This post is dedicated to my friends Ruth and Elizabeth in thanksgiving.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!
One thing I have noticed about the Holy Spirit is that when He is really on the move, the same message keeps coming into my life from different directions. Lately, this overall message has been one of expecting good things and of being a source of blessing to all, even blessing the hurts and weaknesses in my very self. In a previous post I ended with a special prayer to St. Rafael the Archangel. Just today, I was at breakfast, after morning Mass, with two friends; and, they asked me to send them this prayer. I would like to comment on the prayer to encourage us all to expect good things. At breakfast, we spoke of God’s abiding Love for us. He sends us “love letters” through His Word. He gives us gifts and places desires and dreams on our hearts for our own benefit and the benefit of others.
We members of Regnum Christi love very much Our Lady of Guadalupe. Her black belt was worn by the expecting, native women of those ancient times. Expectant Hope is a signpost of active faith. Our Lady, while on earth, lived a perfect faith. She will buoy are faith if we ask her to help us. As she spoke to St. Juan Diego in his mother tongue, she tells us things in ways only known to us, so that we understand more deeply her Son and His mission for us. We are stirred to love ourselves and others as God does. May we all be blessed to expect good things this day and all the days of our missionary, pilgrim journey. We find ourselves on the mission field every day everywhere.
O, Rafael, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us: Rafael, Angel of happy meetings, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for.
I was on our parish RCIA team for three years. On the first session of the first year, our pastor entered the room to greet everyone; and, after his greeting, he stunned the room into a thoughtful silence by telling everyone to expect that God wants to tell them things, to be ready to listen and hear the good things God wants to say. In the current troublesome, toilsome age, we are stunned by this. So many of us do not think of God as personally interested in our day-to-day affairs. His angels are his messengers, so we see that their mission is in complete union with God. They are incapable of bringing us anything but the true, the good and the beautiful (doctrinal note: yes there are fallen angels called demons; I, of course, refer to the hierarchy of non-fallen angels).
We ought to ask in prayer for the real, abiding desires of our hearts because God and his agents, the saints and angels, want nothing but to give us the graces we need to be eternally blessed by our loving Father in Heaven. Doing God’s work and His Will will make us happy now as well as keep us safe for eternal beatitude.
May all our movements be guided by your Light and transfigured by your Joy.
For five years our family was part of a Catholic homeschool group that did so many good things, one of which was a talent show. I remember with happiness the enactment of this famous skit by two young fellas.
Often being “guided by your Light” just consists of being open to the normal moments of playfulness and affection that are “already” in our days. The current environment is stressful, fast-paced and sophisticated. We Christians can be like turtles, slowing things down. We can take pleasure in crayons and basketball, hearing or telling a good joke, or simply stopping and asking our neighbor over for some lemonade.
We can also run for public office, teach in public schools, operate construction business and factories. We can be nurses and engineers, scientists and homemakers. All these things “guided by your Light and transfigured by your Joy.”
What is going on in Heaven affects what goes on now on earth. Think on it. It is really amazing! Would that more people knew of the invisible realities, the spiritual realities.
Because of the personal nature of our spirituality, Regnum Christi members are realistic about the challenges that each of us face and provide a tool belt filled with spiritual tools. Our first apostolate is always the apostolate of prayer.
Angel, guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze.
There are times that we become overburdened and even glum. I do. It is normal as the world and the flesh and the devil pound us hard. This is the time to make specific petition, a time to place our hands together –in what I call “rocketship hands,” meaning pointing those hands straight up to Heaven to God for timely help. Prayers of petition, of specific intention, are heard and answered when made honestly and with full confidence in God’s saving help. Prayers in the Confessional, at Mass and in front of the Blessed Sacrament are like bombs blowing the enemies of the soul (the world, the flesh and the devil) right out of the water. In peaceful waters are souls are at rest. Alleluia!
Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of life, we feel the need of calling you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, so that we may not be as strangers in the province of joy, all ignorant of the concerns of our country.
To be “in the province of joy,” we must often pause and reflect that this is not our true home. “Our country” is Heaven and the heavenly realities. The number one heavenly reality is the Holy Eucharist. A friend of mine who is a priest often would encourage me and others by saying that “we are living tabernacles of the living God.”
God is alive in his faithful people, acting, speaking and doing works of mercy. As members of the Church Militant, we are pilgrims. We wear our baptismal garment as spiritual armor and are given every means to keep it shiny clean and a good fit.
This passing journey is a testing ground and a journey of faith. When we pass through the door of death into eternal life, we will no longer need faith or hope. Only Love will remain. I can hang my hat on that truth. The truth of eternal life does not preclude the various foretastes of Heaven that we experience during our earthly pilgrimages. I wish I could shout from the rooftops the fact that God does not call us to works of mercy on earth that will kill real Joy or Peace. God is a builder not a killer. Above all, God is a Lover and the truest Friend we will ever have. His plan is to build holy Joy and Peace in our hearts so that we are the type of companions that others will say to us things like,
“I am tired of this, that and the other, will you help me to see things differently, to see things as God sees them…I am having trouble understanding God, could you tell me more about God and what God is all about? His holy Church, our Mother? Is prayer really for people who are not priests and nuns and teachers/leaders of faith? Does God work miracles now as He did in the biblical times?”
Remember the weak, you who are strong, you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene and bright with the resplendent glory of God.
Before God and heavenly realities we are so very weak; but, it is in and with and through this weakness, that we are schooled in God’s Love and Mercy. We indeed hold the treasure of the Holy Eucharist in “cracked pots.”
Yes, we Christians are fools for Jesus—just a bunch of crazy, cracked pots! Catholic Christians, having the fullness of Divine Revelation, should be even crazier! We who are willing to embrace consecrated virginity, full-time apostolate and other such insanities! Yes, please, St. Rafael,
Remember the weak!
Our prayers and aspirations should be crazy and other-worldly or else we are not trying to build the City of God. I am still trying to persevere in writing about prayer and healing, about alcoholism and addiction. I struggle. Just when I am ready to give up, Heaven often sends timely help through friends who are so courageous in sharing their journeys of faith, their hopes and dreams, struggles and victories.
Jesus, we thank you for taking the time and the care to love us personally. You love us directly and through our brothers and sisters in Your Precious Blood and through people of good will. You became man to enter into our lives daily. You heal us so personally. You and the Father and the Holy Spirit are so creative and familial.
Blessed Trinity, thank you for creating angels to rule and to guide, to heal and to conquer all evil. While we fight lots of battles here on earth, help us believe that the war has already been won. Help us to know that our job now is to be faithful and to hear Your call to be Light and Love and Life.
Thank you, dear Lady, Seat of Wisdom, for taking all of our troubles, dreams, tribulations and hopes straight to the Sacred Heart of your Son where all is made new in Him Who is Love!
This is the DAY the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!
