Long time, no post- more from Houselander

It's been a long time since I posted anything thoughtful here.  Constant full days and I think the Chaput quote at the top is partly responsible, as well: I may be thinking about on-line reading and a post but then as I open my blog page and scroll past that quote, I always know there is something else more important I should or could be doing!

Still slowly reading The Reed of God, by Caryll Houselander.  So good, especially for Advent.  She reflects on the life of the Blessed Mother with Christ, her on the "Finding in the Temple:"

...Why must we be always seeking for the lost Child?

Why must we be always feeling the pain of loss?

If we did not, we should not realise that our idols are not God, are not Christ.

Bad as they are, they match our limitations; and if they should content us, we should never know the real beauty of Christ: we should not become whole.

It is one of God's great mercies that, although our vanity and our fear and our other mean passions crave for satisfaction, when they are satisfied, we are not.  There is an essential  you, an essential me, who cannot be satisfied excepting by God: that is why the sense of loss saves us from complacency in our idols and drives us to go on seeking for the lost Child....

We know Him only by continually learning Him anew; we get away from false gods only by continually seeking Him; we hold Him only by losing Him....

...[A]fter all: "Seek and ye shall find."

His meaning is Love.