Saturday, April 30, 2011

Today my Grandparents, Great Grandparents on my Mom's side and my aunts and uncles are smiling in Heaven as Pope John Paul is made a Blessed .  Oh how I remember the joy when a Polish priest was named the Pope!  Such sufferings the Polish people endured and thier faith remained strong even as the Soviet Communist tried to crush them.

They did not falter, they knew where their trust and hope lay..it lived in Jesus!

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  Truly He is risen!

And in His infinite divine mercy He freed them, and all of us, from the bondage of those who try to break the faith of those in the world.

Pray for us Papa John Paul the Great, pray for us to our glorious Jesus! 

His fortune was foretold by the great poet Juliusz Slowacki, one century earlier:
«In the midst of discord
God sounds a mighty bell
He opens the throne to a Slavic Pope…
Much force is needed
to reconstruct the world of the Lord
this is why a Slavic Pope is coming
a brother to all mankind…».


Sunday, April 17, 2011

Holy Week starts tomorrow, well, this morning..Palm Sunday..the day where Jesus is meet with great adoration while they plan his death.  Yet, selfishly I am drawn to my own path of life.  Where does my Love wish for me go?  Where will I find my true self and joy that God desires for me?  Who knows?  The journey of discernment.  The only difficulty my own because I always hear a ticking clock behind my back ticking away.

How wondrous is His Love, so total, so complete, so encompassing...how much I desire to live for Jesus, for my Father Almighty.  At times I am thrilled and at peace at visiting and living with the Carmelites, then as suddenly I am filled with a fear.  Fear that it is not for me, I will not find it to be where my home is...Fear about my family.  I know that God comes first and family second and I need to trust God will care for them if I follow His wish for me.  I also know that my joy comes from listening and knowing what makes me happy is what God made me for, for my happiness will hopefully start to mirror the being God created me to be.

Carmelites appeal to the desire to live completely for God, a radical, counter cultural way giving all for Him and for the people of this world.  But I also am drawn to MH and the active role they take directly with people, but is that even something I am capable of?  Well, nothing I can do is possible except through God's grace, nothing is possible without God's merciful grace to guide us to fulfill His and our own mission on this earth.   And what if I stumble upon another way?  LOL, the wonderful, crazy journey I am now walking interiorly.  What is my joy?  Who am I really?  Where am I going?  Is all this some selfish fear I am acting upon?  Some desire for a family of my own outside of my own loving family? And more and more questions if I allow myself to pause too long on them.

This is why I try to live in the moment and not think too much beyond this minute, this moment that is before me.  To trust implicitly in Jesus' loving hand and heart.  Let His will be done, for He will guide me to that which is best for me and for Him.  Let not my fear hinder me in doing His will and that which will unite me ultimately in what He created me to be.

Friday, April 15, 2011

TRUE TRANSFORMATION

You will be wounded.  Your work is to find God and grace inside the wounds.  This is why Jesus told Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side” (John 20:27).  Thomas was trying to resolve the situation mentally, as men usually do, so Jesus had to force direct physical contact with human pain—the pain of Jesus, Thomas’ capacity for empathy with that pain, and very likely with Thomas’ own denied pain.  Deep healing has to happen corporeally and emotionally, and not just abstractly.
Jesus wanted Thomas to face and feel in his body the tragedy of it all—and then know it was not tragedy at all!   In that order.  That is how wounds become sacred wounds.  This is the pattern of all authentic conversion in the Christian economy of grace: not around, not under, not over, but through the wound we are healed and saved.
From On the Threshold of Transformation: Daily Meditations for Men,
p. 256, day 247