2000
From Harold Masback, The Path to Transformation" (March 5, 2000) at page 7:
15th century preacher Girolamo Savronella prayed as follows: Let us pray: Lord, we pray not for tranquility nor that our tribulations may cease; we pray for your spirit and your love, that you grant us strength and grace to overcome adversity; through Jesus Christ. Amen.
2005
From Harold Masback, Work Habits: Spiritual Experience at Work" (October 23, 2005) at pages 19-21:
Christendom’s most renowned model of habit change comes down to us from the least auspicious of sources, Nicholas Herman of Lorraine. By 1666, Herman had failed at every endeavor. He had failed as a soldier, he had failed as a footman, and when he entered a monastery at age 55 as “Brother Lawrence,” he failed at being a monk as well. Brother Lawrence found himself unable to follow the rhythms of chapel and chant, his colleagues thought him “an annoying clutz,” and the Abbott relegated him to the kitchen as the monastery’s pot scrubber. But there with his pots, Lawrence stumbled on a recipe for spiritual transformation that changed Christian devotional life forever. He resolved to see if he if he could “practice the presence of God” for just seconds while he scrubbed his pot. When he failed he tried again, and when he succeeded he tried for more seconds, and then more seconds and so on, until he slowly built a new habit of God-consciousness throughout the day. When attempting some new task he whispered, “Lord, I cannot do this unless you enablest me.” And whenever he failed, he whispered, “Lord, I shall never do otherwise if You leave me to myself.” In time and after steady effort, Lawrence found, “Thus, by rising after my falls, I have come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it was at first to accustom myself to think of him.” Until finally, he observed “the time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.” Brother Lawrence had learned how to “pray without ceasing” at work, he had realized the greatest of God’s gifts: transcendence, unity, and wholeness. The Pope and the King of France both made pilgrimages to Brother Lawrence to learn his spiritual ways, and Brother Lawrence’s devotional book, “The Practice of the Presence of God” remains the best selling devotional book of all time.
From Mother Theresa:
…in the slums, in the broken body, in the children, we see Christ and touch him.
From John Calvin, Commentary on Thessalonians:
For Paul censures those lazy drones who lived by the sweat of others, while they contribute no service in common for aiding the human race. Of this sort are our monks and priests who are largely pampered by doing nothing, excepting that they chant in the temples for the sake of preventing weariness. RefMgr field[22]: 3
From Thomas Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (August 12, 1955) at Chapter 27:
To eat and drink, to watch and sleep, to rest and to labor, and to be bound by other human necessities is certainly a great misery and affliction to the devout man, who would gladly be released from them and be free of all sin.
From Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (1954); Toward a Pyschology of Being (1968); and The Further Reaches of Human Nature (1971):
Maslow’s complete list of self-actualization needs included: transcendence, unity, wholeness, goodness, beauty, completion, simplicity, meaningfulness, playfulness, justice, and order. Likening the hierarchy of human needs to a pyramid, psychologist Abraham Maslow found that humans restlessly seek to move up the pyramid of needs, satisfying first the base-level physiological, safety and security needs, then the mid-level love and belonging needs, and then the higher-level esteem and approval needs. Finally, Maslow concluded, our ultimate human needs, our ultimate needs of self-actualization,” can be satisfied only as we crest the very summit of the pyramid, only as we experience transcendence, unity, and wholeness in what Maslow would go on the describe as “peak experiences.”
From H. Richard Neibuhr:
I do not trust that death has been conquered, addictions broken, sins forgiven, marriages healed, mourners comforted because I know that Christ rose from the dead. I trust that Christ rose from the dead because I know death has been conquered, bonds of addiction broken, sins forgiven, marriages healed and mourners comforted. I’ve seen it.
From Harold Masback, Just as He Told You" (April 20, 2003) at pages 4-5:
What was that trust like? Every single one of us knows, for we have each relived an echo of that cosmic trust in the arms of our own parents. Think back to that very first pre-school of trust we all attended: our cribs. You’re two years old and you’re suddenly undone in the middle of the night by an ear ache, a missing teddy bear, a monster under your bed. What do you do? You do what every other baby does, you shout out “Mommy!” No uncertainty in your voice. Just a supremely confident, utterly presumptuous, “Daddy!” You don’t calculate Mommy’s daily schedule, or competing priorities. You don’t have any way of knowing whether Mommy is home, or downstairs watching TV or fast asleep. It doesn’t matter. “Mommy! Daddy!” And you want to know a secret we all learn from the other side of this little learning laboratory? Parents love it. Oh for sure, a mother might let off an exasperated sigh before throwing off the covers to respond, and for sure there are only so many “Mommy’s” a child gets in any one night before the mother’s “awww, what’s the matter, honey” starts to morph into a “ok, what is it now?” But deep down inside, every parent loves the confidence, the security implicit in the unquestioning trust. Parents want to be the kind of parents a child will call for – the kind of parents a child trusts to respond.
From John Calvin:
As John Calvin wrote concerning the real presence of Christ in the communion elements, he would rather experience it than understand it.