{"id":4852,"date":"2013-09-03T11:05:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T10:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/?p=4852"},"modified":"2013-09-04T00:04:07","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T23:04:07","slug":"sleepless-in-stamullen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/2013\/09\/sleepless-in-stamullen\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleepless in Stamullen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Don<\/a>Last Night<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last night I found myself lying awake.\u00a0 Not good.\u00a0 I was worrying about \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 finances.\u00a0 There are bills to be paid. Winter is coming and I have yet to install the heating and hot water system needed in the monastery.\u00a0 The guesthouse \u2014 one of our principal means of generating income \u2014 is still incomplete.\u00a0 I want to trust in Divine Providence and in good Saint Joseph, God’s own minister of finance.\u00a0 I do trust in Divine Providence but, at the same time, I fret, especially at night. Rather than lying sleepless (and praying) in the dark, I turned on the light and picked up the book that was on my night-table, opening it at random.\u00a0 It was a life of Don Dolindo Ruotolo (1882\u20131970).\u00a0 This is what I read (my own translation from the Italian):<\/p>\n

The Providence of God<\/strong><\/p>\n

His spiritual daughters recall that when Don Dolindo went to the printery to order the first issues (of his immense commentary on the Bible), having given away the little money that he had scraped together, he said with his habitual candour, “The Providence of God will look after the rest, since I don’t have any money at all.”\u00a0 Hearing this, the printer retorted, “Padre, what are you saying to me?\u00a0 If you don’t have the money to publish, I’m doing nothing.\u00a0 It’s all well and good to say that Providence is going to pay.”\u00a0 Don Dolindo defied him.\u00a0 “Do the printing, and you will be paid down to last penny!\u00a0 I guarantee it in the name of God.”\u00a0 The printer came back with, “But I don’t do jobs trusting in prophecies about the help of God!”\u00a0 Don Dolindo replied, “Trusting in the help of God, I tell you that I will pay you for all the work and buy your printshop from you on top of it!”\u00a0 Don Dolindo did not buy the printshop, but he was always punctual in paying for the printing.<\/p>\n

Paid in Full<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many beautiful accounts of faith and of extraordinary assistance marked the printing of Don Dolindo’s commentary on the Bible.\u00a0 One Saturday, for example, Don Dolindo had to pay the printer.\u00a0 Opening his wallet, he saw that he was lacking several hundred lire<\/em> to to make the payment.\u00a0 He went to see Maria La Rovere, who kept the cash box for printing and asked her for what was needed.\u00a0 Maria didn’t have a cent to give him; there was zero in the cash box!\u00a0 And in her personal funds zero as well.\u00a0 As usual, Don Dolindo didn’t let this bother him, saying, “God will look after it” and going his way.\u00a0 He had a few pressing errands that, in the end, took up the whole morning.\u00a0 At about 1:00 p.m. he remembered all of a sudden that he had to go to the printery to make his payment.\u00a0 Strangely, he forgot that he didn’t have the amount necessary and, without thinking, went to the printery, asked to see the owner, and paid him the amount in full, discovering, moreover that he had in his wallet 250 lire<\/em> left over.<\/p>\n

Can You Figure This Out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having returned home, Don Dolindo reviewed what had happened; he remembered that he did not have the money to pay the printing bill, but pay it he did!\u00a0 He had the receipt in front of him to prove it. Even stranger, he had money let over in his wallet.\u00a0 In the afternoon he met Maria La Rovere and said to her, “Maria, can you figure this out for me?\u00a0 I had to pay up . . . I didn’t have the money.\u00a0 You gave me nothing because there was nothing in the cash box.\u00a0 Here is the receipt marked paid.\u00a0 And here are 250 lire<\/em> given me in advance.\u00a0 Can you explain this?”\u00a0 It all ended in the praise of Christ.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

Unless the Lord Build the House<\/strong><\/p>\n

How many times has our work seemed, although it be serious and accurate, not to succeed in bearing fruit!\u00a0 And prayer?\u00a0 Where have we buried the supernatural aspect of our life?\u00a0 We must remember well the divine word of the psalmist:\u00a0 “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do the builders labour” (Psalm 127:1).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And with that, I fell soundly asleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Night Last night I found myself lying awake.\u00a0 Not good.\u00a0 I was worrying about \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 finances.\u00a0 There are bills to be paid. Winter is coming and I have yet to install the heating and hot water system needed in the monastery.\u00a0 The guesthouse \u2014 one of our principal means of <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divine-providence","category-silverstream-priory-county-meath"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paVypq-1gg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4852"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4861,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions\/4861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}