AUGUST 15 : THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

"Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians..." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Article 966)

When we stop in prayer and turn our gaze to look at Mary, Mother of God, our Mother; when we kneel in our great need to beseech her to help us; when we find our prayer-lives in darkness or our dear ones in deep distress: what do we see in her features as she returns our gaze?

We see the reflected love of the Son Whom she carried in her womb. We see a Woman-made-prayer, the one ordained to be our Mother, the one whose faith is loving, pure, hidden, obedient, sacrificial, humble, filled with self-emptiness, the spotless Window without stain through whom the Son shines.

SACRIFICIAL LOVE; HIDDEN PRAYER; A GIANT OF FAITH; OBEDIENT; HUMBLE; EMPTY OF SELF

                                                   MARYAM : MARY.

In his Meditations, St. Thomas of Aquinas teaches us that the virginal body of Mary, as well as her soul, overflowed with grace. "The soul of the Blessed Virgin was so full of grace that it overflowed into her flesh, thus fitting it for the conception of God's Son."

Her immaculate heart, her feelings, mind and will were all involved in the conception and care of her Son, just as it is in helping each of us conceive and bring forth Christ in our soul.

                                MARY NOT ONLY BRINGS CHRIST TO US :
                                   SHE ALSO BRINGS US TO CHRIST.

"... the Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

When Spirit Lord came upon Mary, overshadowed her, He became "... present in all the pores of her soul, in all the molecules of her body, penetrating her entire being with his light and his love..." (Pere Marie Eugene OCD)

"... she belonged to Christ, sharing in the salvific and sanctifying grace and in that love which has its beginning in the ‘Beloved’, the Son of the Eternal Father, who through the Incarnation became her own Son. Consequently, through the power of the Holy Spirit, in the order of grace, which is a participation in the divine nature, Mary receives life from him to whom she herself, in the order of earthly generation, gave life as a mother. The liturgy does not hesitate to call her "mother of her Creator" and to hail her with the words ‘… daughter of your Son. 'And since Mary receives this ‘new life’ with a fullness corresponding to the Son's love for the Mother, and thus corresponding to the dignity of the divine motherhood, the angel at the Annunciation calls her ‘full of grace.’" (Pope St. John Paul II)

... Mary will live her obedience of faith in suffering, at the side of the suffering Savior, and that her motherhood will be mysterious and sorrowful. Our beloved Mom said Yes to a share in the shocking mystery of the self- emptying of her Son, and endured perhaps the deepest "kenosis" of faith in human history (excerpts from Redemptoris Mater, Pope St. John Paul II).

This Mother's eyes will be filled with a Love that understands our suffering, a Mother of our sorrows, a Mother who is full of Grace, a Mother who will make present to us the mystery of Christ in our pain.

When we read these reflections from St. John Paul II, the Holy Spirit, our Mother's Sacred Spouse, deepens our understanding of ...

       MARY NOT ONLY BRINGS CHRIST TO US :
      SHE ALSO BRINGS US TO CHRIST.

WHY I LOVE YOU, O MARY

Oh! I would like to sing, Mary, why I love you,

Why your sweet name thrills my heart,

And why the thought of your supreme greatness

Could not bring fear to my soul.

If I gazed upon you in your sublime glory,

Surpassing the splendour of all blessed,

I could not believe that I am your child

O Mary, before you I would lower my eyes!

If a child is to cherish his mother,

She has to cry with him and share his sorrows,

O my dearest Mother, on this foreign shore

How many tears you shed to draw me to you!

In pondering your life in the holy Gospels,

I dare look at you and come near you.

It’s not difficult for me to believe I’m your child,

For I see you human and suffering like me…

When an angel from Heaven bids you be the Mother

Of God who is to reign for all eternity,

I see you prefer, O Mary, what a mystery!

the ineffable treasure of virginity.

O Immaculate Virgin, I understand how your soul

Is dearer to the Lord than his heavenly dwelling.

I understand how your soul, Humble and Sweet Valley,

Can contain Jesus, the Ocean of Love!

Oh! I love you, Mary, saying you are the servant

Of God whom you charm by humility.

This hidden virtue makes you all powerful,

It attracts the Holy Trinity into your heart.

Then the Spirit of Love covering you with his shadow,

The Son equal to the Father became incarnate in you,

There will be a great many of His sinner brothers,

Since He will be called: Jesus, your first-born

At least you find Him and you are overcome with joy,

You say to the fair Child captivating the doctors;

“O my Son, why have you done this?

Your father and I have been searching for you in tears.”

And the Child God replies (O what a deep mystery!)

To his dearest Mother holding out her arms to him:

“Why were you searching for me? I must be about

My Father’s business. Didn’t you know?”

The Gospel tells me that, growing in wisdom,

Jesus remains subject to Joseph and Mary,

And my heart reveals to me with what tenderness

He always obeys his dear parents.

Now I understand the mystery of the temple,

The hidden words of my Lovable King.

Mother, your sweet Child wants you to be the example

Of the soul searching for Him in the night of faith.

Since the King of Heaven wanted his Mother

To be plunged into the night, in anguish of heart,

Mary, is it thus a blessing to suffer on earth?

Yes, to suffer while loving is the purest happiness!

All that He has given me, Jesus can take back.

Tell Him not to bother with me….

He can indeed hide from me, I’m willing to wait for Him

Till the day without sunset when my faith will fade away…

Mother full of grace, I know that in Nazareth

You live in poverty, wanting nothing more.

No rapture, miracle, or ecstasy

Embellish your life, O Queen of the Elect!

The number of little ones on earth is truly great.

They can raise their eyes to you without trembling.

It’s by the ordinary way, incomparable Mother,

That you like to walk to guide them in Heaven.

While waiting for Heaven, O my dear Mother

I want to live with you, to follow you each day.

Mother, contemplating you, I joyfully immerse myself,

Discovering in your heart abysses of love.

You motherly gaze banishes all my fears.

It teaches me to cry, it teaches me to rejoice.

Instead of scorning pure and simple joys,

You want to share in them, you deign to bless them.

At Cana, seeing the married couple’s anxiety

Which they cannot hide, for they have run out of wine,

In your concern you tell the Saviour,

Hoping for the help of his divine power,

Jesus seems at first to reject your prayer:

“Woman, what does this matter,” he answers, ”to you and to me?”

But in the depths of his heart, He calls you his Mother,

And works his first miracle for you…

One day when sinners are listening to the doctrine

Of Him who would like to welcome them in Heaven,

Mary, I find you with them on the hill.

Someone says to Jesus that you wish to see him.

Then, before the whole multitude, your Divine Son

Shows us the immensity of his love for us.

He says: “Who is my brother and my sister and my Mother,

If not the one who does my will?”

O Immaculate Virgin, most tender of Mothers,

In listening to Jesus, you are not saddened.

But you rejoice that He makes us understand

How our souls become his family here below.

Yes, you rejoice that He gives us his life,

The infinite treasures of his divinity!

How can we not love you, O my dear Mother,

On seeing so much love and so much humility?

You love us, Mary, as Jesus loves us,

And for us you accept being separated from Him.

To love is to give everything. It’s to give oneself.

You wanted to prove this by remaining our support.

The Saviour knew your immense tenderness.

He knew the secrets of your maternal heart.

Refuge of sinners, He leaves us to you

When He leaves the Cross to wait for us in Heaven.

Mary, at the top of Calvary standing beside the Cross

To me you seem like a priest at the altar,

Offering your beloved Jesus, the sweet Emmanuel,

To appease the Father’s justice…

A prophet said, O afflicted Mother,

“There is no sorrow like your sorrow!”

O Queen of Martyrs, while remaining in exile

You lavish on us all the blood of your heart!

Saint John’s home becomes your only refuge.

Zebedee’s son is to replace Jesus…

That is the last detail the Gospel gives.

It tells me nothing more of the Queen of Heaven.

But, O my dear Mother, doesn’t its profound silence

Reveal that The Eternal Word Himself

Wants to sing the secrets of your life

To charm your children, all the Elect of Heaven ?

Soon I’ll hear that sweet harmony.

Soon I’ll go to beautiful Heaven to see you.

You who came to smile at me in the morning of my life,

Come smile at me again … Mother… It’s evening now!…

I no longer fear the splendour of your supreme glory.

With you I’ve suffered and now I want

To sing on your lap, Mary, why I love you,

And to go on saying that I am your child!

(St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, May 1897)

Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Karmel (Carmel) means "garden", "orchard", "vineyards of God". In each of these places, a mystical Beauty lives and thrives and transforms. Carmel is God's Garden, a place of Encounter. Carmel is God's space where He chooses to dwell. God's Space: His Garden which He tends, His Orchard where He brings forth the sweetest of fruits, His Vineyard where His oils and aromas of Himself make holy every branch that He encounters on His Way.  Carmel is the spiritual room gloriously decorated with every sign of God's Presence within and in this Garden of God, His "Word is a spring which never runs dry" (St Ephrem). 

Our soul is His Garden, His place of Encounter, His Vineyard where His inexhaustible spring of love never runs dry.

WE ARE CARMEL AND MARY IS QUEEN IN THIS GARDEN WHERE GOD DWELLS.

              Queen and beauty of Mount Carmel, Virgin of the solitude,

              In the wilderness of Carmel lies the world's eternal good.
              Draw us into deep seclusion And make God alone our goal,
              In the mystical Mount Carmel That lies hidden in the soul.

                                       (Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit OCD,1905–1988).

Our soul is God's chosen dwelling house, the space where He longs to meet us. 

              SOLITUDE      WILDERNESS         SECLUSION              HIDDENNESS.

We need a Mother's touch to guide us into such unknown and often untrod places.

God allures us to desire Him in the depths of our soul where He waits within the scars of our life-wounds, silently, longing for even a glance from us in our busy-ness. His deepest desire is for us to give Him permission to inhabit our raw memories, our still-festering spiritual and emotional sores, to allow Him to give us sight to see how every hurt can become the context of our holiness* as He heals and transforms us into Himself: 

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably unto her."  (Hosea 2:14)

And our Beloved Mother, ordained to "reveal the thoughts of many", gently helps us to recognize His Voice. 

When her Sacred Spouse, Spirit Lord draws us to pray the Rosary, we remember the words of St Louis de Montford: "When we say Mary, she says God." As we pray the Rosary, and at every utterance of her name "Mary", she turns our weary thoughts to Jesus, Lord, God. 

She is the stainless Window through which the Sun shines in His glory.

She is the Virgin of solitude, and, as she taught Therese of Lisieux, when we love someone, we want to be alone with them. 

Our Mother of Carmel directs our soul to yearn for her solitude where she is endlessly adoring God. She walks us silently and gently into our interior wilderness where our spiritual courage is under fire, yet, it's in that very fire, "with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning" (Joel 2:12), that we find Him again, His arms open, waiting for us to come back to Him with all our heart. 

Mary, our Queen of Carmel, whose Heart was Immaculate, still was human. St Therese reminds us that Mary was more a Mother than a Queen, she was one of us, not someone above us. Therese used to ask, what kind of a Mother would Mary be if her children could not imitate her? Mary "walked the ordinary days we all must travel. She was preserved from sin, but she was not spared the suffering which is its consequence. Just like us, she was often puzzled by the Will of God... She suffered pain as we all do, from privation and the cold, from misunderstanding, from anxiety and care... and yet she said... "LET IT BE DONE."** 

When this Woman draws us "into deep seclusion...to make God alone our Goal/In the mystical Mount Carmel That lies hidden in our soul" we can follow her there without fear, knowing that she has trodden that path of solitude and seclusion and hiddenness before us. In the Carmel of our soul, our Mother will lead us into purity, simplicity, holy poverty, to become completely open to God's wishes. She will give to us 'all that she gave to her Son.... her steadfast Mother's love'**.

In the Carmel of our soul, we will indeed hold the spiritual room gloriously decorated with every sign of God's Presence within, and in this Garden of God, His Word will be a "spring which never runs dry." 

                                                                               Flos Carmeli

 O beautiful Flower of Carmel, most fruitful vine, Splendour of Heaven, holy and singular,

 who brought forth the Son of God while still remaining a Pure Virgin, assist me in this necessity.

 O Star of the Sea, help and protect me! Show me that Thou art my Mother.

References: 

* Mark Foley OCD

** Bishop Patrick Ahern

PENTECOST - LORD, SEND OUT YOUR SPIRIT

"The Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with His grace, in order to draw them to Christ. The Spirit manifests the risen Lord to them, recalls His word to them and opens their minds to the understanding of His Death and Resurrection. He makes present the mystery of Christ, supremely in the Eucharist, in order to reconcile them, to bring them into communion with God, that they may 'bear much fruit.' " (Catechism of the Catholic Church, article 737)

"The Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with His Grace, in order to draw them to Christ."

Have our minds ever been brought to a full stop when reading Sacred Scripture? One word, or one complete sentence may suddenly grasp our faculties: our intellect, our memory, our emotions. Perhaps the Holy Spirit may have animated every molecule, every pore in our body to the very 'tip of our fingers, to the tip of our toes' and a 'holy shiver' rushes through our being as He gives Light to our seeking mind.

This Pentecost Sunday, when Spirit Lord inflamed Christ's frightened apostles huddling together in that upper room around Mary, the Spirit's Immaculate spouse, we too are present, because wherever God is, we, born or yet to be born, are held in His Loving Mind.

Do we too look on the Flames of His Love as He hovers over us, over every soul in whom He moves in all times and places? And in each one of us, He animates our thoughts and we experience that Living, rushing Flame as He enlivens our minds and we are drawn into unknown depths of Sacred Scripture. Holy words that we may have read or heard so often throughout our lived years, suddenly flood into our minds and our spiritual awareness is set on Fire.

This may have happened when, after decades of praying the Psalms, one word, one line may reveal an astonishing depth of a life-changing meaning. 

When we proclaim Psalm 139 aloud and substitute our own voice for that of King David's, using his words to address our Creator, Spirit Lord may inspire our own magnificat in our souls, and give us His Power to explain and unite our prayer with the psalmist: 

“May the spoken words of our mouth and the hidden thoughts of our heart win favour with you, O Lord our God” ... so that You may see and love in us what You saw and loved in Your Son, Jesus Christ.

When Spirit Lord animates our thoughts and our words, it is He Who prays through us in glorious praise of God's indescribable love for each soul whom He has created. It is Spirit Lord Who inflames our soul and our prayer soars to new heights of awe and gratitude.

Spirit Lord has prepared us, has now come to us, and is drawing us to Christ by empowering us to sing our magnificent prayer of praise as we sit to meet Him in silent solitude in our candle-lit room.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and night wraps itself around me,"

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

                   (from Psalm 139)

Psalm 139 reveals God's deeply loving, intimate crafting and infinite knowledge of each human being, uniquely and wonderfully made by Him.

God's intimate touch and knowledge of our soul is further detailed in the mystery of verse 16 which reads "... your eyes saw me unformed, in your book all are written down."

Some have translated these words of King David to describe the time when God will open that "book" and have interpreted it to means that God will see all of our actions which will justify His condemnation of us. This understanding of Verse 16 is also at times supported by the verse from St Luke 12:2:

"Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known."    

But in prayer, perhaps Spirit Lord might draw us into a deeper discernment of "your book."

Edith Stein guides us.

She speaks of the "BOOK OF THE CROSS ..."

To open that Book, we must sit humbly available, before a Crucifix.

And we look on the One Whom we have pierced as He lovingly returns our gaze. 

In His Sacred Body, Jesus Lord let flow unquenchable oceans of mercy. All sins were absorbed and consumed into His Suffering Sacred Humanity and the Cross, holding and giving witness to His ocean of suffering, is where the pages of our lives reveal the story of our "actions."

The Cross that pins Him is where we can't run from His spirit, or flee from His face, or climb the mountains of our wrongdoings. The Cross is where He will never stop longing for us to give Him our broken selves, wounded and scourged by our own sins. Even if we lie in the grave, He is there, where His right hand holds us fast (Psalm 139).

The Book of the Cross is the story of our lives, our life-sufferings and death. 

The Book of the Cross is Christ's Book and our book.

In every page of this sacred Book the profound and hidden meanings of every incident, suffering, joy, of our lives are best read under the guidance and inspirations of the Holy Spirit. Wherever in our lives we travel, whatever we become, we are ever under the Gaze of God, a Gaze of utter love, never condemning, ever redeeming.

The glorious Spirit of God has "made present ... the mystery of Christ" and has "opened our minds" through Sacred Scripture to further grasp an "understanding of His Death and Resurrection." 

"FATHER OF LIGHT, FROM WHOM EVERY GOOD GIFT COMES,

SEND YOUR SPIRIT INTO OUR LIVES

WITH THE POWER OF A MIGHTY WIND,

AND BY THE FLAME OF YOUR WISDOM

OPEN THE HORIZONS OF OUR MINDS.

LOOSEN OUR TONGUES TO SING YOUR PRAISE

IN WORDS BEYOND THE POWER OF SPEECH

FOR WITHOUT YOUR SPIRIT

MAN COULD NEVER RAISE HIS VOICE IN WORDS OF PEACE

OR ANNOUNCE THE TRUTH THAT JESUS IS LORD,

WHO LIVES AND REIGNS WITH YOU AND THE HOLY SPIRIT."

                             (Liturgy of the Hours, PENTECOST SUNDAY )

RISEN WOUNDS

"He is risen from the dead and He is Lord"

(Matt 28:6, Confession from Romans 10:9)

                                              "Put your finger here and see my hands,

                                             and bring your hand and put it into my side, 

                                                 and do not be unbelieving, but believe."    

                                                                        (John 20:27)  

                                                                                  

It is Easter Sunday morning. 

On this glorious, astonishing day of miraculous and eternal moments, a day filled with holy joy,

our Savior, Lord, God, directs our inner eye to look on the miracles held in His Sacred Risen Body, to meditate on the five deep canyons where we hide when we are in our darkness and pain and fear and sinfulness. His Sacred Risen Body is the Same Sacred Body that will rush to embrace us when we are finally called Home, His arms open wide, utter joy on His Face. 

                                                      He is our Promised Land.

                                          "Put your finger here and see my hands,

                                           and bring your hand and put it into my side, 

                                               and do not be unbelieving, but believe." 

Pope Benedict XVI described that moment of encounter between Christ Jesus and His apostles... us ... in the barricaded room when our "wounded God " stands among us and His Wounds are laid bare. His "wounds of love," the wounds He longed for when He took on "the passion of man," made evident in the Shroud of Turin, in the "Icon written in blood." 

These Wounds make visible the unquenchable love of God for each of us. These "Risen Wounds" reveal the essence of God, His Divine Vulnerability, that will be made present on His Sacred Body for all time. 

We may continue to ponder for the rest of our lives how and why our souls are so deeply moved by the fathomless depths in the Pope's description: His "Risen Wounds."

On this day of the Risen Lord, when the torrents of God's Mercy are flooding into souls of all time, perhaps we may be inspired to take that phrase to prayer : Risen Wounds. 

Spirit Lord may grace us with a question ... why would the Savior retain the Wounds from the nails on His Sacred Body if His Flesh, after 3 days, had otherwise completely healed from lashings, thorns, punches, blows, bruises. 

In the words, "Risen Wounds", Pope Benedict was drawing on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas who had helped us to begin to understand that the Savior's Wounds, retained in His Glorified Body, are Wounds that would remain visible until the end of time and beyond.

St. Thomas described them as wounds of dignity, not deformity, beacons of hope, signs of victory won through humility and self-surrender, evidence of a love filled with mercy, gifted to His Father in self-emptying obedience (Summa Theologiae).

Christ Jesus will never not have these Sacred Wounds, visible to all souls for all eternity.

And St. John of the Cross draws us deeply into each wound to locate our souls in those places of healing, redemption: St. John helps us to locate our broken selves, our 'violated ' soul, our fragile and finite humanity  as we hide in the 'clefts' of these Sacred Risen Wounds. There, with our permission, Spirit Lord begins to purify us, consumes our egoism, and we find mercy, restoration, healing, redemption, always encloaked in Love.

“O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, 

let me see your face, 

let me hear your voice” 

(Song of Songs 2:14).

Our Divine Saviour, the Rock, pleads with us in a great longing, to enter into His Risen Wounds, especially the 'secret place ' of the Wound in His Side where He yearns to 'see our face, hear our voice.' 

At the Last Supper, Jesus pronounced,

"This is my body ... This is my blood."

St. John Paul II teaches us that in the Lord's use of the present tense, "IS",  He brought about a "mysterious 'oneness in time' between the Triduum , the Last Supper, Passion, and Resurrection, and the passage of the centuries".

The Pope is teaching us that at every Holy Communion, every Holy Eucharist for all time when a priest consecrates the bread and wine, Jesus Lord becomes Present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

We step forward, in awe and trembling, to receive His Sacred Body. This is the same Sacred Body that holds the Risen Wounds. All time meets in Him, Divine Time and God's human time. And hosts of Angelic Beings bow low before us because we now carry on our tongue or in our hand the Lord of Hosts : because we have become His living Tabernacle, His enfleshed Ark of the Covenant. If we manage to navigate our way back to our pews, we may be graced to realize that God's Divine Vulnerability is now subject to ourselves. We now hold in our being the One Who bears the Wounds of Love, our Wounded God who is the Icon written in Blood, Who now "sees our face and hears our voice."  

The One Whose wounds of love, Whose Sacred Body holds the "clefts" where we hide, is now hidden within us, truly Present with Father and Holy Spirit, humbly asking for us to gaze on Him with our "feeble love that enthralls" Him.

                                                 "Put your finger here and see my hands,

                                                  and bring your hand and put it into my side, 

                                                    and do not be unbelieving, but believe." 

Our glorious, Risen Lord, ever-loving, ever-present, ever-pleading, ever-longing, ever-waiting, ever-forgiving, ever-redeeming, ever-imprisoned in our being ...

"To live by love is closely to enfold 

the Uncreated Word  - Voice of my Lord!

And with Thee, in my heart of hearts, to hold

the Spirit sending forth His flame adored.

Thus, loving Thee, the Father too is mine :

My feeble heart hath drawn Him from above,

O Trinity, the Prisoner Divine!

           Oh, my poor love."

(St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face)

   HE IS ALIVE.

THE RADICAL POVERTY OF CHRIST DWELLING IN US

Our five week journey through Lent has perhaps held Spirit-blessed treasures. 

We may have been blessed to recognize that many of our human weaknesses have become uncloaked and hidden in them, the spiritual pride that estranges us from God may have been exposed; God's gift of humility may have begun to nurture a contrite heart and we have bent the knee in obedience; being subject to temptations may have gradually revealed to us the reality of our profound poverty in our world arena where having and being in control fills the tabernacle of our self; and we may have been graced at last with the desire to surrender our all into God's love.

Weakness: humility: obedience: temptations: poverty: surrender.

This may have been the story of our encounter with ourselves during our Lent this far. 

This was the Story of Christ Jesus' encounter with Satan in the desert, an encounter that was the prelude to the coming week which opens with Passion Sunday.

Christ's willing Weakness in His Sacred Humanity incurred the devil's assault on the Lord's Humility;

the devil's continued assault on Christ's Obedience to His gift to His Father of total Self-renunciation; 

the devil's strategized temptations against the Lord's radical poverty;

the devil's continued assaults on Christ's chosen and complete surrender to a total impoverishment held in His Sacred Humanity.

These reveal to us the Story of the Lord's Temptations in the Desert ...

He surrendered His Glory to become weak in His Sacred Humanity; 

He personified       Humility; 

                               Obedience;

                               Poverty. 

                                

Our own story of Lent holds the same...

                                       

            weakness; humility; obedience; poverty; surrender.

                                 Our Savior's Story holds our story.

"When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him, for a time"  (Lk 4:1-13).

                              ".... FOR A TIME". 

                            

                                Holy Week is that time. 

During Holy Week, all hell finally released its utter hatred for the One Who had vanquished the devil's  temptations in the desert. Evil had waited for thirty-three years to despoil, mock, destroy the self-renunciation of our Savior. It is through His choice of total Self-renunciation that Jesus redeems us. 

He clothed Himself with the "dark robes of our frailty," with the utter poverty of our weak humanity.

Satan assaulted that radical poverty because in that choice of uncompromising poverty, our poverty, the Lord Jesus became utterly poor. 

"To become human means to become 'poor', to have nothing that one might brag about before God. To become human means to have no support, no power ... Jesus held back nothing. He clung to nothing, and nothing served as a shield for him": 

"Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself" (Phil 2:6).

Satan despises this poverty, weakness, this humility, this obedience, this surrender to love because the devil has the deepest fear of virtues that he cannot fight.

This is Christ's Mighty Powerlessness. 

And when we allow Him to dwell in us, He becomes our Might in our powerlessness. 

When we humbly acknowledge our human frailty, our finiteness, our lack of control, our sinfulness, we allow Christ's power to work within us. 

And Spirit Lord speaks to our souls when we read and respond to the words of St. Paul:

"That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, I am strong." (2 Cor 12: 9-11)

Perhaps in our prayer this holy week, we might sit with this reflection from Johann Baptist Metz :

    "Have we really understood the impoverishment that Christ endured? Everything was taken from him during the passion, even the love that drove him to the cross. No longer did he savor his own love, no longer did he feel any spark of enthusiasm. His heart gave out and a feeling of utter helplessness came over him. Truly he emptied himself (Phil 2:7). God's merciful hand no longer sustained him. God's countenance was hidden during the passion and Christ gaped into the darkness of nothingness and abandonment where God was no longer present. He reached his destiny, stretched taut between a despising earth that had rejected him and a faceless heaven thundering God's 'NO' to sinful humanity. Jesus paid the price of futility." 

                                     And the Savior asks only this of us:

             "Couldn't you keep watch with me even for one hour?" (Mk 14:37)

MIRACLES OUT OF HOLY DARKNESS - 5TH SUNDAY OF LENT

Lent: a time of the Mystical Presence of God, a time of transformation, powerlessness, spiritual dryness, a wilderness time when our  soul prays without feeling His nearness or experiencing His sweet consolations. If our quest for God during these parched times draws our soul to acts of raw faith then we may thank Him with a holy joy which is an un-felt joy, because in such spiritual drought, we may be certain that our prayer is being nurtured into maturity and our soul is being uniquely perfected by Spirit Lord Himself. 

"Prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it" (Blessed Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus).

When the Lord permits us to endure times of painful spiritual darkness, our souls are being de-formed in order to re-form and trans-form us. And the growing pains wound. The quality of our faith seems to be being stretched to breaking point because God needs it to hold a  measure of His supernatural power to join Him in a willing suffering that will win Him many souls.

Such are times of great transformation because our faith is being measured by and empowered by God Himself, animated by the gifts of Spirit Lord. And in this spiritual darkness, we may ever remember ... where are the gifts, so too is the Giver.

We can locate our own Lenten spiritual journey in an event involving the deep suffering of Martha, friend of Jesus (John 11:21-39).

Martha and Mary had sent word to Jesus to let Him know that their brother, Lazarus, was very ill. 

Jesus had great love for these three people.

Yet, when the Lord heard about Lazarus' serious illness, and despite the confusion His decision brought about in the Apostles, Jesus delayed returning to the home of His beloved friends.

When He and the Apostles finally arrived, Lazarus had died four days before and was already entombed:

"LORD, BY NOW THERE WILL BE A STENCH; HE HAS BEEN DEAD FOR FOUR DAYS" (John 11:39).

If ever we have been in a crisis, or immersed in an overwhelming circumstance that shakes our faith, or unable to breathe in a deep hurt that seems to draw only confusing silence from Heaven, we may hear something of our own wounded bewilderment voiced by Martha to Jesus when He finally arrived:

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

There had been only silence from Jesus to Martha's message to Him when she pleaded for His intervention. These, her words to Him, seem to suggest that her faith in Him was shaken, a life-time period of four days when Martha may have been immersed in a dense spiritual darkness. 

Perhaps we too may be permitted to endure Martha's spiritual suffering. 

At such times, and during our Lenten darkness, we remember the profound reflection from St. John of the Cross: "God does not fit in an occupied heart."

We plead with Him to help us to see, name and surrender all that is disordered and that occupies our heart, distracting us from His Presence in our souls so that we may make greater space for Him. 

When He draws near to us, our spiritual eyes, unaccustomed to the brilliance of God's Presence in our soul, become temporarily, spiritually blind. This is the time when St John of the Cross guides us and leads us into the "holy darkness," when our blindness causes us to stand still, when we have no prayer formulae to help us to move in the "right" direction to find Him, when our senses are powerless to "feel" our way, where our ability to reason is enfogged, and our will, often fed  by our disordered emotions, begin to be purified, when God's sweet consolations and enlightenments are starkly absent. 

In this precious holy darkness of deeper purification, when our Director is Spirit Lord Himself, we begin to die to self. 

We return to the Gospel exchange between Jesus and Martha to hear Martha's astonishing proclamation of faith in her profound darkness. We hear her living those mysterious words of Blessed Marie Eugene:

"Prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it." 

The Lord Jesus tells Martha that He is the resurrection and the life, that whoever believes in Him, even though they die, they will live:

 

And in full hearing of the silent, stunned crowd, He digs deeper into Martha's soul,

"... whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

OUT OF THOSE DEPTHS OF HER HOLY DARKNESS, OUT OF HER DESOLATION, HER ABJECT POWERLESSNESS, HER PROFOUND GRIEF, OUT OF THE SEEMING BETRAYAL FROM A DEEPLY LOVED AND TRUSTED FRIEND. FROM THESE DEPTHS OF HER INTERIOR TURMOIL, WE HEAR MARTHA'S STAGGERING WORDS OF FAITH: 

"YES, LORD, I BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE THE MESSIAH, THE SON OF GOD, WHO IS TO COME INTO THE WORLD."

We may almost see the shocked faces of those crowding around Jesus and Martha, pushing forward to hear every word spoken by them. 

And the Lord Jesus approaches the tomb, commands that the stone be rolled back, and calls Lazarus out from death.

"Prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it." 

Jesus, God had probed deep into the soul of Martha, found there a magnificent faith that had been perfected with the spiritual scalpel of suffering, and He, the Lord, had rewarded the "quality of the faith" that He found there, and immediately, He raises Lazarus from the

dead.

We may take to prayer the words of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face:

"Jesus works miracles for his dearest friends only after he has tested their faith. He let Lazarus die, even though Martha and Mary sent word that he was sick. But after the trial, what rewards! LAZARUS RISES FROM THE DEAD."

From our own holy darkness, where God is re-forming and trans-forming our souls, we may ask: how can we surrender ourselves endlessly when we feel that we have nothing to give Him, only utter powerlessness, desolation? 

We pray again with St. Therese ...

                         "And even when I have nothing, I will give Him this nothing.

                          You, Lord, will descend to my nothingness and 

                          transform that nothingness into living fire."

We will then hear the Lord's reply:

                                

"SEE, I COME QUICKLY. I HAVE MY REWARD IN HAND" (REVELATION 22:12).

LAETARE SUNDAY REFLECTION

"HE HAS CALLED YOU OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS OWN WONDERFUL LIGHT" 

(1 PETER 2:9).

Laetare Sunday: the Gospel moment when we glimpse the glorious Light of New Life in the Resurrection, when our Lenten sacrifices are paused and our souls strain toward the splendour of our rising in the Risen Christ.

In the Gospel on this day of joy, when we quietly step into the Gospel scene, we may find ourselves made speechless by what we witness as the events unfold. 

    Jesus Lord "was passing by and saw a man blind from birth" (John 9:1-41).

Perhaps we notice that the blind man did not ask the disciples to lead him to Jesus to ask for healing. We don't hear the man addressing Jesus so we may infer the possibility that he had never heard of this Healer. He was simply a blind man, standing at the wayside, listening to the disciples of Jesus asking the Lord if the man's blindness was the result of the sins of his parents. Jesus reveals to us that, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God may be made visible through him." 

The man born blind is completely silent.  

Jesus Lord chose this one to be healed, one who was enduring lifelong suffering and darkness. 

And the healing would give glory to God.

If we take this to prayer, we may be confronted with a question that may unsettle our souls: we are believers in the gratuitous Self-outpouring love of God. Do we accept our sufferings in order to give God glory when He wills to heal us?

 

Or when He wills to withhold His healing, for the salvation of our souls or for the salvation of the souls we pray for?

St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face gives us our answer ...        

"Does He not see our anguish and the burden that weighs us down? Why does He not come and comfort us? ... He knows that it is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves Divine!"

And our souls are quieted in the Presence of the Lord. 

The man born blind is completely silent in the Presence of the Lord.

Our minds may remember the little petition: "Lord, be near to those who seek You without knowing it" ( Liturgy of the Hours). 

And the Lord draws near to the man born blind whose life then changes for ever.

                                              

            We hear the Lord Jesus speak....

                                          

                      "'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.'

                         ... he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle 

                                 and spread the clay on his eyes" (John 9:1-41).

   And Christ Jesus gives a man born blind the light of life, physical light and, as the remainder of the Gospel testifies, spiritual light; a man who had never known daylight and who had dwelt also in a profound spiritual darkness.

We may pause to ponder in prayer: who are we in this Gospel miracle moment?

At the moment of our Creation ... 

                   "the Lord God formed man from the clay of the earth, 

                       and he breathed into his face the breath of life, 

                                  and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7).

            

   At the beginning of time, God, Creator, uses 'clay' and forms us, gives us life from the dust: the Breath of God breathes into our being and our soul is given life in God.

       At that moment in Genesis, we are physically formed into a living being from the 'clay' of the earth.

       At that moment in John's Gospel, Jesus Lord, God, "spat on the ground and made clay." St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that in this action, Christ is revealing Himself to be the same Creator Who formed man from the clay in Genesis. 

 Christ uses the clay of the earth, made unclean by Adam, and with his own bodily fluids, He sanctifies and repairs the work of creation.

      He touches the blind man ... us. Christ, God, breathes new spiritual life and sight into our souls, opening our eyes to recognise ourselves again as newly created souls in Himself.

     Jesus, Lord, God, "as long as He is in the world," never stops loving us into new life in Him.

We were, we are, and we always will be, spiritually re-formed and re-created, endlessly, in Love, into Himself.         

After Jesus heals him, physically and spiritually, we learn from the Gospel that he became the target of abuse and hatred by the Pharisees.

And, once again, Jesus Lord seeks him out and in his new spiritual sight, the man proclaimed his glorious act of faith in Him: 

            "I do believe, Lord.  AND HE WORSHIPPED HIM" (John 9:1-41).            

Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus helps us understand why Jesus sought him out again, now that his life in Christ was changed forever.              

"Why are we in this world? The great reason is that God is Love and that He has loved us. He created you out of love, He called you out of love, and this love remains alive. What He has loved, He still loves; what He has given, He will never take away. As St. Paul, who deeply understood God’s nature, reminds us: “The gifts of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29), and what He has begun, He will bring to completion!

God cannot let us go, He cannot abandon us, because He loves us. Our great hope is God; our great hope is eternity! He sees all things in truth and clarity, while we only see appearances. He sees us in our eternal reality. He longs to share His vision with us,  to awaken our hope in this eternal reality" (Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus). 

GOD NEVER ABANDONS HIS CHOSEN ONES.

CHRIST IS THE LIGHT LIFTING US OUT OF OUR BLINDING SPIRITUAL DARKNESS.

And in His Love, He transforms us into ...

"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD; ...

WHOEVER FOLLOWS ME WILL HAVE THE LIGHT OF LIFE"

(John 9:1-41).

                        THIS IS LAETARE SUNDAY: A DAY OF HOLY JOY.