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I've mentioned before that the average Dominican will say, "Praise GOD!" when you praise a sermon or a lecture he gave. And that seems absolutely right to me. "Praise God." If there is any good at all in my vicinity, it's because He put it there or did it there. I'm clear on that.

I'm clear on that too, dear brother in Christ!

You wrote:

... there is nothing you can do and nothing you must do to be saved ... but it's very hard to do nothing.

Dear brother, the constant act of living Faith is never "nothing!"

You wrote:

And let us all pray that God will enable us to heed the promise of Exodus 14:14 — "The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be still."

This wisdom evidently is of very ancient heritage. From ~1500 B.C. Egypt we have the "Wisdom of Amonepone" (author anonymous, spelling doubtful):

"Rest still in God's arms,
and your silence will confound
your enemies."

It seems to me if we feel we are walking in darkness, The Book of Exodus and Amonepone's insight can remind us of the helps and consolation we have from the Holy Spirit of God, by Christ's unimaginably stupendous Sacrifice, so to give us patience for the return of His Light....

It seems to me the Holy Spirit is always near to those who manifestly love Christ, even if the Spirit seems "obscured" or somehow "distant." Saint John of the Cross speaks of this sort of thing as the "dark night of the soul".... The 23rd Psalm speaks of "the valley of the shadow...."

Yet St. Anselm of Cantebury speaks passionately of direct communication with God....

All these insights come from human experiences of an extraordinarily elevated order. JMHO FWIW

In Christ's love and peace, dear brother Mad Dawg!

All Praise and Glory be to our Lord God!

Yep. God is profligate with His self-disclosure. We can say, "What other nation has a god like our God?" but He seems to love those folks too. (I personally think it's the cuisine, but that's just me.)

So here's a nice story:

For the non-feelthy papists, the year after you're baptized as an adult you're a "neophyte." And we kind of extend that courtesy in my parish to anyone for the year after they've become Catholic one way or another. And once a month I make myself available to the neophytes. I have a program, but I try to make it as flexible as possible.

So, tonight, one, (1) - as in ONLY 1!!!! - neophyte shows up, and he and his wife haven't come to any of the previous evenings. So I'm kind of bummed.

But I try to catch them up on the concept of neophyte, on our living no longer with our life but with the Life of Christ in the community of Love which is the Trinity, on how we share our Lord's sorrows as well as His joys, His defeat as well as His victory -- and how, because we 'know' the victory, our very defeats, like His, are blessed.

So he tells me that he was a junior naval officer, with a career ahead of him, and all, and suddenly he comes down with juvenile diabetes!

And first he tries to be really really good so that he will be worthy of a miraculous cure.

Then he realizes that that's crazy. (The worthiness part, not the praying part.)

Then he realizes that in his illness (which is not SO bad but still ...) he is experiencing a closeness to Christ he never knew when everything was hunky-dory!

Is God great or WHAT?

Once again, I'm running my mouth, feeling like a garrulous bozo, and the guy I'm talking to is drinking in every word because it tracks his walk with IHS.

I am in awe of God's greatness!