May 14, 2008

                Time is given to us by God. 

                Jesus is truly present in the Blessed
                    Sacrament — no less present
                    than when He walked the
                    earth.

                How do we measure time we
                    spend in prayer and
                    Mass and before the Blessed
                    Sacrament.

                There must be that element of
                    realizing we cannot measure
                    our relationship with God.

                How do we measure relationship with
                    others —

                I know that loving someone means
                    I spend time with them —
                    If it is God's will for me to
                    have a relationship — then
                    time is spent with them —

                The time should be fruitful —
                    not a slavishly dependent
                    relationship, but one of
                    recognizing it is God's will
                    to be with another and so
                    we are doing so because it
                    is God's will and ultimately it is for
                    God's honor and glory —
                    Our lives are lived serving God
                    Our relationships of loving one
                        another come from serving
                        God by having that relationship —

                Our every breath is to be as the
                    Father intends

                God allows us to suffer
                God brings us through suffering
                    to greater life — if we
                    stay rooted in Him —

                Remember the fig tree that was
                    not producing fruit —

Luke 13: 6-9

He told this parable, ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it but found none. He said to his vinedresser, “For three years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and finding none. Cut it down: why should it be taking up the ground?” “Sir,” the man replied, “leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it: it may bear fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.” ’

                By what measure of producing
                    fruit are we measured —

                We are to help build the Kingdom
                    of God —

                God commands us to love Him and
                    to love each other —

                Building the Kingdom means we
                    work at it —
                    a person building a house
                    of bricks — lays one brick
                    at a time — it is work — it is effort —

                    The Father is the vine - grower —

                    Our lives are to be governed by
                seeking God's will —

                    Some will decide, what they
                will do to manipulate others —
                control others — if others loved them —
                gave honor to them, then they would
                be happy they reason

                    God gives us grace when
                we are baptized — we receive
                a sharing in His life —

                    God dwells in the baptized graced
                soul — Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwell
                in us —

                    A person seeking their importance
                from outside themselves depends on
                imperfect human creatures to
                act and then they decide by their
                actions of others outside them —
                what they will do to make their
                decisions about how they are —

                    The person rooted in the vine —
                baptized and living in the state of grace
                knows the life of God alive in
                them — they seek more and more to please
                God — they know how special they
                are — God the Father — God the Son —
                and God the Holy Ghost dwell in
                their graced baptized soul —

                    They aren't waiting to manipulate
                others outside them to give them their
                needs. God alive in them is a
                light to others — they are selfless
                rather than the person — who sees
                themselves as the wise old bird —
                judging, manipulating others,
                but really weak and scared inside —
                wanting the others to make them
                see they are worth something —

                    Did you ever see a human
                heart — the guy not doing good to
                others is the one hurting inside —

                    Our strength comes from not
                what others think of us — our
                strength comes from knowing
                God — for me a Catholic — I
                know how deeply God dwells
                in my graced baptized soul —
                My strength comes in praying
                to God — living by His Plan —
                learning to love Him and others more and
                not trying to control others' lives
                with possessiveness, jealousy,
                anger because I am hurting
                inside and think my strength comes
                from controlling others.

                    The person who doesn't know they
                were angry and depressed, controlling
                manipulative their whole life —
                may isolate — keep secrets for
                control — become very passive — when in
                fact they are aggressive provoking
                fights —

                    Our lives are to be lived to be like Jesus —
                we were created in His image and likeness —
                hurting others in passive-aggressive —
                secretive ways — can get to be greater habits —
                An alcoholic sometimes needs an "intervention"
                they hurt family — making a circle of
                problems for all those involved with
                them and hurting them — when others build
                they can tear down.

                    In living with others a person —
                depressed, being secretive — withholding
                information — always doing something
                disharmoniously — sticks out like
                a sore thumb — when unity is the
                goal —

                    they then can isolate blaming every
                one else for what is going on inside
                of them — years of anger — argumentation —
                inability to mix with others because
                of how they act —

                    Misery loves company —

                    If they can control another — then they
                will be able to continue in their
                disharmonious way — so they try —
                manipulation — people depressed —
                angry inside over years — over nothing —
                getting angry and rageful — or passively
                aggressively abusing others to
                act out their anger raging in them —
                have a problem that must be dealt
                with — because it gets worse —

                    The interior life of a person
                deeply rooted in God has the fruits
                of the Holy Spirit 

                    "charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
                    goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness,
                    modesty, self-control, chastity"

                    A person angry inside — hurting
                another and others can change — they
                may never have recognized they were
                always depressed and angry, inflicting
                pain on others as they become more
                secretive, manipulating, controlling and
                telling themselves it was others fault
                they are depressed and angry —

                    When God is alive in us — we know
                our happiness is in Him — we seek
                Him — we are branches rooted to the
                vine producing good fruit —
   
                    There is selflessness in our
                actions — wanting God's will — seeking
                it — working with others as one —
                wanting them to do God's will — in
                this lies our peace

                    We don't try to think up things
                to do to control others —

                    We are actors working on the Father's Plan
                    We are united to a place of peace
                        and love within us, where
                        we know God — His Plan
                        for us and His Plan for others

                We work as one

    Fr. Carter says: Closely connected with the concept of the Eucharist as covenant, is the fact that the Mass is a passover event. In both the Mosaic covenant and the covenant of Jesus the act of passover, or religious transition, holds a key place. In the Mosaic covenant, passover occurred as the Jewish people were led out of Egyptian slavery under the leadership of Moses. The Jews were experiencing passover. They were experiencing religious transition. They were passing over from a former life to a new type of existence as Yahweh's people. To do so they had to be willing to bear with suffering, both physical and spiritual. To the extent they were faithful, they thus submitted to a kind of dying in order to achieve the life of the covenant and to grow towards its maturity. They died in order to rise.

    Jesus lived passover, or religious transition, perfectly. He brought to perfection the passover event of the Jewish people. All during His life He was passing over, passing back, to the Father. In a complete and perfect actuation of His manhood, He was willing to bear with that which was hard and difficult in order to achieve passover. This willingness to achieve a new life for mankind was an extreme willingness, a desire which was boundless, a desire which finally incarnated itself in the complete outpouring of His life. Jesus died — and passed over to resurrection. This resurrection was His — and ours. Through the passover of Jesus we too are enabled to live passover.

    The passover event of Jesus, His death and resurrection, is sacramentally re-enacted in each Eucharistic liturgy. And through our participation in the passover event of the Eucharist, we pledge ourselves anew to live passover. We pledge ourselves to assimilate more radically the process of religious transition — the process of coming closer to the Father in Christ and under the Spirit. We pledge ourselves to continue to die with Jesus so that we might rise more with Him — now and in eternity. Our encounter with the Eucharist, then, is meant to give us a renewed determination — and, yes, a desire — to bear with whatever pain and suffering is necessary to live in Christ Jesus. The Eucharist strengthens us for the encounters with suffering, whatever form it may take — physical pain, failure in work, frustration, a feeling of rejection, a feeling of being unloved by others, misunderstandings, humiliations, anxiety, anguish, and . . . But as Jesus did before us, we bear with suffering for the purpose of life. The Eucharist orientates us toward deeper life. Since love is the most important life-experience, the Eucharist especially makes us thirst for a deeper love experience, a deeper love of God and man. Enabling us to pass over to more real life, to a deeper life, to a deeper love — this is the purpose of the Eucharist.

     Our passing over, our experience of religious transition, will not have achieved its fullest possibilities until we achieve eternal life. The Eucharist, with its thrust toward greater life, obviously has a thrust toward eternal life. The Eucharist possesses an eschatological aspect. It has a futurist dimension. St. Paul reminds us of our Eucharistic expectancy when he says: "Until the Lord comes, therefore, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death. . . (1 Co 11: 26).

   

                God wants unity —

John 17: 21-23

May they all be one,
just as, Father, you are in me
   and I am in you,
so that they also may be in us,
so that the world may believe
it was you who sent me.
I have given them the glory
   you gave to me,
that they may be one as we are one.
With me in them and you in me,
may they be so perfected in unity
that the world will recognise
   that it was you who sent me
and that you have loved them
as you have loved me.

                Man is formed in a woman —
                Jesus was formed in the womb
                    of a human person

                Jesus gives us His Body and Blood
                    to eat and drink —

                God in Us

                There is in man a capacity
                    to become something higher —

                God acts on the man
                God gives us baptism
                God dwells in the graced
                    baptized soul.

                The Holy Spirit forms us more
                    and more in the image and likeness
                    of God.

                As we go to Mary's Immaculate
                    Heart this forming more and
                    more in the image and likeness of God
                    goes on in us through the
                    Holy Spirit.

                    A person losing their arms and legs
                to a disease can be far happier
                than a man filled with selfishness
                and anger.

                    Say the Apostles Creed

The Apostles Creed

Romans 8: 8-17

and those who live by their natural inclinations can never be pleasing to God. You, however, live not by your natural inclinations, but by the Spirit, since the Spirit of God has made a home in you. Indeed, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But when Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is alive because you have been justified; and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead has made his home in you, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you. 

    So then, my brothers, we have no obligation to human nature to be dominated by it. If you do live in that way, you are doomed to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the habits originating in the body, you will have life.

All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons of God; for what you received was not the spirit of slavery to bring you back into fear; you received the Spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit himself joins with our spirit to bear witness that we are children of God. And if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and joint–heirs with Christ, provided that we share his suffering, so as to share his glory.