{"id":1650,"date":"2016-01-29T21:38:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T02:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/holy-desire\/"},"modified":"2016-01-29T21:38:30","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T02:38:30","slug":"holy-desire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/holy-desire\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Desire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Sr. Spero<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The entire life of a Christian is an exercise in holy desire.<\/em>\u00a0 St. Augustine<\/p>\n<p>The Lauds reading this morning was from St. Augustine\u2014about stretching our souls through holy desire. \u00a0He used the illustration of a wineskin, the forerunner of the wine bottle, that could be stretched to hold more wine. I\u2019ve never had to stretch a wineskin, but I\u2019ve put too much in a suitcase, and been very grateful for a top zipper that expands my space. So I understand the concept.<\/p>\n<p>St. Augustine\u2019s point is that we are containers, of one sort or another, that should expand and stretch so that God can use us more and more. We do this through holy desire. As we desire God, we are being stretched, to be able to hold more of Him. I suspect spiritual stretching is like physical stretching. It takes effort, it&#8217;s sometimes painful, but always worth it. Lord, help me to desire you more and more, and not be surprised when I feel the stretching.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Vineyard.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-5626112\" src=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Vineyard-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Vineyards at the Community of Jesus\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Follow us<\/strong><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheCommunityOfJesus\/~4\/EyIPARvfWLw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sr. Spero The entire life of a Christian is an exercise in holy desire.\u00a0 St. Augustine The Lauds reading this morning was from St. Augustine\u2014about stretching our souls through holy desire. \u00a0He used the illustration of a wineskin, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/holy-desire\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}