Feb 21 2023 11 mins 12
SM1 – Begin with Desire – Season of Mercy: Lent and Easter by Servant of God Catherine Doherty
An excerpt from Season of Mercy: Lent and Easter:
Begin with Desire
“In Lent we approach a threshold where this preaching will make way for pain and surrender. We approach a reality that he has enunciated to us and that we usually take lightly: “Greater love has no man than he lays down his life for his brother.” We are going to enter the moment in which our brother Jesus Christ has laid down his life for you and me, and every human being who has ever lived in this world—for he is brother to everyone.
Each one of us can enter into his own heart and look for that desire for God. It might be a little flame barely visible, or it might already be a bonfire in us. Be that as it may, we are going to see how God loved us. This is what Lent is all about. Like Zaccheus (Luke 19: 1-10) we are going to climb a big tree of faith so as to watch that no word of those last weeks of Christ’s life passes in one ear and out the other. His every act, his every word, must be enclosed in our desire, for if we are to fulfill our desire to see him when the door of death opens (and even before, for the Kingdom of God begins now) we have to imitate him whom we are going to look at.”
Doherty, Catherine. Season of Mercy: Lent and Easter (Seasonal Customs Vol. 2) (pp. 3-4). Madonna House Publications. Kindle Edition.
Catherine Doherty was born into an aristocratic family in Russia in 1896, and baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. Because of her father’s work, she grew up in Ukraine, Egypt, and Paris. Many different strands of Christianity were woven into the spiritual fabric of her family background, but it was from the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the living faith of her father and mother, and the earthy piety of the Russian people themselves that Catherine received the powerful spiritual traditions and symbols of the Christian East. Catherine fled to England during the Russian Revolution, and was received into the Catholic Church in 1919. The cause for her canonization has been officially opened in the Catholic Church. More information about Catherine’s life, works, and the progress of her cause can be found at: www.catherinedoherty.org and www.madonnahouse.org.
Discerning Hearts is grateful to Madonna House Publications whose permission was obtained to record these audio selections from this published work.
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