Our Lady's Message: Prayer and Penance

Since the Fall of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, pain and suffering have been part of every person’s earthly life. Yet there are certain moments in human history that seem darker than the rest, as if all of humanity were racing toward the edge of a cliff. While history will tell whether we are experiencing one of those times now, there is no question that the pain and suffering of our day is, in many ways, unprecedented. During the month of October, it is good to once again remember what we have been told repeatedly by our Lady when she has appeared in our troubled past – as followers of Christ, we are called to undertake penance and prayer.

The specific prayer recommended time and again by Our Lady is the Holy Rosary. We have written before about praying the Rosary, this most beautiful prayer of our Lady that guides us to meditate on the Gospel and leads us to her Son and our Savior Jesus. It is a prayer that changes hearts and lives as it calls down God’s grace and transforms us as it keeps us under the protective mantle of our Blessed Mother. During October, the month devoted to the Holy Rosary, we invite you to join us in renewing a commitment to this prayer.

But what about penance, the other side of this coin? If all is mercy and we are forgiven, why does God require penance?

Most of us approach penance from the wrong direction. We hear “penance” and we immediately equate it with a disagreeable hardship, something we endure for a time, like giving up chocolate Lent, or something we are told to do by the priest in confession. So, we add “penance” to a to-do list and… Check! Done! Now we can move on to something more pleasurable. But that’s not exactly what God meant when He said “take up your cross”, and it’s not how the Church and saints understand penance. As Dom Hubert van Zeller points out in his book, “Approach to Penance”, these may be acts of penance, and are indeed often a good place to start, but true penance goes much deeper than that.

True penance demands a complete surrender of self to the will of God. Penance that is worth anything is not simply a turning from something, but it is a turning to Someone.

Often our acts of penance are inspired by feelings of remorse. We recognize we did something wrong or are overly attached to something (or someone) and we are remorseful. Yet, true penance does not stop at remorse – it must go forward to trust. It is this confusion of remorse and penance that leads to seeing penance as only external acts to be performed instead of a habitual disposition of the soul – a virtue – to be cultivated. Penance as a virtue begins in humility - in acknowledging that God is all and compared to God we are nothing - AND it goes further to have complete confidence and trust in God’s loving mercy.

Why does this matter? Because everyone is called to penance, but not everyone is called to perform the heroic acts of penance we often read about in the lives of the saints. Dom Hubert van Zeller warns us that if we approach penance as only acts to be performed, then we risk falling into one of two errors.

First, we may avoid true penance all together. We say to God, “I’ll give this, but not that”, which means we haven’t really given our whole selves to Him. We can also fall into pride by going down our list of sacrifices and congratulating ourselves at how much we’ve given God. In both cases, the emphasis is on the “I”. It is much better to say, “God, here I am. Take whatever, whenever, however You want.” And then trust that He will give you the grace and strength you will need when He takes you at your word.

The second error we can fall into is to have the desire to deny ourselves, but to be disillusioned because we can’t do as much as the saints, or even perhaps other individuals we know – we aren’t strong enough, or our vocations don’t allow us to perform such heroic acts of penance. Yet penance as a virtue means that the merit of the act is based on the intention of the will. It is the denial of self that is the substance of true penance.

Remember what Jesus said about the poor woman who gave two coins in the collection - she gave more than all the others who came before her because she gave from her poverty; she gave all she had to give. That is all Jesus asks of us - to willingly give all, whether that means two coins or 20 coins doesn’t matter to Him, as long as it is everything.

If we have the desire to give ourselves to God through penance - whether to atone for our own sins or in reparation for the sins of others - it is because God has first instilled in us that desire. This should give us greater faith and hope in Him, because along with the desire, He will give us the grace - Jesus Himself will help us - to complete the gift. Yet we must keep in mind that penance is the way of the cross. It is the way of love, to be sure, but it is also that way of faith and it is a work. In picking up the cross - in developing the virtue of penance - our sole motive should be to please God. We must also realize that we will be called to bear the cross in a shape we didn’t bargain for and that the really effective part is not what we do by way of self-denial but what God does in us by way of reproducing Jesus’ Passion in our everyday lives.

This is why humility and trust is so important - because when Jesus gives us a small part of His cross, or a thorn from His crown, or a share in the wounds He received under the lash, or the humiliation of being despised and ridiculed by others, He is asking us to join Him in His supreme gift of love. We cannot love Jesus completely if we do not also love what He loves, and He loved the cross. Not because he loves pain and suffering itself, but because He loves the Father’s will and He loves us and it is the cross that bridges the way between Him and us.

So how do we put all this into practice? How do we know what specific acts of penance God may be asking us to undertake to cultivate the virtue of penance in our souls?

Only grace will reveal what specifically we are to do, how we are to do it, and when or for how long. God speaks to us in many ways; here are some tips for discerning God’s voice:

• Read the Scriptures and the Catechism to learn more about what God and the Church teaches us about prayer and penance.

• Find out what the Pope and our bishops are asking us to do (i.e., are they asking the faithful to engage in specific prayers or acts of penance, such as fast days?).

• Seek counsel from a wise confessor or spiritual director. This is especially important before taking on more rigorous acts of penance. Remember, God prefers obedience to sacrifice.

• Consider your current disposition (i.e., temperament, health, etc.), vocation, and circumstances. God will not call us to take on crosses that are truly beyond our strength or in conflict with fulfilling our vocations (though, admittedly at first, it may feel like it!).

• Spend time in prayer and ask God for direction, then listen to what He speaks in your heart. And if you feel a nudge that doesn’t go away, take that seriously. Again, because we are approaching penance as a virtue and total gift of self, our prayer to God is not, “God what more can I give you today?” because, if we have truly given Him everything, we cannot give Him “more”. Rather, our prayer becomes, “God, I’ve given you all of me and with the help of your grace, I renew that gift of self. What would you have me do today?”

Finally, because penance is a virtue to be cultivated, it will take time and practice to grow strong in it. So, when we stumble, remember Jesus also fell under the weight of the cross - offer your weakness to Him with confidence, ask for the help of our Blessed Mother, rise and press forward once more. For the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Assumption Anticipation: A New Postulant to Arrive!

After waiting longer than anticipated due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we are finally able to welcome our newest postulant-to-be on Saturday, the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary!

The time of postulancy is a time of committed discernment. Before entering the monastery as a postulant, a young woman has already spent more than a year getting to know the community (and the community, her). She has completed her aspirancy period, which requires a month-long stay inside the enclosure. She has now given up most of her possessions, her car, her apartment, and her job, because she has been led by God to believe this really could be the vocation He has called her, and the community has affirmed this possibility by accepting her application to the postulancy. But no formal commitment has yet been made, nor even a commitment to enter into a formal commitment. Rather, the postulancy is a time of learning more about what that commitment will entail, with the joys and crosses of religious life and observance of the Rule and the Constitutions of the Nuns of the Order of Preachers.

A calling to the cloistered life is a mystery, that is, it requires faith to see its beauty and importance. How wonderful it is to be called to give unceasing praise to God in the liturgy, seven times a day on behalf of all the faithful, to seek the face of God for the salvation of souls! God doesn’t call everyone to this path to love, but for those He does call and who respond generously, He gives abundantly more in return.

Will you join us in praying for our postulant-to-be as she also makes her last preparations to enter, as well as praying for her family and loved ones. And please too remember all those God is calling to take the next step of faith and trust in their own vocation journeys.

Deo gratias!

Who are the Dominican Nuns? Premieres today!

When people hear that the Order of Preachers includes cloistered nuns, many scratch their heads - huh?! The puzzlement deepens when they learn how the nuns came to be: that Our Holy Father Dominic was moved with compassion for the salvation of souls, but before he sent out his first Friars Preachers, Divine Providence led him to found a monastery of women who would be the first Nuns of the Order of Preachers. After all, how can a person preach if he or she never goes outside the walls of their home? What do cloistered Dominican nuns do all day? Who are the Dominican nuns and what place do we have in the Church and Order of Preachers?

We are excited to invite you to the premiere of a new short video we’ve produced: “Who are the Dominican nuns?” It will premiere on both YouTube and Facebook today at 4 p.m.

Invite your friends to a watch party and let us know what you think! Also, be sure to Subscribe to our YouTube channel and Like our Facebook page to receive notifications about all our future video projects.

One Hour That Can Change Everything

This past Sunday we celebrated our monastic community’s feast day: Corpus Christi Sunday. And while it was an unprecedented celebration due to COVID-19 – no friends and family and Dominican brothers and sisters filling our chapel for Mass and Benediction, no reception after – one thing, the most important thing, did not change in the day’s liturgy and our keeping of holy hours – the remembrance and adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist.

One of our monastery’s practices that we inherited from one of our “grandmother” monasteries in France was a devotion to our Eucharistic Lord. The practice of perpetual adoration was first introduced to a Dominican monastery at Oullins, France, and every monastery that can trace its roots to Oullins inherited the privilege and practice of perpetual adoration, including the first Dominican monastery founded in the United States. Our monastery is also part of this line of perpetual adoration monasteries and it is one of the reasons why we were asked to found in San Francisco – to bring perpetual adoration to the Bay Area. How beautiful it is to see perpetual adoration chapels and holy hour devotions in so many parishes and kept by so many people in our area and beyond!

In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, Venerable Fulton Sheen outlines some of the reasons why he began the practice of keeping a daily holy hour and why he encouraged everyone to make the same commitment.

1. The practice of keeping a holy hour is actually not a devotion – it is a sharing in the work of redemption. On the night Jesus experienced His agony in the garden, the night he was to be betrayed by one of his own and arrested and convicted to death, the night evil seemed to be let loose and it looked like it might win after all, Jesus asked his disciples to wait and pray with him. He was asking for an hour of redemption to combat the hour of evil in the world.

2. The night of his agony was the only time Jesus asked anything of his disciples, and he did not ask for activity – he asked for companionship. In particular, he singled out his three closest disciples, Peter James and John, to be particularly vigilant with him, as he was “sorrowful unto death”. He also advised them it was to their benefit that they keep watch and pray because he didn’t want his disciples to be caught off-guard, which they were as they gave into sleep. The same holds true for us – when we allow ourselves to spiritually slumber, we too are caught off-guard by temptation and evil.

3. The third reason Archbishop Sheen gives for keeping a holy hour is so that we may be made more and more into the likeness of Jesus.

“Looking at the Eucharistic Lord for an hour transforms the heart in a mysterious way as the face of Moses was transformed after his companionship with God on the mountain. Something happens to us similar to that which happened to the disciples at Emmaus. On Easter Sunday afternoon when the Lord met them, He asked why they were so gloomy. After spending some time in His presence, and hearing again the secret of spirituality – ‘the Son of Man must suffer to enter into His Glory’ – their time with Him ended, and their ‘hearts were on fire.’”

To be sure, keeping a daily or even weekly holy hour is not always easy. Sacrifices of time and energy must be made. Archbishop Sheen describes a few of his experiences – missing social engagements in order to keep his Holy Hour commitment, having to rise extra-early to spend a holy hour before a day of travel, getting locked in churches at night because the pastor forgot to let him out at the end of the hour, falling asleep during a holy hour because he was so tired, and hours spent in dry, distracted prayer. We can relate to many of these.

Nonetheless, “the purpose of the Holy Hour is to encourage deep personal encounter with Christ” and he considered his holy hour the “hour that makes the day”. Jesus is always there in the Eucharist, waiting for us. To gaze upon Him is to be reminded of how much He loves us NOW. Not just at Calvary – He comes to us today in the Eucharist. And He desires to transform us, to set us free. But He cannot do this unless we do our part and welcome the encounter.

But what if we can’t make it to a church or chapel for a holy hour with our Eucharistic Lord? In the days of COVID-19, access to churches and the Blessed Sacrament has been rare or simply not possible for most of us. Should we just forget the idea of keeping a holy hour with Jesus? Archbishop Sheen has a suggestion for that as well.

In speaking to Protestant pastors, he encouraged them to also keep a continuous Holy Hour of prayer to combat the forces of evil in the world:

“You are not blessed with the same Divine Presence in your churches that I believe we possess. But you do have another presence that we do also, and that is the Scripture. At the [Second] Vatican Council we had a solemn procession of the Scriptures into the Council every morning as a form of the Presence of God. You could make the Hour before the Scripture.”

So, if you are unable to keep a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, keep one with the Holy Scriptures, which is truly a form of Christ’s presence. We need these hours of prayer to combat the evil in our world, to allow Jesus to transform us and make us truly free. And Jesus thirsts for our companionship. One hour, that’s all it takes. The length of time of a primetime drama. But it can change the course of history – how shall we spend this hour?

Strong Sisters: Bl. Diana and Cecilia

If you want inspiration for living feminine genius as a holy woman of strength, fortitude with gentleness, today’s Dominican saints give plenty to ponder. Blessed Diana and Cecilia were two of the first nuns of the Order of Preachers in Italy, and both of them faced difficult challenges in pursuing their vocation to give themselves completely to God as His bride.

Bl. Cecilia was a nun in Rome when she and her community first met Saint Dominic. Our Holy Father Dominic had been asked by the pope to reform the women religious of Rome, as most of them had grown lax in their observances. Dominic’s proposal to the nuns was to essentially come together and refound themselves under his direction as nuns of the Order of Preachers. His words and the workings of the Holy Spirit persuaded them. But before they could complete the arrangements, their families protested. They had gotten used to the lax practices, to being able to enter and leave the monastery enclosure and visit their female relatives in the monastery. The nuns began to waiver. Dominic came again and strengthened them in their resolve and they didn’t look back. When the way was made for a monastery of nuns to be founded in Bologna, made possible in large part because of Bl. Diana, Bl. Cecilia was asked to go to Bologna and teach the new nuns there the ways of the Dominican life.

To read the story of Bl. Diana is to meet a dynamic, passionate woman. From a noble background, she loved fashion and parties, and was considered beautiful and charming. Her parents had high hopes for a good marriage for her. Then, one day, a couple Dominican friars came into Bologna where they lived and began preaching. Diana was captivated…and experienced a turning point in her life. She began to engage in long periods of prayer and undertook acts of greater penance and sacrifice. When the friars needed a place to build a priory, Diana convinced her father to give them the land they needed. But when she decided to build a monastery for Dominican nuns and enter herself, her family forbid it.

Not to be outdone, she came up with a plan to have her way. She visited an Augustinian monastery and, to the surprise of her party visiting with her, she suddenly slipped inside and donned the habit! Stunned, they immediately reported her actions to her family. Her brothers were sent to fetch her, forcibly if necessary. And in the struggle, Diana suffered a broken rib that left her convalescing, imprisoned in her family home. Her family forbid that she have contact with the friars, but Dominic, and after his death his successor, Blessed Jordan of Saxony, slipped to her notes and words of encouragement. Eventually, due to the influence of Bl. Jordan and the workings of the Holy Spirit, Divine Providence cleared the way for Diana’s vocation - her family relented and she happily joined the ranks of Dominican nuns at the new monastery in Bologna.

We are indebted to these women in many ways: it is because of Bl. Cecilia that we know the appearance of Our Holy Father Dominic; her description of his physical appearance is the only one we have. And we are grateful for Bl. Diana and her community; they have preserved letters from Bl. Jordan to Diana which reveal much about the second Master of our Order and some of the happenings at the time, as well as provide a beautiful description of spiritual friendship. And they each model for us feminine genius lived with ingenuity, fortitude and grace under fire.

Blessed Diana and Blessed Cecilia, pray for us!

Music Release for Pentecost

Chant is an integral part of our liturgical prayer and as a nun learns how to chant with the community, it becomes like breathing - it is the sacred music of the Holy Spirit. We simply become His instruments. Yet over the years, we’ve had many requests for us to record some of the chants we sing and make them available to the public.

This is the year! In celebration of Pentecost, we've recorded three singles under the album title “Veni Creator Spiritus” and arranged to have them released on Sunday, May 31st. Check your favorite music provider (iTunes, Spotify, etc.); on or after May 31st, where these three songs will be available for download. You can also click here to “Presave and Follow” via Spotify.

Deo gratias!

Sheltering-in-Place? Join Mary in the Upper Room

No doubt about it, we are living in painful and surreal times. As sheltering-in-place has become the “new normal”, some things in life have been forgone, others put on hold. But one thing that can and should grow and flourish is our faith and spiritual life. You are invited to join Mary in the upper room for a day of retreat, right where you are, as you are!

Wherever you are in life, whatever you’ve got going on, take a pause on Saturday May 30th to recenter and refuel. Bring your stresses, your worries, your shelter-in-place hair. Come as you are to live more authentically and fully.

Mary’s Retreat is a free one-day Catholic virtual retreat for young women (but all ages and men are welcome to register for the talks), taking place on Saturday, May 30th from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

We are created with beauty and potential, yet our world pressures us to fit a mold of perfection. Let’s set aside a Saturday to do something different, allow ourselves to be unfinished, and walk with each other towards greater wholeness as women.

The speakers include Sister Joseph Marie, O.P. of our community. Her talk is “Living Your Fiat” - “we all want to joyfully say YES to God. But how do we know His plan when we are faced with an overwhelming number of seemingly good choices in life? Sister Joseph Marie will share with you some principles to help you know God’s will and give you a few tools and examples for making wise decisions.” Other talks include: Mary, A Model for Discovering Our Feminine Identity; Superpowers from the Holy Spirit; God’s Plan for Healing; and What Women Saints Can Teach Us.

Plan to spend the day before Pentecost with Mary in the upper room in prayer and fellowship with other young women, right where you are, as you are. Visit Mary’s Retreat for more details and register today!

The Bride’s Love of God: The Response, Uniquely Dominican

Part Three of the Portrait of a Cloistered Dominican Nun Series.

A Dominican nun lives a contemplative life at the heart of the Church – something in common with all cloistered contemplative religious. But the full flowering of her contemplative vocation is uniquely Dominican: the liturgy and sacraments form the foundation of her prayer; her mind is renewed and enlightened through study, which guides her will and disciplines her heart; through Dominican common life, she becomes one in heart and mind with her sisters in God; and by living her vows as a cloistered nun, she preaches to others that God alone suffices.

Her life is liturgical and sacramental, that is, a life founded on liturgical prayer and the sacraments. As a cloistered religious, the Church entrusts to her the mission of praying for and on behalf of the Church and the world. Seven times a day, she is called to the choir by her Beloved, to make an offering of sacrifice and praise and call down His graces for His people and the world. This grace, like blood in a body, is sent out to all the Church’s members for their needs. She also cherishes the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. As the sacrament of unity, it is the sacrament of contemplation, the sacrament of eternal life. It is Christ Jesus Himself.

The life of a Dominican nun is doctrinal. Her love for her Beloved is nourished through her study. If we do not know our faith, we run a grave risk of falling into error or even heresy. Study submits us to Truth and the teaching authority of the Church. Study is also absolutely indispensable for apostles. For we cannot love what (or who) we do not know – a Dominican nun studies so as to know her Beloved all the more and to be able to express her affective knowledge of Him to others. God grants us knowledge of Him in our heart through love; but study gives us the words and concepts to share the fruits of our contemplation with others, and so to lead them into the mysteries of the faith.

A Dominican nun lives a fraternal life; she takes active part in her monastic community and in the Dominican Order. As love is at the heart of the Church, so too is love at the heart of the Dominican Order. All members of the Order are called to live a common life together, as the early Church lived, calling nothing one’s own, but sharing everything in common. A Dominican nun gladly gives up not only her possessions, but she puts her knowledge, talents, and skills, to common use of the community, as God, through the superiors, see fit. A Dominican nun also shares freely her spiritual riches of soul and mind. All she has, all she is, is put at the service of the Order. Through her community, she is exercised in the virtues, which leads her to greater contemplation. Her life of fraternal charity manifests the Holy Trinity.

And finally, through her religious profession and living of the vows, the life of a Dominican nun is sacrificial. At baptism, every Christian dies to self and the world and is reborn as a new creation in Christ Jesus. At profession, that death and rebirth is renewed in a profound way - she is consecrated to Almighty God. She has become a “house of prayer”, set aside as sacred for God alone. Her sacrifice is herself and she gives herself daily by living according to the Rule, Constitutions and laws of the Order. The religious observances and rubrics of the Order, such as silence, fasting, abstinence, wearing of the habit, prayers, and so forth, stand as one of the means to achieve the ends of the Order. When a Dominican nun fulfills her vows and lives the observances with fidelity, they daily immolate her – through them she joins her Beloved on Calvary as she dies to self and the world for love.

Suffering, Grace and Love: Catherine of Siena

Saint Catherine of Siena. There’s no earthly reason we should know who this woman is. Born in Siena, she dedicated herself to God and a life of secluded prayer. For many years, she was happy to remain hidden in a room of her family’s home – her and God alone. Then, God gave her a commission. In a time when women did not venture too far from either home or cloister, God told her, she had work to do – work that would take traveling and advising governors and powerful men…even the pope himself.

Illiterate, yet now a doctor of the Church, her treatise, The Dialogue, and her letters and other writings are some of the most widely read and studied around the world. Most of her writings were dictated to scribes, though she reportedly learned to read and write, being miraculously taught by Christ Jesus Himself. She possessed in a high degree the spirit of St. Dominic and spent herself tirelessly for the salvation of souls, doing good for her country and the Church, including urging the pope to return to Rome after the papacy had spent 70 years in France.

At one point in her life, when the devil was particularly vicious in his attacks against her, she responded, “I have chosen sufferings for my consolation; not only will it not be difficult for me, but delightful, to undergo similar afflictions, and even greater ones, for the love of my Jesus, and as long as His Majesty wills!” Immediately the devil fled and Jesus appeared to her as when He hung on the Cross and consoled her with loving words. “Lord, where were You when my heart was so tormented?” “Daughter,” came the reply, “I was in the midst of your heart!”

At the age of thirty-three, having utterly spent herself, she died.

St. Catherine of Siena’s feast is also very special to our community for another reason. On June 23, 1923, the Holy See published an Indult allowing nuns of those religious orders originally possessing the privilege of solemn vows to re-assume that sacred obligation. As soon as the indult came to the notice of Mother Mary of the Rosary, prioress of our community at that time, she took prompt measures to have the nuns of the community possess their age-old inheritance.

All the necessary communications and arrangements made, the decree received from the Sacred Congregation of the Religious, and the nuns having made a preparatory retreat, on the feast of St. Catherine of Siena in 1929, His Excellency, Archbishop Hanna , D.D. of San Francisco, arrived at Corpus Christi Monastery and read the official papers to the nuns at the grille. Then, Mother Mary of the Rosary made solemn profession into the hands of the Archbishop and each nun then made solemn profession into the hands of their prioress. The eventful ceremony closed with a full-hearted Te Deum.

The nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery, Menlo Park, have the unique honor of being the first in the United States to avail themselves of this indult and bind themselves under solemn vows.

St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

Our Only Hope

For most of us, the beginning of Lent was like any other. We chose which Lenten practices we wanted to do, if possible, we made a point to go to Mass on Ash Wednesday, and we settled in for another 40-day season of purple. But we did not count on this: ending Lent and spending the Holy Triduum sheltering at home, social distancing, with sickness, death, economic difficulties and stress looming over us. We did not choose this cross. And yet, because of it, God is using it to give us a tremendous opportunity to more deeply enter into the sacred mysteries of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. What we need, now more than ever, is hope.

Hope is an overused and often little-understood word. Hope, as a theological virtue, is a gift from God infused in our souls at baptism, which enables us to “move and stretch forth toward the arduous good”, that is by hope we reach toward the goodness of God even when it isn’t easy. Hope enables us to desire God above all things and to trust Him for our salvation. Hope anchors us in God, no matter what storms or difficulties may arise. “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf…” (Hebrews 6:19-20).

While it is a gift from God, we must cooperate with God’s grace by exercising the virtue of hope given to us. Right now, we are in a unique place of human history. Nearly the entire world has been knocked off balance – our universal human frailty has been laid bare to us - where will we turn? To whom will we go? What do we really desire? These are questions each of us must answer for ourselves, and, because we change over time (even from moment to moment), we must answer them repeatedly.

Over the next three days as we walk with Jesus through his final days and hours before His death, consider the disciples of Jesus. Two of the most prominent are Peter and Judas. Both were intimate companions of Jesus for three years: they traveled with him, ate with him, shared in his ministry. When given the opportunity to leave, they didn’t, and Peter even professed him the long-awaited Messiah. But what happened that fateful Passover? Why did Judas betray Jesus? Why did Peter deny him?

We are told in the Gospel of John that Judas was a thief – he placed his hope in material goods. He must have had some abilities with money, for he was entrusted with the group’s finances and embezzled from them. We tend to think our weaknesses as our trouble areas, but Judas shows us that it is often our strengths and gifts that can be our downfall. Some commentators have also theorized that Judas was a Zealot and was hoping in a political Messiah that would free the Jews from the power of the Romans; if that is true, then he also desired worldly power. Whatever his motivation, and as with most of us it was likely mixed, Judas sinned against hope in his ultimate despair – he gave up on the goodness of Jesus, on the goodness of God and His mercy.

Peter also sinned against hope in his pride and presumption. He did not trust in God, but rather trusted in himself to stand firm by Jesus, and he failed bitterly. There is another way we can sin through presumption – by taking for granted God’s almighty power or His mercy. Many slip into some kind of presumption all too easily – we give lip service to God, but trust in our own abilities, our wealth, our power or our influence. We think we meant well, we wanted God’s glory, but we wanted it on our terms, in our way, and in our time.

Or perhaps we just didn’t take time for God. We were too busy with our life activities and told ourselves, “I’ll go to Mass / prayer / confession, etc. next week, when things slow down, etc.” Or we put off discerning our vocation or taking a particular action we feel God calling us to do. But the problem with this presumption is that eventually, for all of us, there will be no next week. By not making a decision or taking action, the door will eventually close for good. The result of these presumptions is that, at best, we become lukewarm in our faith, and, at worst, we because haughty and prideful, despising God. Yet, before we console ourselves by thinking lukewarm is better than prideful after all, we should remember Jesus told Saint Faustina that lukewarm souls caused Him His greatest suffering in the garden of his agony.

So what are we to do? Stand firm, take heart, and hope in God.

• If we want hope, we need to humbly ask God for it. Make frequent acts of hope.

O my God, relying on your infinite mercy and promises, I hope to obtain pardon of my sins, the help of your grace, and life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer. Amen.

• Avoid complaining, murmuring and making negative or critical comments. Avoid media, television and movies that have negative messages or dialogue. This does not mean living in a false optimism or denying the truth of something truly sad or evil; but it does mean we put things in proper perspective and keep our eyes on Jesus, His Kingdom and trust He has a much bigger plan for our supreme good.

• Hope is closely linked to the virtues of humility and magnanimity. We need to acknowledge our wretched sinfulness AND acknowledge that we are beloved children of God. The cross tells us both these things - it was the price of our sins, and Jesus embraced it out of infinite love.

• We practice magnanimity by seeking to do great things for God. And we need to see “great things” as God sees them. By the world’s standards, Mary, Jesus, the disciples and most of the saints were failures. But God sees and works differently – we need to be unreserved and generous, surrendering to God and let Him work through us as He wills. Begin with small acts of kindness for others. Write a friend or loved one a note or letter expressing your gratitude for that person. Keep gratitude and hope lists - the gratitude list for all the things and people for which your are grateful; the hope list for those you encounter who need encouragement or a boost of hope - commit to pray for them and check in with them periodically.

• Hope is also closely linked with the beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” By hope, we desire God’s goodness, we desire to see Him face to face, we desire heaven for all eternity. And we desire it above all things. To strengthen this desire, we must detach our hearts from anything that keeps us from moving toward God, the “Earthly P’s”: pleasures, possessions, power and prestige. The fifth “P”, pride, underlies all of them as self-centered love. For some of us, this means God will call us to renounce them completely. For others, he asks us to discipline our use of them, holding them with open hands. Begin by giving away items that are burdening you with clutter or which are little used. Give someone a little extra time and attention. Volunteer to help someone who needs an extra hand. Deny yourself little comforts and pleasures and offer your sacrifice to Jesus. If you are used to being in control and making decisions, let someone else take the wheel - this is a great way to practice surrendering: when we do this, we must realize it won’t go all our own way and probably won’t be done as we would do it, but the more we let go of control, the freer we become and the happier we will be.

Over the course of the Triduum, let’s enter into the Gospel passages we hear and read. As our chaplain is fond of saying, it is not a distant tale about someone else. This is our story. How have we failed in the past? How have we betrayed or denied Jesus? How have we run away in fear? Whatever it is, let us bring it to the cross. Let us stand with Mary and Mary Magdalene and John. Let us join our sorrows with theirs, and let us hope for our resurrection day and the eternal joy of seeing God face to face, to know Him as we are known. Hail holy cross, our only hope!