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Medjugorje
Message: May 25, 2012 |
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Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry This beautiful message from Our Lady
was given on the Vigil of Pentecost, the great feast of the Holy Spirit and
“birthday of the Church.” Again she is
calling us “to conversion and to holiness,” and twice she refers to “joy
and peace.” Joy and peace are two of the nine Fruits of the Holy
Spirit mentioned by St. Paul in Galatians 5: “love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Our Lady tells
us, “God desires to give you joy and peace through prayer,
but you, little children, are still far away—attached to the earth and to
earthly things.” In other words, while we all want joy and peace, we
are not willing to receive them from God “through prayer”—the means by
which they come to us. Instead, we are “attached to the earth and to earthly
things.” These attachments to earthly pursuits actually rob us of joy and
peace. It’s important to understand what
Our Lady means by the words “earth” and “earthly things.” Clearly she is not “anti-Earth”; she is a
Mother who often draws our attention to the glory of nature and the splendor
of God’s creation in our planetary environment with its cycles and seasons.
Still, she makes a sharp distinction between our attachment to “the
earth and earthly things” and her call for us to “open our heart
and sight towards God and the things of God.” What
does it mean to move our focus and attention in life from “the earth and
earthly things” to “God and the things of God”? Turning back to St. Paul in
Galatians 5, we find it much the same as his distinction between life in “the
flesh” and life in “the Spirit.” St. Paul writes, “I say then: live
by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For
the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want….Now
the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness,
idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of
selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts,
orgies, and the like….In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control….Now those who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh
with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also
follow the Spirit.” This dismantling of “fleshly” attachments in favor of
cultivating “spiritual” fruits is a summation of the spiritual journey
in Christianity, as well as in all of the major religious traditions of
the world at their highest levels. To put these terms into more
contemporary language, we can say that what St. Paul calls “the flesh” and
“desires of the flesh” and what Our Lady calls “the earth” and “earthly
things” are what we call the “False Self” or “ego”
with its “programs for happiness” or “energy centers” that inevitably lead to
the self-centered miseries listed above by St. Paul. The “earthly” or
“fleshly” things upon which our lives are focused are our overblown
emotional needs for safety and security, affection and esteem, power and
control. “Gratifying our desires” (as St. Paul says) for these
fleshly/earthly things becomes the focus of every life that is
conditioned by the normal values and success-symbols of the dominant culture.
In contrast to this “broad path leading to destruction,” St. Paul and Our
Lady call us to “conversion and holiness” — life in the Spirit. How do we make this transition? As always, Our Lady invites us “anew”: “open
your heart and your sight towards God and the things of God—and
joy and peace will come to reign in your hearts.” From the start she said
that God desires to give us these spiritual fruits “through prayer”….and
for Mary, prayer is always an opening of heart, mind, eyes, ears,
and our whole being to God our Source. June
Musings . . . Golden Anniversary of Vatican II …the
polarized positions of Campaign Season . . . prayer in a hectic day . . . & consecrating our
life to the Most Holy Trinity Prophetic Words from Pope
Benedict XVI: “For many people today the church has
become the main obstacle to belief. They can no longer see in it anything but the human struggle for
power, the petty spectacle of those who, with their claim to administer official
Christianity, seem to stand most in the way of the true
spirit of Christianity.” --
Fr. Joseph Ratzinger during Vatican
Council II, 1963 This year we celebrate
the 50th Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the
world-changing Ecumenical Council convened by Pope John XXIII. We are still grappling with the Gospel question—raised by Jesus
himself—of how to put the “new wine” of the Spirit into the “old wineskins”
of our tradition. Jesus said, “Every scribe learned in the reign of God knows
how to bring forth out of his treasures new
things and old.” (Matthew
13:52) Some people can bring out all kinds of new things, but very little out
of tradition. And some people can bring out the old stuff ad nauseum. Neither
are teachers that Jesus considers apt for the reign of God. Fidelity to
the old and openness to the new were magnificently represented by Pope John
XXIII. The signs of the times that he recommended to the consideration of
the bishops at the Vatican Council are a revelation of God just as much as
things long since past. The living tradition
alone passes on the full Christian life. The
church constantly has to integrate new wisdom, new science, new information into the Gospel if she is going to communicate
it to contemporary people and to people of other cultures. Unfortunately, those of little faith tend to identify the values
of the Gospel with particular structures or symbols. Then if the symbol is
modified…they think the values of the Gospel are being rejected. People
have to grow beyond this over-identification. Ancient symbols can sometimes prevent the value of the Gospel from
being fully transmitted in new circumstances. Even words develop opposite
meanings over time. Would we say that Jesus was not in continuity with Moses
and the Prophets? They bore witness to him on the mountain [of
Transfiguration]. Yet he was completely free about following their tradition.
He paid no attention to the rabbinical practices of preaching only in
synagogues and only in regard to scripture.
– Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM On the heels of Pentecost and on the anniversary of Vatican II,
let us reflect on the “New Wine” of the Holy Spirit in our life: New wine is a marvelous image of the Holy Spirit. As we move to the
intuitive level of consciousness through contemplative prayer, the
energy of the Spirit cannot be contained in the old structures. They are not flexible
enough. They may have to be left aside or adapted. The new wine as a symbol of the Spirit has a tendency to stir people
up; for that reason, the fathers of the church called it “sober
intoxication.” Although its exuberance is subdued, it breaks out of
categories and cannot be contained in neat boxes. Jesus points out to John’s
disciples that they have a good practice but are too attached to fasting as a
structure. The wine of the Spirit that Jesus
brings will not fit into their narrow ideas. They must expand their views. Otherwise, the new wine of the gospel will give them trouble. It will
burst the narrow confines of their mindsets, and both what they have and what
they are trying to receive will be lost. Jesus suggests a solution: “Put the new wine into new wineskins.”
The new wine of the Gospel is manifested by the
fruits of the Spirit, which,
according to Galatians 5:22-24, are nine
aspects of the mind of Christ. If the new wine is to be preserved, new structures have to be
found that are more appropriate than the old ones. If we lean too heavily on
the old structures, the new wine of the Spirit will be lost. This
happened in the late Middle Ages and especially in the post-Reformation
Catholic Church when the emphasis moved from cultivating the fruits of the
Spirit to conformity to doctrinal formulas and external observances. That
is why we found ourselves at the time of Vatican II in a spiritual desert. The
old wine had run out. Renewal
in the Spirit, the new wine, is our recovery of the contemplative tradition
of Christianity. But this movement of the Spirit has to be put into new
structures; the old ones are likely to burst. Is it possible to renovate
old wineskins? With a lot of greasing they may regain some flexibility,
but not as much as new ones. The process may also take a long time.
– Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO Questions for Personal
Reflection: In our Catholic Church today, what might be
the “new wine”? Are we trying to
put “new wine” into “old wineskins”? Do we need to be careful not to lose
what we have—and also—what we are
trying to receive from God’s Holy Spirit? What “old wineskins” are we trying
to “grease”? What might be our “new
wineskins”? How about my own personal life? What “new wine” of the Spirit am
I trying to accept and hold in my “old wineskins”? What can be a “new
wineskin” for me? 2012
Campaign Season: “Holy Wars”...The Inner and Outer “Jihad” While the Islamic term “jihad” (holy war) has become associated with religiously inspired
acts of terrorism, the “True Jihad”
or “Greater Jihad” has a much
broader and deeper spiritual significance which bears considering, especially
in today’s political campaign climate of rhetorical terrorism on every side.
Before engaging in the escalating partisan feuds that permeate the American
landscape now, take a moment to reflect on a truth that all great religious
traditions share: The truer, greater meaning of jihad refers to the
battle for the utter liberation of the spirit from the tyrannical “nafs”—the unconscious motivation in the human psyche
that insists on separation and division. The point that the religious traditions make—and illustrate through
the wild images of Tibetan demons, Satanic spirits, and the personification
of the Seven Deadly Sins—is that there is something
fundamental within each of us that must be named, faced, and conquered
in order to free the human spirit. The sins of our forefathers were not simply an inventory of human
darkness; they pointed to what needed to be transcended, moved beyond, in
order to realize the glory of God ringing through the beauty and goodness
of creation. –
Elizabeth Debold If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere
committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the
rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing
good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn The struggle against evil can make
us evil, and no
amount of good intentions automatically prevents its happening. The whole
armor of God that Ephesians 6 counsels us to put on is crafted specifically
to protect us against the contagion of evil within our own souls,
and its metals are all forged in prayer. –
Walter Wink When we have our body and mind in
order, everything else will exist in the right place, in the right way. But usually,
without being aware of it, we try to change something other than ourselves, we try to order things outside us. But it is impossible to organize things if you
yourself are not in order. When you do things in the right way, at the
right time, everything else will be organized. – Shunryu Suzuki He who sees himself as
he really is, is greater than he who raises the dead. -- St. Isaac of Syria Praying
in Hectic Days: How Bad is it to Miss My Lectio, Meditation, Rosary, Centering Prayer, Daily Mass,
or other Regular Prayer Time? Regularity at prayer is the energy
that fills the center of my spiritual life….Maybe, given your life, you are just dead tired now. In that case, as
long as you are awake and breathing that is a prayer. As our prayer
life matures there is something in us that deepens immensely, and that is a
sense of awareness of the presence of God in life. It’s like one drop of
ink in five gallons of water—it permeates us. Once your prayer life is mature enough, you
can’t look at a beautiful flower, you can’t see a hungry child, you can’t
walk a dusty road, you can’t see an angry person and
not see it with the template of all the years of prayer that precedes
it. So what you are moving toward is constant
awareness, a continual sense of presence, a total commitment to a perspective
on life, an attitude toward humanity that becomes prayer. Life becomes
prayer. None of that is either a substitute or excuse for not
continuing to feed that life. Just be careful that you do not substitute a
schedule for a prayer life. It’s consciousness we’re seeking
and not a compensatory schedule. On days that you can do a
schedule, good for you; but on the days you can’t,
don’t assume you’ve closed the door between you and God. On the contrary,
you might be opening it for the first time. – Sr.
Joan Chittister, OSB
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Mark
Your Calendar
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June 3 |
Most Holy Trinity |
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10 |
Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus
Christi) |
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13 |
St. Anthony of Padua, Patron of San Antonio |
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15 |
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus |
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16 |
Immaculate
Heart of Mary |
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17 |
Father’s Day |
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18-20 |
Oblate Summer Institute:
“Give Reason for Your Hope” with Fr. Michael P. Gallagher, SJ, Deborah Smith
Douglas, Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI + 10 more speakers;
Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate Dr., $80 + meals/lodging; call (210)
349-4173 |
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24 |
Birth
of St. John the Baptist Rosary
Making: 2:00 pm - 5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s, ……… free parking &
materials |
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29 |
St.
Peter and St. Paul |
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30 |
PEACE
MASS: 12 noon, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s ………11:30 am Peace Rosary |
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“He who does not see God in the next
person he meets need look no further.” --
Mahatma Gandhi |
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permission. |