Your Cross - St Francis de Sales

The everlasting God has

in His wisdom foreseen

from eternity the cross

that He now presents to you

as a gift from His inmost heart.

This cross He now sends you

He has considered with His all-knowing eyes,

understood with His divine mind,

tested with His wise justice,

warmed with loving arms

and weighed with His own hands

to see that it be not one inch too large

and not one ounce too heavy for you.

He has blessed it with His holy Name,

anointed it with His consolation,

taken one last glance at you

and your courage,

and then sent it to you from heaven,

a special greeting from God to you,

an alms of the all-merciful love of God.

Mark Shea links on the Last things

On Earth as it is in Heaven - http://catholicexchange.com/2010/09/29/128242/

The World to Come http://catholicexchange.com/2010/09/10/89660/

Who Art in Heaven -http://catholicexchange.com/2010/09/01/128234/

Blessed are Those who are Persecuted - http://catholicexchange.com/2010/06/02/128204/ 

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

Prayer of Cardinal Newman

Dear Jesus, Help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.

Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.

Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.

Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.

Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others;

the light, O Jesus will be all from You; none of it will be mine; it will be you, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me.

Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example,

by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You. Amen.