Catechumens: I want to say that it is difficult to live in the ever-present awareness of God’s world. The real world, rather than the veil that is pulled over my eyes – “the frail shadows of elusive dreams”. But then I think of what that world is, and how it came to be, and I am ashamed. It is my life apart from God that is the illusion. It is my atheism that is the veil. I don’t really believe that “the bridgegroom cometh in the midst of the night”. I live as though the illusory world were an end in itself.
Fasting: How can I eat when I have betrayed and crucified him? How can I find it difficult, when He hungered 40 days in a desert, when He cried blood, when He stood for me in execution, and raised me with Him? And dare I say that I am only a man, when He became man for me?
Feasting: How can I pass the day like any other when He is born and He is risen? How can I fail to honor the day that He honors, having filled it with His Grace? How can I fail in hospitality to His friends, greeting them in the day of their honor? How can I feel no excitement? Is my soul dead? How can I forget those who have begotten me and anchor me, through so righteous a chain of begettings?
The Hours: How can I sleep, and how can my soul slumber, when I would wish so desperately to rise to meet him if he came for the last time. He waits for me. He is to be found where the Church is praying. Is my lamp trimmed and filled with oil? Then let us go together and meet the Lord who walks about in the Church.
My Rule of Prayer: How can I think my prayers long or that they are too long for me to pray? “Could you not keep watch for one hour?” asks the Lord who has gone up to the highest mountain to pray for me. He intercedes for me even now. How can I find it tedious when it is God with Whom I speak, unless my soul does not regard Him in prayer, and does not befriend Him who is my friend.
The world is changed. The universe is remade. God has become man for me. Glory to Him forever.
– Catechetical Letter 12/28/2005
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of [our] faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. – St. Paul the Apostle