The Riches of Poverty - Fr Sullivan, O.P.

The Year of Consecrated Life: The Riches of Poverty                                                                              — Father James M. Sullivan, O P.

Both the Solemnities of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart often fall among the thirty days of June. This liturgical lesson directs us in some ways to the vow of poverty, because evangelical poverty forms the basis of consecrated life in the Church, and this type of poverty opens up the consecrated person for the riches that await the faithful.

Pope Francis in his preaching for the Vigil of Pentecost on May 18, 2013, reminded those gathered with him: “A poor Church for the poor begins by reaching out to the flesh of Christ. If we reach out to the flesh of Christ, we begin to understand something, to understand what this poverty, the Lord’s poverty, actually is.”

Consecrated persons live the vow of poverty faithfully by not allowing any good thing of this world to fill them up. They live wanting more but never simply settling for what the world wants. They live reaching out to the flesh of Christ, always wanting more of him, in the Eucharist and in the love of his Sacred Heart.

Pope Saint John Paul II in his apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata speaks of the need for evangelical poverty. Because we live amidst a “materialism which craves possessions,” we simply forget other people (#89). The vow of poverty reminds us of “the needs and sufferings of the weakest.” The vow of poverty reminds each of us how our lives could be transformed if we craved God as much as we craved that last possession we ordered online.

(Father James M. Sullivan, O.P., serves as director of the Institute for Continuing Theological Education at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.                                  Magnificat, June 2015, Page 413.

What draws you in? ...not a philosophical doctrine nor a program, but a person

Reflection from Pope Francis: Christianity is a person

"The serpent is the sign for sin. We think of the Book of Genesis: it was the serpent that seduced Eve, that suggested that she sin..." and later God commands [Moses] to lift up the serpent, that is sin, as a flag of victory. It is something that one “cannot understand well if one does not understand what Jesus said in the Gospel. Jesus says...: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me’.” Lifting up the symbol of their sin and transforming it into an instrument of salvation thus represents the redemption which comes from Christ lifted up on the Cross... 
Christianity... is not a philosophical doctrine, it is not a program of life that enables one to be well formed and to make peace. These are its consequences. 

Christianity is a person... 

a person lifted up on the Cross. A person who emptied himself to save us. He took on sin. And so just as in the desert sin was lifted up, here God made man was lifted up for us. And all of our sins were there... One cannot understand Christianity without understanding this profound humiliation of the Son of God, who humbled himself and made himself a servant unto death on the Cross. 

To serve...

Thanks to the mercy of God, we glory in Christ Crucified. And that is why there is no Christianity without the Cross, and there is no Cross without Jesus Christ...

The heart of God’s salvation is his Son who took upon himself our sins, our pride, our self reliance, our vanity, our desire to be like God. A Christian who is not able to glory in Christ Crucified has not understood what it means to be Christian. Our wounds, those which sin leaves in us, are healed only through the Lord’s wounds, through the wounds of God made man who humbled himself, who emptied himself. This is the mystery of the Cross. It is not only an ornament that we always put in churches, on the altar; it is not only a symbol that should distinguish us from others. The Cross is a mystery: the mystery of the love of God who humbles himself, who empties himself.

Where is your sin? Your sin is there on the Cross. Go and look for it there, in the wounds of the Lord, and your sins shall be healed, your wounds shall be healed, your sins shall be forgiven. God’s forgiveness is not a matter of canceling a debt we have with him. God forgives us in the wounds of his Son lifted up on the Cross. 

Pope Francis concludes this homily by expressing our hope, that “the Lord might draw us to himself and that we might allow ourselves to be healed.” 

In this wonderful reflection we are invited to experience being drawn into Christ's Life, to share in His Life's engagement with God's Love; an engagement of eternal life in time that is not limited to a time defined by death. This experience of Life that is not defined by death, but rather one of creation, a 'bringing-something-out-of-nothing', drawing us toward faith and thus healing us, refreshing us and sending us forth to serve.

Easter and a return to Galilee - Pope Francis

Galilee is the place where [the disciples] were first called, where everything began!  To return there, to return to the place where they were originally called...

To return to Galilee means to re-read everything on the basis of the cross and its victory, fearlessly: Do not be afraid.  To re-read everything - Jesus preaching, his miracles, the new community, the excitement and the defections, even the betrayal to re-read everything starting from the end, which is a new beginning, from this supreme act of love.

For each of us, too, there is a Galilee at the origin of our journey with Jesus.  To go to Galilee means something beautiful, it means rediscovering our baptism as a living fountainhead, drawing new energy from the sources of our faith and our Christian experience.  To return to Galilee means above all to return to that blazing light with which Gods grace touched me at the start of the journey.  From that flame I can light a fire for today and every day, and bring heat and light to my brothers and sisters.  That flame ignites a humble joy, a joy which sorrow and distress cannot dismay, a good, gentle joy.

In the life of every Christian, after baptism there is also a more existential Galilee: the experience of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ who called me to follow him and to share in his mission.  In this sense, returning to Galilee means treasuring in my heart the living memory of that call, when Jesus passed my way, gazed at me with mercy and asked me to follow him.  It means reviving the memory of that moment when his eyes met mine, the moment when he made me realize that he loved me.

Today... each of us can ask: What is my Galilee? I need to remind myself, to go back and remember. Where is my Galilee?  Do I remember it?  Have I forgotten it?  Have I gone off on roads and paths which made me forget it?  Lord, help me: tell me what my Galilee is; for you know that I want to return there to encounter you and to let myself be embraced by your mercy. Do not be afraid, do not fear, return to Galilee!

The Gospel is very clear: we need to go back there, to see Jesus risen, and to become witnesses of his resurrection.  This is not to go back in time; it is not a kind of nostalgia.  It is returning to our first love, in order to receive the fire which Jesus has kindled in the world and to bring that fire to all people, to the very ends of the earth.  Go back to Galilee without fear!  Let us be on our way! - Pope Francis