Stand in your Presence

At Mass say: We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you. The presence of God in our lives is what enlightens our darkness and keeps us from fainting on the way. We are called to be totally present to the One who is the

Ps: 5:5 "The arrogant cannot stand in your presence." There is a time for standing in readiness to serve, as there is a time for resting and being refreshed. Come aside and rest awhile. This is what takes place during our meditation when we wait upon the Lord. Meditation prepares us to take our stand. We wait with expectation with patient an hope-filled expectation. For what?

Isaiah 40:31 Shows both the resting and the serving in one magnificent statement: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. Strength is for action, to enable us to serve. Meditation is meant to overflow in service to God and to others.

Mount up like eagles
An eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks It will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm, it simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm. When the storms of life come upon us ... and all of us will experience them ... we can rise above them by setting our minds and our belief toward God.

The storms do not have to overcome us, we can allow God's power to lift us above them. God enables us to ride the winds of the storm that bring sickness, tragedy, failure, and disappointment into our lives. We can soar above the storm. This heaven-inspired soaring is what gives us the strength to stand in the Divine Presence and serve the King of Heaven.

They shall run and not be weary : Walking is too slow sometimes, to reach the prize, There is a need to pay the price and RUN towards it. The secret of coming into the presence of God or any human being, is being ourselves totally present, with all our attention and all our faith in the other. Lack of faith in God's power and God’s love for us, sets up a new god. For if there be anything which usurps the power of God, something that is more potent than God, then that something must be god!

DOOR INTO THE SACRED

This new work by Fr. Paul Murray is a Meditation on the Hail Mary. In his introduction, the author writes: "My hope in writing this tiny book is that, by giving space to some of the most moving and most profound reflections ever written on the Hail Mary, a door will open for the reader into a world in which the strenuous task of thinking and the easeful grace of feeling can both be considered sacred, and where wisdom and enchantment, theology and devotion, are found, at core, to be one and the same thing. For almost an entire millennium the most commonly repeated prayer in the Church, apart from the Our Father, has been the Hail Mary. It’s a prayer that, with great simplicity and ease, brings us at once into the mystery of God incarnate, the mystery of Jesus, son of Mary. For countless numbers of people over the centuries it has proved to be a threshold of grace, a real opening into the mystery and meaning of God’s love, a ‘holy door’."

For myself, I find this latter to be so true. How often on entering an old Church in Italy or France, I have observed the Angel Gabriel carved on one side of the main door and the Virgin Mary on the other side. It made me feel that I was being ushered in to the wonderland of the sacred and secret mystery of God. I hope to have this precious work of Fr. Paul available for our Rosary Retreat in the Retreat Centre, in Tallaght
August 14th--20. If you cannot make the full five days it i possible to drop in for a single day or more.

Rosary Video

The picture shows Dominican Friars singing the Night Office with Our Lady watching over them as they sign the Salve Regina-- Hail Holy Queen!
www.worldpriest asked me to put a Nine minute talk on their Website. Hope you like it.Look up the site below.

Rosary Videohttp://worldpriest.com/home/rosary

Fr. Gabriel at the Dominican Priory, Tallaght Village, Dublin 24

Beads for Meditation

For those who may be shy of producing the Catholic beads in public, it may be of help to know that they are not alone when they pray the Rosary. Hindus, Buddhists and many other folk, use the beads as an aid to meditation. They sit still and pass the beads through their fingers while they repeat a sacred word or mantra. Touching the beads enables them to be serene and secure. The sacred word is more sounded in the depth of the being than spoken by the lips.

So never be tempted to think that the Catholic Rosary is elitist or out of date. Praying with the beads is universal and belongs to every age and civilization. See picture of Buddhist monk meditating with his beads in his hands. You can read more about all this in my book: The Riches of the Rosary, published by Veritas, Dublin.

The Catena of the Legion of Mary

Catena is the Latin word for link or chain. It is the sign of the Holy Slavery of Jesus and Mary as taught by St. Louis Marie de Montfort. It reminds Legionaries that they are bound by the sweet chain of Love and Loyalty to Mary and to each other. Members of the Legion of Mary are not lone rangers working on their own. They are in the service of the Queen of Heaven and they stand shoulder to shoulder in army that has set itself to conquer the world.

Even those who have left are encouraged to pray the Catena and thereby keep a connection with the Legion. The opening Antiphon of the Catena is a panorama of the whole role of Mary: Fair as the Moon, Bright as the Sun, and like an Army in battle array! At once attractive and awesome!

In the Magnificat Mary does what we all need to do: She points to the Lord. For our part we often focus on ourselves -- our projects and our problems and make them still larger. Mary sweetly and surely makes the problems into possibilities as she teaches us instead to magnify the Lord. She is the Magnifier of God and his kingdom. Like her Son, she prays thy name, thy Kingdom, thy will. As we grow in this spirit of Mary, the apostolate becomes no longer my kingdom my project, my problem. As our little kingdom decreases, so does the Kingdom of God take root and grow great.

Pride is the most destructive force in the world and blocks the stream of grace. The Lord scatters the proud hearted. We know this to be true from our own experience and have seen that how it can destroyed or gravely diminish even Mary’s own Legion. Humility on the other hand is the foundation on which the Kingdom is established.

Mary acknowledges that anything that is good in her is the work of the Lord. Her soul proclaims the greatness of God. She knows that God has saved her and she rejoices in God my Saviour. Legionaries should remember the words of St. Ephraem so well: ‘May the spirit of Mary be in every soul to glorify the Lord.’

Fr. Bede the Head spiritual director of the Legion of Mary suggests that while we pray the Magnificat together at all our meetings sometimes we should pray and meditate over it personally and in solitude.

worldpriest.com

Recently I was given the opportunity of appearing live on the
Website entitled: worldpriest.com

The occasion, was the close of the Year for Priests and they asked me to say a few words on the Rosary in the life of a Priest. You can look the site up for yourself and I trust it may bring us a little closer. What I was trying to get across in the short time available, was that in the hands of the Priest, the Rosary was not only a prayer, but that a valuable instrument of preaching the Good News of Jesus and Mary.

For the Rosary is a summary of the Scriptures and Sacred Tradition. Pere Lacordaire spoke of it as L'evangile a genoux-- The Gospel on its knees. You can see and listen live by clicking on the following:
http://www.worldpriest.c/home/rosary_relay_video.php

God needs each one of us

Ascension Day:

This is a great day of Mercy. It is the final work of mercy when Jesus goes to prepare a home for each one of us: I go to my Father and to your Father, I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father’s House, there are many mansions.

It helps me appreciate this work of mercy, when I think of my own earthly father and mother who went to such trouble preparing a home for us. It happened quite a lot because we never really owned a home but simply rented a place, and every few years depending on working situations, we were on the move to a new home. I have vivid memories of all the loving caring work of preparation: carpets, curtains, lights and mirrors not to mention the mountains of bedding and kitchen stuff.

And in this work of preparing a home in heaven, the Heavenly Father wants our co-operation. God our Father has a great task in hands-- keeping this whole creation ticking over, seeing to it that souls are saved and getting all his faithful ones into heaven. He could do it all on his own, but he calls us to share in his work. While God has an infinite supply of mercy to pour out on the world, he ask us to share in his outpouring by being merciful ourselves.

Jesus says: Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
And in the Fifth Beatitude: Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. It would seem that to pour out his mercy, The Almighty has need of our acts of mercy. As the Frenchman, Leon Bloy has written: We have the privilege of being needed by him who has need of no one. We are asked to give from the little we possess, but only to receive much more in return:

Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, they will pour into your lap. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return. Luke 6:38

By way of illustration let me tell of a couple who loved to work together in their garden. But this day the husband was on his own in the back garden. He was preparing to dig out the stubborn roots of an old tree. He toiled and sweated for over an hour until at last he knew it was coming. There was a surge of pride.... but then another emotion took over. He wanted his wife to share his little victory with him. He wanted her to have the thrill of pulling the old root out together with him. He didn’t really need any assistance. At least not in the physical sense. He had all the strength he needed for that. For love’s sake however, he needed her. He knew that she would like to part of his achievement. So he called her and together they pulled the old root out and dumped it. Together is better.

You notice the same thing when a strong man wins a seat in Parliament. He calls up his wife to stand beside him to share his hour of glory. Don’t we all want to share, to be needed, to be part of the project. As long as he needs me, goes the song. On the other hand there is the trauma of not being needed not wanted, not on the team. It must be terrible to hear those words: Surplus to requirement! Rejected! redundant!
In God’s plan of mercy, there is no redundancy. We all in it together. We have the privilege of being needed by the One who has need of no one. He has entrusted some work of Divine mercy to me which he has committed to none other. He wishes me to work alongside him in his own mission of mercy. Let me do so that I may find mercy in my hour of need.