Tag Archives: mystery

Thinking with Fr. John A. Hardon, S,J., S. T. D. – Real Presence

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Last Supper. Russian icon

Image via Wikipedia

Mary was the first tabernacle.

At the Last Supper Jesus, the Christ, ordained and empowered His Apostles to do what, until then, only He could do, make Himself present, in His humanity, to the world.

What the senses can not perceive, the believing heart receives as total gift, total God, in His Holy and eternal Humanity, not just Spirit, but human flesh and blood, along with the power to make Him present in the world and to the world through out Time.

Mary received, and by her body, in her body, made Him present as gift from God the Father. In her Immaculate body, at Her faith response,”Fiat secundum tuum.” God became Man, and Mary was His Tabernacle, the Ark of the New Covenant, in fulfillment of the Old Covenant.

Reality challenges the mind and senses to believe God.
“And the virgin shall be with Child.”
“This is My Body…This is My Blood.”

God enters Time and remains in Time, coming unto his own and so remaining “Emmanuel”, “God with us” for all Time until earth and the heavens be no more, made new, as promised, a New Heaven and a New Earth. And God remaining Man throughout eternity with the Virgin at His side with the children He gave her from His Cross.

Flowers and Drunken Bees

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Flowers in the rain
Petals open to sustain

Life that is and is to be
Crouched in hidden expectancy

Bees by colors in delight,
Arrested, nay, beguiled, alight.

To sip and gather on furry feet
Nectar and pollen of life so sweet.

Flower to flower in drunken run
Dance the mystery now begun.

by Joann Nelander

*  “A hapless male bee, blind drunk with the flower’s overpowering pheromones, might well mistake a toadstool for a suitable mate” a tidbit from Wikipedia


Thursday – Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary

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Pray along with me!

The Mystery of Death

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From the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world of the Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et spes)
The Mystery of Death

In the face of death the enigma of human existence reaches its climax. Man is not only the victim of pain and the progressive deterioration of his body; he is also, and more deeply, tormented by the fear of final extinction. But the instinctive judgment of his heart is right when he shrinks from, and rejects, the idea of a total collapse and definitive end of his own person. He carries within him the seed of eternity, which cannot be reduced to matter alone, and so he rebels against death. All efforts of technology, however useful they may be, cannot calm his anxieties; the biological extension of his life-span cannot satisfy the desire inescapably present in his heart for a life beyond this life.

Imagination is completely helpless when confronted with death. Yet the Church, instructed by divine revelation, affirms that man has been created by God for a destiny of happiness beyond the reach of earthly trials. Moreover, the Christian faith teaches that bodily death, to which man would not have been subjected if he had not sinned, ywill be conquered; the almighty and merciful Savior will restore man to the wholeness that he had lost through his own fault. God has called man, and still calls him, to be united in his whole being in perpetual communion with himself in the immortality of the divine life. This victory has been gained for us by the risen Christ, who by his own death has freed man from death.
Faith, presented with solid arguments, offers every thinking person the answer to his questionings concerning his future destiny. At the same time, it enables him to be one in Christ with his loved ones who have been taken from him by death and gives him hope that they have entered into true life with God.

Certainly, the Christian is faced with the necessity, and the duty, of fighting against evil through many trials, and of undergoing death. But by entering into the paschal mystery and being made like Christ in death, he will look forward, strong in hope, to the resurrection.

This is true not only of Christians but also of all men of good will in whose heart grace is invisibly at work. Since Christ died for all men, and the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, that is, a divine vocation, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being united with this paschal mystery in a way known only to God.
Such is the great mystery of man, enlightening believers through the Christian revelation. Through Christ and in Christ light is thrown on the enigma of pain and death which overwhelms us without his Gospel to teach us. Christ has risen, destroying death by his own death; he has given us the free gift of life so that as sons in the Son we may cry out in the Spirit, saying: Abba, Father!

Sent from my iPod

Searching with Mary

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Paraphrased from The Holy Rosary Narrated, distributed by Keepthefaith.org and narrated by Fr. Hugh Thwaites:

A reflection on the Fifth Joyful Mystery – The Finding of Jesus in the Temple

“The whole human race are either Mary’s children or potentially her children because when we’re baptized,  we are baptized into Jesus and become her children.  For the rest,  her motherly heart searches,  and cannot rest until she sees her children safe in Heaven.”

If you look closely at an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, you will notice the small sandal hanging from the foot of the Infant Jesus, who is safe in His Mother’s arms.  This represents those who Mary also holds if only by a thread.

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