The Apostles Creed - Part 4

Here is the fourth installment of our series on the Apostles Creed:

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

Jesus was sent to suffer and die on a cross for you. Although Jesus was sent on a mission from God to do this, he had to choose as a human being to accept the mission he had been given. And he did. Jesus chose to endure death by crucifixion for you. He chose to go to the cross for you. He endured the pain and suffering in order to show you how precious you are to God. In the eyes of Jesus of Nazareth, you are precious enough to die for. In the eyes of your heavenly Father, you are precious enough to lose a Son for. The death of Jesus was a real death. For the love of Jesus is real love. His death reveals what love really is. His death shows you God’s love for you.

To be continued...

Hopefully by the time of next week's posting, we will have a new Holy Father!  Come Holy Spirit!

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 3

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary.

Your eternal Father has a special sort of Son – an eternal Son. Your eternal Father and his eternal Son live together for all eternity in perfect, infinite love. The perfect infinite, eternal, love between them is called the Holy Spirit. Your heavenly Father, his eternal Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one God somehow. We call this one God “the Holy Trinity.” God the Holy Trinity made you in order to adopt you. The Holy Trinity wants you to take part in its awesome life. Therefore, your heavenly Father has not abandoned you to your wounds, but has sent his eternal Son into the world to come and bring you back to your Father. The Son came to give you the Holy Spirit so that you can take part in the perfect, infinite, eternal love between your heavenly Father and His eternal Son. About two thousand years ago, in the land of Israel, the eternal Son was conceived in the womb of Mary of Nazareth while she was still a virgin. The Holy Spirit worked this conception in her womb. Nine months later, the eternal Son was born of the virgin Mary in the town of Bethlehem as a human being with a human face and a human name – Jesus. Jesus grew up as a carpenter in the town of Nazareth, a Jew among Jews. Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal Son. He is looking for you. He sees you, he knows you through and through, and he loves you. He reveals his love to you in a special way....

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 2

This is the second part in our series on the Apostles Creed. This week we continue to reflect on the creed's first statement:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth.

 

...You and all human beings are wounded. You are wounded in many ways that you are probably not aware of as wounds. For example, not realizing how much your heavenly Father loves you, and going through life without a lively sense of His care and concern for you is a wound that you have. To give another example, you are morally weak – you often find it very difficult to do what you yourself really want to do. This weakness is one of your wounds (and all human beings share this wound). You often fail to consider what the right thing to do is, and even when you do consider it, your passions and emotions blow your thinking one way and another. So knowledge of what is right and wrong often eludes you. This is another sort of wound (and all human beings share this wound as well). Furthermore, there are the wounds that you in particular received from growing up in this society, and from the moral failures of yourself and others. Everyone has their particular wounds as well. Your wounds have the power to ruin your life, and your life will end in tragedy if the wounds are not addressed. No politician, no psychologist, and no professor can adequately address the wounds. Your heavenly Father has not abandoned you to live with your wounds without hope. He has not left you as an orphan in the world to struggle for yourself. No longer do you have to live without hope and without God in the world

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 1

All of us experienced a shock this past week, “like a lightning bolt in a clear blue sky” as Cardinal Angelo Scola put it, when Pope Benedict humbly announced his resignation.  I don’t have anything profound to say.  However, I wish to express my personal gratitude for Pope Benedict XVI and my ongoing prayers for him and the Church at this time, confident that the Holy Spirit is mightily working.

Moreover, as a way of honoring Pope Benedict and his legacy, I would like to offer you a brief series of reflections on the Apostles Creed.  This series serves two purposes.  First, it is an opportunity, during this year of faith, to reflect more deeply on the fundamental content of our faith.  Second, I would like these reflections to serve as an introduction to a future series on Human Formation.  Human formation is a hot topic for religious orders, seminaries and lay communities of all sorts these days.  The Church clearly teaches that grace builds on nature, and, therefore, if grace is to be effective in the lives of disciples, their human nature needs to be understood so that it can heal, develop and become more open to grace.  Yet, to understand our human nature, we need to begin with God, who gifted us with it in the first place.  Therefore, we begin with the Creed.

These reflections are not my own.  They were developed by a priest I know as part of a dialogue with a young woman returning to the faith.  They speak powerfully of the steadfast and personal love of God for each one of us, something Pope Benedict proclaimed time and time again.

At the beginning of each reflection I will place the particular article of the Creed at the top, followed by the reflection.  Let us begin!  Enjoy and be edified!

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth.

You have a Father in heaven, God, who created you. Even before the world began to exist, God your eternal Father thought of you, knew you, loved you, wanted you, and brought you into being. Your life is from Him. Although you need not have existed, He wanted you to exist, and therefore you do exist. Your life was given to you so that you might come to know how much He loves you and to love him in return. You are precious in His eyes. You are priceless to Him. For you are made in his image and likeness. When your eternal Father looks upon you He loves what He sees. He rejoices at the sight of you. Although you do not comprehend how much he loves you and adores you, He has provided a way for you to come to know His incredible love for you. What you are reading is a step on that way.

To be continued…

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

Religious Life and the Presentation

On February 2nd, the Feast of the Presentation, almost twenty of our brothers in temporary vows renewed their profession of poverty, chastity and obedience for another year.  The profession and renewal of religious vows on that feast is a long-standing tradition in the Church because of the light that mystery sheds on the meaning of religious life.

Pope Benedict XVI, in the recent volume of his Jesus of Nazareth Trilogy points out that the Greek word used to describe Mary and Joseph “presenting” Jesus in the temple actually means “offering”, as in priestly offering.  The pope remarks that a deliberate connection is being made between the Presentation and the Crucifixion where Jesus offers himself to the Father as priest and victim “for us men and for our salvation.”    It is His self-gift that saves us and gives us new life.

And it is in response to His self-gift that men and women religious throughout the world make a gift of themselves to God and the Church through the living out of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.  This too is a priestly offering.  As a fruit of baptism, all the baptized now share in the priesthood of the faithful.  While not the same as the ministerial priesthood, it is still a participation in the one priesthood of Jesus Christ.  This means that all that we are, have and do can be united to the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, particularly in the Eucharist, and contribute to our own sanctification and that of the whole world.

This reality is especially true for men and women religious because “in the Church's tradition religious profession is considered to be a special and fruitful deepening of the consecration received in Baptism” (Vita Consecrata, 30).  Thus, through the profession of poverty, chastity and obedience, men and women religious join Jesus, priest and victim, in His one “offering” to the Father.  That’s good news!

God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY


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Vocation to Life

Recently, I saw an excellent, two-part, YouTube video of Fr. Jaques Philippe of the Community of the Beatitudes on discerning one’s vocation.  Fr. Philippe is a well-known and well-respected priest, author and spiritual guide with several books to his credit and many years of pastoral experience.  The video is only twenty minutes long, but chalk-full of practical and spiritual wisdom.  I highly recommend it to anyone at any stage of discernment.  However, don’t view it expecting to find some secret method or magical technique.  Fr. Philippe offers nothing of the kind!  Rather, he emphasizes the time-honored truth that discernment is ultimately about slowly and steadily learning to recognize a Voice, God’s voice calling to us in the depths of our hearts.

He offers several keys to hearing God’s call.  Again these are not necessarily sequential steps.

1. The Desire to give one’s life to God.  We actually want to know what he wants and to do it.
2. Ongoing surrender to the Lord in a loving relationship with Him.  We actually put #1 in practice.
3. Daily prayer.  Desire and Surrender grow here, especially in the practice of Lectio Divina.
4. Daily, ongoing reading of Scripture, especially the gospels.  He says that this practice, in particular, has a way of gradually making us attentive to the heart and mind of God, and therefore, capable of hearing his voice.
5. Speaking to someone we trust about our vocation, especially a spiritual guide.

Fr. Philippe lists other keys in the video, which again, I encourage all of you to check out if you haven’t already.  But let me offer one more from his book, Called to Life.  He writes, “God’s call can concern important life choices and be a vocation in the classic sense (a vocation to the consecrated life, to marriage, to a particular mission in the Church or in society).  Often, though, the calls we receive from God bear upon smaller, everyday things:  an invitation to pardon, an act of confidence in a difficult situation, a service to render to someone, a moment of prayer…. It is as important to detect these calls and consent to them, for, small as they may seem, they mark out the path that leads to a far richer and more abundant life than we would otherwise know.  Every yes to God’s call, even in the least matter, brings an increase of life and strength and encouragement, for God gives himself to those who are open to his calls and confers more freedom upon them” (Philippe, 10-11).

With each “yes” to these small calls comes more strength, more encouragement, more freedom, all of which are needed for ultimately saying, “yes” to the great call that God puts on our life.  Our first vocation is a vocation to life itself, to living “in a more intense and beautiful way, engaging human life as it is with more confidence “ (Philippe, 4).  Those who live this first vocation well will not fail to know and choose their ultimate vocation and, therefore, will not fail to be the happy and fruitful people God created them to be.

Have courage, God is calling you!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

+ Discerning Your Vocation Part 1
+ Discerning Your Vocation Part 2

Discipleship: An Unexpected Journey

I recently saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of a trilogy of movies based upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s marvelous prelude to his Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  I found myself deeply moved and inspired by the movie, especially the character of Bilbo Baggins and his reluctant struggle to accept an invitation to step out of his comfort zone and make an “unexpected journey”.  While not an immoral hobbit, Bilbo was living a very comfortable, “I’m ok, you’re ok, leave me alone” lifestyle.  He was minding his own business, eating (several meals a day), sleeping, smoking his pipe, reading his books and maps, and seems perfectly content to live for the next meal, nap or smoke.  However, the good wizard Gandalf showed up at his front door and disrupted all of that, inviting Bilbo on a journey of epic proportions, and not taking “no” for an answer!  Before they set out, Bilbo asked if Gandalf could guarantee his safe return.  Gandalf said that he could not, but then assured Bilbo that if he did return, he would not be the same person that he was when he started.  It was as if to say, if he made this journey, Bilbo would become the person he was created to be.  What Bilbo gradually began to realize was that before he chose the journey, the journey had already chosen him—he was made to do this. 

            Brothers, I find Bilbo’s struggle to accept Gandalf’s invitation so moving because it speaks to both the struggle of vocational discernment and the on-going struggle of discipleship.  Vocational discernment can indeed be a journey, sometimes a reluctant and grueling one, as we seek to distinguish between the voice of God, our own voice, and the voice of the enemy (the world, the flesh, and the devil).  That’s why we feel a sense of victory and peace when we are able to surrender and say “yes” to what God is asking of us.  However, the journey is not over at that point!  Really, it is just beginning.  Vocation discernment is about saying “yes” to the journey of discipleship, but the living out of our vocations is about actually making that journey.  And we quickly realize, as Bilbo and his companions did, that it is an “unexpected journey”, and that the fulfillment of our “yes” is full of peaks and valleys, joys and sorrows, darkness and light, defeat and victory.  And through it all the Lord is molding us into our true selves.

            We witness a similar dynamic in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  At first, the visit of the Angel Gabriel deeply troubled her.  She didn’t fully understand his greeting (what did it mean that she was “full of grace”?) or the invitation being extended to her:  “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?”  But the angel Gabriel assured her that “nothing will be impossible for God” and that she was not to rely upon her own power, but that of the Holy Spirit.  He helped her to realize that she was being asked to say “yes” to a journey that had already said “yes” to her.  It wasn’t a journey she fully grasped; she accepted it amidst the darkness of faith not completely knowing what would be demanded of her.  While she experienced truly unfathomable joy as a result of her “yes”, she also experienced untold sorrow as well.  And yet, ultimately, her “yes” changed history, bringing salvation to those of us who accept it.

            Blessed John Paul II proclaimed that “Mary teaches Christians to live their faith as a demanding and engaging journey, which, in every age and situation in life, requires courage and constant perseverance.”  And so, we look to her this Advent and Christmas not only for the grace to say “yes” to the journey of discipleship, but for the courage and perseverance to live that “yes” through every “unexpected” twist and turn.  If we do so, our unexpected journey will lead us to unexpected joy!

Merry Christmas to you all!

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY