Category: Lent

Loving with Mary

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

This morning as I woke up, I began thinking again about contemplating our Lord’s Passion with Mary.  I was immediately struck by the thought of how much of her time and love was spent through these difficult days in loving those that Christ loved.  Peter would surely have flown to her after his denial.  How lost John must have felt after his flight in the garden.  Mary Magdalen and Mary and Martha (and Lazarus) of Bethany would have faced their own devastation.  There was the bitter anger at Judas that pervaded them all.  And so on with all of them. But just as Jesus gave her to us through John at the Cross, so He would have been urging her in the same way (by His Spirit) to go out to those He loved so much.

Perhaps your Triduum will be filled with the demands of others and you would rather be focusing more “directly” upon our Lord.  Perhaps it is His Spirit urging you to go where His Mother is going.  In following her and loving whomever she is loving, you will in fact be loving our Lord who loves them more than you do.

Contemplating with Mary

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

There were two options for the Opening Prayer for Mass last Thursday–something I hadn’t seen yet in the new missal.  Our priest chose the second option, and I will be forever grateful.  The prayer reads:

O God, who in this season give your Church the grace to imitate devoutly the Blessed Virgin Mary in contemplating the passion of Christ, grant, we pray, through her intercession, that we may cling more firmly each day to your Only Begotten Son and come at last to the fullness of his grace.  Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.  Amen.

I was caught by the beginning: “to imitate devoutly the Blessed Virgin Mary in contemplating the passion of Christ.”  My whole prayer became one of asking Mary to help me walk through this Holy Week close to her, perceiving her Son with her eyes and loving Him with her heart.   This, of course, can totally change one’s experience of the Passion.  Wouldn’t Mary have walked in great faith though in great darkness?  Wouldn’t she have strengthened her Son as much as she could?  Would she not have stood at the Cross in adoration, willing that He would draw from her everything that could encourage Him in doing His Father’s will completely?

May we each learn greatly from her this week.

Entering Holy Week

Sr. Dorcee, beloved4 Comments

Entering Holy Week

by Catherine Doherty.

This is the hour of faith. We are going to need faith, because Holy Week, in a manner of speaking, will show us the reign of the prince of darkness, who rejoiced on Good Friday because he killed God, or so he thought.

One picture has haunted me throughout the years. It is Christ hanging on the cross while many who have benefited by his goodness—the halt, the lame, and the blind—are saying to him, “If you are who you say you are, come down from that cross and we shall believe you.”

How many miracles have happened to us, individually?

This is the week for meditating on how much we are loved. If there is anyone who thinks that he or she is not loved, let him follow the Holy Week liturgies, and he will know with what love we are all loved.

For those of us who do know a little of that love, let this week be a week of loving others, for no one can receive the infinite love of God without passing it on. God meant it to be that way. If we kept it for ourselves, it would break us.

It seems that each of us is always to have empty hands—to have our sinner’s heart with all its hostility, pain, and sin—yet a heart that is always turned to God. He who loves sinners has to come into our hearts again and again and constantly give us the mercy of his love.

Let us acknowledge this and let us share this love, emptying it onto the other, whoever he might be. It is immaterial who, for when one is loved by God, one loves everybody, because God lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust.

God’s love pouring into us is poured out to the other, and then another Niagara of his love comes in. It never stops.

When I think I have nothing to give, lo and behold, the cascade of God’s love passes through me and I am renewed. I can give again, because God became man, dispossessing himself.

When you fall in love with God, the desire for dispossession becomes like a fire in your heart, because when one falls in love, one wants to identify with the beloved. It has always been thus and still is.

The Gift of Tears

Russians say that this is the week of the gift of tears. We believe that there is a gift of tears that comes from the Holy Spirit. We say that it washes away our sins and the sins of mankind. Silence and tears and a contrite heart God will not reject.

This is the week of confession and also the week of overcoming sins, because it is one week in the year when we know that, while we can’t overcome our sins, Christ can.

As one of our MH priests has said, “During most of this holy season of Lent, you have to work at living Lent, but then comes the time when you no longer have to carry Lent. The liturgy is so strong, so powerful, that it just carries you. The strength and power at work in the Church carries us all through Holy Week.”

When you think of this holy week, it’s like a shiver passing through you. It is the mercy of God and his love for you. And because you are caught up in it, held by it, immersed in it, your soul opens up and you cease to be afraid. The God-man has erased your fear.

In this Holy Week, let us join hands in deep forgiveness of one another. Let us reconcile ourselves to whomever we are not reconciled. Let us each enlarge the circle of love in our hearts so that it can encompass the humanity that flows near us. Such is the love of God: mercy flows from it. Forgiveness is part of it. Humility sings a song to it. This truly is a week that is holy!

Let all of this sink into you, for God is with us every moment. He is present right now. Let his love, his simplicity, his ordinariness, and his extraordinariness—all of him—enter your heart, and then you will know why this week is called holy.

— Adapted from Season of Mercy, pp. 79-81, available from MH Publications.

If today

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

“If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”

We have been praying that verse several times every morning during Lent.  In essence, it is a plea to not turn away when the Lord convicts us of sin.  But yesterday morning, the Lord broke into my thoughts as if to say: “What I most speak to you is My love.  Don’t harden your heart to it.”  When we think of the true meaning of sin, it is a breaking of our relationship with God–which, in fact, weakens our ability to know His love.  He only convicts in order to restore the relationship.  He so longs for full union with us, for each of us to know His love in its fullness.

So today, when the Lord nudges you with His love, don’t harden your heart.  Open it wide.

Put yourself in this woman’s place

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

Jesus does not want our sins, our weaknesses and faults, to keep us from coming to Him, to keep us from intimacy with Him.  I post again this painting by James Tissot.  Put yourself in this woman’s place, a great sinner.  Touch His feet, kiss His feet.  And see the Lord reaching out to you in His tender love.

He said to Simon the Pharisee, “You gave me no kiss . . . ” (Lk 7.45).  The Lord of Love will miss your kiss if you don’t draw near to Him . . .

At the top of the stairs

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

On those days when I think, “This is never going to change in me”, the Holy Spirit often reminds me of these words of St. Thérèse:

“At the top of the stairs He is looking at your lovingly.  Soon conquered by your vain efforts, He will come down Himself, and taking you in His arms, will carry you forever into His kingdom where you will not leave Him again.  But if you stop lifting your little foot, He will leave you on earth for a long time.”

“God desired a harlot . . .”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

As some of you know, I have a little book of art pictures and quotes that I periodically use for meditation.  I have been pondering the picture below of the sinful woman anointing Jesus’ feet (James Tissot).  And below it is a beautiful quote from John Chrysostom describing the love of God for us, each of whom is indeed the sinful woman.

“God desired a harlot, and how does He act?  He does not send to her any of His servants.  He does not send any angels or archangels, cherubim or seraphim.  No, He Himself draws near to the one He loves, and He does not take her to Heaven, for He could not bring a harlot to Heaven, and therefore He Himself comes down to earth, to the harlot, and is not ashamed.  He comes to her secret dwelling place and beholds her in her drunkenness.  And how does He come?  Not in the bare essence of His original nature, but in the guise of one whom the harlot is seeking, in order that she might not be afraid when she sees Him, and will not run away, and escape Him. He comes to the harlot as a man.  And how does He become this?  He is conceived in the womb, He grows little by little, as we do, and has intercourse with human nature.  And He finds this harlot thick with sores and oppressed by devils.  How does He act?  He draws nigh to her.  She sees Him and flees away.  He calls the wise man, saying, ‘Why are you afraid?  I am not a judge, but a physician.  I come not to judge the world, but to save the world.’  Straightway He calls the wise men, for are not the wise man the immediate first fruits of His coming?  They come and worship Him, and then the harlot herself comes and is transformed into a maiden.  The Canaanite woman comes and partakes of His love.  And how does He act?  He takes the sinner and espouses her to Himself, and gives her the signet ring of the Holy Spirit as a seal between them.” (John Chrysostom)

What wondrous love is this!

“It was because a man lay on the road . . .”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A painting or a song can be so powerful.  The picture below can be found on the cover of the first volume of Fire of Mercy by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, a Trappist monk.  I have been meditating on it this Lent.  I know I have posted about this picture before, but can’t help sharing it with you again.

Good Samaritan

This is how the back of the book describes this picture:

The book’s cover portrays Christ as the Good Samaritan in an illumination taken from the mid sixth-century Syrian Codex Rossanensis. The fire of God’s mercy, poured out without reserve by the Father into the Heart of his incarnate Word, impels the Son’s eager gaze earthwards.  Christ Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, the living ‘image of the invisible God’ in whom ‘the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily’ (Colossians 1:15, 2:9), bends down his sun-like nimbus—the very splendor of his glory, inscribed with the cross of his suffering—in a full ninety-degree angle, to show the perfection of His descent among us.  The eternal Lord of the ages thus moves into position to nurse with divine tenderness the green body of decaying humanity, prostrate with festering wounds: ‘Through the tender mercy of our God, the Dawn from on high has visited us, to give knowledge of salvation to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death’ (Luke 2:78f).  For his part, the dazzling angel has found a new mode of praise: to stand by his Master, marveling and ministering as he holds the gold bowl of grace and compassion, awestruck at the depth of the Word’s condescension.  What even angelic hands cannot touch unveiled, that Christ lavishes with open gesture upon the flesh and soul of his beloved brother, sin-wounded man.

Sometimes I just sit and meditate on how I am that green man lying in the road and try to imagine Christ standing over me pouring out His mercy–that even the angels cannot touch–upon me.  Peguy says: “It was because a man lay on the road that a Samaritan picked him up.”  It is because we lay on the road that Christ picks us up . . .