Pilgrim progress- a disciple on a journey!

Last Sunday we celebrated Vocation Sunday, also known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Whilst many homilies focussed on the call to priesthood and religious life, we need to remember that each and every one of us is called to a particular vocation in life. It is fitting to recall the words of St. Catherine of Siena, whose feastday we mark today: “ If you will be what you should be, you will set the world afire. Don’t be content with the small things: he, the Lord God, wants them great” (St. Catherine). No ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’, no half measures! Don’t be contented with a mediocre life when God is holding out his hand to you to follow him in love and for love. The heart is always drawn by love”  (Dialogue 26). Love transforms everything. Christ lives in us in the measure in which we are transformed each day. Just like the tomb of Jesus is empty, nothing remains in death’s prison. Our existence is a manifestation of his love for us, won by the Cross. One of the phrases in St. Catherine's 4t

                                              Talk for Dublin Diocesan Virtual Pilgrimage Live-streamed through the webcam at Our Lady of Victories Church, Ballymun Road, Dublin Title: St. Joseph and the Apparition at Knock Shrine. Good afternoon to all of you gathered as we continue our time of pilgrimage here in the Archdiocese of Dublin. My name is Sr. M. Louise O Rourke, I am a sister with the congregation, Disciples of the Divine Master and I serve the Diocese in the Office for Religious and Extern Priests. I have been asked to talk to you a little about the figure of St. Joseph in the Apparition of Knock. Most of us know the story of the Apparition of our Lady of Knock. On the 21st of August 1879, there was an apparition at the gable wall of the Parish Church in Knock when our Lady appeared, in the company of St. Joseph and of St. John. On the altar was Jesus the Lamb of God, and a Cross behind Him. The apparition is unique because in a way it is an apparition of a family: St. Jo

Mary Magdalene, what are you about, as I follow your footsteps through the gospels? You begin and you end with JESUS. I see you at Simon’s house with your perfumed oil, and I find you again at the tomb, carrying fragrant spices. What are you about Mary? You are unique in the gospels, as the one always at the feet of Jesus. At your home, where Martha busied herself. At the Cross with Our Lady.                                                                               I never find you when you are not in adoration of Him. Such faithful love did not go unnoticed.          You were the first to see Him after He rose. “Mary,” He said, And you were at His feet again. Mary Magdalene, what are you about? Tell me please, that I too may follow in your way And anoint today the Adorable Face of JESUS, with grateful love. And sit at His feet, washing them with tears of repentance And stand by the Cross, consoling Him as I bear my own little cro

 For was it not in a garden that a woman, together with a man, fell away from God?  Was it not in a garden that our first parents, after having first rejected God’s abundant love, wept?  Was it not in a garden that the expectation of death first reared its ugly head as the wages of sin? The events of Good Friday centred on a hill called Golgotha but ended in a nearby garden, where Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus bound Jesus’ body in linen cloths and laid it in a tomb. Once more…. A woman A garden The sound of weeping The expectation of death but…. Mary Magdalene, a daughter of Eve, turns and sees a man standing there. This man asks: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Mary supposes Him to be a gardener.  And yet, is she really that far off? Was not the first Adam—the caretaker of Eden?  Here now is Jesus—the second Adam—walking in a garden in the cool of the new day, revealing Himself to the daughter of Eve.  In response to the Gardener, Mary replies: “Sir, if You hav

Later, at the Passion of the Lord, we will enter the liturgy on Good Friday in silence. We don't need a "gathering rite." It is as though we have been "gathered" since the night before. The first act of the liturgy is for the Presider and ministers to lay face down before the cross, in silence. As with all liturgical rituals, that invites us to lay prostrate before the cross as well. We can prepare to begin the Good Friday celebration by reflecting upon ourselves laying there - with all the feelings we want to identify and pay attention to. Our feelings may not be consistent or even inspiring. I might feel awe, gratitude, guilt, powerlessness, all at once.  During his very first general audience Pope Francis said, "Living Holy Week means increasingly entering into God's logic, the logic of the Cross, which is not first of all that of pain and death, but of love and of self-giving that brings life." We come overwhelmed by the depth of Jesus'

  O loving Father, make me like Jesus: the Jesus who could spend nights in prayer, the Jesus who went about doing good, the Jesus who made time to talk to Nicodemus, the Jesus who could not bear to see the mother cry at Nain, the Jesus who took a towel and knelt and washed the feet of the men who were going to deny, betray and forsake him, the Jesus who could give a patient word when smitten on the face, the Jesus who could pray for the men who nailed him to the cross, the Jesus who was strong enough not to answer back when accused unjustly, the Jesus who could sleep peacefully in a gale and storm, the Jesus who would not let the marriage at Cana be spoilt by lack of wine, the Jesus who would not condemn the woman taken in an act of sin, the Jesus who could shrink from the cup of suffering yet drink it to the last dregs. O Loving Father, make me like the Jesus who came to the world to show what you were like. (Personal prayer of Bishop Jacob, Bishop of Travancore, South India)