Michael Sliney

“Bah,” said Scrooge, “Humbug.”
Sometimes an excessive sense of justice or an obsession with making money, can prohibit the possibility of forgiveness and compassion….

“I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.” Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities

“The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.”(Charles Dickens, “Tale of Two Cities”)
The indifference of so many towards religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, with so many empty pews, deeply hurts the Sacred Heart of Christ…does it bother you?

“A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away—the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us—is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.” —The Pickwick Papers (Charles Dickens). As I read this quote, I think of the look that my mom, my dad and St. John Paul II gave to me…so powerful!

“We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” — Epictetus