Year IV, Number 16

It always gives me great joy to address a special message to you on the occasion of World Youth Day. It is also a way to show you the extent of my affection for you. The vivid recollection of my experiences during our World Youth Day meetings is impressed on my memory: young people and the Pope together, and a large gathering of Bishops and priests, all with our gaze on Christ, light of the world, invoking him and proclaiming him to the entire human family. While I give thanks to God for the witness of faith that you have given once again recently in Toronto, I renew the invitation I made to you on the banks of Lake Ontario: “the Church today looks to you with confidence and expects you to be the people of the Beatitudes!” (Exhibition Place, 25 July 2002; ORE, 31 July 2002, p. 6).

For the 18th World Youth Day that will be celebrated in dioceses all over the world, I have chosen a theme related to the Year of the Rosary: “Behold, your mother!” (Jn 19:27). Before his death, Jesus entrusted to the apostle John what was most precious to him: his Mother, Mary. These are the final words of the Redeemer, and therefore they take on a solemn nature and could be regarded as his spiritual testimony.

The angel Gabriel’s words in Nazareth: “Hail, full of grace” (Lk 1:28) also cast light on the scene at Calvary. The Annunciation comes at the beginning, the Cross signals the fulfillment. At the Annunciation, Mary gives human nature to the Son of God within her womb; at the foot of the Cross, she welcomes the whole of humanity within her heart in the person of John. She was Mother of God from the first moments of the Incarnation, and she became the Mother of humanity during the final moments of the life of her Son Jesus on earth. She, who was without sin, on Calvary “experienced” within her own being the suffering of sin that her Son had taken upon himself to save humankind. At the foot of the Cross on which was dying the One whom she had conceived at the moment of her “yes” at the Annunciation, Mary received, as it were, a “second annunciation”: “Woman, behold, your son!” (Jn 19:26).

The Son upon the Cross can pour out his suffering into his Mother’s heart. Every child who suffers experiences that need. You too, my dear young people, are faced with suffering: loneliness, failures and disappointments in your personal lives; difficulties in inserting yourselves in the adult world and in professional life: the separations and losses in your families; the violence of war and the death of the innocent. Know, however, that in difficult times, which everyone experiences, you are not alone: like John at the foot of the Cross, Jesus also gives his Mother to you so that she will comfort you with her tenderness.

Q. Dear Fr Anthony,

I will be received into the Church this Easter. I am currently discerning the possibility that I am being called to the religious life/priesthood. I have a few questions for you.

1) How can one find objective information on the many religious orders, such as if they are orthodox or not?

2) After Easter would it be a good idea to try to become a Eucharistic Minister or Lector at my parish?

3) My parish is a Stephen Ministry Parish; would this be something good to get involved with?

4) I have a spiritual director and he knows about my discernment, but should I also share this with my parish pastor?

5) Would making a Holy Hour once a week before the Blessed Sacrament, even if it isn't exposed, be a good idea? In the future I hope to be able to work with adults that grew up as I did, with no faith formation, to help them along so that they do not have to make this journey alone as I did. Thanks.

- David

A. Dear David,

Welcome into the Church! Since the Church recommends that about 18 months go by before admitting a convert into a seminary or religious/consecrated life, you have time to find answers to your search. For ease I will repeat your questions and provide some pointers.

1) How can one find objective information on the many religious orders, such as if they are orthodox or not? There is no “directory of orthodox religious orders” or any such thing. Here you will have to seek the advice of people you trust, and take it upon yourself to visit any orders that attract you, asking all the questions you want. To be orthodox a group has to walk with the Church, be faithful to what the Holy Spirit tells us through Christ’s Vicar, live centered on the Eucharist, have Mary as part of their lives, and be faithful to the vision of their Founder. All of this requires that there prayer and a mature faith be the “daily bread” of the members.

2) After Easter would it be a good idea to try to become a Eucharistic Minister or Lector at my parish? It will not be indispensable, but could be good. It really depends on what your pastor says. Do try to get involved in some ministry or outreach.

3) My parish is a Stephen Ministry Parish; would this be something good to get involved with? Again, this depends on your pastor’s recommendation and your own abilities.

4) I have a spiritual director and he knows about my discernment, but should I also share this with my parish pastor? It is not absolutely necessary to go into this with your pastor, but neither is there anything wrong with letting him know. It depends on how much he knows you, and what you are comfortable with. What you want to avoid, though, is having two spiritual directors, which is never a good idea.

5) Would making a Holy Hour once a week before the Blessed Sacrament, even if it isn't exposed, be a good idea? Not a good idea - an excellent one! Choose the time well so that you can keep to it without fail. Read and reflect on the New Testament for part of the hour, perhaps pray the Rosary, have some time for personal reflection, use a good spiritual book (the Catechism of the Catholic Church is very helpful to reflect on in prayer; as a mater of fact, it has a beautiful and useful section on prayer) and pray for all those in need.

In the future I hope to be able to work with adults that grew up as I did, with no faith formation, to help them along so that they do not have to make this journey alone as I did. That could well be the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart.

God bless.

- Fr Anthony

Q. Dear Fr Anthony,

Greetings in Christ! I have been discerning religious life for the last couple years. I have finally opened the door to my soul. “Yes, Lord, your servant is listening.” I have been helping out with an order that I am feeling God is calling me to. The only thing is my mom and dad divorced when I was young. I live with my mom. She has no health insurance, and I worry that something will happen to her. I have told her of my feelings. She says that if it is the will of God, let it be, but I am still concerned. She seems upset that I will leave her by herself. That is why I have not gone. Is that wrong? I want to follow wherever the Good Lord leads me. I realize it is not always easy to trust in the Lord with all my heart, but I pray every day for the strength to say “yes” no matter what it may cost me. I love to spend time in adoration before the Lord. I feel that my heart is being lead closer each day to the Lord. I am starting the nursing program in May and I feel in two years I will be entering the convent as a sister. My question is: can God still be calling me to become a sister? My heart and soul long to serve the Lord always. The sisters understand that I must pay things off and that I plan to finish my nursing classes first. I have talked to them about my mom. The sister ask me if my mom would in couple years like to come live at the assisted living department with them. My thing is that if I asked my mom that question, I know she will think I am trying to put her somewhere, which I am not. Thank you always. Peace in Christ always.

- Discerning Soul of God

A. Dear Discerning,

The problem you are faced with is a practical one. I am afraid I am only going to be able to talk around it a little to see if I can give you some light.

As regards your personal perception and acceptance of the vocation, everything seems in place; the Sisters have practically accepted you, and the only question as yet unanswered seems to be, “Is my mother sure to need me at some stage in the future?” You do not mention any brothers or sisters. That would be a major factor. Of course you should make sure that any pending debts you have are paid off, and that some provision is made for your mother (her present age, state of health and means of support need to be considered also). It may not be necessary to bring up with your mother the possibility of arranging assisted living in the future - that would be something for you to know is there in case a need arises.

Hope that helps in some way. Be sure of my prayers. God bless.

- Fr Anthony

God is God of the living. Why do we still look for the living among the dead? Why do we go about with our sulks and our woes and our complexes as though Christ had cheated us? Why do we regret taking up this path, as though Christ were only a dream and we had never heard his command to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19)? Why? Why?

Sometimes we think that Christ can’t totally fill us. Might it not be, on the contrary, that we’re too full of ourselves to let him do so? We get all wrapped up in our own little world. We close in on our memories, fantasies and pointless dreams so as to avoid difficulties, struggles or the constant, serious work that our vocation demands. We ensconce ourselves in these thoughts and pad ourselves with them to soften any severe blows. Escape – the path that the modern world chooses to solve its problems – has infiltrated our lives also.

We are so pitiful! We fear God because our hearts continue to cry out that he is the Lord, even when we most foolishly resist. He inspires fear in us, not love, because we have already secretly plotted with the world, we have already struck a deal with our passions, and we are just waiting for the right moment, occasion and excuse to glaze our consciences with false and conceited tranquility. Every difficulty, every awakening of our instincts is one more reason and motive to deny our vocation and draw closer to the world’s boundary, away from God. We will soon find that we are more outside than inside, without a single motive to follow God’s call other than a vague thorn in our sides that doesn’t leave us entirely at peace.

9 May 1981

Dios es un Dios de vivos, ¿por qué andamos buscando aún entre los muertos al que vive? ¿Por qué andamos mohínos, cabizbajos, acomplejados, como si Cristo nos hubiese defraudado? ¿Por qué nos lamentamos de haber caído en este camino, como si Cristo hubiera sido sólo un sueño, y como si jamás hubiéramos escuchado su mandato de "ir y predicar a todas las gentes" (Mt 28, 19)?¿Por qué? ¿Por qué?

A veces pensamos que Cristo no nos llena, ¿no serán por el contrario que, llenos de nosotros mismos, no nos dejamos llenar de Él? Nos envuelve nuestro mundillo, nuestros recuerdos, fantasías e ilusiones fatuas en las que nos encerramos para huir de las dificultades, de la lucha, o del trabajo constante y serio que exige la vocación. En ellas nos acolchonamos, y de ellas nos revestimos para amortiguar cualquier golpe duro. La evasión, que escoge el mundo moderno como solución de sus problemas, ha entrado también en nuestras vidas.

¡Qué pobres somos! Dios nos da miedo porque, aun en la más necia resistencia, nuestro corazón seguirá clamando que Él es el Señor. Nos da miedo, y no amor, porque ya hemos congeniado en secreto con el mundo, ya hemos pactado con nuestras pasiones, y sólo esperamos el momento propicio, la ocasión y el sofisma que sea capaz de barnizar nuestra conciencia de una tranquilidad falsa y fatua. Cada dificultad, cada despertarse de nuestros instintos es una razón, un motivo más para renegar de la vocación, y para irnos acercando a la frontera del mundo, marginándonos de Dios. Pronto nos encontraremos más fuera que dentro, sin más motivos para seguir el llamado de Dios que un cierto aguijoncillo que no nos deja del todo en paz.

Gospel: Mt 28: 8-15

So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” While they were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, “You must say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.

Introductory Prayer: At the dawn of your Resurrection, you brought forth a new-found hope for all who follow you. Help me live this hope in my daily life. May my heart shun any fear or doubt. Teach me to cling to this confidence of risen life with you and live as a joyful herald of hope.

Petition: Lord, as you rose from the tomb to bring light to the world; illuminate the darkness of my heart with your hope and joy. Inflame my heart so as to make me a tireless herald of your message.

1. “Jesus met them.”

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” Jesus did not meet his followers in the tomb, for he had conquered death. Jesus comes to meet his followers on the path of hope leading away from the tomb. Filled with fear and great joy, they were running to spread the news of the empty tomb and there, on the path of hope, Jesus met them. In that moment, how their hope was bolstered! Christ is alive, and death has now lost its sting! In our lives, you come to meet us too, Lord Jesus. You come to us in our moments of fear and of joy. You come to distill in our hearts the confidence of your love and truth. You come to build our hope on the path to heaven. And where do we still meet you? You come to us in prayer, the Church, the sacraments, and charity, but especially in your most delicate expression of love: the Eucharist. Thank you, Lord, for never abandoning me. When I meet you on the way, bolster my hope so that I tirelessly extend the message of salvation to all nations.

2. “Do not be afraid!”

The first words of Christ address the looming fear in the hearts of his followers. There is nothing to fear; Christ is our risen hope! The previous words of Christ when he raised Jarius’ daughter echo in their minds, “Fear is useless. What is needed is trust.” Upon seeing the Risen Lord, the disciples become heralds of hope to his other followers. The disciples eagerly proclaim the joy of the Resurrection with zeal impossible to contain. So often, Lord Jesus, I lack this same zeal. Many times I remain locked in fear, afraid of going out to proclaim your Kingdom. Help me to rise above my anxieties to trust in you. May the reality of your love push me forward to commit my time and energies for the Church. I want to spread your message of life and not remain bound up in the tomb. Open my eyes to see the needs of the Church and grant me the courage to respond generously.

3. “You must say…”

At the dawn of the Resurrection, the guards and chief priests sought to spread the darkness of lies. Ever since Christ came into the world, he has been and always will be a sign of contradiction. There will always be those who prefer the darkness of their hearts than the light of Christ. The fear of these lies and persecutions, however, did not daunt the hope of the first Christians. Although hunted down and martyred, the first Christians fearlessly proclaimed Christ's message to all nations, and by their many trials, they conquered.

Dialogue: Lord, never let me forsake hope in the midst of my sufferings or trials. Today, as with the first Christians, it seems like society works against the cause of Christ and that our chance of success is bleak at best. Yet in this tribulation, you call noble souls to stand up in hope, to fight for the Church and to lay down their lives for the sake of their brothers and sisters. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” By my suffering and fidelity to the mission you entrust into my hands, I can change this world. Lord, teach me to grasp the hope of your Resurrection tightly, so that no matter what difficulties I face in extending your Kingdom, I will always be faithful to you.

Questionnaire:

1. How deep are my daily encounters with Christ in prayer and the sacraments? Does my prayer life fill me with hope?

2. What fears do I wrestle with in regards to responding to God's will for my life? How do I overcome those fears and build trust?

3. Do I look upon the world with hope, confident in Christ and confident that he will use my fidelity and sufferings to help save souls?

The liturgy, the Mass, is a said prayer. There are parts that vary, but it’s something that’s already formulated. So obviously we follow what’s being said, and try to adjust to it. There’s one phrase that always strikes me: “We thank you, God, for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you.” Did that ever strike you? Every day we say Mass, and in one of the Eucharistic prayers we say that: “Thank you for counting us worthy to stand before you.” God’s given us his baptism and so many graces; if we are not worthy, well, we try to fix that, right? God has done his part; we have to correspond. So if you start looking at the prayers we say, even the most normal ones, there’s so much in them that we can go over, which can help us, and we can actually change. The whole purpose of prayer is to change us - to change us from the self-centered, vain, superficial people that we are, into people with a little more depth, a little more sense of perspective, a little more thinking of other people. Prayer is to change. The purpose that we pray is to change us. And we need prayer in the morning, and we need prayer in the evening. We need to do those prayers so as to make those changes in our lives. So that’s one type of prayer. It’s very rich, and for those who are more into spontaneous prayer, they tend to downplay, but even though the spontaneous prayers, the meditation that we talk about now is important to cultivate, there is so much to learn from the prayers that are already written, even the simplest prayers where we can go back to them again and again.

There are things that we do without thinking, and one of them - I don’t want to call it a shock, but a revelation that I had - was a very simple thing altogether. I was with two doctors, and I was doing my internship in Mexico - internship as a religious (not as a doctor!), which means I was a brother on apostolic work. They were important people who were there for a conference. Father Maciel asked me to take these people around and show them a little bit of Mexico City, so I took to the cathedral in Mexico City. We were wandering around the cathedral, and then as we were going out the back and around the big choir area, there was a smaller chapel, where the Mass was being celebrated; in fact, it was just after the Consecration.

These two doctors with whom I was were agnostics. They are not like atheists, who are against God; an agnostic is one who says, “I don’t know if God exists or not. I respect religious people, but I don’t believe it, and I might be wrong.” Agnosticism is a very scientific, hands-off point of view. We went around the back and had an interesting conversation. I told them about the history of the cathedral: when it was built, the things that happened there, and a few of the particulars. Since it was a little past the Consecration, I automatically made a genuflection as I crossed the center. As I was making the genuflection, it suddenly struck me that these people had no idea what I was doing. What do you do if you’re walking along talking to somebody and suddenly he goes down on one knee; did he throw out his ankle or what? So I kind of sheepishly said to them, “Well, we Catholics believe,” and it was just as I was saying it that the enormity of what I was saying struck me. It came onto me; this is actually what we believe. We Catholics believe that on the altar after the Consecration it’s not bread; it’s actually God himself, in person. You say that to a person who doesn’t know if God exists, right?

But I was born into a Catholic family. I never missed Sunday Mass all of my life, was brought up with First Holy Communion and Confirmation, was an altar boy… you name it. I had joined the seminary straight out of high school; I guess you could say I was a religious person. I was twenty-five years old at this time, and I’d been in eight years in the seminary, and suddenly it struck me what we actually believe. I was so used to believing in it that it never really came on to me what we actually do believe, and how it must sound to somebody who didn’t even know if God existed. That’s why we have to pray over and over again, because there are certain things that are there that we just don’t see or penetrate. We need to, though, and it’s that moment of grace when it sinks into our soul, when we have a revelation, and life is not the same as it was before. That’s why we need these simple prayers and we shouldn’t be afraid to go back to them, and we should never feel that it’s a lesser type of prayer while we’re saying them. We should always ask God, “Open up my soul to what I’m actually saying,” and then to ask for the gift of believing, accepting, acting on that. So these types of prayer, the said prayers, are very important because they’re usually the experience of people much closer to God than we have, their experience of the Church, it accumulates over time.

Upcoming Events & Retreats

(( Listed here are retreats directed by the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi members. For a listing of diocesan activities and other events, click here to go to the vocation.com website ))

LEGIONARIES OF CHRIST

Pasadena, CA, April 27, 2003, Test Your Call Retreat. Ages 16-27. Contact Fr Thomas Maher at tmaher@legionaries.org or (626) 792-0447.

Sacramento, CA, May 13-14, 2003, Young Men's Retreat. Ages 16-30. Contact Br Robert DeCesare at sgomez@legionaries.org or (916) 716-5506. Price: $15.

Cheshire, CT, May 16-18, 2003, Test Your Call Retreat. Ages 16-30. Contact Br Branigan Sherman at vocation@legionaries.org or (800) 420-5409. Price: none.

Cornwall, ONT, May 16-18, 2003, Test Your Call Retreat. Ages 16-30. Contact Fr William Slattery at wslattery@legionaries.org or (613) 931-1920. Price: none.

Rome, Italy, May 23-30, 2003. Pilgrimage for college-aged men and high school seniors. Contact Karolee Stauduhar at kstauduhar@msn.com or (407) 869-8263.

REGNUM CHRISTI consecrated women

Atlanta, GA, May 5, 2003, Young Women's Spiritual Growth Retreat. Ages 17-30. Contact Dorrie Donahue at ddonahue@inteducators.org or (770) 417-1045.

Los Angeles, CA, May 18, 2003, Young Women's Spiritual Growth Retreat. Ages 16-30. Contact Magdalena Faine at mfaine@inteducators.org or (562) 597-6352.

Washington DC, May 19, 2003, Young Women's Spiritual Growth Retreat. Ages 17-30. Contact Lucy Honnor at lhonnor@inteducators.org or (301) 536-6931.

REGNUM CHRISTI consecrated men

Call Tony McDonnell for more information, (301) 365-3205. amacdonnell@arcol.org.

ShoreLines welcomes your questions and comments at questions@shorelines.org. If you do not specify otherwise, your question may be posted in the Vocations Q&A section.

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