Perhaps this Lent we will begin to learn to say from the heart:
"I am completely useless. May the Lord have pity on me and since He loves me so much, may He make me capable of doing something for His glory."
-St.P. Pio, Letters I, # 136
Padre Pio, pray for us!
That we may learn that holiness is not perfection but it is our very brokenness given to God and filled with His Love!
lunes, febrero 26, 2007
martes, febrero 20, 2007
PURPLE HAZE...LOVING GRACE
"But may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6, 14
How difficult and yet how beautiful it is to bleed...if it is for LOVE.
In the moments of immense grace we may desire total union with the crucified, and we may even ask for the cross! Our prayer is answered and suffering arrives but it is not what we expected...(but what we needed). We forget that it is precisely in that moment of pain where and when we can so deeply be in communion with Jesus Christ, who in His enormous agony offered the chalice to His Father because of its extreme bitterness, but received it and drank it ALL because of the sweetness of His obedient Love!
It is so easy to idealize it all, even the cruelty of the Cross- there, hanging seeing the beautiful face of Mother Mary! And we do not think of the furious crowd who blasphemes and has covered the bleeding, sweating face of the Lord with sacrilegious saliva! Both are true...
Hanging and crying "I THIRST" with ALL the Love of GOD! But we do not think of the total abandonment that moved Him to cry "My God, My God why have you forgotten me?"
We only know what the cross is when we live it and we have united ourselves with the Lord's passion. This is what compassion means...com-passion, with-the-passion...at the foot of the Cross...on the Cross! We cry with those who cry, we laugh with those who laugh!
And this is our life; the constant blessing and battle, between falls and merciful recoveries, through which we learn to accept the Cross just as it is, just as it comes...trusting, trusting, trusting fully that it is the Cross that the All-knowing GOD has willed for our salvation and sactification- for the intimate union the Father wills to have with us through Jesus Christ our Lord!
"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will." Matthew 26, 39
How it hurts...even before the Cross, having to abandon our idea of the suffering we wanted or waited for! How difficult to deny ourselves and trust more in GOD's wisdom than in our ignorance! But to realize that this very process means dying to ourselves is an immense blessing, since it becomes one with the bitter chalice that Jesus himself accepted in loving obedience. It is the FIAT through which came the cross...that cross we wanted so much for love of God in those moments of burning faith!
Jesus was captured in Gethsemani and taken to the high priest...on the way he saw the blood of the slaughetered paschal lambs running down the walls of the temple. Thousands of lambs were being sacrificed and offered as holocausts for the remission of sin within those walls. Jesus, bleeding and chained-up, knew that His Blood would have to be shed to cleanse those and all the sins of humanity! The TEMPLE was to bleed and its crimson rivers would flow and run to meet every tear of repentance and every contrite heart...BLOOD TO TEARS!
And so it was...and so it is!
BLESSED BE GOD FOREVER!
The Church dresses in purple to walk up Calvary in LOVE, for LOVE, with LOVE and towards LOVE! We can only begin this journey saying YES in Gethsemani, that is, in the midst of our present condition and all the small and great sufferings we have. Just as we are right now! and not how we think we should be. Know right now that GOD is loving you! And that your suffering is not in vain...it is gain! (Phillipians 1, 21) Know that His arms, once and for all, are outstrectched and His Heart traspassed and thirsting for you!
So it is the Lord Himself, eternally wounded (John 20, 28) for Love who calls you and me to enter the mystery of the desert, abide in His Word to defeat all evil (Matthew 4, 1-11) and to come as we are into His presence. That we may allow Him to touch us and heal us, and we may respond by entering His wounds, through which His Blood flows out to cover and transform our lives! Let us cry "My Lord and my GOD!" and join the saints in saying:
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church..." Colossians 1,24
How difficult and yet how beautiful it is to bleed...if it is for LOVE.
In the moments of immense grace we may desire total union with the crucified, and we may even ask for the cross! Our prayer is answered and suffering arrives but it is not what we expected...(but what we needed). We forget that it is precisely in that moment of pain where and when we can so deeply be in communion with Jesus Christ, who in His enormous agony offered the chalice to His Father because of its extreme bitterness, but received it and drank it ALL because of the sweetness of His obedient Love!
It is so easy to idealize it all, even the cruelty of the Cross- there, hanging seeing the beautiful face of Mother Mary! And we do not think of the furious crowd who blasphemes and has covered the bleeding, sweating face of the Lord with sacrilegious saliva! Both are true...
Hanging and crying "I THIRST" with ALL the Love of GOD! But we do not think of the total abandonment that moved Him to cry "My God, My God why have you forgotten me?"
We only know what the cross is when we live it and we have united ourselves with the Lord's passion. This is what compassion means...com-passion, with-the-passion...at the foot of the Cross...on the Cross! We cry with those who cry, we laugh with those who laugh!
And this is our life; the constant blessing and battle, between falls and merciful recoveries, through which we learn to accept the Cross just as it is, just as it comes...trusting, trusting, trusting fully that it is the Cross that the All-knowing GOD has willed for our salvation and sactification- for the intimate union the Father wills to have with us through Jesus Christ our Lord!
"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will." Matthew 26, 39
How it hurts...even before the Cross, having to abandon our idea of the suffering we wanted or waited for! How difficult to deny ourselves and trust more in GOD's wisdom than in our ignorance! But to realize that this very process means dying to ourselves is an immense blessing, since it becomes one with the bitter chalice that Jesus himself accepted in loving obedience. It is the FIAT through which came the cross...that cross we wanted so much for love of God in those moments of burning faith!
Jesus was captured in Gethsemani and taken to the high priest...on the way he saw the blood of the slaughetered paschal lambs running down the walls of the temple. Thousands of lambs were being sacrificed and offered as holocausts for the remission of sin within those walls. Jesus, bleeding and chained-up, knew that His Blood would have to be shed to cleanse those and all the sins of humanity! The TEMPLE was to bleed and its crimson rivers would flow and run to meet every tear of repentance and every contrite heart...BLOOD TO TEARS!
And so it was...and so it is!
BLESSED BE GOD FOREVER!
The Church dresses in purple to walk up Calvary in LOVE, for LOVE, with LOVE and towards LOVE! We can only begin this journey saying YES in Gethsemani, that is, in the midst of our present condition and all the small and great sufferings we have. Just as we are right now! and not how we think we should be. Know right now that GOD is loving you! And that your suffering is not in vain...it is gain! (Phillipians 1, 21) Know that His arms, once and for all, are outstrectched and His Heart traspassed and thirsting for you!
So it is the Lord Himself, eternally wounded (John 20, 28) for Love who calls you and me to enter the mystery of the desert, abide in His Word to defeat all evil (Matthew 4, 1-11) and to come as we are into His presence. That we may allow Him to touch us and heal us, and we may respond by entering His wounds, through which His Blood flows out to cover and transform our lives! Let us cry "My Lord and my GOD!" and join the saints in saying:
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church..." Colossians 1,24
lunes, febrero 05, 2007
Col. 1, 24
“Eli, Eli, Lemá Sabactaní”
- Mat. 27, 46
"JESUS! YOU are now atoning for those moments when we are neither hot nor cold, members neither of heaven nor of earth, for now YOU are suffering between the two: Rejected by the one, abandoned by the other.
Because YOU would not give up sinful humanity, Your Heavenly FATHER hid His face from YOU. Because YOU would not give up Your Heavenly FATHER, sinful humanity turned its back on YOU, and thus in holy fellowship YOU found a way to unite us both. No longer can anyone say that GOD does not know what a heart suffers in abandonment, for now YOU are abandoned.
No longer can anyone complain that GOD does not know the Wounds of an inquiring Heart which feels not the Divine Presence, for now that sweet Presence is seemingly hid from YOU as well. JESUS, now I understand pain, abandonment, and suffering, for I see that even the sun has its eclipse.
But JESUS, why do I not learn? Teach me that just as YOU did not make Your own Cross, neither shall I make my own. Teach me to accept the one that YOU have made for me. Teach me that everything in the world is Yours, except one thing, and that is my own will; and since that is mine, it is the only and real true gift that I can ever bestow.
Teach me to say, "Not my will, but Yours be done, O Lord." Even when I see YOU not, grant me the grace to believe and "although YOU slay me, yet will I trust YOU."
Tell me, how long, how long, O Lord, will I keep YOU writhing on the Cross?"
-CARD. FULTON SHEEN
("The Seven Last Words")
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