HOPE AND RESILIENCY

"You sanctify what you are grateful for!"

- Anthony De Mello, S.J.

Surely, all art is the result of one's having lived in danger,
of having gone through all experience all the way to the end,
where no one can go further...
- Rainer Maria Rilke -

PRAYER

Lord, teach us always to recognize your greatness, to ponder on our treasures, 
and to draw strength from our daily blessings,
 especially during our most trying times.

Guide our sometimes weary hearts 
to trust in your abiding presence 
and in your great plans for us (Jer 29:11)!

"For I know the plans I have for you - it is Yahweh who speaks - 
plans for peace not disaster, reserving a future full of hope for you." 
Jeremiah 29:11

May God's Overflowing and Abundant Love

Fill our Hearts in a Special Way

this Easter !

CHRIST IS RISEN!

Break the box and shed the nard;
Stop not now to count the cost;
Hither bring pearl, opal, sard;
Reck not what the poor have lost;
Upon Christ throw all away:
Know ye, this is Easter Day.

Build His church and deck His shrine,
Empty though it be on earth;
Ye have kept your choicest wine—
Let it flow for heavenly mirth;
Pluck the harp and breathe the horn:
Know ye not 'tis Easter morn?

Gather gladness from the skies;
Take a lesson from the ground;
Flowers do open their heavenward eyes
And a Spring-time joy have found;
Earth throws Winter's robes away,
Decks herself for Easter Day.

Beauty now for ashes wear,
Perfumes for the garb of woe,
Chaplets for dishevelled hair,
Dances for sad footsteps slow;
Open wide your hearts that they
Let in joy this Easter Day.

Seek God's house in happy throng;
Crowded let His table be;
Mingle praises, prayer, and song,
Singing to the Trinity.
Henceforth let your souls always
Make each morn an Easter Day.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ,
(July 28, 1844 –June 8, 1898)

English poet, Roman Catholic convert and Jesuit priest

"Nothing is more important than finding God, 

that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute and final way!

What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, 
will affect everything.

 It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, 

what yo do with your evenings, 
how you spend your week-ends, 
what you read, 
who you know, 
what breaks your heart, 
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. 

Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything." 

Quote attributed to Fr. Arrupe, SJ

LOVE  is founded on our desire for completion

"to be whole, to be in harmony, to be connected, to be free."

What is it that completes us?

 It does not have to be a person,

it could be work, an experience in nature,

a hobby or something else...

MAY WE ALWAYS BE IN LOVE, 

that is, may we be always in touch with and be grounded on

 what it is that completes us!

"A heart that is full of love always has something to give."
Pope John XXIII


"This is the MIRACLE that happens every time to those who love:
the more they give, the more they possess."  
  Rainier Maria Rilkie


JOY IS THE MOST INFALLIBLE SIGN OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD!
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Ministry Appropriating Issues on Responses to Life and Vocations

Seeing the Beauty and God's Grace in all of our Life endeavors! Ministry Appropriating Issues on Responses to Life and Vocations

Bearded Iris from http://www.flickr.com/photos/exequiel_mapa/6782993493/in/photostream/
BEAUTY

"True Beauty is from elsewhere, a pure gift. It cannot be programmed nor its arrival foreseen. It never falls simply into the old patterns of what is already there nor is it frivolous or burdened with leaden solemnity. 

Frequently, beauty is playful like dancing sunlight, it cannot be predicted, and in the most unlikely scene or situation can suddenly emerge. This spontaneity and playfulness often subverts our self-importance and throws our plans and intentions into disarray. Without intending it, we find ourselves coming alive in a sense of celebration and delight. The pedestrian sequence of a working day breaks, a new door opens and the heart recognizes the silent majesty of the ordinary. The things we never notice, like health, friends and love, emerge from their subdued presence and stand out in their true radiance as gifts we could never have earned or achieved.''

- Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, John O'Donohue -

May we never lose our sense of awe and wonder in whatever we do in all of our life endeavors!  May our God of Wonder continue to surprise our lives with this sense of celebration and delight in whatever circumstances we may found ourselves in our life situations and ministries!

WONDER

"Among the many things that the religious tradition hold in store for us

is the LEGACY OF WONDER. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is TO TAKE THINGS FOR GRANTED. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

AWARENESS OF THE DIVINE start with WONDER. It is the result of what humanity does with its higher comprehension.  The greatest hindrance to such awareness is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental cliches. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is therefore a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.


RADICAL AMAZEMENT has a wider scope than any other act of humanity. While any act of perception or cognition has as its object a selected segment of reality, radical amazement refers to all of reality; not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at their ability to see.


The grandeur or mystery of being is not a particular puzzle to the mind, as for example, the cause for volcanic eruptions.  We do not have to go to the end of reasoning to encounter it. Grandeur or mystery is something with which we confronted everywhere and at all times. Even the very act of thinking baffles our thinking, just as every intelligible fact is, by virtue of its being a face, drunk with baffling aloofness. Does not mystery reign within the reasoning, within perception, without explanation? Where is is the self-understanding that could unfurl the marvel of our own thinking, that could explain the grace of our emptying the concrete with charms of abstraction? What formula could explain and solve the enigma of the very fact of thinking? Out is neither thing nor thought but only the subtle magic of blending the two.


What fills us with radical amazement is the relations in which everything is embedded bu the fact that even the minimum of perception is a maximum of enigma. The most incomprehensible fact is the fact that comprehend at all.


The way to faith leads thought acts of wonder and radical amazement.


Abraham Joshua Heschel, "GOD IN SEARCH OF MAN"

May this Christmas Season remind us

of the most important and powerful Christmas message of all.

It is about God's Special Love for Us

and the relationship that has been created by this Great Love!

May we always be open to recognize God's abounding grace

and be always wiling to be drawn and seized by God 

to participate in this Circle of Love

in all of our life endeavors

especially in how we care for and love one another (Jn 13:34)!

A Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year to All!

Nativity Scene displayed at the St. Augusting Chapel

of the Alexian Brothers Residence

Signal Mountain, TN. 2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/exequiel_mapa/6626020293/in/photostream

Ministry Appropriating Issues on Responses to Life and Vocations: Fall Reflections

Ministry Appropriating Issues on Responses to Life and Vocations: Fall Reflections

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all that is seared with trade'bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is here now, not can foot feel, being sod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

                          -Gerald Manley Hopkins, S.J. (1844-89)