Pope Francis on the feast of St. Thomas

Study, meditation and mortification are not enough to bring us to encounter the living Christ. Like St Thomas, our life will only be changed when we touch Christ’s wounds present in the poor, sick and needy. This was the lesson drawn by Pope Francis during morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta today, the Feast of St Thomas.

Jesus after the Resurrection, appears to the apostles, but Thomas is not there: "He wanted him to wait a week - said Pope Francis - The Lord knows why he does such things. And he gives the time he believes best for each of us. He gave Thomas a week. " Jesus reveals himself with his wounds: "His whole body was clean, beautiful, full of light - said the Pope - but the wounds were and are still there" and when the Lord comes at the end of the world, "we will see His wounds". In order to believe Thomas wanted to put his fingers in the wounds.

"He was stubborn. But the Lord wanted exactly that, a stubborn person to make us understand something greater. Thomas saw the Lord, was invited to put his finger into the wounds left by the nails; to put his hand in His side and he did not say, 'It's true: the Lord is risen'. No! He went further. He said: 'God'. The first of the disciples who makes the confession of the divinity of Christ after the Resurrection. And he worshipped Him”.

"And so - continued the Pope - we understand what the Lord’s intention was when he made him wait: he wanted to guide his disbelief, not to an affirmation of the Resurrection, but an affirmation of His Divinity." The "path to our encounter with Jesus-God - he said - are his wounds. There is no other”.
"In the history of the Church there have been some mistakes made on the path towards God. Some have believed that the Living God, the God of Christians can be found on the path of meditation, indeed that we can reach higher through meditation. That's dangerous! How many are lost on that path, never to return. Yes perhaps they arrive at knowledge of God, but not of Jesus Christ, Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity. They do not arrive at that. It is the path of the Gnostics, no? They are good, they work, but it is not the right path. It’s very complicated and does not lead to a safe harbour. "

"Others - the Pope said - thought that to arrive at God we must mortify ourselves, we have to be austere and have chosen the path of penance: only penance and fasting. Not even these arrive at the Living God, Jesus Christ.

They are the pelagians, who believe that they can arrive by their own efforts. "But Jesus tells us that the path to encountering Him is to find His wounds: "We find Jesus’ wounds in carrying out works of mercy, giving to our body – the body – the soul too, but – I stress - the body of your wounded brother, because he is hungry, because he is thirsty, because he is naked because it is humiliated, because he is a slave, because he's in jail because he is in the hospital. Those are the wounds of Jesus today. And Jesus asks us to take a leap of faith, towards Him, but through these His wounds. 'Oh, great! Let's set up a foundation to help everyone and do so many good things to help '. That's important, but if we remain on this level, we will only be philanthropic. We need to touch the wounds of Jesus, we must caress the wounds of Jesus, we need to bind the wounds of Jesus with tenderness, we have to kiss the wounds of Jesus, and this literally. Just think of what happened to St Francis, when he embraced the leper? The same thing that happened to Thomas: his life changed. "
Pope Francis concluded that we do not need to go on a 'refresher course' to touch the living God, but to enter into the wounds of Jesus, and for this "all we have to do is go out onto the street. Let us as St. Thomas for the grace to have the courage to enter into the wounds of Jesus with tenderness and thus we will certainly have the grace to worship the living God. "

WYD@Home

The program for WYD@home is coming together. Beginning 26th July 2013. Here is a taster

 

Friday Night

 

After getting tents setup or collecting room keys we will have our first supper together. The WYD weekend will then begin in the marquee with an introduction from the MC’s, CJM leading praise and worship then a formal welcome to Aylesford from Fr. Damian Cassidy, O.Carm, one of the resident Carmelite friars, and Archbishop Peter. We will show some highlights of the events in Rio and link up with those from the UK and Ireland who have travelled to WYD. Expect a chance then to socialise while listening to great music including Something Simple and Jules Rendell.

A tradition of WYD is to have Stations of the Cross and WYD@Home will be no different. As the sun is setting over Aylesford we will be experiencing a retelling of the Passion around the ancient Marian Shrine finishing in a night prayer and the end of the days program.

 

Saturday

 

For those up early enough the day will start with Morning Prayer. Otherwise be sure to get some breakfast before 9.30! The main program will start after breakfast and the morning will feature a keynote from David Wells who you may recognise from the Flame congress at Wembley last year. There will be presentations from others including our CAFOD partners César Lopéz and Fredy Gallego from Columbia. César hopes to write and perform a song while in the UK on his signature "escopetarra" (a guitar made from a modified AK47) and Fredy will be using his skills as a graffiti artist to create a mural during the weekend.

There will be a chance during the morning for small group discussions over coffee and RISE Theatre will be performing. We will be hearing from those who have travelled to Rio and seeing short highlights of what has taken place so far. We will then finish for lunch which as always at Brightlights will feature live music.

After lunch we will meet for Mass on the Shrine and share in our first liturgy with CJM leading music. After Mass there are a number of opportunities available. Several workshops and seminars will be starting on a wide range of topics, you can choose to take part in a sport tournament (beach volleyball anyone?) or simply relax for an hour before dinner.

Dinner follows with a chance to socialise during the evening and listen to live music including Juliyaa. We will again gather during sunset on the Shrine, this time there will be a chance for Reconciliation and Adoration during which the site will temporarily fall silent in prayer. When it gets too cold or late the Blessed Sacrament will be moved into one of the Chapels where we invite you take part in Adoration. Groups from all over the UK and Ireland will be leading us in prayer and reflection during what will become an all-night Vigil.

 

Sunday

 

Depending on how late you stay up try to grab some breakfast before we gather with Praise and Worship! (Those who were up late be aware our speakers are VERY loud!) Beccy Roseman will start our day with a reflection before we hear from Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow the founder of Mary’s Meals and have catechises from Bishop Declan Lang. Small group discussions on what we have heard will follow with a question and answer session with all the mornings speakers.

The discussions will continue into lunch where we have more live music. Sunday is the main day in Rio. This will be when the Papal Mass takes place. A big screen on the Shrine will be showing highlights from this as we celebrate Mass together during the early afternoon. There will be even more workshops and seminars taking place after Mass.

It is now time for the evening’s celebrations to begin. Dinner will be accompanied with music and followed by the now annual Brightlights pub quiz. Aylesford will be transformed during the evening into a Rio Carnival atmosphere as headliners Sounds of Salvation offer up their unique Ska music to dance along to.

 

Monday

 

Sadly the festival is near its end. A final talk allows us a chance to reflect on the weekend and what our mission moving forward is. A commissioning Mass celebrated by Archbishop Vincent Nichols ends the festival and we go our separate ways bounded by the shared experiences and mission we have gained though the weekend.

Washing feet with her tears

How embarrassing.

The situation was already delicate, to say the least. Surprisingly, Jesus was at a private dinner in the house of a Pharisee, specifically, Simon the Pharisee. It was a great honour to be invited to the distinguished Simon’s house, but at the same time Simon had also dishonoured Jesus by showing none of the usual courtesies due a guest in that culture. It was a scant and insulting welcome.

As dinner proceeded, an unknown woman walked right in without asking and took up a place right behind Jesus. Still worse, she began weeping. We are not told why. Luke only reveals two things about her, that she was known as “a sinful woman,” and that she loved Jesus a lot.

She “began to bathe his feet with her tears.” Then she actually dried them with her hair. Remarkable. As a final gesture, she took out a lovely ornamented flask which she must have brought along warily for this purpose. She spread ointment upon his feet, with repeated kisses.

She was out of control!

Simon the Pharisee said under his breath, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman is touching him. She is an offender.”

In fact Jesus did know. He knew and was happy to receive her goodness. He accepted her tenderly. And he gave the Pharisee a sharp rebuke.

When I entered your house,

you did not give me water for my feet,
but she has bathed them with her tears
and wiped them with her hair.
You did not give me a kiss,
but she has not ceased kissing my feet
since the time I entered.
You did not anoint my head with oil,
but she anointed my feet with ointment.

His deft words showed that her actions came directly from a loving heart. Here is the important line (which I paraphrase): “Her many sins have been forgiven; that is the reason she has shown such great love. If she had been forgiven only a little bit, her love would be small.”*

Notice what Jesus names as first. Not the woman’s love for Jesus, which many people think would then result in the forgiveness of her sins. Just the opposite. He had already forgiven her sins, and her love flowed from knowing that. Godly love is always the first cause, personal and present, for each of us no matter how sinful we are.

This love shows up in the form of forgiveness because we are all so inadequate.

Usually you and I have it backwards. We think we have to get rid of all our sins and turn into very loving people in order for God to care about us. In reality we are already loved to perfection by the good Lord, and as we slowly let that love in, we begin to change. We begin to recognize who we really are. We soften our hearts toward the mess or messes we have made of our lives because we see that somehow we are loved “as is.”

Jesus and the Pharisee and the sinful woman, with her tender affection, show us what it means to be loved and cared for in the midst of shame.

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. (1 John 4:1-10)

John Foley S. J.

 

The Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ

A Hard Question

When the disciples came to Jesus with the request to dismiss the people to go find food, Jesus challenged them with the question: “Why do you not give them something to eat yourselves?” That question should haunt us today.

 

More than enough food is grown to feed everyone on this planet. “Why do you not give them something to eat yourselves?”

More than 60,000 people will die of hunger on this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Two-thirds of them will be children. “Why do you not give them something to eat yourselves?”

Nearly one in five people worldwide is chronically malnourished—too hungry to lead a productive, active life. “Why do you not give them something to eat yourselves?”

One-third of the world’s children are significantly underweight for their age. “Why do you not give them something to eat yourselves?”

The amount of money the world spends on weapons in one minute could feed 2,000 malnourished children for a year. “Why do you not give them something to eat yourselves?”

Jesus is our living bread. It is his obvious intention that we be well fed. The Eucharist, a great gift from the same God that sent the manna in the desert, should strengthen the determination of both the hungry and the satisfied to do what it takes to eliminate hunger.

If a person is in extreme necessity, he has the right to take from the riches of others what he himself needs.

(Vatican II, Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,  1965: 69)

 

Feast of the Visitation

1) Opening prayer

Lord our God, loving Father,

Mary went with haste to visit
her cousin Elizabeth in her hour of need.
May we too rejoice in the Lord
when we can hurry to see people
to bring them the Lord
as we to share in their needs and their joys.
With Mary, may we become
a blessing to them.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

2) Gospel Reading - Luke 1,39-56

Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could into the hill country to a town in Judah. She went into Zechariah's house and greeted Elizabeth.

Now it happened that as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, 'Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? Look, the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.'

And Mary said:

 

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour; because he has looked upon the humiliation of his servant. Yes, from now onwards all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is his name, and his faithful love extends age after age to those who fear him.

He has used the power of his arm, he has routed the arrogant of heart.

He has pulled down princes from their thrones and raised high the lowly.
He has filled the starving with good things, sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his faithful love
-according to the promise he made to our ancestors -- of his mercy to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.

Mary stayed with her some three months and then went home.

 

3.) Reflection

• Today is the Feast of the Visitation of the Virgin, and the Gospel narrates the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. When Luke speaks of Mary, he thinks of the communities of his time which lived dispersed in the cities of the Roman Empire and offers to them, Mary as a model of how they should relate to the Word of God. Once, hearing Jesus speak about God, a woman in the crowd exclaimed: “Blessed the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you”, praising the mother of Jesus. Immediately Jesus answered: “More blessed still are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Lk 11, 27-28). Mary is the model of the faithful community which knows how to live and practice the Word of God. In describing the visit of Mary to Elizabeth, he teaches how the communities should act in order to transform the visit of God into service of the brother and sisters.

• The episode of the visit of Mary to Elizabeth also shows another typical aspect of Luke. All the words and the attitudes, especially the Canticle of Mary, form a great celebration of praise. It seems to be a description of a solemn Liturgy. Thus, Luke evokes the liturgical and celebrative environment, in which Jesus was formed and in which the communities should live their own faith.

• Luke 1, 39-40: Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Luke stresses the haste with which Mary responds to the demands of the Word of God. The Angel spoke to her about the pregnancy of Elizabeth and Mary, immediately, rises in order to verify what the Angel had announced, she goes out of the house to help a person in need. From Nazareth to the mountain of Judah there are about 100 kilometres! There were no buses or trains!

• Luke 1, 41-44: The greeting of Elizabeth. Elizabeth represents the Old Testament which ends. Mary, the New One which is beginning. The Old Testament welcomes, accepts the New One with gratitude and trust, recognizing in it the gratuitous gift of God which comes to realize and to complete whatever expectation people had. In the encounter of the two women, is manifested the gift of the Spirit which makes the child jump with joy in Elizabeth’s womb. The Good News of God reveals his presence in one of the most common things of human life: two housewives who exchange the visit to help one another. A visit, joy, pregnancy, children, reciprocal help, house, family: Luke wants to make the communities (and all of us) understand and discover the presence of the Kingdom. The words of Elizabeth, up until now, form part of the best known and most recited Psalm in the world, which is the Hail Mary.

• Luke 1, 45: The praise which Elizabeth makes of Mary. “Blessed is she who believed that the promise made by the Lord would be fulfilled”. This is Luke’s advice to the communities: to believe in the Word of God, because it has the force to realize what it says. It is a creative Word. It generates a new life in the womb of a virgin, in the womb of the poor and abandoned people who accept it with faith.

• Luke 1, 46-56: The canticle of Mary. Most probably, this canticle was already known and sung in the Communities. It teaches how it should be prayed and sung. Luke 1, 46-56: Mary begins proclaiming the change which has come about in her life under the loving look of God, full of mercy. This is why she sings joyfully: “My spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour”. Luke 1, 51-53: she sings the fidelity of God toward his people and proclaims the change which the arm of Yahweh is bringing about in behalf of the poor and the hungry. The expression “arm of God” recalls the liberation of the Exodus. It is this saving force of God which gives life to the change: he has routed the arrogant of heart (1, 51), he has pulled down princes from their thrones and raised high the lowly (1, 52), he has sent the rich away empty, and has filled the starving with good things (1, 53). Luke 1, 54-55: at the end, she recalls that all that is the expression of God’s mercy toward his people and an expression of his fidelity to the promises made to Abraham. The Good News is not a response to the observance of the Law, but the expression of the goodness and the fidelity of God to the promises made. That is what Paul taught in the letters to the Galatians and to the Romans.

The second Book of Samuel tells the story of the Ark of the Covenant. David wants to put in his own house, but he is frightened and says: “How can the Ark of Yahweh come to be with me?” (2 S 6, 9). Then David ordered that the Ark be placed in the house of Obed-Edom. And the Ark of Yahweh remained three months in the house of Obed-Edom, and the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and his whole family” (2 S 6, 11). Mary, waiting for Jesus, is like the Ark of the Covenant which, in the Old Testament, visited the houses of the persons granting benefits. She goes to Elizabeth’s house and remained there three months. And while she is in Elizabeth’s house, the whole family is blessed by God. The community should be like the New Ark of the Covenant. Visiting the house of the persons, it should take benefits and the grace of God to the people.

4) Personal questions

• What prevents us from discovering and living the joy of God’s presence in our life?

• Where and how does the joy of the presence of God take place today in my life and in that of the community?

5) Concluding Prayer

Bless the Lord, my soul, from the depths of my being,

his holy name;
bless Yahweh, my soul,
never forget all his acts of kindness. (Ps 103,1-2)

Source: Order of Carmelites

www.ocarm.org

Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

Our blogger is away this weekend for a wedding. Thus we have a reflection for Sunday’s feat a wee bit early.

Please pray for Toby and Jenni who will celebrate the Sacrament of Marriage with each other on this splendid feast.

A topic that will strike fear in the heart of preachers is the Trinity. We experience a real poverty of language when we come to trying to give insights into mystery. Maybe we try too hard. Maybe we try to explain mystery and then get frustrated when words aren’t enough. But we know something of this mystery because we experience something of it. Let me try and explain

The Trinity is not some kind of intellectual speculation by scholars. It is the way we experience God in this world. To “go to church and be good to each other” is the Trinity in action!

First, long ago, human beings learned that there is only one God, and that he “takes delight in the human race.” Think of the many, many stories in the Old Testament about God’s pursuit of us, his labouring to make a loving and holy covenant with us: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” Like a marriage agreement.

Well, God became, by turns, angry, hurt, delighted, spurned, glorified, ignored, praised and rejected. Yet he kept coming back and back to renew the covenant. God's love remained steadfast.

Then we found out that God’s nature had always had another component. God had not been alone or lonely, like a rock in the desert. His very nature has always been to relate to others, to “pour himself forth,” as the First Reading puts it, and to receive back. The “Second Person” has been at one with the “First Person” for all eternity.

This Second Person, the Word, was made flesh. We saw him. Jesus laughed and cried and preached and turned over tables and cured people, and was loyal to his friends even to the end. “Everything that the Father has is mine,” he said (Gospel). That’s how we knew he was The Word and the Word was God.

Then came a third revelation about the Trinity. Jesus hints about it in the Gospel: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” In other words, our small souls would burst with the greatness of God—unless part of God ‘gentled’ himself down and began to dwell within us, to guide our understanding. So Jesus promised to pour out the Holy Spirit into us.

Jesus tells us that the Spirit is God. “Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he [God the Spirit] will take from what is mine and declare it to you.”

Do you get the logic? Everything the Father has belongs to the Word. Everything that Jesus the Word has belongs to the Spirit. Thus, the Spirit is the third part of God, and that Spirit bestows us and the whole earth back upon the Father, thus closing the circle.

What aliveness, what movement there is in God: speaking, reaching out, flowing forth, receiving back. God is liquid motion, a dynamism in which everything is changing always, yet remains always secure because it is rooted in love—because it is love. We are invited into that circle of love.

Too theoretical? Allow me to put it more simply. Do you suffer? God invites you meld that pain into the Trinity’s unending love. Do you lack hope? The Christ who rose from death is within you. Are you abandoned? Remember that the one God in three persons embraces you with tender affection and asks you to melt into his arms.

Happy Feast! 

 

A letter from the General Councils of the Order of Carmelites and the Order of Discalced Carmelites

In this Year of Faith, we, the members of the two General Councils OCarm. and OCD, came on pilgrimage to Aylesford, England. This is a significant place for the entire Carmelite Family. In fact, in this place, where we are writing this message to you on the feast of St. Simon Stock, are the remains of the ancient Carmelite house which was founded in 1242 by some of the pilgrim-hermits from Mount Carmel. Their return to Europe from the Holy Land, their gradual move from an eremitical life to a mendicant one, their experience of God and above all, their humble and fraternal trust in Mary in a period of cultural crisis, were for us all a source of inspiration. They also gave us pause for thought in rethinking our mission for today’s world – the topic to which we devoted most of our working sessions. In these we were guided by Father Benito De Marchi, a Comboni Missionary.

At Aylesford we were the guests of the local community of OCarm. friars, to whom we wish to express our heartfelt thanks for their warm and attentive welcome. This was a time of prayer, of brotherhood, of meditation, during which we also experienced two significant ecumenical events. We celebrated First Vespers of Sunday with our Anglican brothers in the ancient cathedral of Rochester (founded in 604 ad). The second event was a meeting in Cambridge with Lord Rowan Williams, emeritus archbishop of Canterbury, a subtle theologian and very considerable expert in Carmelite spirituality and saints. These two meetings in prayer and theological reflection helped us to understand that mission today has to be carried out in close co-operation with other Christian groups, in a spirit of ecumenical openness.

From our pilgrimmage to the origins of Carmel in Europe has emerged the humble conviction that this epoch, characterised by globalisation, by mobility in all directions, by the eruption in our lives of the “other”, by the affirmation of the value of the “subject”and by the loss of a sense of God, requires a new missionary spirit. That is, it needs a heart which is more evangelical and less sure of itself. In fact what we wish to share with others is not the world views nor the attitudes of our old self, but a new humanity which the Father has given to us as a gift, through his Son who died and rose and which is constantly shaped by the Holy Spirit. In his much appreciated address to the Synod of Bishops in October 2012, Rowan Williams referring to Saint Edith Stein, called this new humanity “contemplative”.

Taking up this expression, with its typically Carmelite flavour, we tried to describe in our reflections a humanity which forgets itself, in silence and is free from the tiring search for personal satisfaction and from the claim to make others happy by imposing our ideas and projects on them. This new humanity, turned towards the Father, can see all people, and especially the poor, the marginalised and the suffering, with eyes full of compassion. This is a welcoming humanity, ready to undertake a continual pilgrimage together with women and men of our time in order to find the way that brings us more deeply into the heart of Trinitarian life.

It is impossible for us to imagine this new humanity without “freeing the charism for a new lease of life” (Benito De Marchi). That is, without freeing its contemplative and missionary potential from all shallowness, hubris and selfishness, which prevent it from seeing Trinitarian love and close inside a self-referential cycle.

On a more positive note, freeing the charism means experiencing the Trinitarian relations of the fraternal and community life more vividly. It means rediscovering evangelical joy and enjoying the taste of unity and simplicity which exist between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. In this way we can bear witness to them in every time and place, in every context where we are sent.

In all this Mary the Mother of God, and our Mother, accompanies us. For Carmelites she is a sublime model of humanity listening to the Word and of contemplating the living God. She is the supreme contemplative, who nonetheless approaches each one of us to be a pilgrim with us. She embraces us with her maternal and fraternal love and lights in our hearts the flame of love. Poor and humble, with the simple sign of the scapular she protects this flame in our fragile human bodies and changes it into burning passion for evangelisation and mission. Her discreet but eloquent presence in our life means that those who wear the scapular are called to commit themselves to loving their neighbour. In this sense the Virgin of Carmel has been called “Missionary to the people”. (Oscar Romero)

Dear brothers and sisters, we leave Aylesford with a renewed awareness of the gift of our vocation and of the mission that is connected to it. The Risen Lord invites us not to be afraid of the difficulties we will meet and not to be discouraged when faced with the inevitable trials and possible failures. There is in all of us, insignificant and poor as we are a stronger force which has conquered the world. It is the force of the Father’s love for us, the force of his Word and his Spirit which drives us towards the world and opens us to all those that the Lord puts in our path. Many women and men are waiting for us, expecting that the family of Carmel will show our God’s tenderness to them. May the Lord help us not to dash their hopes!