Kindle the fire of love

I am letting the Holy Spirit write this blog as I sit at the computer. I am sure the Spirit will inspire something that helps others during these forty days of Lent. I want to kindle the fire of divine love in my own heart and in the hearts of others. How do I do this? By loving - but with the love drawn from the Heart of Jesus. As a Religious of the Sacred Heart I feel called to go to His Heart and there find all I need, even if it is what He asks of me. I believe this; why do I neglect to do this and forget that alone I can do nothing? I had the grace yesterday of the Sacrament of Reconciliation; it is a great way to begin Lent and left me feeling so grateful!
I am hoping to begin one of my resolutions and clear out my closet today!! Therefore, I will go begin and let you know tomorrow how much the Lord and I have done to remove clutter from my life in different ways (cleaning the closet is just a beginning and quite symbolic, at least to me, of clearing our interior clutter).

Home again and hopeful for these Forty Days!

I left Naples this morning and arrived at the University in plenty of time for the noon Mass. I went to Mass in Naples yesterday and was impressed with the people who were standing around the church as is was so crowded and they had five Masses. I chose the ten o'clock thinking it would be less crowded. It is a church that seems to have many winter visitors.
I have been reflecting today on what the Lord wants from me this Lent. I think it is what I want and need as He gives me the desires and lets me feel the need. I made a list and decided that two items are the most urgent and important; a third is one that will help me feel good as I have been promising myself to clear out and get rid of things for ages; the fourth will help me keep the first two. Now I am praying that the Lord will help as I feel the desire to do these four things this Lent is from Him and He knows that I cannot do anything alone!
I did not plan to share any of the above. What I was going to reflect on is that Lent is a time to return to the Lord. He asks each of us to "Return to me with all your heart." That is what Lent is about and now is the time. If I look into my heart, is it on fire with the love of God? Are the flames burning brightly or do I find ashes that need to be enkindled this Lent?

Ash Wednesday

There is a poem by T.S. Eliot called "Ash Wednesday." It is too long to copy here so try this instead:
My Heart is Ready

My heart is ready, Yes! My heart is ready!

like a desert I am parched. My soul of sand

soaks up the rain at once is dry again, and

the inner fount of life is rank and deadly.

In such abysmal straits, remind the self

that we are loved, for all our self-despair;

that Jesus Christ has sought us out, that care

will open up the inner streams of health.

God’s love is real and God’s affection never spent.

So, be watered, tended; be refreshed, this Lent.

[Year B - Ash Wednesday]

Archdeacon Harold Macdonald

Tuesday full of Thanksgiving

Today is a day to thank for I am filled with gratitude - gratitude for the gifts received yesterday, both spiritual and material ones. In fact, I listed a whole page in my journal this morning of people who made yesterday very special for me. Now I am off to see if I can find some Valentines to write and thank at least some of those in my University Community before I leave for Naples tomorrow for a whole week with my friend. We have been friends since we could talk, I guess, as our parents were friends even before getting married. We have stayed close as we are able to share and laugh together. She has four beautiful grown children, but no one could be with her this week and so I will have that joy.
I will not be writing this week, but will try to plan reflections for Lent; I return early on Ash Wednesday as I have a meeting that morning.

Golden Anniversary of my Profession Day in Rome

Today is the day and I woke up so full of gratitude and joy. I look back on the morning of February 8, 1960, and see myself leading the Americans up to the Communion rail as I was the first of our international group of 46 to pronounce my final vows. We had three days of Profession Ceremonies in three languages. There was a Cardinal celebrating the Mass, but I do not remember his name at all. I had known since Christmas Eve that I would be going to Chile as a missionary straight from Rome without returning to the United States. This was still a secret and I do remember praying and asking the Lord to make me his own and let me give his love to others. It was a happy day and the beginning of my life as a professed religious.

Today, with joy and gratitude, I will be renewing the vows I made fifty years ago and this will be at the noon Mass at the University where I have been for the last twenty-four years of my life. I will renew my vows that end with "and I commit myself anew to our mission of manifesting the love of Christ by the service of education." I have been an educator for close to sixty years now and hope and pray that I have manifested the love of Christ to all my students. I have taught every grade at every level from kindergarten through post-masters and have loved teaching. However, I am also looking forward to retirement this May. All my readers are in my prayer today!

"Put out into deep water..."

The Gospel(Luke 5:11) tells us that Jesus got into Simon's (Peter's) boat and asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch." Now, they had worked hard all night and had caught nothing, but Simon is willing to do as Jesus says. When he does, the number of fish in the nets is so great that the nets were tearing and they had to signal to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They filled both boats. And then Luke tells us, "When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,'Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.'"

That phrase for years made me wonder for I thought I would have called out, "Do not leave me, Lord, for I am a sinner and need you!" Then, I had an experience in making a thirty-day retreat in Manresa, Spain, at the cave where Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises. I was so aware of my own sinfulness that I understood Peter's cry. The Lord told Peter, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." Luke tells us that when they had brought their boats to the shore, "they left everything and followed him."

Leaving All

Sometimes you know when you need to leave all and answer a call for help. I am going this coming Wednesday to be with a friend who needs my help at this moment. It was easy to say "yes" and block out a week to be with her. It is only after making the decision, which I know was the right one, that I am also aware of how many things I have been putting off that need to be done here. However, I think that the Lord arranges these things and so I shall not worry. I suspect that I will get more done knowing that I am leaving this Wednesday as I do seem to work better under pressure. I am just delighted that I can be of help and I have been praying over my renewal of vows for Monday when I will say: "I renew with all my heart the vows which I have made (fifty years ago) to follow Jesus Christ in the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by perpetual obedience, poverty and chastity, and I commit myself anew to our mission of manifesting the love of Jesus by the service of education." Going to be with my friend is one way I can "manifest the love of Jesus" and I guess I glorify His Heart each time I choose what pleases Jesus. I am aware of the "light" I had years ago when praying over John's Gospel where Jesus says that He is not alone; the Father is always with Him because he chooses what pleases the Father. I have thought that I need to always choose what pleases Jesus and then He is with me and takes care of the rest. Anyway, Religious life is a constant call to leave all and follow Jesus and it is a joyful life because Jesus is with us. I shall try to write my blog ahead as I shall be away a week beginning next Wednesday without easy access to a computer.

Miscellaneous

Words mean different things to us at different times. This is evident when we talk of words that have taken on a new meaning in our present culture, but it is also true that a word may deepen and mean more as we mature or even when we reflect on it. I am thinking of the word "glorify" - the verb has different meanings for different people. I am called as a Religious of the Sacred Heart to glorify the Heart of Jesus; Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus for "the greater glory of God" - I think it means to give all the honor and recognition due to God. I think it also means recognizing that we belong to God and God created us. It is hard to put into words what I am feeling about "glorifying" - every time I try to express what I feel in words, it is not really what I want to say. We sing, "Give glory to God" and we mean this, but try to describe in words the meaning of "glory" and I feel inadequate! Words are concepts that convey meaning. Just my pondering this today makes me think that often we do not fully grasp the meaning! Maybe I have had clarity about a word before and now feel that I cannot remember how I used to understand the term to my own satisfaction...sorry but this is what today's reflection is about: a struggle to clarify for myself a rich concept that goes beyond words.

A Consecrated peerson is a "bridge" to God for all...

Pope Benedict XVI said this in a homily for the World Day of Consecrated Life:
"If Christ was not truly God, and was not, at the same time, fully man, the foundation of Christian life as such would come to naught, and in an altogether particular way, the foundation of every Christian consecration of man and woman would come to naught. Consecrated life, in fact, witnesses and expresses in a "powerful" way the reciprocal seeking of God and man, the love that attracts them to one another. The consecrated person, by the very fact of his or her being, represents something like a "bridge" to God for all those he or she meets -- a call, a return. And all this by virtue of the mediation of Jesus Christ, the Father's Consecrated One. He is the foundation! He who shared our frailty so that we could participate in his divine nature.

Our text insists on more than on faith, but rather on "trust" with which we can approach the "throne of grace," from the moment that our high priest was himself "put to the test in everything like us." We can approach to "receive mercy," "find grace," and "to be helped in the opportune moment." It seems to me that these words contain a great truth and also a great comfort for us who have received the gift and commitment of a special consecration in the Church."

When I read that the Holy Father says that a religious by the very fact of her being represents something like a "bridge" to God for all those he or she meets, I realized why the Holy Spirit has been calling me to the image of a "bridge" !:)

Thomas Merton and the Trappist Gethsemani Abbey

Here is a prayer that one of my international online certificate program students just shared with the course. She found it at Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery that Thomas Merton made so famous. There is also one of my favorite prayers by Merton that another student shared. (You can tell that Thomas Merton is one of the contemporary authors we are reading in this Unit.)

A LITANY of the PERSON

Image of God

Born of God’s breath

Vessel of divine Love

After his likeness

Dwelling of God

Capacity for the infinite

Eternally known

Chosen of God

Home of Infinite Majesty

Abiding in the Son

Called from eternity

Life in the Lord

Temple of the Holy Spirit

Branch of Christ

Receptacle of the Most High

Wellspring of Living Water

Heir of the kingdom

The glory of God

Abode of the Trinity

God sings this litany

Eternally in his Word

This is who you are.

This is definitely Merton's prayer and a favorite of many:

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Thoughts from Haiti

I thought I would quote this that I received yesterday: (It was much longer and very moving)
Early on Thursday morning, before leaving the hotel for my flight to Burbank, Calif., I read a passage from Elie Wiesel’s book Night, which was quoted in a book on Franciscan humility that I was reading:
The SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp. The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for a half an hour. “Where is God? Where is he?” Someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time, I heard the man call again, “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice in myself answer, “Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.”

My thoughts after reading that drifted back to the painful memory of the collapsed grammar school. I could see inside a classroom. The blackboard, small desks, scattered books and notebooks were clearly visible. The haunting site of a young boy’s decaying foot sticking out from the rubble. One minute the boy was studying, the next minute he was dead. Where was God? God was hidden in the rubble, the magnificence and mystery of God’s humanity at its worst. I thought how God is often buried under the rubble of our lives, buried under so many trivial and unimportant things that prevent us from loving God. And loving God is of paramount importance in the life of a Christian.

I’m not sure how long it will take to make any sense out of what I saw in Haiti. Maybe it will never make any sense. But I do know that the presence of so many wonderful men and women who rushed into this hell of suffering was truly inspirational, for they became living symbols of the compassion God calls each of us to embody.

[Gerry Straub is a filmmaker, who in December was in Haiti working on a documentary titled "Angels of Compassion: the Luminous Force of Intentional Kindness." He returned to Haiti Jan. 21 for more filming. While there, he filed reports for NCR by phone.]
All the stories from the " Haiti Dispatches " series

1. 'Organized chaos' as help reaches Haiti, Jan. 22
2. The outpouring of compassion is amazing , Jan. 23
3. Line between haves and have nots has disappeared, Jan. 24
4. A huge tragedy made startlingly personal, Jan. 27
5. Homeward bound, Jan. 29

For more information on the foundation Straub created, The San Damiano Foundation in Burbank, Calif., and to read about and order his films, please see www.sandamianofoundation.org.

Diamond Jubilee

Yesterday I had the most incredible experience. Since I entered the Society of the Sacred Heart sixty years ago, the Archdiocese celebrated my diamond jubilee!! It was a surprise for me as I am concentrating this year on celebrating a Golden Julilee on February 8 with a Mass at the University where I can renew the vows I made fifty years ago to serve God in the Society of the Sacred Heart until death by obedience, poverty, and chastity... - and now I had this incredible, beautiful liturgy in the Cathedral with two bishops and several priests and a wonderful choir...There were just three of us celebrating diamond jubilees; the other Sister was on a walker and we had orchid corsages! I was chosen to bring the hosts up at the offertory. I just was so moved during the liturgy and kept hearing Jesus say to me, "Let me love you." After the liturgy there was a marvelous banquet of several courses all served perfectly and the food presentation was so artistic we could have been in a five star hotel instead of the parish hall.
I am still thanking the Lord for the wonderful celebration but especially for the fact that I have been able to serve him in the Society of the Sacred Heart for 60 years - years so full of grace. Please help me thank!