“Day of Recollection. If I were to make any resolutions, it would be the same old ones…no need to make them…they have been made. No need to reflect on them…it doesn’t take much concentration to see how I keep them. I struggle along. It is useless to break your head over the same old details week after week and year after year, pruning the same ten twigs off the top of the tree. UNION WITH GOD..should be the focus. On these days of recollection drop everything and hide in yourself to find Him in the silence where He is hidden within you, and listen to what He has to say.
There is only one thing to live for: love. THere is only one unhappiness: not to love God. That is what pains me on these days of recollection, to see my own soul so full of movement and shadows and vanities, cross-currents of dry wind stirring up the dust and rubbish of desire. I don’t expect to avoid this humiliation in my life, but when will I become cleaner, more simple, more loving? Have Mercy on me, O God. My sin is always before me.”
Thomas Merton