"“Religious experience is a fundamental element of the normal Christian life. It is not limited to the ‘spiritual elite,’ nor is it to be sought after simply for its own sake. Knowing God through a conscious, personal encounter through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit is Christianity. We were made for that encounter.”
Peter Herbeck
When The Spirit Comes in Power, Servant Books"
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
If You Want To Win Souls . . .
“If you want to win souls for Christ, you must willingly endure the anguish for sins that sinners do not experience, in order to win at least ultimately the grace of repentance for them. You may have to go through the agonies of delayed hopes for many hearts, and even seeming failure at the end, for someone whose soul has been your deep concern. But your sincere devotion to bring a soul to Christ will not be in vain. God knows the secret workings of His grace in souls.”
Lawrence G. Lovasik
The Hidden Power of Kindness, Sofia Institute Press
Lawrence G. Lovasik
The Hidden Power of Kindness, Sofia Institute Press
Friday, May 21, 2010
Be An Oblation
I’ve been pondering this subject a lot in the past several months. The fact is, there is so much to write about that I have had trouble knowing where to start.
Main Entry: ob·la·tion
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈblā-shən, ō-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English oblacioun, from Anglo-French oblation, from Late Latin oblation-, oblatio, from Latin offerre
Date: 15th century
1 : the act of making a religious offering; specifically capitalized : the act of offering the eucharistic elements to God2 : something offered in worship or devotion : a holy gift offered usually at an altar or shrine
How’s that for starting from the beginning?
Leviticus 1:17 And he shall break the pinions thereof, and shall not cut, nor divide it with a knife: and shall burn it upon the altar, putting fire under the wood. It is a holocaust and oblation of most sweet savor to the Lord.
From scripture we see that an oblation is a sacrifice offered by burning and giving off a sweet savor to the Lord. The burning process consumes the sacrifice completely making it a total loss to anyone but God.
Out of love for us, Jesus made Himself an offering to God for us. His sacrifice of self was abundantly pleasing to the Father and redeemed us all; making it possible for all to become the children of God.
In all things we are to be imitators of Christ. We are called to follow in His footsteps in our giving of self to Him and to our neighbor; especially those in our families and our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also to the stranger and the helpless.
Christ did not shrink away from the very personal price of love. He ate with sinners and took the ridicule of the religious elite for it. He touched the sick and the maimed. He spat on the ground and anointed sick eyes with clay of his own creation. Out of love for each of us, he first knocked the soldiers to the ground with a word and then surrendered himself to be beaten, whipped to the point of death, and then crucified for us.
Those of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death. The life we now live, we live by the faith in Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. (Gal. 2) We are no longer our own. We have been bought with an unfathomable price. Now, as imitators of Christ, we are to pour out our lives out of love for him.
When we come to appreciate the depth of his love for us, our response is to seek to obey him and to give of ourselves for the sake of those souls who have not yet come to understand how loved they are. We seek to lend our own suffering to the suffering of Christ on the cross and therefore become one with him in his sacrifice for souls.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face understood this well. In her Act of Oblation she describes how all those down through the centuries who have poured themselves out for Christ offer their own suffering in union with Christ for the salvation of souls. Until Christ returns in glory, all those who love him will desire to join him there on the cross because the bride loves what the Divine Groom loves: the souls of men and women.
My daughter, Sarah, recently had her first child. Very soon after the birth I recognized in her eyes and her manner that overpowering love of mother for child. It is overwhelming at first. A mother gives up her body, time, strength and attention to this little bitty human who cannot do anything for themselves. When I had my first child, I was surprised to realize that for the first time in my life I would willingly offer my own life in her place. I would gladly take every blow that life delivered rather than see her suffer. I was just beginning to grasp the kind of love God has for us.
Your children become adults. They have their own children. They move away and develop their own families and lives. You get to see how well you have taught them the values and beliefs you hold dear. Sometimes you see them claim those things for themselves and live them out. Sometimes they endanger their own souls and wander away from the God who reaches for them every day and night.
As a parent, you have to find that place between indifference and complete panic in attempting to make some input into their thinking as adults. That is a very illusive place! You pray for teachable moments. You pray that God uses their circumstances, their catechesis and your own example to come to the right conclusions. Most of all you pray. You pray with tears.
Never lose faith that God hears those prayers. Pray in the face of seeming impossibility. And while you pray, offer yourself, your work, your grief, your pain, your weakness to God in union with his own suffering. The very pain in your heart over their unbelief is a mirror image of his own pain as he hung on that cross for those who still mocked him as he bled for them. Offer your own suffering for those you love. Offer the pain you feel when you see that blank stare when you try to offer a word of admonition, or when you see them take yet another step away from God’s best for them.
Growing old provides a plentiful supply of offerings to God for those we love. Offer yourself to him for them as long as he gives you breath. Your prayers are never forgotten; never without impact. I’ve heard beautiful stories about children and grandchildren who have returned to the Church as the result of the prayers of parent and grandparents who prayed for years without visible fruit, but God never forgot those prayers.
Out of love for him and for them, make yourself an oblation with Jesus for those you love and for whole world. Pour out your life with him for them.
Main Entry: ob·la·tion
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈblā-shən, ō-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English oblacioun, from Anglo-French oblation, from Late Latin oblation-, oblatio, from Latin offerre
Date: 15th century
1 : the act of making a religious offering; specifically capitalized : the act of offering the eucharistic elements to God2 : something offered in worship or devotion : a holy gift offered usually at an altar or shrine
How’s that for starting from the beginning?
Leviticus 1:17 And he shall break the pinions thereof, and shall not cut, nor divide it with a knife: and shall burn it upon the altar, putting fire under the wood. It is a holocaust and oblation of most sweet savor to the Lord.
From scripture we see that an oblation is a sacrifice offered by burning and giving off a sweet savor to the Lord. The burning process consumes the sacrifice completely making it a total loss to anyone but God.
Out of love for us, Jesus made Himself an offering to God for us. His sacrifice of self was abundantly pleasing to the Father and redeemed us all; making it possible for all to become the children of God.
In all things we are to be imitators of Christ. We are called to follow in His footsteps in our giving of self to Him and to our neighbor; especially those in our families and our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also to the stranger and the helpless.
Christ did not shrink away from the very personal price of love. He ate with sinners and took the ridicule of the religious elite for it. He touched the sick and the maimed. He spat on the ground and anointed sick eyes with clay of his own creation. Out of love for each of us, he first knocked the soldiers to the ground with a word and then surrendered himself to be beaten, whipped to the point of death, and then crucified for us.
Those of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death. The life we now live, we live by the faith in Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. (Gal. 2) We are no longer our own. We have been bought with an unfathomable price. Now, as imitators of Christ, we are to pour out our lives out of love for him.
When we come to appreciate the depth of his love for us, our response is to seek to obey him and to give of ourselves for the sake of those souls who have not yet come to understand how loved they are. We seek to lend our own suffering to the suffering of Christ on the cross and therefore become one with him in his sacrifice for souls.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face understood this well. In her Act of Oblation she describes how all those down through the centuries who have poured themselves out for Christ offer their own suffering in union with Christ for the salvation of souls. Until Christ returns in glory, all those who love him will desire to join him there on the cross because the bride loves what the Divine Groom loves: the souls of men and women.
My daughter, Sarah, recently had her first child. Very soon after the birth I recognized in her eyes and her manner that overpowering love of mother for child. It is overwhelming at first. A mother gives up her body, time, strength and attention to this little bitty human who cannot do anything for themselves. When I had my first child, I was surprised to realize that for the first time in my life I would willingly offer my own life in her place. I would gladly take every blow that life delivered rather than see her suffer. I was just beginning to grasp the kind of love God has for us.
Your children become adults. They have their own children. They move away and develop their own families and lives. You get to see how well you have taught them the values and beliefs you hold dear. Sometimes you see them claim those things for themselves and live them out. Sometimes they endanger their own souls and wander away from the God who reaches for them every day and night.
As a parent, you have to find that place between indifference and complete panic in attempting to make some input into their thinking as adults. That is a very illusive place! You pray for teachable moments. You pray that God uses their circumstances, their catechesis and your own example to come to the right conclusions. Most of all you pray. You pray with tears.
Never lose faith that God hears those prayers. Pray in the face of seeming impossibility. And while you pray, offer yourself, your work, your grief, your pain, your weakness to God in union with his own suffering. The very pain in your heart over their unbelief is a mirror image of his own pain as he hung on that cross for those who still mocked him as he bled for them. Offer your own suffering for those you love. Offer the pain you feel when you see that blank stare when you try to offer a word of admonition, or when you see them take yet another step away from God’s best for them.
Growing old provides a plentiful supply of offerings to God for those we love. Offer yourself to him for them as long as he gives you breath. Your prayers are never forgotten; never without impact. I’ve heard beautiful stories about children and grandchildren who have returned to the Church as the result of the prayers of parent and grandparents who prayed for years without visible fruit, but God never forgot those prayers.
Out of love for him and for them, make yourself an oblation with Jesus for those you love and for whole world. Pour out your life with him for them.
St. Therese - Act of Oblation
O My God! Most Blessed Trinity, I desire to Love You and make You Loved, to work for the glory of Holy Church by saving souls on earth and liberating those suffering in purgatory. I desire to accomplish Your will perfectly and to reach the degree of glory You have prepared for me in Your Kingdom. I desire, in a word, to be a saint, but I feel my helplessness and I beg You, O my God! to be Yourself my Sanctity!
Since You loved me so much as to give me Your only Son as my Savior and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of His merits are mine. I offer them to You with gladness, begging You to look upon me only in the Face of Jesus and in His heart burning with Love.
I offer You, too, all the merits of the saints (in heaven and on earth), their acts of Love, and those of the holy angels. Finally, I offer You, O Blessed Trinity! the Love and merits of the Blessed Virgin, my dear Mother. It is to her I abandon my offering, begging her to present it to You. Her Divine Son, my Beloved Spouse, told us in the days of His mortal life: "Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name he will give it to you!" I am certain, then, that You will grant my desires; I know, O my God! that the more You want to give, the more You make us desire. I feel in my heart immense desires and it is with confidence I ask You to come and take possession of my soul. Ah! I cannot receive Holy Communion as often as I desire, but, Lord, are You not all-powerful? Remain in me as in a tabernacle and never separate Yourself from Your little victim.
I want to console You for the ingratitude of the wicked, and I beg of You to take away my freedom to displease You. If through weakness I sometimes fall, may Your Divine Glance cleanse my soul immediately, consuming all my imperfections like the fire that transforms everything into itself.
I thank You, O my God! for all the graces You have granted me, especially the grace of making me pass through the crucible of suffering. It is with joy I shall contemplate You on the Last Day carrying the scepter of Your Cross. Since You deigned to give me a share in this very precious Cross, I hope in heaven to resemble You and to see shining in my glorified body the sacred stigmata of Your Passion.
After earth's Exile, I hope to go and enjoy You in the Fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for Your Love alone with the one purpose of pleasing You, consoling Your Sacred Heart, and saving souls who will love You eternally.
In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!
Time is nothing in Your eyes, and a single day is like a thousand years. You can, then, in one instant prepare me to appear before You.
In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!
May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.
I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!
Marie, Francoise, Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, unworthy Carmelite religious.
Since You loved me so much as to give me Your only Son as my Savior and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of His merits are mine. I offer them to You with gladness, begging You to look upon me only in the Face of Jesus and in His heart burning with Love.
I offer You, too, all the merits of the saints (in heaven and on earth), their acts of Love, and those of the holy angels. Finally, I offer You, O Blessed Trinity! the Love and merits of the Blessed Virgin, my dear Mother. It is to her I abandon my offering, begging her to present it to You. Her Divine Son, my Beloved Spouse, told us in the days of His mortal life: "Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name he will give it to you!" I am certain, then, that You will grant my desires; I know, O my God! that the more You want to give, the more You make us desire. I feel in my heart immense desires and it is with confidence I ask You to come and take possession of my soul. Ah! I cannot receive Holy Communion as often as I desire, but, Lord, are You not all-powerful? Remain in me as in a tabernacle and never separate Yourself from Your little victim.
I want to console You for the ingratitude of the wicked, and I beg of You to take away my freedom to displease You. If through weakness I sometimes fall, may Your Divine Glance cleanse my soul immediately, consuming all my imperfections like the fire that transforms everything into itself.
I thank You, O my God! for all the graces You have granted me, especially the grace of making me pass through the crucible of suffering. It is with joy I shall contemplate You on the Last Day carrying the scepter of Your Cross. Since You deigned to give me a share in this very precious Cross, I hope in heaven to resemble You and to see shining in my glorified body the sacred stigmata of Your Passion.
After earth's Exile, I hope to go and enjoy You in the Fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for Your Love alone with the one purpose of pleasing You, consoling Your Sacred Heart, and saving souls who will love You eternally.
In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!
Time is nothing in Your eyes, and a single day is like a thousand years. You can, then, in one instant prepare me to appear before You.
In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!
May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.
I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!
Marie, Francoise, Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, unworthy Carmelite religious.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Persevere In Prayer
“Do you persevere in prayer? Do you know who Jesus is? If he seems silent, do you ask him again and again for what you need? Do you humble yourself and continue to cry out for mercy for yourself and those you love? Saint Josemariá Escrivá in his little book ‘The Way’ wrote: “Persevere in prayer. Persevere, even when your efforts seem sterile. Prayer is always fruitful.”
Sr. Ann Shields, S.G.L.Deeper Conversion Extraordinary Grace for Ordinary Times, St. Anthony Messenger Press
Sr. Ann Shields, S.G.L.Deeper Conversion Extraordinary Grace for Ordinary Times, St. Anthony Messenger Press
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Prayer For Unbelievers
O Holy Spirit of Truth, we beseech Thee to enlighten the minds of unbelievers in the midst of us, to incline their hearts to receive Thy Word, and to believe the teachings of Thy Church; give them courage to accept the faith and openly profess it, that they may come into union with Thee and the Father, through Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth forever and ever. Amen.
Father Baker's Prayer
O, Victorious Lady,
Thou who hast ever such powerful influence with thy Divine Son,
In conquering the hardest of hearts,
Intercede for those for whom we pray
That their hearts be softened by the rays of Divine Grace,
That they may return to the unity of the true faith,
Through Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
Thou who hast ever such powerful influence with thy Divine Son,
In conquering the hardest of hearts,
Intercede for those for whom we pray
That their hearts be softened by the rays of Divine Grace,
That they may return to the unity of the true faith,
Through Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
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