CONGREGATION OF HOLY CROSS
General Administration
Via Framura, 85
00168
Phone: (39) 06-612-962.10 Fax: (39) 06-614-7547
e-mail: hughcleary@attglobal.net
Lent, 2005
Circular Letter 8
Dear Fellow Religious,
The Lenten Season is upon us. In English, Lent means “spring
time” or “lengthening” in reference to the days growing longer as
spring approaches. This season
within the Church is a traditional time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Its purpose is to deepen our experience of
God’s grace moving within and among us, calling us to greater intimacy and
fidelity with “the Source of our Being.” We hope to lengthen and strengthen the span of
our attentiveness to God’s tender mercies, surrendering to them and proclaiming
them for what they are: the great gift of life itself,
fully lived.
YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST: THE JOY OF FRIENDSHIP
This past October, at the start of an international
Eucharistic Congress in
Cardinal Josef Tomko
captured the Congress’ attention when he asked the participants to reflect on:
“Who is the Eucharist?” not “What is the Eucharist?”
The Eucharist is not an idea, a theory, a philosophy
of life or a theological concept. The Eucharist is a person. Jesus greets us, engages
us, and invites us into a life-changing intimacy. Life has a new urgency, a new
vibrancy to it.
When we share in the Eucharist we encounter a person
who awakens a fundamental good within us. Jesus greets us as a friend and
speaks to our innermost being. The
encounter transforms us; we are no longer the same. We are made new by the very fact of breaking
bread with Him and in Him.
This “Who” of the Eucharist is
the radiant, transfigured Christ who dispels the darkness of our minds and
hearts. Our encounter with Him gives meaning and purpose to our lives, changing
us, revealing clearly the destiny that is ours. Jesus forgives our sins, heals
our sorrows, dispels our fears, strengthens our resolve, sets
us on a course from which there is no turning back.
Jesus is the faithful friend who is “beyond
price… our life saving remedy”
(Sirach
6:15-16).
In His friendship Jesus loves us with God’s love and
commands us to do the same through a vibrant communion with one another.
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you;
abide in my love…I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you,
and that your joy may be complete. This
is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater
love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (Jn 15:9-13)
Jesus enters our lives so that our joy may be
complete. To be joyful is to be in possession of a treasure. Jesus possesses
God’s love, and is possessed by it in return.
His joy is complete; it is full.
Through the gift of His friendship, Jesus’ joy can
become our own, if we do what He commands us. It is not an automatic joy, nor
is it magical. We deprive ourselves of the graced power for transfiguration in
Christ’s joy if we eat His flesh and drink His blood unworthily. To be worthy,
we, too, must be broken. We, too, must
be poured out in love of God and love of neighbor.
Christ’s friendship is unconditional, in that He
will always love us no matter what. Still, unless we live its demands, we may
not experience its vitality. “Love others as I love you.” His friendship is priceless yet it costs
us everything: “No one has greater love than to lay down one’s life for
one’s friends.”
EUCHARIST: COMMUNION ALL-CONSUMING
The desire for Jesus’ friendship seems self-evident
yet we waver to accept it. It is a demanding friendship. We want an all-consuming love but we fear
being consumed. We can dread what we want.
Our love can falter in spending ourselves for
others. In the deepest recesses of our hearts we fear any death, most
especially a death to self. Death
appears to be our ruin - can it really be our life?
We rejoice that Jesus died for us, but are we ready
to die for others? In our weakness we
long for the strength of God’s embrace to make us more than we are, but do we
dare accept the weaknesses of others, perhaps weaknesses more incapacitating
than our own? Communion with Jesus is
not only in the strength of God’s love and human friendships; it is communion
with frail and sinful humanity as well; communion with strangers and even
intolerable enemies. There is the
crucible!
Jesus commands us to bear one another’s burdens.
Communion with Jesus’ strength fortifies us; communion with one another’s
weaknesses can terrify us. We can barely tolerate the limits of our own
weakness, how can we possibly take on those of others? Will our sinful lives bring us down?
The communion of the vine and the branches involves
a healing intimacy with the God of Jesus; but Jesus’ God assertively commands our
communion with one another. We are a fellowship of sinners. We can and often do harm one another. How can we trust such a communion to bring
healing?
EUCHARIST: ALL-EMBRACING LOVE
The divine love is demanding. We are not always
ready for its burdens. Its exigencies
take us beyond the seeming limits of our endurance. The height and breadth and depth of love is
tested in fire; tried in the cup of bitterness that Jesus drinks. Can we drink His same cup; drink it to the
dregs?
Jesus calls us friends because He makes known
everything about the love of His Father; nothing is left unsaid. He reveals
love’s most fearsome demands; nothing is concealed. We tend to hide ourselves from love’s truth. Its cost is perhaps more than we can bear at
any given time.
Jesus’ friendship opens our hearts to a love that
probes the depths of God’s heart while laying bare our own. Divine love is accessible yet fearsome. The
pattern and rhythm of God’s love requires everything from us. It is a hard
command, almost impossible. Perhaps that is why love is always found wanting.
What kind of love is this? Our human instincts resonate with the desire
for an absolute, unconditional, all-embracing love. We long to receive such love; giving it is
another matter. We are most comfortable
when taking everything, not in giving everything! It is the aura of this “every-thing-ness”
about love that is so endearing and so troubling.
The Bread of Life gives everything; it takes everything. It is the perfect sacrifice. The Eucharistic love satisfies our hunger and thirst; our communion with fellow sinners can drain and empty us, perhaps till there is nothing left. We are Christ’s outpouring for others as He poured Himself out for us. The mystery of Christ’s love is forever to be fathomed. We need to be nourished daily if we are to live this friendship intently.
When we partake of the Eucharist, we are plunged into the paschal rhythm of not only living in Christ but dying with Him for others. It takes tremendous courage and moral strength to live well the Eucharistic sacrifice.
After that Holy Thursday meal
when He gave us the living and active memorial of our redemption, Jesus spent
long hours of prayer alone in the
“Abba, you have the power
to do all things. Take this cup away from me. But let it be done as you would
have it, not as I.” (Mark 14:36)
To receive the Eucharist is to commit ourselves to God’s command to love as Jesus loved. Like Him, we find the love daunting, almost impossible. Like Him we need to prepare to love as God would have it, not as we would have it.
EUCHARIST: PASCHAL LIFE
The Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives.
Through the Eucharist we enter into the all absorbing cycle of the Paschal
Mystery of Jesus Christ, making His way of life the pattern of our own. We seek to live life at its very core, in the
embrace of God’s love. To be holy is to live from the very center of life.
Just as the Pascha
marks the Hebrew liberation from
The Eucharist embodies the glory of God made
manifest in Christ’s triumph of love over sin and death. In eating His Body and drinking His Blood we move
with Jesus through the sacrifice of His life.
He offers His love as the remedy to death-dealing, self-absorbing
sin. He conquers death and sets us free
to live life fully. He commands us to love others as He loves us. He invites us to live sacrificial lives for
the sake of nourishing and strengthening our neighbors. Eucharist is communion. It is our active participation in one
another’s lives day in and day out as we die with Christ to live with Him.
“In Holy Communion we receive the very Victim slain on the Cross; during the Holy Sacrifice we offer ourselves in imitation of and in union with this same divine Victim. In Communion, therefore, we receive back again, as it were, our own lives united with His and transformed into His divine life, which should then be reproduced in our own.” (Venerable Basil Moreau, C.S.C. “Meditations on the Eucharistic Life”)
The Paschal Mystery defines us. It is the rhythm
through which we live and move and have our being. This recurring motion makes
us new creatures, setting us apart in this world, in the most fundamental sense
of what it means to be consecrated or holy.
As consecrated religious we seek to live holy,
unimpaired lives. We want to be free
from ourselves, emancipated from the bondage of fears and anxieties. We want to
live with God’s love, the love expressed so beautifully and generously in the
Good Samaritan’s forgetting of self in the care of another.
To partake of the Eucharist is to engage life’s
meaning in a world sadly disengaged from its own deepest purpose. Without the
food of life, the superficial satisfies too easily, greed gluts our deepest
hungers; our appetite for more than we have battles with the thousands of
frustrating desires that compete for our attention.
The Eucharist centers our attention on what really
matters and offers it to us through the pattern of Christ’s love. The Eucharist
demands everything from us, empties us, yet, paradoxically, floods our hearts
with gratitude for love’s fullness. Eucharistic love gives of itself freely, come what may.
We try to live for others, forfeiting the pleasures
and luxuries of self-absorption. Humbled by our own sins, we rely on conversion
and forgiveness for our daily bread. Our
lives are destined for the cross, freely pouring ourselves out for others, as
Christ’s own blood was poured out. It is
all expressed within the dynamic of the great Paschal rhythm of the Eucharistic
life. It is not an easy life, but it is a true life. Our consecrated brotherhood strengthens
us.
“We are fortified for the journey on which He has
sent us when we share this greatest of all table fellowships.” (C3,27)
EUCHARIST:
CONTEMPLATIVE ADORATION
To prepare ourselves to live in divine communion with God and neighbor, it is helpful to enter periods of contemplative prayer to know better love’s meaning and to rejoice in its glory.
John Paul II recommends, particularly for consecrated religious, time in contemplation before and after the reception of the Eucharist as a means of realizing the joy of Christ’s friendship.
“Consecrated men and women,
called by that very consecration to more prolonged contemplation: never forget
that Jesus in the tabernacle wants you to be at his side, so that he can fill
your hearts with the experience of his friendship, which alone gives meaning
and fulfillment to your lives.” (John Paul II.
Apostolic Letter on the Year of the Eucharist “Mane Nobiscum
Domine”)
The person of the Eucharist is the Risen Lord. The rhythm of the Paschal mystery within us leads to new and deeper life as omnipotent love takes hold of our lives. Contemplating the mystery of the cross heightens our sensitivity to the fruit of love engendered in our being when we accept the cross as a gift. “All is swallowed up in victory.” (C 8, 118) We marvel in true joy as our hearts deepen in love. We rejoice in the promise of love’s fulfillment as we contemplate our lives transformed.
Prayerful adoration of the Eucharist draws us deeper into the mystery of God’s love alive in our hearts.
“We contemplate the living
God, offering ourselves to be drawn into his love and learning to take that
same love to heart. We enter thus into
the mystery of God who chose to dwell in the midst of his people. His Eucharistic presence is the pledge of
that. It is especially appropriate then
for us to pray in the presence of the reserved Eucharist. Each of us needs the nourishment of at least
one half hour of quiet daily prayer.” (C3, 30)
After partaking of the Eucharistic meal Cardinal Newman would pray the following prayer as a means of strengthening himself to fulfill his mission. He went forth from the Eucharist as a presence of Christ’s love for others. It is a prayer we might find helpful as we go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord.
“Dear Jesus, help us to
spread your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess our whole being, so
utterly, that our lives may be only a radiance of yours. Shine through us, and so be in us, that every
soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us but
only you!
Stay with us, and then we
shall begin to shine as you shine; so to shine as to be a light to others; the
light, O Jesus, will be all from you in the way you love best by shining on
those around us. Let us preach your word
without preaching, not by words but by our example, by the catching force, the
sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident
fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.
Amen.”
The Lenten Holy Week of our redemption celebrates God’s love as our salvation. It is a love that sears the soul, gives us everything and asks everything of us in return. In this holy exchange, may the Eucharist, our food of life, be the banquet of our joy. In our friendship with the Lord and with one another, may love endure and never falter.
A Blessed Easter!
Hugh W. Cleary, C.S.C.
Superior General