Her Ministry to the Poorest of the Poor ???

      
Her ministry to the poorest of the poor now continues in service of the truly poor.

To all my Faithful beloved.

What is our greatest treasure?  That which is the priceless gift of our faith. This is the greatest treasure we possess. Sadly, especially in our world of today, there are many who are truly poor, those who have no faith.

It seems that our beloved sister, Mother Teresa, now continues her service to the truly impoverished, the Athiest and the Agnostic.

As I have been led into my personal study of the ‘Dark Night’, I came across what is new news to me. It has been revealed that our beloved saint, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, suffered this ‘darkness’, seemingly to be the most extensive case on record, from 1948 until her death in 1997. The church holds there to be two types of this suffering of ‘Darkness’, one being  purgative, cleansing  the contemplative for a final union with Christ, and a second which is reparative, participating in the sufferings of Christ on the cross. The extensive suffering of Blessed Teresa seems to be of the latter nature.

“…one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared. And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light(Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book’s compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, “neither in her heart or in the Eucharist.” [ "Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith", by David van Biema, Time Magazine, 23 August, 2007 ]

 ”Mother Teresa’s ministry with the poor won her the Nobel Prize and the admiration of a believing world. Her ministry to a doubting modern world may have just begun.” [ "A Saint's Dark Night", The New York Times, by James Martin, 29 August, 2007. ]

TOT 2008 Update!

Tomorrow’s meeting for Theology on Tap has been postponed due to room availibility.  The meeting will now take place on April 5th at 10am at the San Fernando Mission Office.   At the April 5th meeting we will be discussing topics and their respective speakers.   Addtionaly, we are looking for young adult volunteers to serve in a variety of capacities, from hospitality, prayer, to master of ceremonies and food coordination.

RENEW Theology on Tap will be Sundays, July 27, Aug. 3, 10 and 17.

 Thanks - and sorry about the inconvenience!!

If anyone has any questions, feel free to contact myself (by leaving a comment here) or Mike Arvizu, the TOT coordinator at Michael.Arvizu at sfmya.org.

Eat, Pray, Love

Being a young person in today’s society, I really related to Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey in finding herself.  The book follows Liz Gilbert in her search for 3 things - pleasure in Italy, prayer in India, and balance in Indonesia.  In her search for these three things she shows the fine lines one must walk in their lives, depicting how it’s possible for all of us to get lost every once in a while.  At the same time she shows explores how important it to keep God in our lives.  Gilbert’s book shows how easy it is to blend our spiritual lives into our daily secular lives. 

I really loved how Gilbert was able to put so many different faiths and beliefs into her book, while candidly sharing her ideas in life.  It was a wonderful mix of humor, love, spirituality, and the age old quest to find happiness.  It gives all of us that are wandering a bit of hope that things will work itself out. 

With Love

Story Of A Soul,
The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

“I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission to make God loved as I love Him, to teach souls my little way.”  When her sister, Mother Agnes of Jesus, asked her “And what is this little way you want to teach to souls?”  Therese answered:  “It is the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender.

I am only on page 18 of the book as I write this, so I cannot really say much about it.  I, however, have heard of her ‘Little Way’ on so many occasions.  It is a way to holiness through little things, and sometimes insignificant actions, but done for God WITH LOVE.

Here are a few of her quotes:

Without love, all deeds, even the most brilliant, are as nothing.

To live by love is to banish all fear, all remembrance of past faults.

By love and not by fear, does a soul avoid committing the least voluntary fault.

To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.  It is Jesus alone who can give such value to our actions.  Let us then love Him with all our heart.

Confidence and nothing else is what leads us to Love.
I didn’t understand this at first.  Surprisingly, I found an old book of mine stashed in my car and as I was flipping through the pages, I found this…  Con means ‘with,’ and fidel means ‘faith.’  Confidence, then, simply means, ‘living with faith.’

Do not be afraid to tell Jesus that you love Him - even if you don’t feel that you love Him.  That is the way to force him to aid you.

Trials help greatly to detach us from earth.  They make us look to God, rather than to this world.

Jesus gives me just what I can bear at each moment, no more: and if in a moment He increases my suffering, He also increases my strength.

I beg you not to remain any longer at the feet of Jesus but to follow that first impulse which would carry you into His arms.

The Confessions

  

Having gone through a phase when I sinned gravely, I was reminded of St. Augustine.  All I know of him is that he was a great sinner, who, with the help of his mother’s persistent prayers, was converted and later became one of the great Doctors of the Church.  Even that little information may not be accurate.

Wanting to know more about this saint, I browsed through his life and ran into his book Confessions.  The book is an autobiography of Augustine, describing his sinful youth and then his conversion.  I am just beginning to read the book.

Flirting With Monasticism: Finding God on Ancient Paths

 

This book looks from outside the Church to inside the monastic traditions of the Dominican Order.  Karen Sloan is a protestant minister who lived in Eagle Rock and prayed very much here at St. Dominic’s.  She writes of falling in love with one of the Dominican Novices and how this drew her more deeply into discovering more about the religious life within the Catholic Church.  It is quite innocent in nature and more about her spiritual journey.  She writes of her time in Eagle Rock and a priest who gave her a breviary when she asked about if there was Liturgy of the Hours 101 class.  He simply marked the pages with the ribbons and gave her one of his personal copies.  I ran into Karen for the first time on facebook after arriving in Eagle Rock.  I ran into her in person for the first time less than two weeks ago in San Francisco while there for a conference.  She wasn’t at the conference, but at St. Dominic Catholic Church in San Francisco.  I recognized her immediately, and we had a great conversation.  She gave me an autographed copy of her book, and it was fun reading.  In her hand was that very copy of the breviary mentioned, with the name Fr. Raymond inscribed on the inside.  She is still praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and in fact had come to attend Mass.

Amazon.com

Paperback: 162 pages

Publisher: IVP Books (December 9, 2006)

ISBN-10: 0830836020