The Resurrection
1. R. What
a great gift that we are given in Baptism: a sharing in His Divine Life.
The price that Jesus paid is His life that He gave for us on the cross.
See Jesus as He hangs on the cross, His face covered with blood and
crowned with thorns, His body withered, His hands and feet pierced. He
gave the last drop of His blood and the last beat of His Heart. He
showed us the way. His way is the way of total surrender. He gave His
all and He remains with us this day in this room.
Jesus Christ, the same Jesus that walked the earth, the Son of God,
remains in this room, in the tabernacle, and is longing and waiting for
us to tell Him how deeply we love Him and give ourselves to Him. He
wants intimacy with Him. Love is giving - He gives to us and we give to
Him. This is the sharing of this intimacy between Him and us. The more
we give of ourselves, the more we die to ourselves in the ways that are
not like Him. The more we surrender ourselves, the deeper our
relationship with Him becomes, for it is a relationship. He outpours His
love to us. We partake more fully as we surrender and give more of
ourselves to Him.
Jesus calls each one of us here in
this Shepherds of Christ Movement to deeper intimacy with Him. We have
been called and we have been chosen. We are a light that He is sending
into this world to take the message of His love and Jesus asks for
holiness - holiness in all of our actions, for it is in our speech and
the way that we conduct ourselves that we preach the mightiest lessons
of His love for us. We are receiving great graces from Him as He
promised, to carry out this mission. You have been called and you have
been chosen. We have the greatest treasure that there is: the love of
God, Jesus Christ, truly present in this room and giving Himself to us.
This is a rosary about life, about sharing in His life through baptism
and He feeds this life with Himself. We grow more and more in this
graced life. We live His life, death and resurrection in our lives.
To know Him a little is to want so much more, for nothing on the face of
this earth is like the love of God. Let us open up our hearts and let
Him fill us with His Divine Love that we may be more and more satisfied.
2. Song: Come give me life, abundant life, I thirst to be with
Thee
3. R. I see the withered body of Jesus as He
hung on the cross and I see Him as He comes forth from the tomb,
glistening in light, His glorified wounds - the Almighty God!
4. R. We cannot even comprehend the glory that awaits us. To know
Him a little is to know how wonderful it is to share more and more in
His life. Jesus wants to abundantly fill us with this life. We must
spend time with Jesus. Jesus has the time for us, we are the ones that
keep ourselves from Him. We busy ourselves and become more and more busy
- and does the work really get done? Jesus calls us to spend time each
day to put the fragmented pieces of our life together, for our source of
this life is from Him. When we are Baptized we receive a sharing in His
Life: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit live within us in a special way.
As we go out to the world, as we interact, we must come to the interior
of our hearts to know what Jesus is telling us about Himself and about
our lives.
If we do not spend this
time every day with Jesus we miss what God wants to communicate to us.
This world in many ways has turned godless. It is in these precious
moments that we spend with Him that He feeds us, that He comforts us and
He fills us deeply with His love. He calls each one of us this evening
to make a commitment to Him that we will take time each day to be alone
with Him. No matter how busy the day is, that we find time in our day to
just sit with Him and enjoy the presence of the Almighty God within our
hearts.
5. Jesus: In your busyness you have
forgotten how much I am calling you to come and to be with Me. I am
calling you this evening in a special way to a commitment to spend time
alone every day with the Almighty God.
6. R. You
do not see that if we run down the road at a fast pace it doesn't matter
if it is the wrong road, or how fast that we ran down the road, if we
spin our wheels and we do not go anywhere. It doesn't matter how fast we
spin our wheels. Jesus is the Almighty God. He is so present to us. He
knows our every thought, our every desire in our heart, and He stands by
us and He says to us, "what are you doing? I am here. I am with you.
Come to the silence of your heart and know My peace and My love."
7. R. Jesus paid such a price for us to share in His life. What a
treasure, that we receive this sharing in His Divine life in baptism.
8. Hail Mary
9. Hail Mary
10. Jesus: You look the other way and
I stand and knock on the door of your heart. I want such intimacy with
you, My beloved ones. Surrender and give yourselves to Me. Quit
controlling your lives, surrender and let go. Come to Me. I am Lord and
Master of your life. I guard you. I watch you. I am attentive to your
every need.
Sing: God's Love
The Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven
Acts 1: 9-11
As he said this he was lifted up while
they looked on, and a cloud took him from their sight. They were still
staring into the sky as he went, when suddenly two men in white were
standing beside them, and they said, Why are you Galileans standing
here looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you
into heaven will come back in the same way as you have seen him go to
heaven.
R. Before Jesus ascended into Heaven, He gave to
the apostles the power to baptize and to forgive sins.
1.
R. He took them out to the town near Bethany. Jesus raised His
arms and He ascended into Heaven.
2. R. They stood
in utter amazement as the cloud took Him from their sight.
3. R. Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to them. The
apostles were filled with fear and they locked themselves in the upper
room.
4. R. We see Mary in the Visitation as she
greets Elizabeth and she tells her the good news. I see Jesus ascend
into Heaven and He leaves behind the apostles to carry out His work and
we see how the Church has grown this day. We are commissioned in Baptism
to carry out His life, death, and resurrection in our lives. As we go
through our lives we carry out His life, death and resurrection. We walk
the walk to Calvary with Him. We fall under the cross. We are persecuted
and misunderstood, we are rejected, we share more fully in the life of
Jesus. Many may stand around us, ridicule us as they ridiculed Jesus,
but we know in our hearts of the love of God. We know what it is to
share in this intimacy with the Almighty God and nothing: persecution,
ridicule, falling to the ground, spitting in our face, can stop us, for
we have been called and we have been chosen as His special apostles to
go out to this world and to carry out His life, death and resurrection
in our lives.
Jesus asked us to model
our lives after Him. See Jesus in all of His actions. Would He act like
me? Would He talk like me? Is there holiness in this action? Jesus is
calling us to be His apostles and He is giving to us great graces to
grow ever more in our lives in Him. We must constantly look at our
actions and see that they are the actions of holiness for He calls us
and we have been chosen for this special mission to go into this world
that is suffering and in pain and to carry the Gospel message -
the Good News - we are commissioned in baptism to do this.
We are to be examples in all that we do and in all that we say. Jesus
ascended into Heaven but He remains with us this day and He gives to us
the bread of life. He gives us His Body and His Blood, to nourish us and
He asks us in every Mass that we unite in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
and die to ourselves and offer our lives as an offering to the Father.
We are to die to those things that are not like Him, that we may be more
and more holy and that we unite in deep intimacy with Him in Communion.
Let us open our hearts and let Him work within us.
Song: A Song from Jesus
Jesus: I come to you
this day.
Song: A Song from Jesus
Jesus: I call you to holiness. I call you to consecration, to
consecrate your hearts every day, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. You are My apostles and you are commissioned
in Baptism to carry out My life, death and resurrection in your lives.
5. R. Are you hungry? Nothing, nothing feeds the starved soul but
the love of God.
Song: I Am the Bread of Life
6. Hail Mary
7. Hail Mary
8. Hail Mary
9. Jesus: Many are called but few are
chosen. I have chosen you, My beloved ones for intimate union with Me.
Open wide your hearts and let Me fill you with My life.
10. Hail Mary
The Descent of the Holy Spirit
R. They were
gathered in the upper room with the Blessed Virgin Mary and there was a
gigantic-like wind and there appeared over their heads parted tongues of
fire and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they were transformed
from fear into fearlessness.
1. R. They went out
to preach the Gospel message and they were not afraid for they knew the
love of God. To unite with love itself is to be absent of fear.
Dear Holy Spirit, descend upon us and work in us to make us holy!
2. R. I look at myself, especially at the Consecration of the
Mass, and I want to die to all those things that are not like Him, and
to do more like Him. I know that I want to be holy, but it takes the
action of the Holy Spirit working to sanctify me, to be more and more
like Him.
Dear God, help us at every Mass to unite deeper with
Jesus, in this offering to the Father, that we can die to the ways that
are not like God. Holy Spirit, work within us to sanctify us more and
more to be like Him.
3. R. They went out to preach
the Gospel Message. Many were converted. They went from town to town.
They were locked in prisons. They did not care. They got out singing for
they knew the love of God. Give us this fearlessness in the world that
has turned cold in many ways toward God. We are sorry the world uses the
name of God in vain and does not treat You with the reverence that You
deserve. Give us the courage to go out and to speak up for God and to
act as You want us to act!
4. R. Help us to unite
in such oneness with You that we are as St. Paul says
Galatians 2: 19-20
...I have been crucified with
Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no
longer I, but Christ living in me.
R. Help us to live your life, death and
resurrection in our lives. Thank you for this special sharing in Your
life. Help our face to radiate the life within - this sharing in Your
life within us. Help our actions and speech to be as you want. Help us
to put on Christ in all of our actions, that we will preach the Gospel
in all of our ways and help us to ask ourselves, would Christ act like
this?
5. Hail Mary
6. Hail Mary
7. Hail Mary
8. Hail Mary
9. Jesus: Your answers are found
within each moment. Take time to be alone with Me.
10.
Jesus: My dear sweet one, I want to be so close to you. Open wide
your heart and let Me enter into your hearts and join in the deepest
intimacy with you. Surrender and let go, die to yourselves that you will
live in Me. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It is in Me that you
will have peace and joy in your hearts. As you are in your hearts, so
shall you be in this world. You are the lights that I am sending into
the dark night. Let your hearts be forever pure that your lights will
shine the brightest light. I am Jesus, I am calling you to this close
union with Me.
The Assumption of the Blessed Mother
R. Our
Blessed Lady was taken into Heaven.
1. R. Mary is
the Mother of our Christ-life. Mary is our spiritual Mother, given to us
as Jesus died on the cross. It is in her heart that we are sanctified
through the action of the Holy Spirit. Christ was formed in Mary's womb,
through Power of the Holy Spirit. We go to Mary's Heart and the Holy
Spirit sanctifies us more and more. Let us pray to the Holy Spirit to
make us holy, that He works within the heart of Mary and brings us to
greater holiness, that we may dwell deeper and deeper in the Heart of
Jesus.
(Message
from Fr. Edward Carter, S.J.)