In his letter to the Daughters of Charity Fernando Macías, CM write “Dialogue frees us from our nakedness, dispels our suspicions, opens doors, solves conflicts, draws people closer together, binds people together in unity and is the “mother” of sisterhood and brotherhood.”
Letter of Father Fernando Macías to the Daughters of Charity on the occasion of the Feast of the Miraculous Medal
Santiago, Chile
November 25, 2010
Dear Sisters:
O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you.
As I have done in previous years, I once again write to all of you as we draw near to the great celebration of the solemnity of the Miraculous Medal. Last year, during the celebration of the Jubilee Year, we were invited to reflect on the Miraculous Virgin, Mary, who visited our family and blessed our charism of service and charity. This year I want to invite you to engage in a Marian reflection based on the last Apostolic Exhortation of Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, dated September 30, 2010.
This document, very attractive to each one of us, invites us to live in the Word of the God from different perspectives and visions. The three parts of this document (the Word of God, the Word of the God and the Church, the Word of God and the World) provide us with light for our vocational journey. But here I want to focus only on one paragraph of this document that caught my attention during this time of our Vincentian feast. When I read and studied the document, paragraph six, God in dialogue, brought to mind our feast day celebration because the first image that the Marian feast presents to us is that of inviting and calling us to dialogue.
In the Apostolic Exhortation we read: The novelty of biblical revelation consists in the fact that God becomes known through the dialogue which he desires to have with us. The Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Verbum, had expressed this by acknowledging that the unseen God “from the fullness of his love, addresses men and women as his friends, and lives among them in order to invite and receive them into his own company (#6). In these words we find the key to our little reflection. God reveals himself as he is and the inter-Trinitarian dialogue moves outward. This dialogue of the divine persons is also carried on with creation and humankind. In this dialogue with God we come to understand ourselves and we find an answer to the profound questions that dwell in our hearts. The key to the document is found in the words cited above because they show us the power of the Word of God to dialogue with the problems that people have to confront in their daily life.
In this key passage we are invited to embrace and dialogue with the revealed Word and to rediscover how God wishes to dialogue with each one of us. God invites us to open ourselves to his message in the same way that Catherine Laboure was willing to enter into dialogue with the Virgin, spending part of her time with her, listening to her and embracing her message. Catherine provides us with the key to dialogue with the divine as she valiantly accepts this dialogue and is able to put aside her personal and community rules about silence and goes beyond these rules because someone invites her and is waiting to dialogue with her. She kneels at the feet of the Virgin, a truly biblical attitude that symbolizes humility, the smallness of the disciple … and Catherine is a disciple who is willing to learn and willing to allow herself to be formed because she sees herself as unworthy, as someone who does not know everything and so she is willing to humbly fulfill her mission.
Thus, my Sisters, the Word of God invites us to enter into this dynamic of dialogue which involves us in knowing how to listen and how to speak. This was the dynamic of the Divine Revelation, the dynamic of Mary, a woman of prayer and dialogue and this was also the dynamics of the apparitions that occurred on the Rue du Bac. Before Mary gave us her Medal she wanted to enter into dialogue with the humble servant, Catherine.
This feast is an invitation to deepen our experience of spiritual dialogue with the Lord and Mary and to do this through a form of prayer that is more dialogical, an intimate prayer with the Lord. God speaks and I listen; I speak and God listens to me. This form of prayer will be most beneficial for each one of us as we attempt to live out our vocation of service. I believe that we ought to engage in more dialogue with the Divine Word, embrace the Word in the silence of prayer and in prayer dialogue with the Word.
The Virgin Mary, who knew how to dialogue with Catherine, invites us to grow in this attitude of dialogue with the Lord and with his designs for us. This invitation to participate in a “vertical dialogue” is also an invitation to participate in another fundamental dialogue in our vocation, a “horizontal dialogue” among ourselves. Our spiritual life and our various relationships lead us to confront this challenge of strengthening our dialogue with the Lord and with our surroundings as well as with those who surround us.
Saint Catherine allowed herself to be led. She rose up and valiantly set out to enter into dialogue with the Miraculous Mary. How many times could we avoid painful and sad situations in our life if we acted in the same way that Catherine did, if we acted more bravely and decidedly on our desire for dialogue, if we made a decision to engage in dialogue, if we rose up and went out to the encounter with our brothers and sisters, if we dialoged with them and did that which is right. This is most important and we cannot allow the hours and the years to pass us by while we remain in our situation of bitterness or resentment or anger … for indeed all of this can be resolved and clarified through dialogue.
Saint Catherine dialogued with the Virgin in a sacred environment, in a place of peace and silence. We must also know how to create an environment as she did on the Rue de Bac. We must learn how to dialogue in peace, how to listen in silence and respect and how to pray about those things that are told to us. There can only be a profound dialogue when there is interior and exterior peace and so we must be willing to search for the forms and the places that will help us engage in dialogue in peace and in truth. Without this peace we will never experience true dialogue.
Saint Catherine engaged in dialogue on her knees thus symbolizing the humility of the dialogue. This is a fundamental attitude if we wish to engage in profound dialogue with God and with others. Humility leads us to the truth and enables us to become more transparent and free. Humility enables us to accept our errors and to forgive the errors of others. Thus as a result of true dialogue we are able to encounter our sisters and brothers and build with them the portion of the People of God that pertains to each one.
May the Miraculous Virgin fill us with her blessing and provide each one of us with the necessary graces in order to strengthen our spiritual and our human dialogue.
Your brother,
Father Fernando Macías F., C.M.
Prayer for the grace of dialogue
Lord God, we praise you and we glorify you for the beauty of this gift of dialogue. This is the gift that is embodied in your Beloved Son because it is a symbol of the constant conversation that occurs in the heart of the Blessed Trinity.
Dialogue frees us from our nakedness, dispels our suspicions, opens doors, solves conflicts, draws people closer together, binds people together in unity and is the “mother” of sisterhood and brotherhood.
Christ Jesus, the center of community, help us realize that our misunderstandings are almost always a result of our lack of dialogue. Help us also to understand that we need one another and then we complement one another because we are able to give and receive, because we are able to see what others might not see and they are able to see what I do not see.
Lord Jesus, when tension arises give me the humility to not attempt to impose my truth by attacking the truth of another. Help me to be quiet at the proper moments and to wait until the other has spoken all that they desire to communicate.
Give me the sensitivity to recognize that I can be mistaken in some aspects regarding the truth and that I can be enriched by the truth of another.
Lord Jesus, grant us the grace of dialogue. Amen.
Tags: Daughters of Charity, Dialog, St. Catherine Labouré
