a new consciousness or perspective are often mystics. They discover that they are always sustained by Love’s presence. James Finley has a beautiful image for this unceasing support: Imagine, if at the count of three, God would stop loving you into your chair; at the count of three, your chair would be empty. Moment by moment you are loved, chosen, invited into being. So lived Sojourner Truth.

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883)—an abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights—was born “Isabella” to an enslaved couple in New York. When she was nine, Isabella was sold to another slave-holder that brutally beat her. Joy Bostic describes how Isabella’s mother taught her children strategies to survive “within the oppressive system of slavery. Mau-Mau Bett would sit with her children during the evening under the stars and teach them how to call upon God to help them in times of crisis.” [1]

Isabella gradually came to know God as what I might call “the eternal now,” beyond human comprehension. God is only known by loving and experiencing God. Sojourner Truth wrote of her own mystical encounters with God in the third person:

As soon as Isabella saw God as an all-powerful, all-pervading spirit, she became desirous of hearing all that had been written of him, and listened to the account of the creation of the world . . . with peculiar interest. For some time she received it all literally, though it appeared strange to her that ‘God worked by the day, got tired, and stopped to rest,’ . . . after a little time, she began to reason upon it, thus—‘Why, if God works by the day, and one day’s work tires him, and he is obliged to rest, either from weariness or on account of darkness, or if he waited for the “cool of the day to walk in the garden,” because he was inconvenienced by the heat of the sun, why then it seems that God cannot do as much as I can. . . . If I had been God, I would have made the night light enough for my own convenience, surely.’

But the moment she placed this idea of God by the side of the impression she had once so suddenly received of his inconceivable greatness and entire spirituality, that moment she exclaimed mentally, ‘No, God does not stop to rest, for he is a spirit, and cannot tire; he cannot want for light, for he hath all light in himself. And if “God is all in all,” and “worketh all in all,” as I have heard them read, then it is impossible he should rest at all; for if he did, every other thing would stop and rest too; the waters would not flow, and the fishes could not swim; and all motion must cease. God could have no pauses in his work, and he needed no Sabbaths of rest. Man might need them, and he should take them when he needed them. . . . As it regarded the worship of God, he was to be worshipped at all times and in all places; and one portion of time never seemed to her more holy than another.’

Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.

[1] Joy Bostic, African American Female Mysticism: Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism (Palgrave Macmillan: 2013), 70.

Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Digireads.com Publishing: 2018), 64-65.

Benjamin Fundoianu, ”Ruga simplă” — catalinafrancoblog

Benjamin Fundoianu, ”Ruga simplă” O, ploaia primăverii care-a căzut din timp! lasă să-mi spăl în tine picioarele desculţe, lasă să-mi spăl în tine sufletul meu desculţ! O, ploaia răcoroasă care-a căzut din timp! am întâlnit-o-n drumuri, oblică, pe moşie, cu stropii grei de soare ca boabele din spicuri. Oameni — sau poate-amurgul — în linişte […]

via Benjamin Fundoianu, ”Ruga simplă” — catalinafrancoblog

Pardonner le manque de pardon

Cellule dans le monastère de San Marco, Florence ; fresque de Fra Angelico

 

Pardonner le manque de pardon

Nous sommes toujours dans ce discours sur l’Église. Seul Matthieu nous rapporte cette parabole.  À l’époque de Jésus, une coutume religieuse recommandait de ne pas pardonner au-delà de trois fois à un même individu. Nous connaissons le caractère impulsif et généreux de Pierre, mais il compte encore, en allant jusqu’à sept fois ! Chiffre symbolique. Offenser quelqu’un revient à contracter une dette envers lui.  Lorsque le pardon est refusé, la dette reste, des liens d’asservissement sont maintenus. Jésus, en répondant à Pierre « soixante-dix fois sept fois », est dans la démesure, celle du pardon illimité.  L’expression renvoie au livre de la Genèse*. Lémek était un descendant de Caïn. Dieu avait promis à Caïn que si quelqu’un le tuait, il serait vengé sept fois. Dans un chant de vengeance, Lémek décrète : « Si Caïn doit être vengé sept fois, Lémek le sera soixante-dix fois sept fois ! »   Aujourd’hui, nous faisons appel très facilement à la justice pour régler nos conflits, ripostant à coup d’actions répressives. Sans nier notre droit d’ester en justice et de réclamer réparation, Jésus nous invite à renoncer au droit de se venger. Accepter notre ressentiment pour le dépasser nécessitera du temps. La grâce de Dieu nous y aidera. Entendez-vous en écho les paroles du Notre Père : « Pardonne-nous nos offenses comme nous pardonnons à ceux qui nous ont offensés. » ?  * Livre de la Genèse ch 4, v 23.24. Méditation d’une dominicaine, Sr Sandrine Letrou https://matthieu.retraitedanslaville.org/jusqursquoougrave-pardonner

A Simple Prayer

De pe Facebook, „Contemplative Monk”

 

On this last Sunday of July, I would love to give you the gift of a simple breath prayer using the name of Jesus. ~ Enjoy ~

A Simple Breath Prayer.

Light a candle, play some soft music, say a meaningful prayer, recite a Psalm like the 23rd, The Lord’s Prayer, or whatever settles your heart into devotion. 
The monastics call this ‘entering the cave of our heart’.
The Franciscan’s sometimes pray with their head lower than their heart to remind us that our heart leads in approaching the Eternal.

A Breath Prayer is simply a way to drop our linear mind, so we may enter our spirit through our breath.

Take three deep breaths and slowly center yourself in your heart at the threshold.

As breath is spirit, 
Breathe in this moment… 
Let the stillness soak into your being. 
Breathe in forgiveness, and breathe out releasing forgiveness.
Breathe in faith, and breathe out gratitude.
Breathe in silently saying ‘Jes’, 
and breathe out silently saying ‘us’
Settle into this breathing rhythm.

Enter into your rest prepared for you,
In Christ’s finished work.
Close your eyes or let them rest gently focused a few feet in front of you, as you breathe naturally.
Allow the warmth of a soft smile
to lighten your face.

Breathe… embracing belonging, releasing gratitude, 
Focusing on the presence of Jesus.
Embracing and letting go
Letting go and letting God,
Letting go like a trust fall into the arms of God
Breathe in the winds of heaven.
Allow yourself to feel well, and whole in these eternal arms.
Feeling Beloved
Feeling joy in God’s presence.
Free from suffering and harm,
Free and whole.

Take your time, 
and savor,, 
soak in the presence of God.

May you have grace, peace and every good,
Bob Holmes #awakeninggrace

 

„Pâinea ceruta pentru fratele meu e un fapt spiritual” (Berdiaev)

 

A ne ruga nu înseamnă a spune rugăciuni și nici a cere lucruri. A ne ruga înseamnă a evoca chipuri, iar chipul chipurilor este cel al Tatălui. Isus nu se ruga pentru a obține ceva, ci pentru a ieși transformat din întâlnire.

A ne ruga înseamnă a ne realipi de Dumnezeu, așa cum lipim gura de izvor; înseamnă a-i spune lui Dumnezeu tată, a-l vedea ca pe un tătic îndrăgostit de fiii săi și nu ca pe un domn sau rege sau judecător.

Înseamnă a-l chema alături nu pe Dumnezeul care se impune, ci pe acela care cunoaște îmbrățișarea; pe Dumnezeul afectuos, apropiat, călduros, căruia să-i cerem puținele lucruri indispensabile pentru a trăi bine. Și să le cerem ca frați, uitând cuvintele „eu” și „al meu”, pentru că sunt în afara gramaticii lui Dumnezeu. În afară Tatălui Nostru, unde niciodată nu se spune „eu”, niciodată „al meu”, ci întotdeauna Tu, al tău și al nostru. Cuvinte care în rugăciune stau acolo asemenea brațelor deschise: Numele tău, pâinea noastră, Tu dăruiește, Tu iartă.

Primul lucru care trebuie cerut: ca „numele Tău să fie sfințit”. În limbajul biblic numele conține întreaga persoană: e ca și cum i-am cere lui Dumnezeu pe Dumnezeu, a cere ca Dumnezeu să ni-l dăruiască pe Dumnezeu. Iar numele lui Dumnezeu este iubire: ca iubirea să fie sfințită pe pământ, de către toți. Dacă există ceva sfânt, ceva etern în noi, este capacitatea noastră de a iubi și de a fi iubiți.

„Să vină împărăția ta”, să se nască noul pământ așa cum îl visezi tu, noua arhitectură a lumii și a relațiilor umane pe care Evanghelia le-a semănat.

„Dă-ne pâinea noastră zilnică”. Tatăl Nostru îmi interzice să cer doar pentru mine: „pâinea pentru mine este un fapt material, pâinea cerută pentru fratele meu este un fapt spiritual” (Nikolai Berdiaev). Dăruiește-ne tuturor ceea ce ne face să trăim, pâinea și iubirea, ambele indispensabile pentru viața deplină, ambele necesare zi de zi.

„Și iartă-ne păcatele”, înlătură tot ceea ce îmbătrânește inima și o închide; dăruiește-ne puterea de a ne îndrepta în fiecare dimineață spre ținuturi neatinse. Eliberează viitorul, iar noi, care vom cunoaște astfel cum potențează iertarea viața, îl vom dărui fraților noștri și nouă înșine, pentru a redeveni lejeri și a clădi din nou pacea.

„Nu ne abandona în ispită”. Nu îți cerem să fim scutiți de încercări, ci să nu fim lăsați singuri să luptăm împotriva răului. Și din neîncredere și din frică scoate-ne afară; și din orice rană sau cădere ridică-ne tu, bun Samaritean al vieților noastre.

Tatăl Nostru nu trebuie doar recitat, ci trebuie învățat în fiecare zi din nou pe genunchii vieții: în mângâierile bucuriei, în zgârieturile spinilor, în foametea fraților. Trebuie să ne fie foame de viață foarte tare ca să ne putem ruga bine.

Foame de Dumnezeu, pentru că în rugăciune nu obțin lucruri, ci îl obțin pe Dumnezeu însuși. Un Dumnezeu care nu domină, ci se implică, care își împletește respirația cu a mea, care își amestecă lacrimile sale cu ale mele, care cere doar să-mi fie prieten. Și nu-mi puteam dori o aventură mai bună. (Luca 11)

Pr. Ermes Maria Ronchi, OSM

Sursa: https://curajulcredintei.com/2019/07/28/invata-ne-sa-ne-rugam-acum/

Cu gândul la cei care suferă… — Prea târziu te-am iubit…

Cu gândul la cei care suferă… Toți ne regăsim în această melodie, într-o parte sau alta… Cu speranța zilelor mai bune, privind la „copiii” care știu să pună totul în comun și să ofere cu generozitate! Ce bine că acele cinci pâini și doi peștișori erau la un copil. Dacă ar fi fost la un […]

via Cu gândul la cei care suferă… — Prea târziu te-am iubit…

On Self Respect

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”

BY MARIA POPOVA, Brainpickings

For the past half-century, Joan Didion (b. December 5, 1934) has been dissecting the complexities of cultural chaos with equal parts elegant anxiety, keen criticism, and moral imagination.

From her 1968 essay anthology Slouching Towards Bethlehem comes “On Self Respect” — a magnificent meditation on what it means to live well in one’s soul, touching on previously explored inadequate externalities like prestige, approval, and conventions of success.

Joan Didion with her typewriter in Brentwood, 1988 (Photograph: Nancy Ellison)

Didion writes:

The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others — who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.

To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. 

To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.

[…]

Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.

Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.

[…]

Self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.

[…]

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.

If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notion of us.

We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meting the next demand made upon us.

It is the phenomenon sometimes called ‘alienation from self.’ In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Portrait of Joan Didion by Lisa Congdon