USA Pallottine Retreat July19-24, 2015

Session Four

You Can’t start a fire

Apostolic Task and Jesus Apostle of the Father

Second approach

Issues of Structural Importto help us move

from maintanance to Mission

Technology and the human sciences have altered traditional perspective on man and the world almost beyond recognition. …As a result, there has a gradual erosion of traditional values, and a gradual diminishing of reliance on the power of traditional symbols. …we must find a new language, a new set of symbols, that will enable us to leave our fallen idols behind and rediscover the true God; the God who in Jesus Christ, chose to share our human pilgrimage and make our human destiny his own. (Decree 4 of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus.)

How do you enliven faith. We need to look at the subject of evangelisation.

Michael Paul Gallagher writes;“Today’s world and climate, product of what has been called the ‘postmodernity of the streets’, has resulted in a general culture of desolation, where a vulnerable sense of identity is one of the characteristics of our time. This phenomenon is marked among other things, by fragmentation, boredom, ‘depthless’ floating, indifference, passivity, a retreat to the private cocoon.This culture of ‘postmodernity of the streets’ wounds people in three crusical dimensions of their humanity which are of particular significance for religius identity. It results in:

1] a wounded imagination Imagination is shut down or filled with superficial images so that one is not able to grasp the ‘breadth and length, the height and depth’ of the Gospel of God’s love.

2] a wounded memory Memory loses its power to receive the Gospel through a living tradition so that an ‘alienated immediacy dominates

3} a wounded sense of belonging. The inability to belong, absence of community, the perpetual drift into isolation and loneliness

An unhealthy way of reacting to these challenges of postmodernity is to escape into a privatised spirituality.

If we are to respond creatively and positively to each of these wounds we need first of all to understand their

common origin in the culture that has spawned them and continues to foment this sense of cultural desolation

3 words from Pope Franciscalling us to move out and encounter this generation, to walk with them, talk with them personally:

- Dialogue-Discernment -Frontier –how far do we walk?

Pallotti intended world wide renewal of the Church had to start at the local level connected with a global missional vision.

General Statutes 61,a,b, c, f, and 33 speak of the tasks of the Local Coordination Councils

Cardinal Newman: The Church can be mistaken to be in

decline when it is only changing its form.

Paul VI wrote “The Church is a mystery; it is a reality

imbued with the presence of God. It lies, therefore in the very nature of the Church, to be always open to new and greater exploration.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. For He has anointed me.

To bring Good News to the poorLiberation to captivesNew sight to the blind

To set the oppress freeAnd to proclaim the Lord’s year of

favour. (Lk 4:18)

It’s a matter of seeing familiar things differently

Parish renewal is grounded on the mindset of mission.

A mindset is an intuition that awaits elaboration

Innovation is the key to survivaland growth

Christ Apostle of the Father

Bruce Springsteen: Dancing in the Dark

I get up in the evening And I ain’t got nothing to sayI come home in the morning I go to bed feeling the same wayI ain’t nothing but tired Man, I’m just tired and bored with myselfHey there baby, I could use just a little help

You can’t start a fire You can’t start a fire without a sparkThis gun’s for hire Even if we’re just dancing in the dark

Message keeps getting clearer Radio’s on and I’m moving ‘round the placeI check my look in the mirror I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my faceMan. I ain’t getting nowhere Just living in a dump like thisThere’s something happening somewhere Baby I just know that there is

You can’t start a fire You can’t start a fire without a sparkThis gun’s for hire Even if we’re just dancing in the dark

“Apostle of the Father” comes from Hebrews 3:1

John 3:16 God so loved the world that he sent his Beloved Son, not to condemn the world but so that

through him the world might be saved.

“As a consequence, Jesus is the model of the apostolate of each one of us. As all are called, rather obliged to imitate Jesus, Apostle of the

Father, so all in proporrtion to their condition and state in life, are called to the apostolate”

1983 Code of Canon Law, No 204:

“”all are called to exercise the mission of Jesus Christ which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfil in the

world in accord with the condition proper to each”

St John Paul II, on 22nd June 1986”Continue to increase your commitment so that what Vincent

Pallotti announced and what the Second Vatican Council confirmed, may become a happy reality, and that all become

authentic apostles in the Church and in the world.”

Apostolate – DOING or BEING?

Edith Stein

“ The deeper I am drawn to God, the more he calls me to go out of myself

and go to the world in order to carry the divine life to it”

Pope Francis:Every vocation is an exodus from self,

a journey of adoration of the Lordand of service to my neighbour

Vincent’s Daily Practical Reminder

The more you keep your eyes on Jesus, contemplating him, the more the love for

Jesus will grow in you. As the love of Jesus grows in you, the more your confidence in imitating him will increase. Practise it in your thinking, speaking and acting and in

controlling the affections of your heart. Do it every day.

If you believe in Jesus and strive humbly and confidently to imitate him, you will overcome your faults, and Jesus will take possession of you, and will work in you, and extend his life to you. Jesus

will live and work in you. Didn’t he promise: “The one who has faith in me, will do the works I do, and even greater works” (Jn 12:12). He will fill you with

himself and do everything in you, as Paul experienced: I live, no, not me, Christ lives in me”

(Gal. 2:20).

People today are looking for

a religion of connection

A religion that will connect them with the deeper meaning of their longings, hopes, desires – even

when they’re not really quite sure what it is they long for.

A religion that will enable them to connect with God and, in finding

God, to connect with their deeper selves;

a religion of connection that will enable them to make sense

of their longings, and struggles for a deeper, a fuller life,

You are the centre, you are my life,You are the centre, Lord, of my life.

Come, Lord, and guide me, Lord of my life,

Send me your spirit, Lord of my life,You are the centre, Lord of my life.

a life that will connect them to God in the depths of their own heart and

humanity, at the centre of their being and life, where He has been all along

-so that finding God they will find

themselves and the meaning of their lives as they’ve never found them

before.

Jesus here is showing us the true reality of who our God is, what our

God is really like:a God who is sensitive and

discerning, not misled by outer appearance,

whose priority is not rules for rules sake,

but the healing, restoration and happiness of every human being.

You are the centre, you are my life,You are the centre, Lord of my life,

Come, Lord, and heal me, Lord of my life,

Come Lord and teach me, Lord of my life,

You are the centre, Lord of my life.

Give me your spirit and teach me your ways,

Give me your peace, Lord, and set me free.

You are the centre, Lord of my life

Jesus portrays God’s true face towards us: A God who understands our plight,

who beneath our poverty and brokenness can also see our riches;

a God who speaks to our hopes, responds to our dreams,

a God who wants only life for his children,

the fullness of life here and into eternity.

Jesus reveals the good news of the mystery’s presence within us and

the possibilities of life which are the mystery’s gift to us.He lays the claim of the holy mystery

upon us, the claim of the deepest possibilities of our humanity – all that we can become if we truly let God live in us.

“You were there”, he would say in his Confessions as he looked over the events of his past life, “You were always there. For behold You were within me and I outside.”

“Ask anything”, the Lord said to me. And my mind and heart thought deeply for a second, then replied with just one word, “When?” God’s arms then opened up and I entered Myself. I entered Myself when I entered Christ.”

God says:

Come home to yourself. You will find Me there. You will find yourself, your true self there. And finding Me, you will find courage to trust and venture into life with confidence, a secure foothold from which to relate to the world in wisdom and self-possession.

|USA Pallottine Retreat19 -24 July 2015

End of Session Four