Parable and Conscience Meditation October 7

Liturgy  October 7

Superiors and confreres give a special place to proper feasts (Congolese Regional Statutes, 1.5).

            May our parents and the members of our families who have died rest in peace!  (1^st Monday of February).

            That the prayer in our churches, traditionally consecrated to the Holy Cross, be a blessing for the world!  (May 3)

            St. Odilia, our principal patroness, virgin and martyr with St. Ursula, pray for us!  (July 18)

            St. Helena, who found the True Cross and is “mother” of our Order, pray for us!  Blessed Theodore de Celles, our founder, pray for us who commemorate your death!  (August 18)

            St. Augustine, our spiritual father through the inspiration of your life and Rule, pray for us!  (August 28)

            That our deceased benefactors who aided us through their prayers and material support rest in peace!  (a day in September)

            That our sole pride be the Glorious Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!  (September 14)

            May all the deceased confreres of our Order rest in peace!  (a day in November)

            Praised be to you, all holy Canons of St. Augustine, for your great fidelity to our vocation!  (November 5)

            We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world!  (Fridays) 

         

A termite hill doesn’t stay up without the bush that supports it.  (Mongo)

Parable and Conscience Meditation October 6

Liturgy  October 6

As a community founded in faith, we recognize that prayer is an essential expression and source of our life and work together (Const. 16.1).

            Having passed through half of another day of work to bring about the Kingdom of God, we pause to say again, O God come to our assistance.

            In the middle of the day, at the hour of Jesus’ Passion, we make memorial again of his Death and Resurrection. 

            Our hymn expresses praise for God’s saving work and our need for consolation in the trials of the mission.

            Our psalms continue the theme of our challenges and our desire that the Law of the Lord be manifested in the world, that what impedes justice and peace be removed, that the Divine Plan be accomplished, that the world arrive at its eternal destiny.

            God speaks to us again through the powerful Word to encourage us to continue in the good way:  The Word of the Lord !

            Let us pray.  We thank you, God, our help, for this moment of midday rest in the embrace of your love.  For what has already happened today, we praise you.  For what is yet to come before evening, we ask the strength of your help to stay faithful to our commitment through Christ our Lord.

            Let us bless the Lord!

The person with hands outstretched doesn’t die.  (Bakongo)

Parable and Conscience Meditation October 5

Liturgy  October 5

They do not forget in their prayers the concerns of the confreres, the Region, the Province and the Order (Congolese Regional Statutes, 1.5).

Abraham approached and said:

Will you allow the just to perish with the unjust?

Perhaps if there were fifty just people in the town . . .

Perhaps forty-five . . .

Thirty . . . twenty . . . ten . . .

God departed when he finished talking to Abraham (Gn 18:23-33).

When Moses lifted up his hands,

Israel was the stronger;

and when he lowered his hands,

Amalek was the stronger (Ez 17:11).

Therefore, [Christ] is always able to save those

who approach God through him,

since he lives forever

to make intercession for them (He 7:25).

Lord, hear us!

The beggar never has a tired behind.  (Baoule)

Parable and Conscience Meditation October 4

Liturgy  October 4

. . . our membership in a canonical order demands that we be faithful to common liturgical prayer and our other forms of worship within our own communities and in our apostolates (Const. 4.1).

The liturgy of the Church is not simply a "program of prayer" for parishes or religious communities.  The liturgy is a work of salvation whose roots go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.  There was the origin of the rupture which indelibly marked the whole history of the human family.  The sin of our first parents caused the abyss between them and God, an unfathomable distance that allowed the progressive disintegration of human life.  To realize reconciliation between God and humanity was outside human capability.  All depended on the initiative of God.  Through the people of Israel, God began the construction of the bridge.  Finally, through Christ who died and rose, God closed the gap and established forever Christ as the Sacrament of God's regenerating love.  The reconciliation of the human world with God passes necessarily through the only Mediator.  Christ, the Savior, is extended in space and time through his Body, the Church, whose mission is to be the sign of salvation.  This is the meaning of the liturgy, the public action which points to Christ and makes effective the grace of his death and resurrection in people’s hearts.

If you climb a tree, don't forget the one who made himself a short ladder for you.  (Mossi)

Parable and Conscience Meditation October 3

Liturgy  October 3

Each confrere should feel the usefulness of choosing a spiritual director and confiding in him regularly (Congolese Regional Statutes, 1.9).

Spiritual direction is a dialogue in which one Christian who has a gift for discernment gives spiritual help to another with regard to Christian experience.  Spiritual direction is founded on a rapport of mutual confidence that promises a profound dialogue.  The object of the dialogue is different from other forms of human assistance, as, for example, psychological counseling or training for a trade.  Spiritual direction helps a Christian discern and make effective the gift of self to God as a response to Divine Love.  Direction presupposes that directors are seriously engaged in living a Gospel life; that they understand the structure of Christian experience; that they respect the uniqueness of the other person.  Direction has as its goal the deepening of the Christian experience of the other.  Through transparent dialogue, the individual discovers, with the help of the director, personal movements toward God and how to how to orient oneself more toward love.  Direction is concerned with all the person’s human capacities, that is, physical, emotional, intellectual, psychological, moral and spiritual, as areas in which to respond to God.

The ant who crosses the river does it on a spider web.  (Burundi) 

Parable and Conscience Meditation October 2

Liturgy  October 2

. . . that we be faithful to common liturgical prayer and our other forms of worship . . . (Const. 4.1).

A driving motivation at the time of the founding of the Order was the desire of the founders to pray the liturgy of the Church as reformed canons.  At Clairlieu, Theodore and his companions chanted the Mass with the Hours each day, as they had done in the cathedral of Liège, even rising a midnight to pray.  Liturgical prayer, done in honor of Christ crucified, established the structure of their life and was their principal source of contemplation.  With the Church's official confirmation of the Order in 1248, the Crosiers were definitely associated with the Canons Regular.  The first Constitutions,  adapted from those of the Dominicans, asked that the liturgy not be done in a rush.  It was to be the foundation of Crosier life.  The program has continued down through the centuries.  Even during the Protestant Reformation, when the Order became more apostolically active, it did not abandon the traditional practice of the liturgy.  However, the liturgy did become a formality in the eighteenth century under the influence of humanism.  Its practice was almost lost during the time of the French Revolution.  Crosier liturgy was revived in the middle of the nineteenth century, less solemn in form and more adapted to the apostolate.  The liturgy was accentuated in the 1967 Crosier General Chapter of Renewal.

The monkey never misses his road.  (Mongo)

Parable and Conscience Meditation October 1

Liturgy  1 October

“Be assiduous in prayer” (Col. 4.2), at the hours and times appointed (Rule of St. Augustine, 10).

            We, your people, come before you, our Father, in the evening to make memory once more today of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. 

            Now that the day’s work is done and darkness falls, O God, come to our assistance.

            We kindle the fire, singing of our Savior, always the light of the world, and with him we offer our prayers that rise to you like incense.

            We pray our psalms of thanksgiving and hope and we lift up the work of salvation in Christ who has died and risen for us:  Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit!

            The reading of the Word calms us and strengthens us after the cares of this day.

            We take as our own the words of the Virgin who glorified you for the manifestation of your power toward us, your humble ones. My spirit exults in God, my Savior!

            We ask you in the name of Jesus:  pardon our weaknesses, protect your Church for an even stronger fidelity, save our world.  Hear us, O Lord

            In union with him who taught us to prayer, we address you: Our Father, with devotion and conviction. 

            After having brought together in one prayer all the sentiments of the evening, we ask your blessing.  Let us go in the peace of Christ.

The birds who sleep in the same tree fix a meeting for the evening.  (Yaka)