Advent Retreat: Third Week ~ iSlow Down

http://www.csasisters.org/pdfs/Prayers/advent/advent%20retreat%20third%20week.pdf

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Juan Diego!

“The message of Our Lady of Guadalupe is for the restoration of justice. She highlights the need to be present to those who are poor, to those devastated by war, to those whose voices have been silenced by the pillage of conquest, to those who are rendered invisible by social and political structures.” (Sister Esther Pineda, CSJ)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepeyac

http://paxchristiusa.org/tag/our-lady-of-guadalupe/

http://infallible-catholic.blogspot.com/2012/04/miraculous-image-of-our-lady-of.html

http://www.netplaces.com/virgin-mary/ancient-appearances/guadalupe-mexico-1531.htm

http://www.usccb.org/bible/reflections/


Excerpts of Mary’s words to Juan Diego on Tepeyac 
“My youngest and dearest son, I urge and firmly order you to go to the bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in my name and make him fully understand my intention that he start work on the chapel I'm requesting. Tell him again that I am the ever Virgin, Holy Mary, the Mother of God, who is sending you."

"Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that disturbs you, the thing that afflicts you, is nothing. Do not let your countenance, your heart be disturbed. . .  Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you."

"My youngest and dearest son, these different kinds of flowers are the proof, the sign that you will take to the Bishop. You will tell him from me that he is to see in them my desire, and therefore he is to carry out my wish, my will. And you, who are my messenger, in you I place my absolute trust. I strictly order you not to unfold your tilma or reveal its contents until you are in his presence. You will relate to him everything very carefully: how I sent you to the top of the hill to cut and gather flowers, all you saw and marveled at in order to convince the Governing Priest so that he will then do what lies within his responsibility so that my house of God which I requested will be made, will be built."

http://catholiceducation.org/articles/stories_of_faith_and_character/cs0092.html

And when great souls die . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDumMEzYyqk

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/obamas-speech-at-mandela-memorial-mandela-taught-us-the-power-of-action-but-also-ideas/2013/12/10/a22c8a92-618c-11e3-bf45-61f69f54fc5f_story.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrsnwXFKk84

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhUMsqei7kM

Maya Angelou’s ‘When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly.  Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed.  They existed.
We can be.  Be and be
better.  For they existed.

Second Week of Advent Online Retreat

http://www.csasisters.org/advent.cfm

Remembering Nelson Mandela . . .

http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/rumor88.pdf

Fainting to the tune of Amazing Grace

Imagine this scene from a recent courtroom trial in South Africa: A frail black woman stands slowly to her feet. She is something over 70 years of age. Facing her from across the room are several white security police officers, one of whom, Mr. Van der Broek, has just been tried and found implicated in the murders of both the woman's son and her husband some years before.
It was indeed Mr. Van der Broek, it has now been established, who had come to the woman's home a number of years back, taken her son, shot him at point-blank range and then burned the young man's body on a fire while he and his officers partied nearby.

Several years later, Van der Broek and his cohorts had returned to take away her husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of his whereabouts. Then, almost two years after her husband's disappearance, Van der Broek came back to fetch the woman herself. How vividly she remembers that evening, going to a place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from his lips as the officers poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame were, "Father, forgive them."

And now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr. Van der Broek. A member of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to her and asks, "So, what do you want? How should justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?"

"I want three things," begins the old woman, calmly but confidently. "I want first to be taken to the place where my husband's body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial."

She pauses, then continues. "My husband and son were my only family. I want, secondly, therefore, for Mr. Van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining within me."

"And, finally," she says, "I want a third thing. I would like Mr. Van der Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr. Van der Broek in my arms, embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven."

As the court assistants come to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr. Van der Broek, overwhelmed by what he has just heard, faints. And as he does, those in the courtroom, friends, family, neighbors — all victims of decades of oppression and injustice — begin to sing, softly, but assuredly, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGeMBNS9ZA

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25190973

http://news.msn.com/world/south-africans-mourn-celebrate-life-of-nelson-mandela 

• A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

• I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. 

• For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

• There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

• There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

• Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

• If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

More Remembering . . .

• Lord, make me your witness. In this world of darkness, let my light shine.
• In this world of lies, let me speak the good news of truth.
• In this world of hate and fear, let me radiate your love. 
• In this world of despair, let me spread hope. 
• In this world of systemic injustice and institutionalized evil, let me promote justice and goodness.
• In this world of sadness and sorrow, let me bring joy.
• In this world of cruelty and condemnation, let me show your compassion.
• In this world of vengeance and retaliation, let me offer your mercy and reconciliation. 
• In this world of war, let me serve your gift of peace. 
• In this world of violence, make me a teacher and apostle of your nonviolence. 
• In this world of death, let me proclaim the new life of resurrection. 
• Help me to witness to the resurrection of Jesus by loving my enemies, showing compassion, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, serving the poor, liberating the oppressed, resisting war, beating plowshares, and disarming my heart and the world.
• In the name of the risen, nonviolent Jesus, Amen

Taken from:
You Will be My Witnesses: 
Saints, Prophets and Martyrs
By John Dear, sj
http://www.fatherjohndear.org/

Remembering . . .

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sisters+in+el+salvador+youtube&FORM=VIRE3#view=detail&mid=B9F5427477354B07731BB9F5427477354B07731B

http://www.domlife.org/2010Stories/romero_days_srcarla.htm

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Martyrs/Churchwomen/index.html

ARCHBISHOP OSCAR ROMERO PRAYER: A STEP ALONG THE WAY

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent
enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of
saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw

*This prayer was composed by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, drafted for a homily by Card. John Dearden in Nov. 1979 for a celebration of departed priests. As a reflection on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Romero, Bishop Untener included in a reflection book a passage titled "The mystery of the Romero Prayer." The mystery is that the words of the prayer are attributed to Oscar Romero, but they were never spoken by him.