USA Pallottine Retreat July19-24, 2015

Session Two

Everybody’s got a hungry heart

God Infinite Love

Everybody’s got a hungry heart

Bruce Springsteen

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, JackI went out for a ride and I never went backLike a river that don't know where it's flowingI took a wrong turn and I just kept going

Everybody’s got a hungry heartEverybody’s got a hungry heartLay down your money and you play your partEverybody’s got a hungry heart

I met her in a Kingstown barWe fell in love I knew it had to endWe took what we had and we ripped it apartNow here I am down in kingstone again

Everybodys got a hungry heart...

Everybody needs a place to restEverybody wants to have a homeDon't make no difference what nobody saysAint nobody like to be alone

Everybodys got a hungry heart...

Jane Fonda: “I feel a presence, a reverence humming within me that was, and is, difficult to articulate”

Gerald May: “in my 20 years of listening to the yearnings of peoples’ hearts, I am convinced that human beings have an inborn desire for God … Regardless of how we describe it, it is a longing for love. It is a hunger to love, to be loved, and to move closer to the Source of love. This yearning is the essence of the human spirit, it is the origin of our highest hopes and most noble dreams” (Addiction and Grace)

The central piece of the Jigsaw

What is your image of God?

When did God become a person for you?

“All things exist by participation in Divine Being.”“Since God in his very essence is Being, created being must be his proper effect;

as to ignite is the proper effect of fire”Thomas Aquinas

“You must be perfect as your heavenly Father

is Perfect” (Mt 5:48)

Pope Francis on prayer

In Prayer there are two elements heaven and the heart, one in the

transcendent reaches of God’s BeingThe other in the human heart

John of the Cross: “God in his Being is infinitely distant no created thing can naturally attain God, an abyss between God and creatures ... Only the abyss of faith can reach God

God Infinite Love

Vincent created in God’s image his heart’s desire, longing to

respond to God’s love

BonaventureUse every created thing to climb up to God

• Vincent: - especially the created humanity of Jesus, the God-Man, Mary… all created things.

• Augustine: “walk in the man and you will attain God”

His Manifesto

• 1816 Vincent writes his Manifesto (Protesta Generale) in which he intends to climb the ladder of created being to reach God – from the created humanity of Jesus, Mary, saints, every created thing, animals, inanimate, every elementary molecule, every virtuous action, infinitely multiplied to reach God.

• Reverence for every person and created thing

Pallotti’s Home

Narrow Street

“I wish to be perpetually in hospitals and prisons … to alleviate the miseries of the poor, the illnesses of the sick, to teach the ignorant the science of the saints … I want to help and be compassionate toward people worn out and weighed down with work or heavy loads, poor women afflicted with domestic cares, in fights between husbands and wives …”

“I would like to become food to satisfy the hungry, clothes to cover the naked, drink to refresh the thirsty, medicine and health to cure the infirmities of the crippled, the mutilated, the deaf and dumb. I would like to become light to illuminate the spiritually and physically blind” (Vincent Pallotti)

Infinite Love must lead to Universal (Catholic) Apostolate

•To Enlist every person

•To use every thing (every means) for Apostolate

Santo Spirito In Sassia

“The spirit of the consecration consists of a very sacred commitment which each and every being

has, lay person, religious or priest, to always live in God, to speak for God, and to use the senses of the body, the power of the soul , and all created things

for the greater sanctification of oneself and one’s neighbour”

Vincents’ experience of the infinite God, was not one of drivenness but the discovery of the mystery of God whose very essence is love. A God who loves us with unconditional love, a love which can never be withheld or withdrawn, regardless of one’s acceptance or rejection of it.

The heart of this mystery of Love disclosed in the Christian story is that this God of love created

us because he desires a relationship with us; because he desires to share his love with us. And so

he called us into being, into life, as the first step in calling us into ever deeper relationship with himself.

This relationship is not something added to our existence – as if we were first created and then

established in relationship with God. No, God in the very act of calling us into existence, is by that very

fact drawing us into relationship with himself, because he loves us and wants us to exist, to live,

and indeed, to live in relationship with himself for ever.

Every human being of every race, of every religion, of every place, has been created in relation to God, insofar as they have been created human; their very existence IS their relationship with God. The whole

process of our formation should be to bring people to a sustained and living awareness of the reality of this relationship.

This relationship is such that it is impossible for us to step outside of it. There is no place for us to exist

outside of God and relationship with God

This is not a static state of affairs but a dynamic reality. For God in creating us never stops drawing

us, if we will let him, into ever deeper loving relationship with himself.

Not content with loving us, God’s desire was and is to love us with the very same love with which he has

loved his own Son from all eternity. As a first step God chose to create us in the very image of that

divine Son, so that, looking at us, he sees the features of his own divine Son.

From this we see that our human nature, down to the last strand of our DNA, has been created and

patterned in the likeness of Christ, so that to become like Christ is to become authentically human

as God created us to be. Calling us into existence as images of his Son

Christ, we are loved with the very love with which God the Father loves his only-begotten child.

Created in the image of the Son, we are by that fact, able to share in the intimacy of the Son’s relationship with God whereby we dare to call the Mystery that is

God, ‘Abba”, my Father. That is the heart and substance of the Christian life.

But it’s not that created in the image of Christ we are all clones of Christ. As we go deeper into the mystery of our creation, the truth is more wonderful. It is that Christ wants not simply to live IN us; he wants to live AS us.. He wants to find in the individuality of each

one of us, a unique, an original expression of himself – and for this he needs our cooperation.

The divine beginnings of conversion lie in the calling and drawing of God’s love that never ceases, drawing

us into relationship with himself and into becoming who we’re called to be

in deep relationship with himself.

On one side we have the drama of divine desire a God who desires, wants, loves and never ceases to call us into an ever deeper relationship with himself

‘the divine solicitation of grace.’ For God, if we will let him, will never allow us to stagnate, but calls us to

unending life and to becoming our true self in him.

On the other, human side, this desire for God finds its echo in the desirre of the human person. We are

creatures of desire; our whole being is an invocation, a cry- for- meaning-in-the-process-of-coming-to-

oneself. As a result , the human being is the creature of the restless heart,

of the desire for the fulfilling ‘Other’

At our deepest level, then, it can be said that human nature IS desire; that human nature is a resonance to Divine mystery which precedes,

envelops and lovingly anticipates us at the heart of all reality – in the eyes of a child, the smile of a

friend, the disappointment of an anticipated promotion that never came through – calling us to be ourselves as God wills us to be, in the likeness of his Son. These desires are the movement of the

Holy Spirit herself within our hearts calling us beyond ourselves, beyond our limited visions.For to be like Christ as God created us to be

is to be authentically human

Vincent’s chronologically being led into Christ and through his humanity into the depths of God

• 1. Christ crucified: open to crucified people

• 2. Christ’s perfect response to the Father• 3. Jesus my Firstborn Brother (Rom 8:29)• 4. Christ, Apostle of the Father• 5. Christ: a fool of love for me• 6. A cosmic Christ

1. CHRIST CRUCIFIEDVINCENT FROM HIS YOUTH AND THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE

SOUGHT TO IDENTIFY WITH CHRIST CRUCIFIED AND WITH CRUCIFIED PEOPLE

HERE WAS THE APOGEE OF LOVE

MIRRORED IN JESUS, THIS TELLS US OF THE COMPASSION OF GOD,

HIS UTTER TENDERNESS TOWARDS US IN OUR SUFFERINGS AND DISTRESS,

HIS LOVING SOLICITUDE IN RESPONDING TO THE NEEDS OF

OUR HUMANNESS AND HUMANITY.

2. Jesus perfect response to the Father

Jesus my Firstborn Brother• Rom 8:29: “God predestined us to be conformed to

the image of his Son, the firstborn of many brethren.” If Vincent could be conformed to Jesus he could attain to the infinite God. Jesus becomes the guide to scale the heights.

• In 1832 Vincent entered into Spiritual Espousal with Mary, “She being the Spouse of the Holy Spirit promised to endow him with the treasures of her Son to make him effective in the Gospel ministry” Later that year he constantly writes about Jesus my Firstborn Brother

Jesus, Apostle of the FatherHis identity is to “be sent"

Jesus, Fool of Love for Me“My Jesus, you are a Fool of Love and Mercy for me. Every moment you transform me in your whole self. All the exertion of your love and

mercy work always, day and night, whether I am awake, or asleep, when I eat or drink or travel;

whether I think of you or not. My God what can I do in view of your unspeakable love and mercy. I

can do nothing. I offer the life of Jesus. I am nothing. Come Angels, saints, all creatures of the

universe come and adore infinite Love, the Fool of Love. (OOCC X:236-7)

A Cosmic Christ“Jesus gave infinite Glory to God through his

most holy humanity, through which he accomplished the work of redemption, - not only as regards his person (soul and body), but all the

powers of the soul, and all the feelings of his body but also in his least parts, the elementary molecules which constitute his body.” … In his

elementary biological and material make-up he is one with us and with the whole of creation.

|USA Pallottine Retreat19 -24 July 2015

End of Session Two