JMV International Newsletter – February 2005

The February Newsletter of the JMV has some practical ideas on how to make Lent a time of conversion as well as its usual roundup of what is happening around the world in the JMVent is a liturgical time of conversion that the Church designates so we can prepare for the great feast of Easter. It is a time to banish  selfishness and comfort, attitudes that keeps us apart from the Message of the Gospel.

As such, Lent is the time of forgiving and brotherly reconciliation. Each day throughout one’s life we have hurled in our hearts hatred, rancor, envy and jealousy that oppose our love for God and our brothers. During Lent , we come to know and appreciate the Cross of Jesus. With this we become aware of the need for us to take our cross cheerfully in order to reach the glory of the resurrection.

We are inviting you to make during this Lenten Season a way of Conversion where all of us may be capable of not only detaching ourselves of things, but acquiring new attitudes, sentiments and experiences that will bring us closer to JESUS OF NAZARETH.  Don’t forget to gather:

þ      Gestures of forgiveness and welcoming of others:  For sure you live among other persons who squander words and attitudes of forgiveness; have learned that life calls us  to love above all things—And this is more important than anything else.  

þ      Generous Attitudes: How many persons do not scrimp efforts, time, money…in order to make others happy? Let us open our eyes! It is always more joyful to be the giver than the receiver. 

þ      Experiences of service: There are persons who opted, in a radical way, to become “servants” of those who are poorer, weaker and the lesser ones.  Let us take this sensitivity and option for those who are less fortunate.

þ      Sensitivity and Welcoming of the Word: There is no hope that sustains without the Word: no commitment that is sustained with the human power alone. Many persons have listened to the Word, the map that guides each day their “words” and “actions.” 

þ      Experiences of sharing the “Bread of the Eucharist”: In it Christians, young and old alike, finds the nourishment. Communion and reason for self-abandonment.

þ      Contemplative silence:  There is no creative action without silence. Silence is “energy” that unite and aid the contemplation and welcoming of God. 

In the Lenten “knapsack” let us keep all the positive experiences that we shall have, so that we may renew our forces, enthusiasm and joy. The Word of God leads us the “footpath.” It will be like the “compass” that directs our steps towards the north: EASTER. Let us not forget to create spaces in our community-groups, parishes, family in order to pray together, celebrate and live our conversion making others participate our experience of encounter and surrender. We are not called to live solely our Faith, but on the contrary, Jesus invites us to strengthen our hope, sharing and creating strong spaces of PRAYER especially this year when we hear a call to live and celebrate the EUCHARIST with profoundness as a fountain of union.

Seek a certain time each day to deepen in the Word and be faithful to what it suggests

Sr. Asun Garcia D.C.

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