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Medjugorje
Message: January 25, 2014 Dear children! Pray, pray, pray for the radiance of your
prayer to have an influence on those whom you meet. Put the Sacred Scripture in
a visible place in your families and read it, so that the words of peace may
begin to flow in your hearts. I am praying with you and for you, little
children, that from day to day you may become still more open to God’s will. Thank
you for having responded to my call. |
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Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry This month Our Lady uses a word from the world of physics—“radiance”—which she relates to prayer:
“Pray, pray, pray for the radiance of
your prayer to have an influence on those whom you meet.” Radiant energy is the glow
of brightness that reaches remote places from a solid source of light. The sun is our primary light source on earth, and its
“radiance” or “rays of light” reach us, full-force on clear days, and less
brightly on cloudy or rainy days. All living
things are dependent upon sunlight for their growth and life; without
photosynthesis, the planet would wither and die. Just as the radiance of the sun is vital to our organic, physical life, the radiance of the Son (Spirit) is vital to our inner existence. As spiritual
beings, the term “radiance” is a most appropriate marker, for we’re told in Scripture that “God
is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” (1
Jn 1:5) Of Jesus, Scripture says, “What came to be through him was life, and this
life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and
the darkness has not overcome it.…The true light, which enlightens everyone,
was coming into the world.”(Jn 1:3-9) Of himself, Jesus
said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever
follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (Jn 8:12) About us
and our own radiant energy, the Lord says: “You
are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot
be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it
is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine
before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly
Father.” (Mt 5:14-16) When Our Lady calls us to pray for “the radiance of our prayer to
have an influence on those whom we meet,” she is speaking of this very light
of Christ with which we are filled during prayer, that must radiate out and
touch the world about us with its warming, healing and enlightening rays.
When we pray, we are immersed in the Light of Christ, the Indwelling Presence
of God at the center of our being; we are infused or “super-charged” with the
radiant power of Divine Love. The “radiance of our prayer”—the light-and-love energy we’ve
received when “plugged in” to this massive divine “generator”—should
naturally reach, touch, illumine, affect, impact, heal, inspire, and “influence”
in a positive way everyone we meet in our daily life. Does my presence to the people around me bring them a sense of
unconditional love, acceptance, healing power, moral support, comfort,
strength, clarity, kindness, courage, illumination of confusion, reconciling
of conflict, peace, serenity, joy, forgiveness, hope, and faith in God? If
not, why not? In prayer, the Son-light of
Christ within has filled us and is now meant to “radiate out” to all we meet—through
our silent presence, our words, and our actions. If
this is not happening, we need to look at our prayer practice, and make sure
that we are truly “plugged in” to the Divine generator of Life, Light and
Love. If we are, we will experience an ever-increasing openness to God’s holy will and ever-decreasing insistence upon our own
self-will. This transformation of consciousness that takes place through prayer is called “conversion” and it is only through this change
of heart in individuals who pray that
the world itself can be transformed and the human race experience the next step in its spiritual
evolution. Our Lady continues: “Put the Sacred
Scripture in a visible place in your families and read it, so that the words
of peace may begin to flow in your hearts.” Here Our Lady is giving us a definite, practical task and aid to
“radiant prayer.” The Holy Bible is a powerful “light-source” itself, and
prayerful, open-hearted encounters with it can produce intense “radiant
energy” to influence the world around us.
Our Lady invites us to not only put the Scripture “in a visible
place” but “READ IT.” It’s easy to create an attractive
altar for the family bible or a sacred space to enshrine it in our home, but
NOT so easy to cultivate a daily practice of
actually reading it. Without the latter, the
former is meaningless. Notice that the Queen of Peace wants the Bible’s “words
of peace” to “flow
in our hearts.” She is not interested in our
using this beautifully-enshrined book as a weapon to beat others over the
head with judgment and condemnation, criticism and ridicule. Sadly, in a
twisted perversion of our faith, many Christians use the Bible as a
battering-ram for violent persecution or a mere tool for dialectical debate.
Rather, like
Christ, we are meant to “preach
peace to those who are far off, and peace to those who are near,” making peace by the blood of His cross. Our model is Jesus who “is our peace, he who made the two one and broke down the
dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh…that he might create one new
person in place of the two, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile both with God, in one body, through the cross,
putting enmity to death by it. (Eph 2:14-17) This is the Gospel, the Good News of PEACE that must “begin to flow in our hearts” through our encounter
with Sacred Scripture! By our baptism we have been entrusted with a “ministry
of reconciliation” as loving “ambassadors
for Christ.” (2 Cor 5:18-20) Our Lady
prays that “from day to day you may become still more open to God’s will.”
Scripture tells us: “This
is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus”—to RADIATE the bright light of Divine Love to the world around us, spiritually growing and transforming our
human culture through the the Son by the radiance
of prayer as surely as our biosphere
thrives through the Sun’s
radiant energy. February
Musings: Valentine’s Day Reflections on LOVE in the Key of Christ . . . Great love is both very attached (“passionate”) and yet very detached at the same time. It is love but not addiction. The
soul, the True Self, has everything
and so it does not require any particular thing. When you have all things,
you do not have to protect any one thing. True Self can love and let go.
The False Self cannot do this. The “do
not cling to me” encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene….a seeming
contradiction was playing out here: intense love and yet appropriate
distance. The soul and the spirit tend to love and revel in paradoxes;
they operate by resonance and reflection. The ego (False Self) wants to
resolve all paradoxes in a most glib way and thinks that it can. It operates
in a way that is mechanical and instrumental. The ego would like Mary
Magdalene and Jesus to be caught up in a passionate love affair. Of
course they are, in the deepest sense of the term, but only the True Self
knows how to enjoy and picture “a love
of already satisfied desire.” The True Self and False Self see
differently; both are necessary, but one is better, bigger, and even
eternal. – Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be
perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own
image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential
likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them. – Thomas Merton +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ When you have reached the
point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to
give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When
Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a
radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the
Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the
Lover. – Dag Hammarskjold + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + Anyone who has ever loved you well or has felt loved by you
always feels safe. If you can’t
feel safe with a person, you can’t feel loved by them. You can’t trust
their love. If, in the presence of God, you don’t feel safe, then I don’t
think it is God—it’s something else. It’s the god that is not God….a
partial God, an imitation God, a word for God, a “try on” God. But as you go
deeper into the journey, it will always be more spacious and safer. – Fr.
Richard Rohr, OFM + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + Genuine love does not choose its objects. It is universal and
all-embracing. It is divine. It
desires that all should live and nothing should be lost. It is the infinite
love of those who are becoming united to God. It is the union with Love in
love. It is granted to men by the indwelling Spirit of Christ. – Fr.
Thomas Hopko + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + Everyone who perseveres in meditation discovers that…our
thought becomes clarified, relationships become more loving. This is because, in the process of meditation, we
are made free to love by Love. The reason for all this is very simple.
When we meditate, not only do we stand back from the individual operations of
our being, but we begin to learn to
find a wholly new ground to stand on. We discover a rootedness of being.
The rootedness is not just in ourselves, but we discover ourselves rooted
in God. Rooted in God who is Love….All our judgments are now illumined,
inspired by love, because we know that that love is the very ground of our being. All this happens because we
learn to stop thinking about ourselves. We allow ourselves to be—to be
still, to be silent. And in that stillness and silence, we find ourselves in God, in love….The journey is a journey away from self, away from egoism, away
from selfishness, away from isolation. It’s a journey into the infinite
love of God. – Fr. John Main,
OSB + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + Without passion there’s no compassion. In the same way there has to be eros in the mixture if there is
to be agape as well. If there’s no
force of attraction there’s nothing to propel us into transcendence. Passion
can however break loose of this formula and become autonomous—just serving
its own appetite and self-interest. It morphs into a rogue force in our
psyche that causes devastation in the world around us. We bounce wildly from
desire to exhaustion before we start looking for another object of desire.
Any addiction soon teaches us the misery this involves. The way out of it is simple: to allow yourself to be loved.
It might seem you don’t need passion to let yourself be loved. Passion is all
in loving and seeking the object of desire. But the Passion of Jesus takes us to a more concentrated point of
truth where this duality between loving and being loved, the dualistic
source of all egotism, is dissolved. With the dissolution of
self-centeredness comes the dispersal of karma….In Jesus a cyclical
repetition is snapped and karma transcended. We do not need to seek
“temporary relief” medication anymore. This medicine really works a
cure….This is no fairy tale. For any mature person it resonates with our own
experience. Aloneness, anguish, fear, physical symptoms, the unexpected angel
of mercy. But at the heart of it is the love he felt holding him, which
empowered him to love those he did not even, at that instant, consciously
know. – Fr. Laurence Freeman, OSB + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + What is the touchstone of true love? Anxiety for the
perfection, the divinization of the one we love. Everything which tends towards this infinite arises out of true love….If
it is the infinite you love, can your love narrow your heart? No, it can only
enlarge it. If your love does not enlarge your heart, if it narrows it
instead of opening it up, then it is not true love, which must open the
heart to the whole universe and make it Catholic in the universal sense of
the word. Every time a love closes you in on yourself and makes you
selfish, it is yourself that you love, not love….We must never renounce love because of the dangers of loving. On
the contrary, we must love more, love more sincerely, more deeply, try to
enter into the truth of love….We must strive always to make love a gift—a
gift of God. We are never forbidden to love. We are only asked to love truly….To
love is to give God. – Fr. Maurice Zundel + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + I long to see you making your home in the cell of
self-knowledge, so that you may attain perfect love, for I know that we cannot please our Creator unless
we love, because he is love and wants nothing but
love. If we do know ourselves we
find this love. Why? Because we see our own nothingness, that our very existence is ours
by grace and not because we have a right to it….it is all given to us with
boundless love. Then we discover so much of God’s goodness poured out on us
that words cannot describe it. And once we see ourselves so loved by God,
we cannot help loving him. – St. Catherine of Siena +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ We must realize that God
is our tremendous lover,
that he is our all and that he has done all our works for us.
We must believe in God and not in ourselves; we must hope in God and not in
ourselves; we must love God and not ourselves…. We have to enter into this
one man—this one Christ—by faith, hope, and charity. We have to find our all
in him. He is our full complement and our perfect supplement. No matter
how weak we are, he is our strength; no matter how empty we are, he is our
fullness; no matter how sinful we are, he is our holiness. All we have to do
is accept God’s plan….We have to accept
the self, and the surroundings, and the story, that God’s providence arranges
for us. In humility we must accept our self—just as we are; in charity, we
must accept and love our neighbor just as he is; in abandonment, we must
accept God’s will just as things happen to us….Faithful compliance with
his will and humble acceptance of his arrangements will bring us to full
union with Christ…and there shall be one
Christ loving himself. – Fr. M. Eugene Boylan, OCR + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ There is a love that can be demonstrated by signs, and a love
which cannot be demonstrated by signs. I ask you…to be infused with the
love that is totally inexpressible, the love that has no exterior signs. I
desire that you be renewed in the love and pain of the suffering God-man. I
also desire that you feel my love without my need to express it….I desire
very much that you be reborn and renewed….that you rid yourself of negligence
and laziness. I desire that you do not pray less, or keep vigils less often,
or do any other good works any the less when divine grace is withdrawn from
you than when it is in your possession. It is a good thing and very
acceptable to God if you pray, keep vigils, and perform other good works when
the fervor of divine grace is with you, but it is altogether more pleasing and acceptable to God that, when
divine grace is lacking, you do not pray less, keep vigils less often, or
perform fewer good works….Do your share, for God will do his part well.
Forced prayers are particularly pleasing to God. – Bl.
Angela of Foligno, OFS + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + Though there is a continuity between human and divine love,
we realize the distance there is between loving God through the love of a
human being, and loving a human being through our love of God; and between
loving God for his own sake, and loving ourselves because of God and because
we are made in the image of God. Love is a return to the very source of
our existence. It is the perfection of our will, the point where our will
reaches its fulfillment and is dissolved in the will of God….With love it
must be all or nothing. Love knows neither prisoners nor slaves. It is an
infinity whose possession is always beyond us….As each new day dawns we
ought to feel a thrill of joy at the thought of yet another day in which to
love God. – Louis Lavelle
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Mark Your Calendar!
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February 2 |
Presentation of the Lord |
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3 |
St. Blaise (Blessing of Throats) |
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4 |
Lecture: Finding God Among Our Neighbors: Christian
Foundations for Inter-Religious Engagement with Rev. Dr. Kristin Johnston
Largen; 7 pm Village of the Incarnate Word CHRISTUS
Heritage Hall, 4707 Broadway |
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4 (11,
18, 25) |
Class (4 Tuesdays): Revealing the Thoughts & Intentions of
the Heart: Scripture, Spirituality and Spiritual Direction with Dr. Renata Furst; 7-9 pm, Oblate
School of Theology Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate, $50; call (210)
341-1366 x212 |
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4 (&
11) |
Class (2 Tuesdays): The Book of Jubilees: The Oldest
Interpretation of the Book of Genesis with Dr. Todd Hanneken
(St. Mary’s U.); 7-9 pm, SoL Center, 300 Bushnell
Ave, $35; call (210) 732-9927 |
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9-13 |
Retreat: Spirituality and the Seasons of Our Lives
with Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI; Oblate Renewal Center,
5700 Blanco Rd; $395 incl. all meals & snacks; call (210) 341-1366 x212 |
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11 |
Our Lady of Lourdes |
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14 |
St. Valentine’s Day |
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22 |
The Chair of St. Peter the Apostle PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Rosary at 11:30 am |
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23 |
Rosary-making:
2:00-5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; free parking &
materials |
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Let your religion be less of a THEORY and more of a LOVE AFFAIR. -- G.K. Chesterton |
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Copyright, Marian Center of San Antonio. All
rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |