Lenten Prayer Workshop

Living a Discerning Life:  A lenten prayer experience.  On Saturday February 16, join us for a prayer workshop focused on praying with Sacred Scripture and Ignatian rules of discernment.  The workshop will begin with Mass, followed by light refreshments, presentations and an opportunity for prayer.

 Mass:  9:00 a.m. - Christ the King

Workshop: John Paul II Room                                   

Time:  9:45 – 2:00 p.m.

Cost:  donation

To register or for more information contact:

Jeannette Barbacane (jbarbacane@gmail.com) or

Tesa Fleming (tesafleming@gmail.com)

Prepare the Way of the Lord

PREPARE the Way of the Lord:  An Advent prayer experience.  On Saturday December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, join us for a prayer workshop focused on praying with Sacred Scripture.  The workshop will begin with Mass, followed by light refreshments, presentations and an opportunity for prayer.

Prepare the Way of the Lord.
  Make straight His paths.
Mark 1:3b

Mass: 9:00 a.m. - Christ the King
Workshop: Mengling Room                                   
Time:  9:45 – 1:00 p.m.
Cost:  donation

 

                                             

To register or for more information contact:
Jeannette Barbacane (jbarbacane@gmail.com) or
Tesa Fleming (tesafleming@gmail.com).

 

The Truth is the Truth

 The Truth is the Truth; there is no compromise, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope made this observation in today's general audience, as he reflected on the feast of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, celebrated today.
John "did not keep silent about the truth, and thus he died for Christ who is the Truth. For love of the truth, he did not give in to compromises with those who were powerful, nor was he afraid to address strong words to the one who lost his way to God," he said.
Though dedicating today's audience address to this saint, Christ's cousin and precursor, the Holy Father also continued his series on prayer, as he noted that John's strength can be traced to his contact with God.
"We ask: where does this life [in John's figure] come from, this interiority, which is so strong, so principled, so consistent, which is spent so totally for God and in preparing the way for Jesus? The answer is simple: from his relationship with God, from prayer, which is the guiding thread of his entire life."
"The entire life of Jesus' precursor was nourished by his relationship with God, especially during the time he spent in the wilderness (cf. Luke 1:80); the wilderness, a place of temptation, but also a place where man feels his own poverty, for there he is deprived of all support and material security, and he comes to understand that the only secure reference point is God himself," the Pontiff reflected.
John is not only a man of prayer, but also a guide in prayer, Benedict continued. He is also, the Pope said, an example to encourage steadfastness in our own day.
"Celebrating the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist also reminds us -- Christians in our own times -- that we cannot give into compromise when it comes to our love for Christ, for his Word, for his Truth," he said. "The Truth is the Truth; there is no compromise. The Christian life requires, as it were, the 'martyrdom' of daily fidelity to the Gospel; the courage, that is, to allow Christ to increase in us and to direct our thoughts and actions.
"But this can only occur in our lives if our relationship with God is strong. Prayer is not time lost, nor does it steal space away from our activities, even those that are apostolic; it is exactly the opposite: only if we are able to have a life of faithful, constant, trusting prayer, will God himself give us the ability and strength to live in happiness and peace, to overcome difficulties and to courageously bear witness to him. May St. John the Baptist intercede for us, that we might always maintain the primacy of God in our lives."
--Pope Benedict XVI, quoted in ZENIT

For the Greater Glory of God

On this Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, here is an excerpt from him (from Magnificat, 2010 p. 420):


(describing a time of desolation)"...Our old enemy places before us every obstacle to divert us from what has begun, attacking us very much. He acts completely counter to the first lesson, often plunging us into sadness without our knowing why we are sad. Nor can we pray with any devotion...

So here the person fighting has to identify the enemy. If it is a time of consolation, we must lower and abase ourselves, and reflect that soon the trial of temptation will come. If temptation, darkness, or sadness come, we must act against them without allowing any bitterness, and wait in patience for the Lord's consolation, which will evaporate all disturbances and shadows from outside."

Truth Stumbles in the Public Square

"Lo, the hand of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.  Rather it is your sins that make him hide his face so that he will not hear you...

"That is why right is far from us and justice does not reach us.  We look for light, and lo, darkness; for brightness, but we walk in gloom...

"Right is repelled, justice stands far off; For truth stumbles in the public square, uprightness cannot enter."
--all from Isaiah chapter 59.

The pharisees responded to Pilate "We have no king but Caesar."  America was founded as a republic, refusing to be led by an earthly king.  More room for the King of Kings to be our ruler.  Somewhere along the line, our refrain has changed to "I have no king but myself."--a far cry from "To Jesus Christ our sovereign King!"  Yet the truth remains, He is our King.  Whether acknowledged or not, He is King.  Pray for our nation, that we return to the truth and proclaim Him King -- in the public square.

Direct Your Gaze

"Wherever we direct our mental gaze, there we may be said to stand.  That is why Elijah said:  'The Lord lives, in whose sight I stand.'  He did indeed stand before God, for his heart was intent on God. 

"That the Jews gazed at the pillar of cloud and stood at the doors of their tents in adoration, has this meaning:  when the human mind perceives these high and heavenly things -- albeit in image-- the elevation of its thought has already lifted it free from the limits of its bodily habitation; and although it is denied sight of the divine substance, it humbly adores Him whose power it can already see by spiritual illumination.   --from Liturgy of the Hours, Carmelite Proper, Office of Readings for July 20

Where is your gaze directed?  That is where you will stand.

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

This feast, instituted in the 14th century by the Carmelite Order, commemorates the anniversary of the day in 1251 when the Blessed Mother gave the brown scapular to St. Simon Stock. "The scapular is an external sign of the filial relationship established between the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of Mount Carmel, and the faithful who entrust themselves totally to her protection, who have recourse to her maternal intercession, who are mindful of the primacy of the spiritual life and the need for prayer" (Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy 205)

"The Blessed Virgin Mary watches unceasingly with a mother's loving care over the brethren of her Son, and lights us along our pilgrim way to the Mount of your Glory, our beacon of comfort, and the embodiment of all our hopes as members of the Church" (Preface for Our Lady of Mount Carmel). -- taken from The Magnificat, July 16, 2010 page 235

In the spirituality of the Carmelite Order, the blessed Virgin Mary shows the way to all who believe in her Son. She says to the servants at the wedding feast in Cana: "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5). Let us pray that we be granted the grace to fulfill her words on this feast day.

--from the website of the Saint James Vicariate for Hebrew speaking Catholics in Israel

Who will listen?

"A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house."  (Mk 6:4)

"True prophets bear the Word of God.  They and their message are frightening because they disturb our complacency and demand of us far more than we may be willing to give.  At every Mass, we hear the prophetic word.  Will we listen?  Or will we dismiss what seems too familiar to deserve our attention?"  Magnificat, July, p. 105

Interior Life

"The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution.  Christianity, by its very nature, demands such a revolution.  If Christians would all live up to what they profess to believe, the revolution would happen.  The desire for unworldiness, detachment, and union with God is the most fundamental expression of this revolutionary spirit...

"The big problem that confronts Christianity is not Christ's enemies.  Persecution has never done much harm to the inner life of the Church as such.  The real religious problem exists in the souls of those of us who in their hearts believe in God, and who recognize their obligation to love Him and serve Him -- yet do not!...

"The world we live in is dry ground for the seed of God's Truth...You cannot love Him unless you know Him.  And you cannot come to know Him unless you have a little time and a little peace in which to pray and think about Him and study His truth...The truth is, we are simply not permitted to devote ourselves to God without at the same time leading an interior life."
  --Thomas Merton, in Ascent to Truth (1951)

He Humbled Himself

"In the Cross of Christ, man is redeemed and Adam’s experience is reversed: Adam, created in the image and likeness of God, sought to be like God by his own strength, to put himself in God’s place, and thus did he lose the original dignity given him. Jesus, instead, was “in the condition of God”, but he humbled himself, he immersed himself in the human condition in total fidelity to the Father, in order to redeem the Adam within us and to restore to man the dignity he had lost. The Fathers emphasize that He became obedient, thus restoring to human nature, through his humanity and obedience, what had been lost through Adam’s disobedience.


"In prayer, in our relationship with God, we open our minds, hearts and wills to the action of the Holy Spirit in order to enter into this same dynamic of life. As St. Cyril of Alexandria affirms, whose feast we celebrate today: “The work of the Spirit seeks to transform us by means of grace into the perfect copy of his humiliation” (Festal Letter 10, 4). Human logic, instead, often looks for self-realization through power, domination, and powerful means. Man continues to want to construct the tower of Babel by his own power, in order to reach the heights of God unaided, to be like God. The Incarnation and the Cross remind us that full realization resides in conforming one’s human will to the Father’s, in being emptied of egoism in order to be filled with love, with the charity of God, and thus to become truly capable of loving others. Man does not find himself by remaining closed in within himself, by affirming himself. Man finds himself only by going out of himself; we only find ourselves if we go out of ourselves. And if Adam wanted to imitate God, this in itself was not bad, but he erred in his idea about God. God is not one who wills only greatness. God is love, who gives himself first in the Trinity, and then in creation. And to imitate God means going out of oneself; it means giving oneself in love." -- Pope Benedict XVI, in Wednesday's audience. (reported on ZENIT)

More on Prayer...

Benedict XVI said that prayer leads us to see God's merciful plan in the Church's journey.


"St. Ireneaus once said that, in the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit accustomed himself to being in man," the Pope noted. "In prayer we must accustom ourselves to being with God. This is very important, that we learn to be with God; in this way, we see that it is beautiful to be with him, which is redemption. [...] Prayer, as a way of 'accustoming oneself' to being together with God, produces men and women animated not by egoism, by the desire to possess, by the thirst for power, but by gratuity, by the desire to love, by the thirst to serve -- animated, that is, by God; and it is only in this way that we can bring light to the darkness of the world." -- from ZENIT, 6-21-12

Life of Prayer

"A life of prayer is necessary too, because the self-surrender, obedience and meekness of the Christian are born of love and lead to love.  And love leads to genuine concern for others and to mutual dealings, to meaningful conversation and to friendship.  The Christian life requires a constant dialogue with God, One and Three, and it is to this intimacy that the Holy Spirit leads us.

Union with the Cross there must be also...

We tell Our Lord that we do not want to rest content with the standard we have achieved in prayer...that with his grace and the protection of Our Lady we will not rest until we reach the goal which gives meaning to our life -- complete identification with Jesus Christ."  -- In Conversation With Christ, vol 3, pp. 594-5

The Cunning of Pride

"Deep within every human heart - unless it has been profoundly purified - there lurks a sly, unrecognized cunning, all too well skilled in self-deception and evasion.  This is the total adversary of belief.  It is the cunning of pride, of self-possession, of self-sufficiency.  To live fully out of our inheritance...strikes a deadly blow at human pride...

"Each of us has the choice either to live by faith or to live by 'flesh'.  To live by 'flesh' is to live within the limits of our own potential, within the limits of our our perception and understanding, according to how things seem and feel, according to our natural experience.  It is instinctive to live thus, taking for granted that our conscious experience is to be trusted, that it is the way things really are... We want to remain on this level because it is within our grasp...we are unaware of how much of our life is lived from self, relying on self and not on faith in the Son of Man. We cannot rid ourselves of this deeply rooted pride and self-possession by our own strength.  Only the Holy Spirit of the Crucified and Risen One can effect it, and this he is indeed always trying to do.  But we must recognize his work and respond 'Amen'."  --Sr. Ruth Burrows, OCD, quoted in Magnificat, p. 113-4

Prayer -- When You Can't....

"Our prayer...ought to express the feelings of a happy child who enjoys talking heart to heart with his father, and can throw himself into his father's arms with complete abandon.  Unfortunately, we are always poor sinners, and the knowledge of our wretchedness and unfaithfulness  may paralyze this filial affection, causing a certain fear to arise in our souls...especially when the soul is going through dark periods of struggle, temptations, and difficulties, all of which tend to throw it into agitation and confusion, impeding, in spite of its efforts, that confident outpouring of the heart which submerges all its worries in God.  Then one day, during prayer, the soul becomes recollected under the influence of a new light which drives away all fear, not a new thought, but an intimate realization of truth never before experienced:  God is my Father, I am His child.  It is the influence of the gift of piety, set in motion by the Holy Spirit."

"Come, Holy Spirit, be my interior Master...O Divine Spirit, pray then in me and through me.  I ought to think that it is You who are praying and praising God in me, even when weariness or aridity or distractions prevent me from being recollected.  I should remain, then, in a humble attitude of prayer, confident that You will draw from me the praise and glory which I do not know how to give, but which I desire to give to my God."  (Sr. Carmela of the Holy Spirit, OCD)
   ---from Divine Intimacy, #198

Be Docile to the Holy Spirit

"O Holy Spirit, make me docile to Your action and always willing to be guided and directed by You."

"In what concerns sanctity, we are always like school children,m apprentices who, having only a rudimentary knowledge of the art they are learning, are always in need of direction and suggestions from their teacher.  Our Teacher of sanctity is none other than the Holy Spirit...That is why the whole work of our sanctification can be reduced to a question of docility to the divine Paraclete...

"But very often, alas! our will still remains hard, stubborn, and intractable because it is so attached to creatures especially to that one creature, the 'ego' which we blindly cherish.  Hence, to cooperate with the action of the Holy Spirit, the first requirement is the painstaking effort to detach ourselves from everything, especially from ourselves.  Detachment will free us from numerous bonds which, like cords, tie us to creatures, making our docility and submissiveness to the Holy Spirit an impossibility...

"the Paraclete is not content simply to invite us to what is good, but He wishes to take the initiative, impelling us more effectively toward God.  However, He respects our liberty, and will not make Himself Master of our will unless we are disposed to give it to Him freely.  And here we can set up another obstacle to His action:...Perhaps we cooperate partially, giving Him something of what He asks, but we do not give Him 'all'.  We must therefore, cultivate the spirit of 'totality' which puts no limits on our giving.  We must have a magnanimous heart and not retard the work of the Holy Spirit, who will to bring us, not only, to good actions but to generous, heroic, saintly ones."  --from Divine Intimacy, #192.

Come, Holy Spirit!

"But if the Holy Spirit is an impulse of love that comes into us to sanctify us and bring us to God, why do we not all become saints? The mystery of human responsibility enters here...Although He is eager to enter our souls and to possess it, He will not act thus unless we give Him free access..."God does not force anyone, He takes what we give Him; but He does not give Himself wholly to us, until we give ourselves wholly to Him." (St Teresa in Way of Perfection, ch 28) If we do not become saints, it is not because the Holy Spirit does not will it -- He was sent to us and comes to us for this very purpose -- but it is because we do not give full liberty to His action. This is the point in which we fail: we do not use our liberty to wholly yield our soul to His powerful, loving invasion. If our will would open the doors wide, the Holy Spirit would take us under His direction, and, with His help, we would become saints." from Divine Intimacy, #188 (p.563)

Let us pray for His Spirit upon us during the Vigil Mass tonight.

Luke 1:26-38  Mary overshadowed by the Holy Spirit conceived the Savior!  Holy Spirit, overshadow us!  Luke 11:9-13 It simply pleases Jesus and the Father to pour out the Holy Spirit upon us.  Let us ask and knock and seek for more of the Spirit.

On the faithful who adore

And confess You evermore

In Your sevenfold gift descend;

Give them virtue's sure reward;

Give them Your salvation, Lord;

Give them joys that never end.

Amen.  Alleluia.



Acts 2:1-4 PENTECOST   Suddenly there was the rush of a mighty wind, from heaven...And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues.  By our novena we have prepared ourselves for the coming of the Spirit.  Let us repent if necessary, humble ourselves by fasting, and turn to Him with a loving and surrendered heart desperate for more of His Spirit.

Bend the stubborn heart and will;

melt the frozen, warm the chill;

guide the steps that go astray.



Luke 24:49  Jesus said He would send the promise of the Father"...and the disciples would be clothed with "power from on high."  The Holy Spirit is the Father's Promise!  Ask Him now to fulfill His promise to you and your children!

Heal our wounds, our strength renew!

On our dryness pour Your dew;

wash the stains of guilt away.



Luke 4:18-19"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me..."  Jesus quoting the Prophet Isaiah (ch 61). Jesus depended upon the power of the Spirit in His own ministry!  How much more so we, in our family, our work, and our service.

Where You are not, we have naught;

nothing good in deed or thought,

nothing free from taint of ill.