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Jun262015

Gaze of Jesus

A session with Dr. Nichta today. Going in, I felt there was nothing of consequence to discuss. After what seemed like a couple breathes and a flood of words, the fifty minutes concluded. The overall message established: I am being moved into a new realm of maturity. Afterwards sitting in front of the Eucharist at St Paschal Baylon, a woman, Shirley, approached me asking if I would repose the Eucharist at nine. The person signed up to come in at eight texted her, informing her they could not make it. I was honored, truly humbled and touched. Shirley showed me the routine, proper placement within the Tabernacle, providing keys, showing me around the sacristy, how to extinguish candles and turn off lights. Once, she left me alone with the Eucharist tears burst forth, my heart beating with joy, adoration, and a sense of wonder. I feel God is trying to tell me something, yet I am not quite sure regarding details. Sitting for the final hour, I pleaded, praying, begging for understanding. To be made aware how He wanted me to serve Him. Abstinence and sobriety I am proud to offer, yet there is so much more I feel I have to give. I was not sure about time since I did not bring my telephone into the church, however bells at the half hour made me confident there would be hourly bells. Sure enough, a wonderful sounding occurred, before nine distinct individual tones announced the arrival of 9:00 PM. Reposing, positioning myself behind the monstrance and altar, kneeling, looking up at the Eucharist, I just felt an overwhelming love to serve. It was a marvelous way to end a day.

Driving home, listening to Pope Francis expound upon Mercy, a prayer concept was presented: the gaze of Jesus, allowing Jesus to look upon us:

“I found three different manners of Jesus’ gaze upon Peter”.

The first is found at the beginning of the Gospel according to John, when Andrew goes to his brother Peter and says to him: “We have found the Messiah”. And “he brings him to Jesus”, who “fixes his gaze on him and says: ‘You are Simon, son of John. You shall be called Peter”. This is “the first gaze, the gaze of the mission” which will be explained “further ahead in Caesarea Philippi”. There, Jesus says: “‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church’: this will be your mission”.

…in the meantime, Peter has become an enthusiast of Jesus: he follows Jesus…Gospel of John, chapter 6, Jesus speaks of eating his body and so many disciples say at that moment: ‘This is hard, this word is difficult’”. Thus, “they begin to withdraw”. Jesus then “looks at the disciples and says: ‘Do you want to leave too?’”. And it is “Peter who responds: ‘No! Where would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life!’”. This is “the enthusiasm of Peter”. This is the first gaze: the vocation and the first declaration of the mission”. And, “how is Peter’s spirit under that first gaze? Enthusiastic”.

The second gaze we find late at night on Holy Thursday, when Peter wants to follow Jesus and approaches where He is, in the house of the priest, in prison, but he is recognized: “‘No, I don’t know him!’”. He denies Him “three times”. Then “he hears the cock crow and remembers: he denied the Lord. He lost everything. He lost his love”. Precisely “in that moment, Jesus is led to another room, across the courtyard, and fixes his gaze on Peter”. The Gospel of Luke recounts that “Peter cried bitterly”. Thus, “that enthusiasm to follow Jesus has become remorse, for he has sinned, he has denied Jesus”. However, “that gaze transforms Peter’s heart, more than before”. Thus “the first transformation is the change of name and of vocation. Instead “the second gaze is a gaze that changes the heart and is a change of conversion to love”.

“We don’t know what the gaze (third) was like in that encounter, alone, after the Resurrection. We know that Jesus encountered Peter, the Gospel says, but we don’t know what they said. The third gaze is the confirmation of the mission; but also the gaze in which Jesus asks for confirmation of Peter’s love. Indeed Jesus ask three times—three times. Peter denied Him three times; and now the Lord for the third time asks him to show his love. Each time when Peter says yes, that he loves Him, he loves Him, He gives him the mission: ‘Feed my lambs, tend my sheep’”. Moreover, at the third question — “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” — Peter “was grieved, nearly weeping”. He was sorry because “for the third time” the Lord “asked him, ‘Do you love me?’”. And he answered Him: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you”. And Jesus replied: “Feed my sheep”. This is “the third gaze: the gaze of the mission”.

Three gazes of Jesus upon Peter. The first is the gaze of the choice, with the enthusiasm to follow Jesus. The second is the gaze of remorse at the moment of that sin so great of having denied Jesus. The third gaze is the gaze of mission: ‘Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep”. It doesn’t end there: ‘you did this for love and then? Will you receive a crown? No. I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go”

Rembrandt and the face of Jesus

Rembrandt and the face of Jesus

Lesson on St Paschal Baylon from Catholic online:

Franciscan lay brother and mystic. Born to a peasant family at Torre Hermosa, in Aragon, Spain on Whitsunday, he was christened Pascua in honor of the feast. According to accounts of his early life, Paschal labored as a shepherd for his father, performed miracles, and was distinguished for his austerity. He also taught himself to read. Receiving a vision which told him to enter a nearby Franciscan community, he became a Franciscan lay brother of the Alcantrine reform in 1564, and spent most of his life as a humble doorkeeper. He practiced rigorous asceticism and displayed a deep love for the Blessed Sacrament, so much so that while on a mission to France, he defended the doctrine of the Real Presence against a Calvinist preacher and in the face of threats from other irate Calvinists. Paschal died at a friary in Villareal, and was canonized in 1690. In 1897 Pope Leo XIII declared him patron of all eucharistic confratemities and congresses.

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May152015

Simply calling to the Holy Spirit

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. —-Ezekiel 36:25-28

The Holy Spirit, then, as Jesus promises, guides us “into all truth” (Jn 16:13) he leads us not only to an encounter with Jesus, the fullness of Truth, but guides us “into” the Truth, that is, he helps us enter into a deeper communion with Jesus himself, gifting us knowledge of the things of God. We cannot achieve this on our own strengths. If God does not enlightens us interiorly, our being Christians will be superficial. The Tradition of the Church affirms that the Spirit of truth acts in our hearts, provoking that “sense of faith” (sensus fidei), through which, as the Second Vatican Council affirms, the People of God, under the guidance of the Magisterium, adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints, penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life….a prayer we need to pray every day: Holy Spirit may my heart be open to the Word of God, may my heart be open to good, may my heart be open to the beauty of God…  –Pope Francis

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Mar052015

St. Gregory of Narek

Prayer 5

Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart

And now, I, earthbound
and preoccupied with the cares of everyday existence,
numbed by the deceitful wine of foolishness,
I, who lie in all things and am truthful in none,
marked with these faults,
how shall I come before your judgment, Just Judge,
terrible beyond words and telling, mighty God of all?
The more I compare my sinful ingratitude with your loving-kindness,
the more I prove that your law is always stronger,
and my lawlessness, always defeated.

You made me in your glorious image,
favoring a weak being like me
with your sublime likeness,
adorning me with speech,
and burnishing me with your breath,
enriching me with thought,
cultivating me with wisdom,
establishing me with ingenuity,
setting me apart from the animals,
endowing my character with a thinking soul,
embellishing me with a sovereign individuality,
giving birth as a father, nurturing as a nurse,
caring for me as a guardian,
You sowed a wayward being in your courtyard,
irrigated me with the water of life,
cleansed me with the dew of the baptismal fount,
nourished me with heavenly bread,
quenched my thirst with your blood,
acquainted me with the impalpable and unreachable,
emboldened my earthly eyes to seek you,
embraced me in your glorious light,
permitted my unclean earthly hands to make offerings to you,
honored my base, mortal ashes,
like a flicker of light,
imprinted upon a worthless wretch like me your father’s image,
awesome and blessed,
out of your love for mankind.

You did not scald my mouth for daring to call myself your co-heir,
did not reprimand me for arrogantly associating with you,
did not darken the sight of my eyes for gazing upon you,
did not exile me in shackles with those condemned to death,
did not break the wrist of my arm for improperly reaching to you,
did not crack the digits of my fingers for touching the word of life,
did not engulf me with fog for dedicating this to you, fearsome Lord,
did not crush the rows of my teeth for chewing your communion, infinite Lord,
did not turn in anger as I did with you, as with the stubborn house of Israel,
did not dishonor me at your wedding party,
I, who am unworthy of singing and dancing,
did not scold me for my disheveled clothes, I, who am disorderly,
did not cast me into the dark, my hands and feet shackled.

And I exchanged all these portions of
goodness, patience and forgiveness from you,
O beneficent, blessed and always-tolerant God,
for all manner of waywardness of the flesh and the ego,
for the wavering passions of the mind and the diversions of worldliness.
Yes, that is how, my God and Lord, I repaid you for your abundant goodness.
Thus did I offer you evil in the manner of Moses’ ingratitude.
Abandoning wisdom and pursuing foolishness,
thus did I foully dissipate the bounty of your favor with the ways of vanity,
thus in a storm of mindlessness did I lose the beacon of your ineffable grace glowing with your care,
God most high.

And although on many occasions you attempted
to draw me to you by reaching out your helping hand,
I rejected it, as the prophet accused Israel.
And although I promised and made a covenant to please you,
I did not keep it, but again perverted it into something evil.
Reverting to my old ways,
I sowed the field of my heart with thorns of sin for a harvest of dissension.
The words of the God-fearing holy prophet apply to me,
for you expected grapes but instead I sprouted thorns.
I became an unappetizing fruit of bitterness,
outcast from the garden.
Swaying violently in unsteady winds,
always blowing to and fro, I wavered.
Like the voice of blessed Job, I followed my path of no return.
I built my house upon the sands in foolishness.
Misled by the broad gate, I missed the narrow gate to life.
I closed myself off from the pilgrimage of exodus.
I spitefully uncovered the abyss of destruction.
I blocked my hearing against your teaching of life.
I covered the eyes of my soul against the cure of life.
I did not recoil from the wasting of the mind from torpor,
in spite of your trumpet of wrath.
I was not sobered by the reports of the fiery trial,
on the day of judgment.
I did not awaken from the slumber of mortal sleep.
I did not give comfort to your Holy Spirit in my bodily tabernacle.
I did not inhale the allotment of grace you granted me.
With my own hand I wreaked havoc, in the words of the proverb teller,
killing my living soul.

And what is the use of composing these meager and paltry verses
in my state of remorse which passes all measure and evades all cure?
Now it is up to you to offer life to my dead soul
and without vengeance to visit me, a condemned prisoner,
O Son of the Living God, to you be all glory.

Amen.

jVyyDVVk

The Pope on Feb. 21 confirmed St. Gregory of Narek as the Church’s newest doctor. St Gregory of Narek is known for his various poetic writings, especially a book of prayers entitled “Book of Lamentations.”

“This saint is very revered in the Armenian Church. It is not uncommon to find his book in every Armenian household throughout the Middle East…”

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