California, here I come!

Tomorrow I leave for California and only return on July 15; then I leave again on July 27 for a Higher Education meeting followed by our Provincial Assembly in Chicago until August 2. I may be writing a blog on some days, but do not be surprised to find out that I will really be taking a vacation from the blog for the times when I am away. Reverend Mother Stuart said that the best vacation was a change of occupation. I sit at the computer too many hours a day so may just give it up for part of this summer. I will be making my retreat at Villa Maria del Mar in Santa Cruz from July 6-13 and count on your prayer for me during this time. I always think of it as a "honeymoon" with the Lord. It is a short retreat this year with only six nights there, but it is a directed retreat and I look forward to it. Last year I had thirty days there but the Holy Spirit was my director - I hope I still have the Holy Spirit as the real director, but it will be good to also have a Sister of the Holy Names who directed me in a couple of retreats years ago. She is very loving and has a great sense of humor so I am really looking forward to seeing her again. Actually, I did have a visit with her last summer when on a "break day" in my third week of retreat.
Before the retreat I will be visiting a friend from high school and college and then one who I met when I first came to Miami in 1986; she moved to California two years ago and I miss her very much so it will be good to catch up with her. Then I will have a few days in Oakwood to see my friends at our retirement home there before the retreat.
Have a great summer all of you with good reading and time to just be! Look for some interesting Letters from Maryland on Ignatian Spirituality to be published in this blog after July 16 to prepare for the Feast of St. Ignatius.

More Books for Spiritual Reading

Spiritual reading is to nourish our souls. There are so many good books out there. The truth is that when you find a book that really nourishes you, just stop and stay with it. I like to read the entire book and then go back and start a slower reading, take time to savor certain passages, underline them, and then maybe I keep going back to the same book for a long time; other books get put back on the shelf and then suddenly seem to come alive and I pick them up finding God on each page and wonder why these books did not speak to me before - books fit the needs of our souls and so we put some away only to find that later it is nourishing us more than we could imagine!

One such book is Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West. This is not a new book having been published in 2002, but it is rather new for me and I have found it one I now keep picking up. I must add it now to my list in this blog.

Jose Hobday, recently deceased, has a delightful book called Stories of Awe and Abundance This book contains many of the stories that Jose used in talks or I read elsewhere, but what a joy to find 49 wisdom stories in the same little book. We are suggesting this book as a way to understand something of the native American spirituality, but anyone would enjoy reading Sister Jose Hobday,OSF.

New Spiritual Books for Summer Reading

I am adding more books to my list of spiritual books. I have wanted to do this for some weeks so have several to add and think there will be spiritual nourishment for my readers with a good selection of some delightful books.
First, I added two books about St. Paul as we are coming to the close of the year especially dedicated to Paul. I really enjoyed both. I may have mentioned Cardinal Carlos Martini's The Gospel According to St. Paul: Meditations on His Life and Letters. The first part treats of Paul's Conversion; the Passion of Paul; and Paul's Transfiguration. The Chapter on Paul's Transfiguration kept me going back to it in prayer and I seem to have mentioned the attitudes and the modes of action that Martini attributes to Paul. The second part of the book is Apostle by Vocation and I liked the chapter on Love for the Community especially.
I also read Benidict XVI's book on St. Paul and enjoyed it, too. It is really the talks he gave at the General Audience each week from July 2, 2008 to February 4, 2009. It is very readable and informative.

I also have enjoyed another book that I mentioned before by David L. Fleming, S.J. What Is Ignatian Spirituality? published by Loyola Press, 2008. It is a good introduction to Ignatian Spirituality and I have selected it as a book for the International Online Certificate Program in Spirituality Studies. The September course begins with St. Ignatius and Ignatian Spirituality and this is a simple book that highlights the aspects of Ignatian Spirituality. Dave taught me in the Institute for Religious Formation (the IRF) many years ago and was an excellent teacher; we have remained in touch through the years and I enjoyed reading his latest book very much.

I will be introducing you to still more books in the days to come.

Father's Day

This is not the picture I was looking for but it still is one that can evoke memories of my Dad. My Dad taught me to swim. We loved the water and he bought a lake lot when I was a child and I used to go spend Sunday at the lake with him. It was during the second world war so he was trying to sell the lake lots to earn some extra money. We would go to early Mass and then take off for the lake until evening. Sometimes my mother and siblings came, too, but my sister was still too young to be alone all day and my brothers were just babies so it was hard for my mother to be there all day except when we were using a friend's home. We just had a lot and a dock, but the lake was beautiful and my Dad did not worry about me. I would come back for a picnic lunch with him. I guess what brought all this to mind was that I usually had my Dad to myself on those Sundays and I loved that. I also had my Dad just to myself on long rides to and from school when we lived in the county and I went to the Academy of the Visitation. My Dad was special and I am grateful for both of my parents. My life has been marked by their love.

Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

I do not like any of the pictures of the Immaculate Heart of Mary but love this feast. Now it really does not get celebrated as it is the day after the Feast of the Sacred Heart, but it used to be August 22 and was a great day to have a real holiday before the vacation ended. I think Mary's Heart is so united to the Heart of Jesus that she rejoices in our celebrating on Friday and letting her day be rather quiet.

I brought another one of Jessica Powers' poems to share with you. It is not about Our Lady, but it seems she inspired me to pray over it and I want to share it with you.

My Heart Ran Forth
My heart ran forth on little feet of music
to keep the new commandment.
(O feast and frolic of awakening spring!)
It would beguile the world to be a garden
with seeds of one refrain: My little children,
love one another; so my heart would sing.

But wisdom halted it, out far afield,
asked: did you sow this seed
around your house, or in the neighbor's garden
or any nearby acreage of need?
No? Then it will not grow in outer places.
Love has its proper soil, its native land;
its first roots fasten on the near-at-hand.

Back toward the house from which I deftly fled,
down neighbors' lanes, across my father's barley
my heart brought home its charity. It said:
love is a simple plant like a Creeping Charlie;
once it takes root its talent is to spread.

The above poem is giving me much to reflect upon and I suspect it may be part of my retreat this summer- especially that line ""its first roots fasten on the near-at-hand," I now know who my retreat director will be and I am beginning to pray for her and for the others who will be with me in retreat from July 6-13. Please pray for us, too. It is a short retreat, but having had a month last year that was so heavenly, I will be happy with these days and hope to have another three days later this year. For me, my retreat is the most important time of the year, and has been for many, many years.

Feast of the Sacred Heart

I like Jesus holding the lamb and it says more to me about his Sacred Heart than the pictures I find on Google. Unfortunately I have not been able to scan my picture of the statue of the Sacred Heart at Kenwood into the computer, but I have hopes still to do this in the future.
I just added this picture of Sophie as she was being moved to St. Francis Xavier church in Paris and is outside the chasse. I think it is an incredible picture and one that maybe we should have printed. I know that I found Sophie so real when I prayed by her intact body years ago; she just invited conversation with her.

Happy Feast! We are united with the Religious of the Sacred Heart and our Associates all over the world today. The Miami area Religious will renew our vows at a liturgy and then have dinner together.
I entered for this Feast 59 years ago and remember so vividly arriving and being taken to the Chapel for a short visit with Jesus on the way to the "West Wing" where the novices lived. God is so faithful!

Eve of the Feast of the Sacred Heart

We often were in retreat for the Feast of the Sacred Heart; we have still the devotional renovation of our vows which we renew with all our hearts. We used to have a day of fasting and prayer to prepare for the Feast.

The Gospel of John gives us two texts that are the chief scriptural foundations for devotion to the Sacred Heart. These texts are John 7:37-38 where Jesus speaks of the "rivers of living water", and John 19:34, "One of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side and immediately blood and water flowed out." Both texts were commented upon by the Fathers of the Church. both are often the texts that lead me into prayer. I like the Ephesian version which has the living water flowing from Christ. "If anyone thirst, let him come to me; let him drink who believes in me; Scripture has it: 'From withing him rivers of living water shall flow." The majority of the early commentaries of the Fathers of the Church depict the Heart of Christ as the source of living water.

St. Gregory the Great (540-604), one of the last of the Fathers in the Western patristic period, related the two fundamental Scripture passages from St. John's Gospel. He saw Christ as the Rock and His wounds as the clefts in the rock. He wrote in his commentary on the Canticle of Canticles: "By the clefts of the rock I mean the wounds in His side made by the lance."

Our lovely Chapel at St. Thomas University has the base of the altar a huge piece of limestone from the Florida Keys and there are "clefts in the rock" and lead me into prayer.

Since tomorrow is the transfer of the "chasse" of St. Madeleine Sophie from Belgium to the church of St. Francis Xavier in Paris, I want to add another bit from the letter written to us for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. (I do hope that all my readers realize that the body of Sophie is still intact since her death in 1865).
Kathy Conan writes: "...it is fitting that Sophie be in the church of Francis Xavier, Apostle to the Nations. She herself dreamed of going to the far reaches of the world, a dream that took flesh in Philippine and her companions and continues today in newer areas of our mission. Beyond geography, she insisted that the education of her sister and of the students reach into the depths of our heritage and be open to the breadth of new worlds being explored in science, in the understanding of the human person, in the awareness of various cultures and their ways of living and thinking." I think that Sophie will like her new resting place, surrounded by God's people.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart

In one of her letters to Philippine in July 1810, Mother Barat told Philippine : "Enter his Heart, and from its depths draw the virtues you lack." This is the core of Mother Barat's spirituality: Spouses of the Heart of Jesus must enter his Heart and draw from it all that is needed to live in union and conformity with his Heart which is the grace of our vocation.

I think it is good to give a bit of background about the devotion to the Heart of Jesus. Seen in the broadest way, devotion to the Sacred Heart is as old as the Church. In a sense, it began even before the Incarnation, but more properly it is devotion to the love of God for us manifested in the humanity of Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, devotion to the Word Incarnate with the focus on the physical heart of Christ. As such, it was implicit from the beginning but developed gradually in the life, worship, and teaching of the Church.

The roots of the devotion are found in the Old Testament. God, as a loving God, entered into a relationship with humanity. The New Testament reveals the extent of His love even to giving us His only Son. With the Incarnation, God entered our history in a human form. The "Word was made flesh": in Jesus Christ, God's love was made visible.

The word, "heart" in the biblical sense stands for the whole person. It is used to indicate the deepest core of a person; it is the place of thoughts, feelings, desires and motives. Sophie would have the novices study the Heart of Jesus as an open book in which they study what regards each particular virtue. It is from the "esteem which the Heart of Jesus had for these virtues, and the manner in which He practiced them," that they should hold them and the manner in which they should put them into practice. Afterwards, "when they are called upon to perform acts of these different virtues, they need but cast one look upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus in order to conform and unite themselves to His interior dispositions."

I have just read the Letter for the Feast of the Sacred Heart from our present Superior General, Kathy Conan, that arrived yesterday. I am sure she will not mind if I quote the following:
"Throughout her own journey Sophie would return to the heart of Jesus, longing to sink her roots more deeply in its soil, to absorb water and nourishment from his love. A more common image in Sophie's writings describing this dynamic of longing and nourishment is that of drawing water from the well of the heart of Jesus. From her earliest letters through to her last, she encourages her sisters to go often to this well, to drink continually of the refreshing waters of Jesus' heart."

Still water and the Heart of Jesus

One of my favorite images to begin prayer is going down into still, deep water and entering into a cleft in the rock and then abiding in the Heart of Jesus where I am surrounded by love. I guess the above picture called forth this sharing. I was thinking how often I find myself wordless in His heart. There is a line that has meant so much to me; it is from a circular letter of Reverend Mother de Lescure to the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1949 and says "the solitude of His heart is a crushing reality." We are called to people the solitude of His heart, to descend to the depths and abide with Him.

Let us Prepare for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Now, we will be celebrating the Feast of the Sacred Heart in just five days! Let us make this a week full of short prayers to the Heart of Christ. I love these that can be sung: O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in You; O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I believe in Your love for me; O Sacred Heart of Jesus, may Your Kingdom come!

I also love, "Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine."

Jessica Powers has a great poem on "The Mercy of God'. I am going to copy the last part that says much to me and maybe to you, also:

I rose up from the acres of self that I tended with passion
and defended with flurries of pride;
I walked out of myself and went into the woods of God's mercy,
and here I abide.
There is a greenness and calmness and coolness, a soft leafy
covering
from the judgment of sun overhead,
and the hush of His peace, and the moss of His mercy to tread.
I have naught but my will seeking god; even love burning
in me
is a fragment of infinite loving and never my own.
And I fear God no more; I go forward to wander forever
in a wilderness made of His infinite mercy alone.

This is taken from the Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau. Sheed and Ward, 1989. Let us all abide in the woods of God's mercy!

Feast of Corpus Christi

Our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, tells us: "Jesus makes himself truly present in the Eucharistic Mystery, which is renewed on every altar. His is a dynamic presence that takes hold of us to make us his, to liken us to him. He attracts us with the force of his love, bringing us out of ourselves to be united with him, making us one with him."

I like the idea of the dynamic presence of Jesus taking hold of us to make us his and I know he attracts us with the force of his love. His love is eternal, without limits, unconditional, and Jesus waits for us to receive Him in the Eucharist to give us even more capacity to receive His love.

From the second Preface for this Feast: Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord. At the last supper, as he sat at table with his apostles, he offered himself to you as the spotless lamb, the acceptable gift that gives you perfect praise.
Christ has given us this memorial of his passion to bring us its saving power until the end of time.
In this great sacrament you feed your people and strengthen them in holiness, so that the family of mankind may come to walk in the light of one faith, in one communion of love. We come then to this wonderful sacrament to be fed at your table and grow into the likeness of the risen Christ...

This Preface contains the theology behind the Feast. Christ is the acceptable gift and the Eucharistic memorial of his passion does bring us his saving power; Jesus does feed and strengthen us. So let us come then to this wonderful sacrament to be fed at your table and grow into the likeness of the risen Christ!

Our Lady of Grace

A good friend sent me this poem of Jessica Powers some time ago; I have used it for prayer myself and thought this Saturday would be a good time for me to share it with all those out there who read my blog. (Please know that I welcome feedback always on the content of my blog.)

The Pool of God

There was nothing in the Virgin's soul that belonged to the Virgin-
no word, no thought, no image, no intent.
She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting God, only God.
She held His burnished day; she held His night of planet-glow or shade inscrutable.
God was her sky and she who mirrored Him became His firmament.

When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her my spirit is enisled in her repose.
And when I gaze into her selfless depths an anguish in me grows to hold such blueness and to hold such fire.
I pray to hollow out my earth and be filled with these waters of transparency.
I think that one could die of this desire, seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod.
Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin,
water that lost the semblances of water and was a sky like God.

I love the line "She was a transparent pool reflecting God, only God."
May God fill us with the "waters of transparency"!

I had to look up "enisled" - I guess the grace to "hollow out my earth and be filled with these waters of transparency" is what is staying with me so may we all become "a pure pool like the Virgin, water that lost the semblances of water and was a sky like God".