|
Medjugorje
Message: January 25, 2013 Dear children! Also today I call you to prayer. May your
prayer be as strong as a living stone, until with your lives you become witnesses. Witness the beauty of your faith. I am with you
and intercede before my Son for each of you. Thank you for having responded
to my call. |
|
Published by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic
Evangelization Ministry In this beautiful message from Our Lady which will guide us through
the first half of Lent, we are given the metaphor of a “living
stone.” This image is found in sacred
scripture, first as the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years,
journeying with Moses toward the Promised Land in great hunger, thirst and
discomfort. God gave them a “living stone” that produced water when struck by
Moses’ staff, thus saving them from death. This “water from the rock” is
later connected to the living
water bubbling up to eternal life that
Jesus promises the woman at the well; he himself is the Rock of salvation who gives the water from which one is so
satiated as to never thirst again. Our forty days of Lent are to mirror the
forty years in the desert, relying on the Rock who is Christ—the “living
stone”—to slake our thirst. Our Lady’s message resonates most closely with 1 Peter 2:4-9, where
we are invited: “Come to him, a living stone,
rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God, and
like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be
a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through
Jesus Christ. For it says in scripture: ‘Behold, I am laying a stone in Zion, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in it
shall not be put to shame.’ Therefore, its value is for you who have faith,
but for those without faith: ‘The stone
which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,’ and ‘a stone
that will make people stumble, and a rock
that will make them fall’…But you are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises of
him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Our Lady links this biblical imagery of the “living stone” with what
has been the centerpiece of her teaching in Medjugorje
for 31 years: prayer. She says, “May
your prayer be as strong as a living stone, until with your lives you become
witnesses.” Through prayer we
experience the Presence of Christ within, the Divine Indwelling, the “Living
Stone.” Once our prayer life becomes
“strong as a living stone” through daily practice of silent meditation with
the intention
to be present, with the inclination
of heart and mind toward God, and with
open consent
and receptivity for God to do God’s work within us, it is as if something actually crystallizes inside us, as if a new
structure is built. When, through faithful
repetition of our daily prayer practice, the spiritual connection between
ourselves and the Indwelling Holy Spirit of God becomes so strong as to “crystallize”—that is, to solidify into a definite, precise, and permanent
form or consolidated structure within us, then the True Self begins to
experience St. Paul’s teaching that “You are God’s building” (1
Cor 3:9), and
Isaiah’s promise, “As a young man marries a virgin, so shall your Builder marry you.” (Isa
62:5)
We realize the Gospel promise: “The Father and I will make our dwelling within you.” (Jn 14:23) From this interior crystallization—the firm and solid indwelling of Christ the living stone—will gush forth life-saving “water” to slake the spiritual thirst of
those we meet who are parched and lifeless in the desert of worldly cares,
and revive those we meet who are hopeless and marginalized. How does this
happen? This new interior structure or crystallization formed by prayer that
is “strong as a living stone” insures—as Our Lady wisely teaches—that “with
our lives we become witnesses.” She says, “Witness
the beauty of your faith.” Just as the living stones of
a temple, ornamented with precious gems and colored glass, reflect the beauty
of the spiritual path it houses, so our very lives begin to give witness to the “beauty of our faith.” St. Paul
teaches, “Do
you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwells in you?...the temple of God, which you are,
is holy.” (1 Cor 3:16-17) He tells us that collectively,
as the Church, we are “built
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself
as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows
into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built
together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Eph 2:20-22) Thus we—in our very persons—begin to radiate the beauty of the Christian faith just as the
splendid architecture and gemwork of a sacred
temple reflect and attract others to its highest ideals. How do we witness such beauty “with our lives”? In our behavior (what we say and do) we exude the classic gifts and fruits of the Holy
Spirit—the divine indwelling of God
whose home has now “crystallized” as a permanent structure within us. The seven
gifts of the Spirit are wisdom, understanding,
counsel (prudence), fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. (Isa
11:2-3), and the nine fruits of
the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal
5:22-23) The highest charisms, according to St. Paul, are the theological
virtues of faith, hope, and love. To “witness the beauty of our faith,” these virtues are foremost in
our character and visible to all. If such a litany of attributes is too
overwhelming for us, all may be distilled to one: LOVE. For “the
greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13:13) “And over all these put
on love, that is, the bond of perfection.” (Col
3:14) “Above all, let your love
for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins.” (1
Pet 4:8) May our Lenten prayer form
within us a “living stone”! “I long to see you a
strong stone, with your foundation in that gentle firm rock, Christ Jesus.
You know that a stone or building set on sand or soil is tumbled by the
slightest wind or rain. So it is with people whose foundation is in the
transitory things of this dark passing life.…We were like that when our
foundation was in selfish self-centeredness ….So my soul longs to see you set
on the living rock….Without this rock we cannot live. And because he is
united as one with the Father (the master architect who set him as the
foundation stone of our building), in this Son everything bitter becomes
sweet. In him is living mortar, not sand or soil.” -- St. Catherine of
Siena February
Musings: Ash Wednesday & Lenten
Reflections for Daily Practice On February 13—Ash Wednesday—we begin our 40 days in
the “desert” of Lent, in imitation of Jesus’ forty days in the desert facing
satanic temptation. Assured of being the Beloved of God at His baptism, our
Lord immediately went to the desert, eager to confront the classic demonic
challenges to life in the Spirit. We are also God’s Beloved, and Lent
is our time in the “desert” of the False Self, letting God
do battle with the demons of ego within us. The “desert” does this
work of purifying and transforming our
heart in the cosmic confrontation between God and satanic evil
that takes place in our Lenten practices of renunciation, prayer, fasting,
almsgiving and self-sacrifice. Below
are some inspirational thoughts for Lent: Lent calls each of us
to renew our commitment to the implications of the Resurrection in our own
lives, here and now. That demands both the healing of the soul and the honing
of the soul, both penance and faith, both a purging of what is superfluous
in our lives and the heightening, the intensifying, of what is
meaningful. – Sr. Joan Chittister,
OSB How
Do We Become “Poor” in the Gospel Sense of Lenten Poverty? We are all rich, so long
as Jesus is not yet fully alive in us. Even the beggar, carrying a brown bag
with nothing but a sandwich in it and cursing anyone who touches it, is no
less rich than any other. His heart is set on something which is not God;
unless he makes himself poor, in the Gospel sense, he will not pass through
into the kingdom of heaven. The road to get there is a narrow one;
only nothingness gets through. There are people who are rich
in education, and their swollen-headedness blocks their way into the
kingdom and the kingdom’s entrance into them. The spirit of divine wisdom
finds no room in their soul. Another is rich in haughty conceit,
another in human affections; so long as they do not break with all
that, they are not with God. Everything must be excised from the heart and
replaced with God, and with others in their
God-given order of importance. There are people who own a wealth of
worries; they don’t know how to get rid of them by casting them into
God’s care. They live tortured lives. The joy and peace of the kingdom of
heaven are not theirs. They cannot pass through. Others’ riches are their
sins; they torment themselves by weeping over them, instead of
incinerating them in the mercy of God and looking ahead, loving God and
neighbor to make up for the times when they have not loved. – Chiara Lubich Put on the robe of sanctity, gird yourself with the belt of chastity. Let
Christ be the covering of your head. Let the cross remain as the helmet on
your forehead. Cover your breast with the mystery of heavenly knowledge. Keep the incense of prayer ever burning as your perfume.
Take up the sword of the spirit. Set up your heart as an altar. Free from
anxiety, move your body forward in this way to make it a victim for
God….Offer your body. Do not merely slay it, but also cut it up into numerous
members, that is—the virtues. For your skills at
practicing die as often as you offer these members, the virtues, to God.
Offer up faith, that faithlessness may suffer punishment. Offer a fast, that gluttony may cease. Offer up chastity,
that lust may die. Put on piety, that impiety may be put off. Invite mercy, that avarice may be blotted out. That folly
may be brought to nothing, it is always fitting to
offer up holiness as a sacrificial gift. Thus your body will become a
victim, if it has been wounded by no javelin of sin. Your body lives, O man,
it lives as often as you have offered to God a life of virtues through the
death of your vices. –
St. Peter Chrysologus The
Primacy of God’s Will for Us in All Things Nature seeks self in
everything, even in virtues and the holiest practices of piety….We must keep a
careful watch especially on things for which we feel an attachment, in order
that we may be ready to sacrifice what pleases us, to comply with the legitimate
desires of our neighbor, and above all to practice obedience. God’s will must always take precedence of our own desires,
however holy these may appear to us.
– Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, SJ The secret of interior
peace is detachment. Recollection is impossible for the one who is
dominated by all the confused and changing desires of his own will. And
even if those desires reach out for the good things of the interior
life...you will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection
unless you are detached even from the desire of peace and recollection. You
will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the
pleasures of prayer. If you give up all these desires and seek
one thing only—God’s will—he will give you recollection and peace in
the middle of labor and conflict and trial.
– Fr. Thomas Merton, OCSO Oh, who can make the
counsel of our Savior about taking up the cross understandable?... Some are content with a certain degree of virtue,
perseverance in prayer, and mortification, but never achieve the
nakedness, poverty, selflessness, or spiritual purity that the Lord counsels
us here. For they still feed and clothe their natural selves with spiritual
feelings and consolations instead of divesting and denying themselves
of these for God’s sake. They think a denial of self in worldly matters is
sufficient without an annihilation and purification of spiritual
possessions….When some of this solid, perfect food is offered them in
dryness, distaste, and trial, they run from it as from death and wander about
in search only of sweetness and delightful communications from God. Such an
attitude is not the hallmark of self-denial and nakedness of spirit, but the
indication of a “spiritual sweet tooth.” Through this kind of conduct
they become, spiritually speaking, enemies of the cross of Christ.
-- St. John of the Cross The man who is poor in
spirit and meek and clean of heart is succeeding in the essential Christian
struggle…the struggle to kill the false self by the daily asceticism of
accepting and welcoming God’s will, the struggle to find God by that
daily searching and listening which is the life of prayer, and the
struggle with the mind’s waywardness to gain—after immense difficulty and
constant failure—that abiding sense of the presence of God which is
the condition of our ability to see and will all things in union with him….We
must learn to see each thing, each event, each fleeting moment, as forever
abiding in the arms of God in the eternal present if we would learn to
see aright….If you learn to see God in all things, you will learn to love them
according to his will, not your own self-will. If you see things as
in eternity, you are less a prey to the pain of their passing, and so you can
learn not to clutch at them as they pass. If you see God in all things and
all things in God, you learn to be reverent and not proudly possessive….Then
you will learn the more easily not to sin by excess or superfluity,
nor to hold fast at all costs when God would take from you what he has given:
you will learn the more easily not to care.
– Fr. Gerald Vann, OP The will of the Word
wants us to follow him on the way of the most holy cross by enduring
every pain, abuse, insult, and reproach for Christ crucified, who is in us
to strengthen us. And as soon as our understanding perceives this, our
will gets up at once….It runs to love what God loves and hate what God hates,
wanting to seek and desire and clothe itself in nothing but God’s eternal
will. Once we have seen and
understood that God wants only our good, we see that it is God’s will to be
followed on the way of the cross. We rejoice and are content with whatever
God permits: sickness or poverty, insult or abuse, intolerable or unreasonable
commands. We rejoice and are glad in everything, and we see that God
permits these things for our profit and perfection….We are, then, free from
suffering, since we have shed the cause of suffering—I mean self-will
grounded in self-centeredness—and have put on God’s will grounded in charity.
– St. Catherine of Siena O Felix Culpa! O Happy Fault! O Necessary
Sin of Adam! (Easter
Vigil Exultet) The events of Good
Friday and Easter show us that God actually uses our very hostility, our
very rejection of him, to provide the means of our deliverance. He
accepts, as it were, our terms and finds a way from where we have placed
ourselves through into life eternal. God’s providence does not mean that he
has got it all planned out in advance….We may think of God’s providence
rather in terms of the way in which he integrates all our free
choices, mistakes and sins and all, into his plan….Our hatred, our
fear, become the occasion of our redemption, as we so clearly see on
Calvary….Even though we may not be able to deal with them, God
is not defeated. – Fr. Simon Tugwell, OP If God in his providence
exterminated every evil deed at once, killed every evil-doer, the final sum
of goodness would be less. We have our Lord’s own words
for it; there would be diminution. Goodness itself, sanctity itself, is
fostered by the proximity of evil. As St. Augustine puts it so well: it
pleased God to make good come out of evil rather than to abolish all evil.
God could have abolished all evil in his omnipotence; he did not. He did the
better thing; he made good come out of evil, he makes sanctity come out of
it….Sanctity will be found to be so great and so high by very reason of
the wickedness that encompassed it.
-- Dom Anscar Vonier, OSB I want to leave with
you this profound prayer, to be recited time and again: “O God, I wish to be fully
what I am.” There is no prayer more beautiful, more
pleasing or more powerful in God’s eye than this simple prayer. “O God, I wish to be just
what I am for as long as you so will; I am aware of an evil strain deep
within me. That strain spawns egotism, infidelity and hostility, leading to
moodiness, laziness, and self-indulgence. I wish to be fully what I am. For,
I know that you are all-powerful and could change me in an instant. Yet, at
the same time, you are infinitely loving and offer
me whatever is for my best. I have total trust in you. You are all powerful
and you love me!” Amen.
– Fr. Jacques Bunel, OCD
|
||
|
|
Mark Your Calendar!
|
February 1 |
Lecture: “The Challenge of Charism in a Global World”
with Rev. Robert Schreiter, CPPS; 7 pm, Oblate
School of Theology Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate Dr., free &
open to the public |
|
2 |
Presentation
of the Lord |
|
5 |
Lecture
Series: “Fear and Her Many Children:
Exploring the Roots & Origins of Religious Fear” w/ Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI; 4 Mondays (also Feb. 12, 19, 26); 7-9 pm,
Oblate School of Theology Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate Dr, $35 for series or $10 per session; call 341-1366 x
212 |
|
5 |
Lecture: “Heavenly Bodies: What Does It Mean to be Resurrected from the Dead?”
with Dr. Candida Moss, U. of Notre Dame professor; 7 pm; CHRISTUS Heritage
Hall, the Village at Incarnate Word; free of charge |
|
5
& 12 |
Class:
“The Theology of Communion” w/ Dr.
Glenn Ambrose, Religion Professor at UIW; 7-9 pm (2 Tuesdays); SoL Center, 300 Bushnell; $25; call 732-9927 |
|
7 |
Thomas Merton Course:
Bridges to Contemplative Living—“Discovering
Paradise within Communities of Forgiveness”; 1-3 pm, Rock House @ Oblate
School of Theology, 285 Oblate Dr; $75 for 9-wk
series; call 341-1366 x 212 |
|
9 |
Portraits
of World Mysticism Class: “Introduction
to Vedanta Philosophy” w/ Yanina Olmos; 9 am-12
pm; Oblate School of Theology Whitley Theol. Ctr;
285 Oblate Dr; $40; call 341-1366 x 212 |
|
11
|
Our Lady of Lourdes |
|
13 |
ASH WEDNESDAY
(Beginning of Lent; Day of fast & abstinence) |
|
14 |
St. Valentine’s Day 12 Week Study Group: “Living
the Compassionate Life” w/ Rosalyn Collier, Karen Ball & Susan Ives;
Thursdays, 10 am-12 pm; Rock House @ Oblate School of Theology; 285 Oblate
Dr., $85 for series or $10 per week; call 341-1366 x 212 Thomas Merton Course:
“Contemplative Living as Inner Experience”; 1-3 pm, Rock House @ Oblate
School of Theology, 285 Oblate Dr, 341-1366 x 212 |
|
18-20 |
Silent Guided Lenten Retreat: “Be Not Afraid!” (Bilingual:
English/Spanish) w/ Sally Gomez Jung, Carol Stehling,
Cecilia von Bertrab & Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI; Oblate Renewal Center; 285 Oblate Dr.,
$150 incl. meals & lodging; call 341-1366 x 212 |
|
21 |
Thomas Merton Course: “The Loss of Self in Full Ripeness,” 1-3 pm, Rock House @ Oblate
School of Theology, 285 Oblate Dr, call 341-1366 x 212 |
|
23 |
PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Rosary at 11:30 am |
|
24 |
Rosary-making: 2 – 5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St.
Mary’s |
|
28 |
Thomas Merton Course: “Contemplative Living and Peacemaking,” 1-3 pm, Rock House @
Oblate School of Theology, 285 Oblate Dr, 341-1366
x 212 |
|
“The interior life of a Christian is
the reproduction of the life of Jesus.”
-- Bl. Ildefonso Schuster |
|
Copyright, Marian Center of San Antonio. All
rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |