Archive for March, 2012

All Encompassing Prayer

March 24th, 2012

One evening I was chatting with a Sister during our recreation about  the power that flows from being a spouse of Christ and how fidelity to this holy relationship penetrates the world and makes us spiritual mothers.

She then shared the following grace with me and I asked her to share it with you!

In prayer before Jesus, I started thinking of all the prayer requests that come in to the monastery and how important each and every one of them is. I was also thinking of all the needs in our Church, in the country and in the world. I wanted to encompass them all and was feeling a little overwhelmed at how to do this.

I asked Jesus, “Jesus, how did you pray for every single person in history while you were here on this earth?”

What came to my mind was something like this: “The best thing you can do for your spiritual children is to love your Divine Spouse and to be faithful. This is what they need to see, and everything will come from this love.”

What simplicity and peace this brought to my heart. Even though those I pray for can’t see this devotion and faithfulness with their bodily eyes, I believe in some way by God’s mercy, they will see with their heart and soul and grace will be present to them.

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Scripture Reflection for 4th Sunday of Lent

March 20th, 2012

Can you believe we just passed the mid-point of Lent? Laetare Sunday brought us organ and violin prelude, rose-colored vestments, flowers by the tabernacle and images of our Lady, St. Joseph and St. Paul of the Cross. The smell of the jonquils by the Pieta statue (statue of our Blessed Mother holding Jesus after he was taken down from the cross) was a foretaste of resurrection glory!

Scripture Reflection for the 4th Sunday of Lent

2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23

Psalm 137:1-6

Ephesians 2:4-10

John 3:14-21

 

The readings this week call us to a deeper understanding of God. We all have heard that God is our Creator and Redeemer, but the terms are so familiar that we can forget what that means in our lives – in your life and in my life. This Sunday we are challenged to open our eyes to see God as He wants us to see Him.

St. Paul in our epistle beautifully sums up our relationship with God: “We are His handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.” Wow! Anne and Sr. Cecilia Maria found great consolation in this second reading. God continually creates us in His Son! Not only did He create us “once upon a time,” but through our whole lives He forms us, teaches us, guides us, admonishes us, calls us back when we wander, and heals us when we hurt ourselves. Why? Because He has prepared good works for us to live in, and He just can’t stand it until we are able to live fully in that goodness! Everything that exists, everything that happens is a gift of God for you. He had you personally in mind when He created it, so that it would help you grow into the good works He has prepared for you.

Our first reading relates to us how this beautiful providence looked at the time of the Babylonian exile of the Hebrew people. “Early and often did the Lord … send His messengers to them, for He had compassion on His people,” the Chronicler tells us. God wants not only to give us His gifts, but to have us keep them always! He seeks to teach us how to live in those good works; when we are unfaithful, in compassion He cries out to us to return. Sr. Rose Marie highlighted for us how the justice of God is always related to His mercy, and that when we think God’s justice is “punishment,” we are forgetting who God really is. God does admonish us, in the hopes that we will hear and return to the good works He created us for, but His justice is not punishment. He knows that on our own we cannot live in His good works. How could He punish us for not doing something we are incapable of doing? No, He has mercy and gives us His own justice, His own strength, His own Son.

Yes! “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This Sunday’s gospel sings once again that well-loved verse and celebrates the largess of our tremendous Gift-Giver. God created us in Christ Jesus for His good works! He loves us so much that He gives us everything we need to live in His goodness; we have only to open our hearts to receive His gift. Sr. Mary Veronica kept returning to this mind-blowing reality. He GAVE His only begotten Son! He did not just send, He GAVE His Son to us!

Have you received Him? Do you live in Him?

Sr. Mary Andrea brought our attention to a message common to all the readings this week: God gives us all these gifts so that He might be our abiding companion. “May his God be with him,” acclaims the first reading about every Hebrew. “May thus and so happen to me if ever I forget you!” cries the psalmist in exile from his land and his God. God creates us “that we should live in [His good works],” teaches St. Paul. And finally, the gospel reminds us that God gave us His own Son so that we might have “eternal life” with Him.

Did you know that eternal life can start now?

It starts as soon as you begin living in the goodness God created you for!

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Scripture Reflection for 3rd Sunday of Lent

March 18th, 2012

I’m going to try something new. For a while we have been posting the novitiate scripture sharings in the Novitiate Corner on our website. Now I’ll be posting them here too.

I hope you find them a source of inspiration!

Scripture Reflection for the 3rd Sunday of Lent

Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19:8-11

1 Corinthians 1:22-25

John 2:13-25

 

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a piece of fine art depicting the cleansing of the Temple?” we asked ourselves this Sunday. How powerful it would be to see the anger, grief, holiness, and majesty of Jesus Christ as He confronts the people who have been making His Father’s house a marketplace! Our whole discussion centered upon the Gospel passage and its meaning, both in the context of Jesus’ earthly existence and of our own lives.

Sr. Rose Marie brought a reflection from the opening pages of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth, which called our attention to Jesus’ “going up to Jerusalem” for the feast of Passover, which is the context of His cleansing of the Temple. Much more than being simply a physical ascent (which it is), it symbolizes the Christ’s ascent to the Father through the course of His life, His ascent to “loving to the end.” As Jesus goes up to Jerusalem and drives the vendors out of the Temple courts, He is illustrating in symbol what He does with His life and passion. Through the Cross, Jesus “goes up” to the true Temple, not made by human hands – His glorified body – and cleanses us to be part of it.

Sr. Mary Andrea brought a similar insight: Jesus tells us, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” How shocking! Of course we know that He is speaking of His body, but not merely His physical body which rose again on that first Easter morning. He speaks too of His mystical body, the Church; He raises her with Him into the glory of His Father’s love. But He is also speaking of you and me individually. He can and He does transform us into that Temple not made by human hands. But we each have a part to play. Even as He cleansed the earthly Temple, Jesus asked for help from the dove-sellers, “Take these out of here!” He asks us to help Him cleanse our Temple courts of all that keeps us from being true and living tabernacles of the Holy Spirit.

Sr. Cecilia Maria was intrigued at how the Gospel story illustrates St. Paul’s beautiful verse from the second reading, “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” As Jesus drives out the vendors, He is using human strength and is actually acting like the powerful Messiah so many awaited, but His human power is useless to convince anyone that He is the Christ. This is true not only of the cleansing, but also of His miracles and even His transfiguration. People still asked for a sign, and they saw folly and instigation, or at best wonder-working, in His actions. However, Jesus points to His Passion and Resurrection as the sign which will be given. The Crucifixion, Death, and Resurrection are certainly foolish and weak by human measures! Yet through the ages, they have been stronger than all human strength and wiser than all human wisdom.

Anne and Sr. Mary Veronica expounded upon the poignant last paragraph of our Gospel. “Jesus would not trust Himself to them because He knew them all….” Alas for our fickle human nature, that renders the same souls who begin to believe in the Son of God to turn upon Him three years later and to condemn Him to death! Christ comes to me every day, every hour, and He longs to give Himself to me. Can He trust Himself to me? Am I open enough to receive Him? Do I welcome Him as King of my heart no matter what; do I cling to Him, no matter what that means and no matter where He leads me?

Let us each love Him to the end, that He may abide in us and us in Him forever!

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Our Passionist Sign

March 16th, 2012

Last month I shared with you a bit about the life of an aspirant in our community. (In case you have forgotten our monastic terminology – an aspirant is a woman who lives in the monastery for 3 months to discern our way of life.)

I forgot to mention that a special point in this stage of discernment is the reception of the small Passion sign pin at the beginning of her aspirancy.

Mother Catherine Marie places this pin near the Tabernacle, asking for our Lord’s blessing upon our aspirant. During Vespers she takes the pin and gives it to the novice directress to pin it on the aspirant, asking our Lord to bless her and that if it be his will one day she receive the large Passion sign of a professed Passionist Nun.

If the woman is so blessed to enter the monastery she will continue to wear the passion sign pin along with a crucifix.

In the Sourcebook on St. Paul of the Cross by Fr. Jude Mead, CP, Fr. Jude gives this explanation of the Passion sign:

Among the intellectual visions that preceded the foundation of the Congregation of the Passion, St. Paul of the Cross received one of the “sign” or emblem: a white heart, surmounted by a cross, bearing the title of the Passion of Jesus Christ. It was formed in his mind in successive phases: first the Cross and the name of Jesus, then the rest. He always considered it as a sublime gift that came to him through the hand of the angels, and he referred to it as holy, most holy and the terror of Hell, the sign of salvation.

The signs worn by the saint himself had a special, even miraculous power. He had no difficulty in giving away those signs which he no longer wore…

The seal of the whole Congregation is composed of this sign, which he had encircled with the devices of victory and peace: the palm and the olive branch. It is a compendium of his charism.

St. Paul himself explained the white color of the heart as meaning that the heart which had the Passion imprinted on it ought to be pure. He further affirmed that this public and visible glorification of the Passion caused all Hell to tremble in a special way…

Please keep up those prayers for Anne during this important time. We recently admitted another young woman to the aspirancy – praise the Lord! She hopes to come this summer after graduating from college. Please pray for these two and for the other two women who hope to visit us this spring.

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Writer’s Block?

March 12th, 2012

Well, greetings!  Did you think I forgot you? Yes, I guess I took a short vacation from blogging.

We are in the midst of a novena to St. Joseph. Since our monastery is dedicated to this great Guardian of the Redeemer we have a solemn novena to him each year.

Today was our community solitude afternoon and I spent it with Blessed Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Custos. What a beautiful reflection on the life and virtues of St. Joseph!

Each Sister is reveling in the spring weather. Every day we can see more buds opening and the grass is just beginning to green – although, we seem to have more wild onions than grass and the wild onions are the first to pop up!

These beauties are in bloom…

I think I have “writer’s block”. :(

I would be interested in hearing what YOU are interested in seeing more of on this blog.  Any ideas?

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