If Catholic bloggers complain about their awards now, one can only imagine what it's gonna be like at the General Judgement. Sheesh, hope St. Peter's got big ear plugs. And, one is afraid to imagine what kind of witness they are providing in the mean time; mean being the byword.I see some people who are having fun with the Catholic Blog Awards ... and some who aren't, which is a crying shame considering that we are all Catholic. Perhaps these awards are good on a second level as a annual litmus test for our own humility.
If we want to build up our Christian life we must have a great desire of developing in ourselves the virtue of humility, pleading with Our Lord for it and facing up to our subterfuges and failings in this area while trying by our actions to root our self-love. Humility produces countless fruits and is linked with all the other virtues. It is associated in a special way with cheerfulness, fortitude, chastity, sincerity, simplicity, affability, and magnamity. A humble person has a special gift for friendship and, because of this, for being apostolic. Without humility there is no chance of living a life full of charity, the theological virtue prerequisite for being an apostle and a friend.Guilty as charged.
To become more humble, we have to be ready to accept the humiliation of finding victory elusive in our struggle to conquer our defects, and of being reminded of our weaknesses day by day. Often when we examine our conscience, especially on those occasions when we can do it more thoroughly, we can ask questions like these: have I managed to offer Our Lord in expiation the very sorrow I feel for having offended him so many times? Have I offered him the shame of all my inner embarrassment and humiliation at seeing how little progress I make along the path of virtue? (J. Escriva, The Forge) Then there are the humiliations inflicted on us by others — the ones we were not expecting or the ones that seem unfair or downright unjust. Do we bear these well for Our Lord's sake?
If we are searching for the firm rock of Our Lord's own humility in order to build on it, we are bound to find countless opportunities every day. We can try talking about ourselves only when it is really necessary — and not so much even then. We can be grateful for the little good turns people do for us. Keeping in mind that we deserve nothing, we can thank God for the countless benefits we receive. We can decide to make the world a more pleasant place for those who come in contact with us throughout the day. And what about those useless thoughts that revolve around ourselves? They can be cut off at the start. We should not miss any chance of lending a hand at home with the family, or at work, or anywhere else we may be. Instead of trying to be too independent we can allow ourselves to be helped, or we can ask for advice. If we are very sincere with ourselves we shall ask Our Lord to stop us finding excuses to explain away our sins and failings, those things that humiliate us and for which we sometimes have to ask other people's forgiveness. All of this is done with God's help and with the help of spiritual direction, which is only another way of coming into contact with him.
Fixing our gaze on Christ, we can have enough humility to admit our mistakes and set about putting them right...
Jake walks into a store, picks up an object and says, "How much is 1?" The clerk says $1.00. Jakes says, "Okay, here's $3.00. I'll take 111."
What is he buying?
There were no major divisions among Christianity until AD 1054, when the Orthodox and Catholic Churches parted company. Until then, for a thousand years there had been one Christian church, with the bishop of Rome (also known as the pope) as patriarch of the West and the other bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and finally Constantinople as fellow partiarchs of the East. The schism between the (Greek) Orthodox and the (Roman) Catholics later subdivided into the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches in the East (AD 1448) and the Catholic and the Protestant churches in the West (since the Reformation in AD 1517). Before the schism of the eleventh century, the terms "Catholic" and "Christian" were often used synonymously by believers in both the East and the West because "catholic" merely meant "universal" (from the Greek word katholikos).
If there is someone on your blogroll who makes your world a better place just because that person exists and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence on your blog.Not just someone but many, many "ones" who have enriched my life both through their blog and through coming to visit mine. Via TO who is one of them.
When a client proves refractory,Brought to mind by a client who wanted his bio on his website because "his customers" were complaining. Right. His customers ... what an ego.
Show a picture of his factory.
If the boss still moans and sighs,
Make his logo twice the size.
But only in the direst cases
Ever show the clients' faces.
Attributed to David Ogilvy
