September 2016 newsletter

September 2016

SAINTS ROSE OF LIMA,

MARTIN DE PORRES, AND JUAN MACIAS

saint images © bernadette carstensen

In this issue: Reflections on Friendship ~ Hispanic Ministry Highlights and more!

feast day: November 3

Three saints: same city, same time period, same religious Order. While the Spanish Conquistadors exploited the native peoples of South America, God's grace abounded in the lives of his children who dedicated themselves to him in the Dominican Family. Rose, a beautiful mestiza girl, devoted her life to prayer, penance, and service of the poor as a Dominican tertiary.

She knew well the pious mulatto, Brother Martin, who visited her on occasion, one time helping her through a time of spiritual darkness by his brotherly counsel. After she died, Martin gained another friend and co-worker in the service of the poor: Juan Macias, a Dominican brother from Spain. Though they lived in different houses, the two lay brothers would meet each other while doing errands for the poor throughout the city of Lima. All three saints, living heroic lives of charity, were an encouragement to each other to love, as their Master did, "to the end." Jn 13:1

JUAN MACIAS feast day: September 18

ROSE OF LIMA feast day: August 23

“Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.� ~ Saint Rose of Lima

The Divine Gift of Friendship “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a sounding gong or a clashing cymbal” (1 Corinth. 13:1).

Love … that can be a confusing term. When determining what Saint Paul means by love, it is possible that two counterfeits can come to mind: on the one hand a sort of “niceness” that refrains from speaking truth; on the other, a generic, impersonal keeping of laws that is supposed to make one “good.” Few people set out to embrace such impostor “loves,” yet we can easily feel pulled into them if we have a superficial notion of love. St. Paul knew that, for the Christian, human love is anything but superficial. It has been made new, finding its Source in the Heart of Christ, which beats with the very Love of the Father. To Paul, for a Christian to speak with Love was to speak from a heart made new by the Gift of friendship with God. This wasn’t a poetic image. It was – and is – a fruit of our Baptism. Paul was not writing of “counterfeits” but of the theological virtue of charity.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, authentic charity is friendship with God. As a theological virtue, charity is infused— poured into our hearts through the grace of the Holy Spirit - not earned. And, as a participation in the life of God, this sanctifying grace makes possible a love which is above but not against our nature.

For St. Paul, this supernatural virtue of charity is a requisite for evangelization not because it supplies articulate responses, but because it makes loving God and neighbor one and the same act. Reborn as children of God by the grace of Baptism, we have the capacity to allow God to love in and through us.

While charity animates the other virtues and makes use of our personal gifts, its well-spring lies not in us or our own aptitudes, but in God’s freely given gift of grace. This sanctifying grace received at Baptism transforms us from within so that – in Christ – we become partakers of the divine nature. In fact, friendship with God is really another way of speaking about the life of sanctifying grace. It is a life meant to be shared with others. Having been made new with God’s life and filled with his love, we want others to share these gifts. Love can’t help itself. It needs to give!

While there are many useful books, videos, public speakers, and retreat programs to jump start evangelization in our schools and parishes, charity, which always presupposes faith, is the evangelization starter kit that we simply cannot do without. Charity is a dynamic relationship that is described by Cardinal John Henry Newman as a “catching force” that allows others to “look up and see no longer us but only Jesus.” Only He, of course, can give grace; but He desires to use us as his instruments in drawing others to Himself.

Charity as a theological virtue is a love more profound and transforming than anything that we can offer through our own efforts. This must be so, for the source and supplier of this love is Love Himself. St. Paul is not asking the Corinthians to improve their communication skills. Rather, aware of the transformative power of friendship with God, he is insisting that it is charity, not oratorical skills, that will win hearts. Without the life of God flourishing within us, our words, however eloquent, run the risk of merely blending with the noise of modern living. How important it is to know that the greatest gift we can give our neighbor is our own openness to the transforming love of God. And, how freeing to recognize that this friendship is a gift that God wishes to share in abundance.

There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

We all want true friends. But how many of us know what friendship is? True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness explains what friendship is, why we seek it, and why it is often hard to find.

Philosopher John Cuddeback deftly weaves the timeless wisdom of the Greeks and of Sacred Scripture into a practical wisdom that will show you the path to the most rewarding of human achievements-being a friend.

Available through FOCUS Store (www.shopfocus.org)

Recommended Reading

In the process of establishing the Order in 1216, Dominic founded the first group of cloistered nuns to support the ministry of preaching by their prayers and penance. What a grace for us then, during the 800th Anniversary of the Order to welcome members of the Association of Dominican nuns in North America, who held their assembly at our Motherhouse September 13-23, 2016. We exchanged mutual appreciation for each other's roles in the Order, knowing that the fruitfulness of the Apostolate depends on their lives of dedicated prayer.

Appreciating the gift that our Latino brothers and sisters are to the Church and to our country, the community has sent a team of sisters to serve in the Hispanic catechist formation programs for the Dioceses of Nashville, Tennessee and Lexington, Kentucky.

At Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Nashville, girls of the "Guadalupanas" club sing together as a choir, pray together, have devotional processions, and support each other in the living of their faith. On Saturdays, 18 sisters teach sacramental preparation classes (in English) and assist with regular lessons once a month, having the joy of sharing their faith with others.

St. Helena Catholic Church, Clayton, GA August 2­8, 2016

Because faith is born and nourished within the family, the sisters are also sentin answer to invitations from various parts of the country to provide workshops on Praying as a Family. The workshops are given both in English and Spanish. (For more information click on the picture below.)

At a parish in Clayton, Georgia, the event was coupled with catechist formation and a Jubilee Day of Mercy for the children.

a homemade Holy Door

Jasper,IN - Home-school co-op

At the kind invitation of Father Denis Duvelius, Sister Peter Marie and Sister Mary Esther participated in a vocation night at St. Mark's parish in Tell City, Indiana. On the way, they stopped in Jasper, Indiana where a home-school co-op invited the sisters to share their vocation stories and answer questions on discernment.

St. Mark's Church Tell City, IN

October Travels

~Ball State Univ. Oct. 7 ~Univ. of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN ~Texas Tech Univ., Lubbock, TX Oct. 7-9

~Franciscan Univ., Steubenville, OH Oct. 13-16 ~THIRST Conference ~Univ. of Mary Bismarck, ND ~ Oct. 25-30

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.... There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.�