Saturday morning
Review these again
Habakkuk chapter 3 - even though the fig does not blossom.
Colossians 2-6 sinking roots into Christ and growing with Him.
Living our life with praise and thanksgiving.
Thanking God for the blessings to come as well as for the blessings received- makes you very alert for the blessings when they appear!
"For everything in my life so far, thank You, and for everything still to come, Yes"
Thank You for the precious gift of life.
Thank you for family and friends, for loving and being loved.
Thank you for the little, simple pleasures I don't always notice enough.
Content to be me, my shadow side and light side, and by and through both my shadows and my light, you will lead me home.
For the grace to see life whole.
You are a God who often lies very hidden, or are just too fast for me, but there have been enough burning bushes on the way to see where You have been.
For the gift of my own vocation, unique and amazing.
For the bright and dark blessings of many years.
I have enjoyed my joys greatly, but I have learned more from my sorrows.
Thank you for Pope Francis, our Church needed him so badly.
Praising you, God for who You are. God of my life, I know you, hidden but always there.
Perhaps the one question we will be asked by God in the end is "Did you enjoy my creation."
Friday afternoon
John Farell - in confession you hear only what God should hear. You hear the goodness they do not hear themselves, you find them all touchingly lovable.
Acts 4 v36 Barnabas - "son of encouragement"
Be attentive
Turn a blind eye to most things
Now and then challenge a bit. Try to speak the truth as you see it with love.
Encourage a lot
Deuteronomy-"Choose life"
To act in a way that brings more life to a situation is a learned art. We have great power over others either to build them up - or the reverse
Hebrews 3:13. Keep encouraging each other
Encouragement was at the very centre of the ministry of Jesus. "I have come that you may have life, life to the full"
Ignatius of Loyola - the human being is a battlefield between two spirits, the Evil One wanting to discourage, where the good spirit will often challenge us but will never discourage - discouragement never comes from the Spirit of God.
2 main sources of encouragement - fidelity to daily prayer. Be consoled that the less you pray, the worse it gets! Not a high motive, but a kickstart.
The other main source is the witness of others.
Encouraging each other - go on relentlessly looking for the good in others. If you look for the good, you can draw out the good, it is always there. The other way is to under grace train ourselves to live in a spirit of praise and thanksgiving. Gratitude is a sure way home.
2 Corinthians 13:10 - the authority which the Lord has given to me is for building up and not destroying.
"I have come that you may have life, life to the full"
Friday morning
Thomas Merton - had great friendship with Buddists - what was the main lesson they learn as novices? To open and shut doors quietly.
Therese of Lisieux - wished to be a priest so that she could preach about the real Mary, not the image on the pedestal.
Mary as a template for everyday life.
3 stages to the annunciation narrative - announcement, questioning, renewed trust
God present for His kindly purposes in all events, event the difficult ones. Ignitions said that 'the facts of our lives are friendly, even the ones that seem difficult, because God is in all of them"
There is no situation in life that is without its blessings and rich promises.
A change of job, a change of community, a health problem - we take it to prayer, we discuss it with a trusted spiritual advisor, but the ultimate peace giving part of the decision is to find what God's will in the situation is. This is the gift of discernment.
Mary in that pivotal moment of her life goes through all those stages, ending in that Yes.
Ignatius of Loyola - "Mary, put me with your Son" and also prayed for her to intercede with her Son
Father Pedro Arrupe - "I shall never be at peace until I have achieved a tender love for our most sweet mother Mary."
Thursday afternoon
Mark 15 - when the sixth hour came there was darkness over the whole land
Luke 22 - the veil of the Temple torn
The impossibility of being ready for death, and the help with the impossibility "alone with none but thee, o God, I journey on my way. I shall not fear if thou art near, oh King of night and day."
The Hail Mary - " pray for us now and at the hour of our death"
Job - "naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return"
Life as a preparation for death - never the final word for a Christian. Our belief is that Life is not a slow decline to death, but an ascent to the reunion with our Maker.
Key supports on this journey we are making to the high point of our life.
The words and witness of Jesus himself - the dialogue with Martha
"I am the Resurrection and the life." "Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God"
Returning to "the struggling heart and the five agnostic senses -we still know You"
The witness and courage of countless martyrs and saints, known and unknown, and our own loved ones.
The veil of faith becomes thin at times and we see clearer and then the light fades again and we feel alone.
Cardinal Hume - in the end we all come to God like the publican - 'Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."
Thursday morning
The Irish broadcaster Feargal Keane describes a moving scene - all his life he had had a love -hate relationship with his father - after his father's death when he had the job of sorting out his fsther's flat he found a bible with the psalms very heavily marked, especially psalm 87 which underlined the words "as for me Lord I called on you for help, in the morning you answered my prayer"
Looking again today at the Table of the Word, particularly the psalms. It is our prayer book as it would have been the prayer book of Christ. Real and raw there is no human emotion that is not in the psalms.
Temptation in the Wilderness - Christ quoting Scripture to refute the Scriptural quotes from the Devil.
From the Office - "in the Scripture, by the Spirit, may we see the Saviour's face"
Psalm 17 - a psalm for all seasons, beginning in the bright morning, the ebb and flow of our lives. "God reached down to me, he saved me because loved me."
Habakkuk - even though the fig does not blossom....
Psalm 49 - Call on me in the day of your distress, I will free you and you will honour me.
Psalm 33 - Glorify the Lord with me.
Look to the Lord and be radiant
Ending with a hymn from the Office - the love that we have wasted, O God of Love, renew. God as the ultimate recycler - all the rubbish in life turned to good.
Wednesday afternoon
The great gift of Christ - the gift of himself
On the wall of Mother Teresa's sacristy ' Priest of God, celebrate this Mass as if it was your first Mass, your last Mass, your only Mass.'
Don't say the words of the Mass, pray the words of the Mass - switch off the automatic pilot and focus.
4 central actions of the Mass - taking, blessing, breaking, giving.
Christ's life a mirror of the parable of the Prodigal Son, but the story of the faithful Son sent into the world.
God took Christ and sent him, blessed him in the Jordan and at the Transfiguration, and then surely allowed Him to be broken open by entering into the human reality as one of us.
Opening of Gaudium et Spes - there is nothing human that does not find an echo in our hears.
Broken again on the Cross, a man of sorrows, but what He gained by them is immeasurable.
And it was the breaking of Christ that enabled him to be given as Eucharist.
God took us too, and blessed us with all the joys and sorrows of our lives, called us by name as His daughters and sons, every now and then we glimpse how great that Love is. Then, if we allow ourselves, He breaks us open by living alongside other people and sharing the joys, hope, fears and anxieties of others. We lose control, but the loss, however difficult, is Grace filled.
By this we can be given to others as Eucharist, we feed people with Christ by our lives.
Pope John Paul II said he had celebrated Mass in many places, it gave him a powerful experience of the cosmic nature of the Mass because it is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the whole world. In it Christ gives back the whole of creation to His Father, but now redeemed.
Wednesday morning
At the heart of everyone is a God shaped emptiness that nothing else can fill
This leads to faith, the belief in the unseen God, the act of faith renewed every day.
Then this becomes the relationship with God - Jesus Christ the Way, the Truth and the Life
The way of prayer. Tertullian - "Prayer is the only thing that conquers God."
Luke 22 v 14 - "I have longed to eat this Passover amongst you"
Reflecting on the Mass - Rolheiser says " Down the ages the Christian community have fouled up most things. But the one command of Christ we have been faithful to is 'Do this in memory of me' "
Bonhoeffer - Love does not sustain marriage, marriage sustains love - we need ritual containers so as not to live life by emotional winds.
We can't always come to Mass in high expectation - the fidelity is that we come.
Every now and then stand back and try to rediscover what JPII called "Eucharistic amazement"
Four hungers - for meaning, for good food, for a context to understand suffering, for hope.
The Mass is not just the table of the Eucharist, it is a table of the Word. It always has an effect if we listen to it carefully. Just a sentence or a word may be a compass.
Hunger for good food - the Mass is the Last Supper made present. "I am the Bread of Life, the one who comes to me will never be hungry, the one who believes in me will never thirst."
Suffering - the mass is Calvary. We all bear wounds. We can't prevent it, but we need meaning for it. We can't find an answer, but Calvary gives us a place to put the suffering, in the shadow of the Cross.
Hope - the Mass is Easter. We receive the Risen Christ - the last word in everyone's life will be the word of Life. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
