Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

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Daily Reflection

St Vincent de Paul Society

 

May 20, 2017

“A grain of charity suffices to calm many anxieties and ease many differences.”
– St. Vincent de Paul

 

 

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The Desiderata (original version)

"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars"

"And whether or not it is clear to you,

you have a right to be here."

THE DESIDERATA (YouTube)

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

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233. Who acts in the liturgy?

In the liturgy it is the whole Christ (Christus Totus) who acts, Head and Body. As our High Priest he celebrates with his body, which is the Church in heaven and on earth.

Further reading: CCC 1135-1137, 1187

234. Who celebrates the heavenly liturgy?

The heavenly liturgy is celebrated by the angels, by the saints of the Old and New Testament, particularly the Mother of God, by the Apostles, by the martyrs, and by the "great multitude which no one could number from every nation, race, people, and tongue." (Revelation 7:9). When we celebrate the mystery of our salvation in the sacraments we participate in this eternal liturgy.

Further reading: CCC 1138 - 1139
 

235. How does the Church on earth celebrate the liturgy?

The Church on earth celebrates the liturgy as priestly people in which each one acts according to his proper function in the unity of the Holy Spirit. The baptized offer themselves in a spiritual sacrifice; the ordained ministers celebrate according to the Order they received for the service of all the members of the Church; the bishops and priests act in the Person of Christ the Head.

Further reading: CCC 1140-1144, 1188

 

WHAT LIFE'S SCARS ARE FOR (You Tube)

http://catholicexchange.com/carry-scars-dignity-honor?mc_cid=77c32cdfa7&mc_eid=365c5a299b

What if our scars remind, not only us but also others, that we’re human, that we’re imperfect and yet resilient? Every wrinkle on our face, every stretch mark on our bellies, every scar from a cut or accident all contribute to the journey of our lives, a story that hopefully reflects love filtered through sacrifice.

If we hide the reality of our battle marks, we are ashamed then of a love that has undergone death and has been resurrected to new life in Christ. I don’t believe God wants us to be ashamed of our imperfect marks. Rather, He wants us to embrace them, to show them to others, and to one day give them back to God as the only gift we really had to offer Him – the wounds, the misery, the pain, the suffering, all given out of love and for His glory to be radiant through us.

Maybe God even sees our scars as beautiful, because they comprise who we are and what we’ve been through. Rough, weathered hands can be a sign of one who had her hands in the laundry or sink or garden in order to care for her family. Calloused feet might indicate that one has toiled for decades in difficult work in order to support his wife and children. And a heart that is wounded is one that most closely unites itself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

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Just did another estimated daily view count of this thread.  The count has increased by just under 200% stable count daily since I began the view count back in January 2015 - and as stated, heaps of variables probably involved.  It's just a rough idea for me as to whether it is worth maintaining the thread or not........and once again, I am grateful to Phatmass Administration for allowing it to continue since January 2014, including a more or less thread title change.

When I began the thread when the Home Mass for private vows (15.8.14 Solemnity of The Assumption) received diocesan approval, I had anticipated that the thread would conclude after the Home Mass.  So much for expectations.

Where am I in my journey with private vows to the evangelical counsels?  Pretty much, my life continues on a stable type of basis.  There are a few things that have changed and I will write about these at some later point (I need to have a distinct motivation to write about myself - where this thread is concerned anyway).  In any contribution/'contribution' I might make to other threads, I just let the words flow on to my keyboard as they come into my consciousness - not much editing at all, if that, other than attempts to punctuate etc. correctly and ensure that what I mean is what I am writing - at least to myself.  It is very easy indeed for the written word to be misinterpreted by one's reader and a point I try to remember.

Another point I try to remember is that these Catholic Discussion sites are tools of evangelisation whether we accept it or not.  They simply are.  These sites are open to the whole world literally. Am I giving good example and Catholic truths in my writings and postings, or am I not?  Am I eager for the Unity for which Christ ardently prayed before His Death, or does my ego demand that my own points of view are asserted and unkindly so?

Plenty of questions to ask myself!

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Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves — on God’s grace and on our will to be holy.

We must have a real living determination to reach holiness.

 

 

- Mother Theresa, A Gift for God

 

Quite personally for myself and my own vocation to the single lay state under private vows, I am not at all convinced that holiness is of necessity a blinkered walk via the well beaten path or 'well advertised' path other than the absolute centrality of Mass and The Blessed Eucharist, The Sacraments. Scripture, The Faith and Morals of The Church.  The Guidance of The Holy Spirit.

We surely need embrace a real living daily and consistent hope for holiness with dependence on God's Grace and one's own, hopefully graced, will to be holy and in all circumstances and with determination including through failures.

Happiness is a by product of existing for the Glory and Holiness of God.  Individual holiness brings Glory to God witnesses to His Holiness.

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Just finished watching a movie on Foxtel Go: "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence".  It is about English and Australian soldiers in a prisoner of war camp in Japanese held Singapore.  At the end of the movie, roles have reversed and Japan has lost the war.  One of the camp's Japanese officers is in jail the night before his execution and the English senior officer visits him, now no longer his prisoner.  I found the scene really moving. 

The Japanese prisoner is pondering why he is being executed (war crimes) when he did what was right to him as a Japanese soldier.  The English officer replies that if it was his decision, he would release him and send him home to his family.  He says to the Japanese officer "You are being executed by those who think they are right.  You once thought you were right.  Truth is neither were right".  I thought there was much truth in that on the human level (not to get ridiculous re absolutes and the existence of Absolute Truth).  It has also set me pondering about the question Pilate addresses to Jesus "What IS Truth?"  It seems that Jesus remains silent.  I haven't come to any conclusions on the latter - it still is just wandering around somewhere or other on a shelf in my mind.

John Chapter 18: "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."  Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" When he had said this, he again went out to the Jews and said to them, "I find no guilt in him."

I don't know if you will see any connection in the following.  I do ... and then I don't!   And the voice and voices I heard as per the following were definitely NOT Jesus, nor anything remotely heavenly at all.

I am reminded me of a psychiatrist who asked me if I was hearing voices.   I replied in the affirmative.  He then said "You know they aren't real, don't you?"  That struck me as really weird - I was hearing a voice or voices and distinctly hearing them......and the doctor is saying that they are not real.   They may not be real as he understands and experiences reality, but they were a reality to me as I was experiencing them  Another strange to me interaction was when I was asked what the voices were saying.  I replied "Whatever they might be saying".  I wasn't trying to be cute with the doctor although I think he might have thought I was.    I mean at one time they said this and another they said that i.e. an ongoing ever changing (subject and content wise) monologue, although if I attempted some sort of response then it became mutual communication.

Perhaps it's just me!

Edited May 26, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

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For too long we have thought of the Christian life as essentially either involvement in political, economic, social concerns that wear us out and result in depression, or activity which keeps the church intact and doctrinally pure. Our primary orientation cannot be an institution or some great cause or even other people, but first and forever to God. Unless our identity is hid in God we will never know who we are or what we are to do. Our first act must be prayer. To be human is to pray, to meditate both day and night on the love and activity of God.

- John H. Westerhoff III and John D. Eusden, The Spiritual Life

Shalom Place - Dominican Sisters of Peace http://shalomplace.com/seed/

 

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"I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be. "

John Cheever

Ahhh the delusion of greener grass over there.............cancelled out by the Peace and Joy in our Doctrine of Divine Providence.   A good read and a spiritual classic of renown: "Abandonment to Divine Providence" by Jean Pierre de Caussade (available free online https://www.ccel.org/ccel/decaussade/abandonment.html)

"Summary God is sovereign.
God is in charge of everything, including the little things.
Not a hair falls from our heads without God's divine will.
We must rest in God's grace, as we are totally unable to contribute to our salvation.
What word pops into people's minds when they hear Christians making the above statements? Calvinist. Usually these beliefs are associated with those of the Calvinist persuasion. However, Father de Caussade was a Roman Catholic Priest who taught that God is truly sovereign, and therefore our whole lives can be lived in the knowledge that all things are working for our good (My note: see CCC 313 HERE)  We may not understand why God does things the way he does, or how our suffering can ultimately be for our good, but we can trust our benevolent Lord, who has decreed all things, is good and just. Reading Abandonment to Divine Providence will help the reader surrender to God's will. The result? Spiritual peace in the arms of a loving God.

Andrew Hanson
CCEL Intern "

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http://dailygospel.org/main.php?language=AM&module=saintfeast&id=10151&fd=0

Saint Anselm (1033-1109), monk, bishop, doctor of the Church
Proslogion, 26 (trans. Sr Benedicta Ward)
 

"So that your joy may be complete"

My Lord and my God, my joy and the hope of my heart, tell my soul if this is that joy which you spoke to us about through your Son: “Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full”. For I have found a fullness of joy that is more than full. It is a joy that fills the whole heart, mind, and soul, indeed it fills the whole of my being, and yet joy without measure still remains. The whole of that joy cannot enter into those who rejoice, but those who rejoice can enter wholly into that joy.

Speak, Lord, to your servant in the depths of his heart, tell him if this is that joy your servants enter into when they enter into “the joy of their Lord” (Mt 25,21)? But of course, that joy in which your chosen ones will rejoice “eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor has it entered the human heart” (1Cor 2,9)... So, my God, I pray that I may so know you and love you that I may rejoice in you.

And if I may not do so fully in this life, let me go steadily on to the day when I come to that fullness. Let the knowledge of you increase in me here and there let it come to its fullness. Let your love grow in me here, and there et it be fulfilled, so that here my joy may be in great hope, and there in full reality. Lord, you have commanded, or rather advised us, to ask by your Son, and you have promised that we shall

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Difficulties and obstacles are God’s challenges to faith.

When hindrances confront us in the path of duty,

we are to recognize them as vessels for faith to fill with the fullness and all-sufficiency of Jesus.

 

- A. B. Simpson

Edited May 30, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

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John Chapter 13

"This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another"

 

 

Communicators must "reject prejudice towards others and foster hope and trust", Pope Francis said on Sunday, marking the World Day of Social Communications, Zenit reports.

Pope Francis (CNS) HERE

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Truth in the above if in my book much too harsh.  In today's workforce with all its stresses and strains and the expense of the cost of living, caring for families etc. etc. - and when I think of the disabled and the unemployed, the homeless, those suffering in war torn regions and those suffering in so many ways in our world..........anxiety is not an offense against God so much as simply our poor, weak and beloved by God humanity clicking into place.  I think if one never experiences real anxiety, there is no way one can truly empathise with those who do.  One could be truly compassionate and considerate..........but not really empathise.

Where absolute holiness is concerned and anxiety only a mild concern, if that, in the most difficult of times, that sort of real holiness is not built in a day short of a miracle - I think we need to be content and at Peace wherever we might be with trust and confidence in God as we journey that with trust and confidence we will be where we are meant to be, even as we stumble and mumble, trip and fall, get up and go on only to stumble and fall again.  I think there just might be a very real sort of strange or weird holiness in that sort of perseverance and journey in the face of consistent failures.  I sure hope so!

A priest once told me that God Loves abundantly those who would get top marks for effort, if not for success.  Then there is that truly beautiful and profound prayer from Thomas Merton:

“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.”

 

 

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31st May 2017 - Feast of The Visitation

I think of the Visitation as a special opportunity to ask The Lord to please grant an increase of

Love of God and of neighbour

Catholic Culture website - Feast of The Visitation https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2013-05-31