Take up your Cross – Is God Calling You? – Our Freedom is in Christ – Spiritual Blindness

Vincentian Day of Prayer and Fast Tuesday March 24, 2015

Dear Vincentians: God sees what is wonderful about you. He says you do deserve forgiveness. It is Jesus who heals us in the Confessional. Going to Confession is an amazing Spiritual cleansing. God always sees the good in us. Pray for your Vincentian Family and especially pray for the violence around the world to stop. Ask our Lord and all the saints to replace it with goodness and love. You are all in my prayers. Remember our clergy, religious and seminarians and our youth.

Take up your Cross. (Luke 9:23) – Name your cross and carry it willingly for Jesus. We can only carry our own cross and we know it well. Each person we see and especially those we serve have a cross to carry and although we may know the surface of the burden of other’s cross, we will never feel their pain, nor will others feel ours. Our cross is for us to carry and carry it proudly for our Lord. Only He can remove this weight. First we must identify it and then pray always on the cross and the weight we bear. Pray always for others and especially those we serve and look at them through the eyes of Jesus and see Jesus and His cross in them. Sometimes we have no control over the cross we carry, so we try to help those who need us and lighten their load with our service and prayers. When serving others reflect on Matthew 25 when I was naked, hungry, cold, imprisoned, unloved, messed up and in need. We must answer this call, it is for Jesus and we are called to serve Him in everyone in need. This is our Vincentian Vocation.

Is God Calling You? – John 3:16. “God so loved the world that he gave us His only begotten son.” We too have been sent into the world to minister to others. As a beloved child of Father God, you were “co-missioned” to continue the ministry that Jesus began. God is calling you, me and all Vincentians to serve as we are called to do. He calls us by name every day. He has a plan and places the plan before us. We are called to serve with love every person who is placed before us. We call on the Trinity to help us not to be complacent and to recognize the call and answer it with our service. In loving Jesus, we also love the Father and His Holy Spirit. In obeying the Father, we hear the Holy Spirit and serve with Jesus. When we talk to one, we talk to all three. We are called and must answer the call and live in unity with Father, Son and Holy Spirit as we go forth and live the Gospel. Listen to the call. He is waiting for us to say “Yes Lord, I am here to do your will. Know your prayer will be answered and thank God before the answer comes. Pray always, He is calling and waiting for your prayer.

Our Freedom is in Christ – He gives us the power to care when no one else will. We have the freedom to love and be loved. Use the power of Christ to face the cross and bring the love of the cross to others in service. Sometimes we help people who are hard to love. This is when we need Christ more. He wants us to call on Him and bring the love and hope to those who have given up. There are so many who feel they do not deserve the help and want just enough for their kids to keep them alive and then on the other side there are those who want everything. We must use our freedom in Christ to journey with all and guide them in the right way. God will always take care of the work we do in His name. We are never alone. Dare to follow your heart to those who need to feel the love and freedom in Christ through you. Stretch yourselves to love others as Christ loves us. Christ sets us free and will set others we serve free, we need to believe and let God show us the way. Bring our freedom in Christ to all in need.

Spiritual Blindness – Seeking the Divine Light and listening to the prayers in our heart brings us healing of our blindness. The key is to listen and be willing to admit what your blindness is. We see the Light of Christ in others, if we truly look and we should always see His light in those we serve and give them hope and love to cure their Spiritual Blindness. We should always pray, because although we are the healing presence, the cure comes from our Lord. We are the hands, feet and servant for Christ. We are servants; those we serve are our masters. Last week in RCIA we did an exercise in discovering our blindness. It was powerful. The answers came flowing and I filled two chart papers quickly. These were the second Scrutiny’s and they were put into music by our choir director and you could see evangelising taking place amongst the parishioners. I always tell the RCIA Candidates and Catechumens they evangelize us. Their faith is so strong and pure. It would not hurt each one of us to regularly ask ourselves what our spiritual blindness is and make plans to cure it with Jesus. It may not be mud made with saliva, but it will be pure and wonderful. Trust in God’s wisdom and perfect timing.

Blessings,

Lynn

Lynn L’Heureux is Special needs co-coordinator & Advisor of the Society of St Vincent de Paul Calgary Alberta Canada.

Her newsletter is translated into 3 languages, hopefully soon to be 4. They have a group which brings the prayer into China and it is translated into Mandarin and other Chinese dialects.