Peace. Joy. Stillness. After going to confession and being there in silent prayer before Mass was such a gift. It had been a week since attending Mass due to being sick, and how much I needed and missed it!
I went to adoration yesterday for the first time in nearly a week (hence, being sick) and just the pure and radiant peace and reassurance of being in Jesus' presence was amazing, nothing can replace it. Things feel simple, less complicated, and my thoughts and worries are all planted at His feet and near His heart. Why am I worrying? Why am I focusing so much on things that are at times beyond my control? They are in His will and plan and will unfold accordingly.
Today, I realized is my other saint of the year's feast day- St. Henry II. I didn't know anything about him, but reading the excerpt from Pope Benedict XI was nice and beautiful, and encompassing this saint.
"Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Henry, who from 1002 to 1024 was emperor of the medieval Holy Roman Empire and thus the most powerful man of the Europe of his time. He was canonized because he placed his power at the service of what is true and what is good, because he recognized power to be a duty of service...
First of all this prayer tells us that St. Henry was endowed with abundant grace. He was not what he had, what he was, from his own resources: it was to him, it was grace, and for that reason it was also a responsibility he had to bear to God and to others. Although our lives are built on quite different lines, the same applies to us too: everything essential in our lives has been given to us without our contributing to it.
The fact that I am alive is not something I have derived from myself: the fact that people were there who introduced me to life, who enabled me to experience love, who gave me faith and opened my gaze to God- all that is grace. We could not do anything if we had not been given the ability to do so first...
He (St. Henry) too had to learn that God's grace is often dark, but that it is precisely in suffering that grace lies."
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