Quotes from Mark E. Thibodeaux

In my own Examen, then, I praydream—prayerfully daydream. I concretely imagine how I might approach the next twenty-four hours if I were to be God's hands and feet and voice.

I am spiritually free when my spiritual and emotional state of being is healthy. I am spiritually free when I am emotionally well-balanced and when I desire to be a faithful, hopeful, and loving person. I am spiritually unfree when my negative emotions and temptations have gotten the better of me, when I am too angry, sad, tempted, or scared to think straight.

To live is to suffer; to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. —Gordon Allport

As I grow in my prayer life, my soul becomes a delightfully cluttered attic, filled with random graces that do not all fit together in some perfectly ordered system. The purpose of some graces will be immediately apparent in my life, but the meaning of others might evade me for a while. I must resist the temptation to clean up the messiness of my graces and must not try to come up with immediate answers for the questions that arise from them.

Death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

by making good decisions, we can bring ourselves closer to God. And moving closer to God means moving closer to a life of peace-and joy.

If we take an honest look at the mistakes we've made, we'll see that many of them were a reaction to unnamed fear within us.

A thorough reading of the Gospels would reveal that perhaps the most persistent command from God is not about sex or violence or a lack of religious practice but rather about not being afraid.