Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Have you bought your turkey and the fixings for the stuffing? We have! Especially since we have over 40 sisters coming to celebrate with us.
The question is: What are we celebrating? Are we just remembering an event that happened hundreds of years ago and use it as an excuse to gather and dine together? May I suggest that what we celebrate is -- Who we are!
By our Baptism, we are children of God. Like all children, all we have has been given to us by God, our Loving Father. We live in a society that rushes frantically from one activity to another; from one experience to another; from one relationship to another. When do we stop, reflect and give thanks to God for the good gifts He has given us?
On Thanksgiving Day ask your family: What 10 things, if they were NOT in your life, would totally change it?
I dare say you will be surprised at what you discover. When I ask myself this question, I immediately realized that if I lived in some other country, my life would be different. If I couldn’t see or hear or if I didn’t have the parents and family I do, my life would be totally different.
As I did this exercise, I discovered those persons and gifts for which I thank God. Why don’t you do this little game and see what you and your family discover? Our children don’t want us to tell them to be grateful; they need to discover for themselves the gratitude that is within them. The thankfulness we experience is God’s gift to us. When we experience it, we see ourselves and our world in a different way. We see and hear the needs of other people; we break out of the shell of selfishness and we begin to live as God’s beloved children.
Lord, I thank you for the ability to see the beauty with which you surround me. I thank you that I can hear your Word and receive your precious Body and Blood! Most of all, I thank you for calling me to be an Apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a daughter of Blessed Clelia Merloni, and calling me to minister here at ICA Parish.
On Thanksgiving Day, you might want to celebrate a different kind of grace. Such as:
Where is God in your life? Your answer is a snapshot of where you are in your faith journey.
Where do you want God to be? This answer is your goal, and you decide the kind of relationship you want to have with Him.
Relationships either grow and flourish or shrivel and die. My brother-in-law leaves early in the morning for work. At 9:00 AM, he calls my sister and he does the same at his lunch break. Why? It’s about feeding the relationship. The same is true in our relationship with God. If I only talk to Him once a week, I may feel awkward, like when my uncles would visit. My sister, brothers and I sat up straight while the grown-ups spoke and we didn’t enter into the conversation because we weren’t able to do so. My relationship with my uncles was not the same as my father’s relationship with them.
Ask yourself again: Where is God in my life? Where do I want God to be? If you desire a deeper relationship, then what needs to change? Please note that I am not telling you what to do, but I am trying to help identify the steps that may be taken, if you so choose. If I want to deepen my relationship with God, I make more time for God in my daily routine. Here are some examples: If you’re a morning person, have a cup of coffee with God, talk about your day with Him and share the things weighing on your heart. If you’re a night person, you may want to pray the rosary or ponder the Gospel of the day while you jog or go for a walk.
God also feeds the relationship so Sunday Mass might become a priority for you. When I want God to feed me, I go to pray the Mass -- to enter into the prayers and the mysteries celebrated. I try to listen to the words prayed and the songs sung. I enter into the Mystery of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection.
No one can make me pray; that is my choice, and it’s a choice you make, too. Either I turn to God and open my heart to Him or I don’t. You choose the relationship you desire with God. You can’t buy it. It’s not on Amazon! It’s free. You need only go to Mass to receive the world’s great gift: Himself in the Eucharist, His love poured out.
Touch God and let God touch you! Why? Miracles happen. Healings occur. We become one with God; that’s why the Eucharist is called Communion. We are united with God, in communion with God!
You are the spiritual leader of your family and, where you go, your family goes. Where is God in your life? Where do you want God to be in your life? You decide.
A friend recently asked me, “What are three reasons to enter the convent?” Being smartmouthed, I said: “The Father, the Son and the Spirit!” Then she replied, “You didn’t answer the question!”
A few weeks later, pondering the question, I thought: I heard His Call. I saw His Heart. I know His Love. After a few minutes, I realized that it was God’s doing. God gave me the grace to hear and respond to the call so I wrote:
His Call I heard, deep in my heart. His Heart I saw in the Eucharist, His Love I know, deep in my bones. How not say “Yes”?
Ever since Second Grade, I knew God was calling me to be a sister. My first memory of this is of me sitting in my childhood bed and crying. I wasn’t crying because God was calling me to be a sister but because sisters couldn’t have babies. How can a Second Grader know this? I don’t know.
In Junior Year, I asked one of the sisters, “What’s it like being a sister?” By Senior Year, my question changed: “What do I have to do to be a sister?” “Write a letter,” she told me. I asked, “Will you help me write that letter?”
I wasn’t yet 18 years old so I needed my parents’ permission. Sitting on the floor with my mom in our bedroom, I asked for it. She replied: “I’ll give you $100 to stay home.”
“I don’t want $100,” I said.
She persisted, “How about a new car?”
“I don’t want a new car. I don’t even have a driver’s license!”
“Knowing you, you’ll stay for meanness!”
“I promise you, if I’m not happy, I’ll come home.” Here I am.
On Jubilee Day, as I walked to the chapel, I remembered this conversation with my mom and the question from my friend: “What are three reasons to enter the convent?”
Entering the chapel, I see the enormous statue of Jesus with His arms wide open. My eyes are locked on Him and His Heart; I speak to Him:
Your Call I heard
Deep in my heart;
Your Heart I see
In the Eucharist;
Your Love I know
Deep in my bones.
How not say “Yes”?
How not say “Yes”?
These few words capture who I am and why I do what I do. I share it with you so you can understand how God works in us and through us. God calls each of us into being for a purpose. His call is a mystery, a profound reality. Our children need to know this; they need to know how you have heard God speak to you, how you have become the person you are.
Vocations don’t just happen. We nourish them by the witness of our lives. Don’t be afraid to share how God is working in you. Be your best self, and, when you fail, ask for forgiveness. The witness you give may be just what God needs to draw another to His Heart.
Let us pray that we may hear His voice and follow His call.
Today we enter more deeply into the mystery of Jesus’ sacred Passion, death and Resurrection: Holy Week. As the Body of Christ, we, the Church, gather to ponder, meditate and gaze at Jesus on the Cross.
On Spy Wednesday of this week, recall Judas’ betrayal of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
On Holy Thursday, gather to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and thank God for these three great gifts:
Open to me the Gates of Holiness, I will enter and give thanks.
- Psalm 118
Stepping into Lent, our petition is: “Open to me the Gates of Holiness.” The Heart of Jesus IS the Gate of Holiness. His Heart is open for us to enter, take rest, and abide there. His Heart was opened on the Cross when he laid down His life for us.
Remember, Jesus taught: “In my Father’s House there are many mansions.” The House of God is the Heart of Jesus and within are the mansions, each with a door, a “gate”—the Gates to Holiness. This Lent, as we journey to the Heart of Jesus, let us enter and give thanks.
Let’s look at these passages from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 7, verses 6, 8-9, where we hear: “You are a people sacred to the Lord, your God; he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly his own.” What does it mean to be sacred? It means to be holy. We are not just called to holiness—we ARE holy because we have passed through the waters of Baptism, just as the Israelites passed through the waters of the Red Sea. Then we hear: “It was because the Lord loved you and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn to your fathers, that he brought you out with his strong hand from the place of slavery, and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.” We need to hold on to the fact that we are chosen. Why? Because we are loved! Listen to God as He reveals His faithfulness and mercy.
At different moments of the day, pray: “Open to me the Gates of Holiness, I will enter and give thanks.” Every hour on the hour stop and take three minutes to give thanks. The Mass and Eucharist ARE the best ways to give thanks so consider putting daily Mass into your week once or twice.
Finally, before going to bed ask: “How did God show His love for me today? Did I thank Him?” Why do this? We want our heart to be like the Heart of Jesus, so we can enter and give thanks! Pray: “Open to me the Gates of Holiness, I will enter and give thanks!”
"When God holds our hand, what does it matter if the way is dark or if we don’t know where we are going?”
Blessed Clelia Merloni wrote the above words at a particularly dark moment in her own life. She, a consecrated woman, experienced false accusations, betrayals and suffering at the hands of both her sisters and the Church. She taught: “Let’s not blame creatures for that which God allows by means of them. They are nothing more than instruments in God’s hands. Whatever tribulation… always comes from God and is a minister of the Divine Will.”
Born in 1861 in Italy, Blessed Clelia founded the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1894. She lived in exile for 12 years from the community, returning two years before her death in 1928. On Nov. 3, 2018, at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, Blessed Clelia was beatified.
The Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have 900 members serving in 15 countries. They arrived in the archdiocese in 1926 to work with Italian immigrant children at St. Joseph School on Madison Street in lower Manhattan as well as Sacred Heart Private School in the Bronx. Currently the sisters serve at Our Lady of Pompeii School, Manhattan; Santa Maria School in the Bronx; St. Joseph Medical Center, Yonkers; and Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Our Lady Parish, Tuckahoe.
You are cordially invited to celebrate the Beatification of Blessed Clelia Merloni at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with the Sisters and Cardinal Dolan on Saturday, February 9 with a 2:00 PM Mass.O Sacred Heart of Jesus, you who filled your servant Blessed Clelia with a profound love for the riches of the graces of your Heart, deign, we beseech you, to make use of her virtues, to draw many persons to the knowledge and love of your Sacred Person, and, if it be your holy will, that she be glorified on earth so that we may have recourse more and more to her intercession and may learn from her example to devote ourselves humbly and generously to your divine service. Amen.