To Gaze upon Christ

This Lent the Lord has put on my heart the awareness of gazing upon Christ.  In our Franciscan congregation, our spirituality flows from John 19:37 “they will look on the one whom they have pierced.”  With this spirituality, we gaze upon the pierced side of Christ and receive from His pierced heart His love and mercy. Then we may go forth to give what we have received.  Throughout this Lent, this action of gazing has been foremost in both my spiritual reading and in prayer.  It also brought to mind a graced trip to Assisi in 2014, by which this “gazing” became so real to me.

           While in Assisi, there are many things to see and let soak into one’s soul. The first place where I was moved to gaze was in the side chapel in the Basilica of St. Clare in Assisi, where the Crucifix from which Our Lord spoke to St. Francis is now housed.  What an awe-filled moment it was to kneel before this Crucifix and to gaze into the eyes of Christ. It was a joyful and prayerful time there. All who entered gazed and prayed, gazing up at the Crucifix suspended above us, into the open eyes of Christ.  There was silence and profound prayer; as each one spoke and sought to hear what words the Lord would speak to the heart. What would the Lord say? He spoke to St. Francis. He speaks today. 
A second place where I was captivated was in San Damiano, and again, by a second crucifix of Christ. There, in a small side chapel is the deeply moving crucifix by Frate Innocenzo da Palermo.  When I walked into this room and gazed upon Christ there on the Cross, I was filled with peace, and a complete desire to simply be before Him, to sit in His presence, to gaze upon Him, and love. As I did this, I experienced our charism anew, of making Christ’s merciful love visible and I saw Mercy before my eyes.

 

This Lent I encountered a book, Franciscan Prayer by Ilia Delio, OSF, which has brought this all to mind.  She quotes from St. Clare’s Letter to St. Agnes of Prague, “O most noble Queen, gaze upon [Him], consider [Him], contemplate [Him], as you desire to imitate [Him].”  St. Clare gazes upon the “book” of the crucified Christ”, she writes, and continues, “‘in this ‘book of life’ we are to come to know God and ourselves in God. To gaze upon the Crucified Christ is to see ourselves, others and the world with a deep, penetrating vision—to see the truth of things in their relation to God. Gazing on this book each day should lead us to ask, what do we see? How do we see? “

Taking those questions to heart, when I see Christ on the crucifix, what do I see? How do I see Him? Can He show me myself? How does He see me? Am I afraid? Do I need to ask forgiveness? Do I find rest?  Love?  May the Lord give you His peace and the gift of His merciful love.
Reflections on The Cross of San Damiano 
By Patrick McNamara, OFM,Cap.

I look to the Cross, I gaze upon its figure,
I wait, I listen, I hope.

Will you speak, will you move, will I be moved.

Will you once again touch the heart of one who seeks.
Of one who questions, of one who seems so lost.

Will you embrace the soul, as you did that of Francis.
Will you take it to Yourself.

Will you give it peace, give it comfort, give it love

This soul waits, listens, prays for such grace. 
This soul seeks the Love from the Lover.

It wavers. It stumbles. It falls.

Your gaze looks down, embraces all. 
Takes all, Loves All. Your Grace heals, accepts.

Again you respond, Again you Love. 
Again you speak to a searching and troubled heart.
I turn. I continue the journey. I continue in Hope. 
I too have heard you Speak.

 – Sister M. Seraphica, FSGM

Fight, Flight or…Hide?

In our day to day life we have all experienced our fight or flight instinct, but there is a third option that is often the most deadly and this is the reaction to hide. Many times in natural disasters children do this, making it not only hard to find them but often times it brings about a tragic end. In the spiritual life this third option is often the most subtle and the most deadly. When we are confronted with the monsters of our sins, our fears, our past, our future or whatever it might be, we often choose to hide. When we see our sins we hide behind our justification. When we are confronted with a fear we hide behind what is comfortable and seemingly safe. When we see the mistakes or the wounds of the past we hide behind our successes of today telling ourselves that we will make up for what we have done wrong. Finally, when we encounter the future and it looks too large to handle we hide behind all sorts of distractions and often times useless complaining.

            So what is the solution to all of these ways hiding? Simple, come out of hiding. We have to be willing to walk in the light of truth, we have to choose over and over again to come to Jesus. When we are confronted with our sins, we must allow the Lord to fight for us and to conquer what we ourselves cannot. To admit our sinfulness can often be painful but the result is to allow our Lord to be our savior, and there is no greater joy we can give Him. When we are confronted with fears we have to trust that it is the Lord Who is fighting for us. This might be hard to do, but if we practice praising Him for all the ways He is faithful we will see that it gets easier and easier. When we our confronted with our painful past filled with all the wounds and failures, we must be willing to walk through them with Christ. We cannot hide from the reality or Christ cannot bring healing to our hearts. If a sick person does not go to the doctor the doctor cannot help them, so too if we do not bring our wounded hearts to the Lord, He cannot give us new hearts with steadfast spirits. Finally when we are looking towards the future and we are filled with fear, we must stop looking ahead and look beside us to see the one Who holds our life in His nail pierced hands. The more we try to live with Him in each moment the less we will hide behind sensual pleasures and the less we will hide from all that causes us fear. The more we live with Him the more free we become and the less we will be controlled by fears.

            As this lent nears its climax, let us run to Christ and join Him in the fight for the salvation of souls. Let us come out of hiding to be the city on the hill and shine His light on all we meet. He has called each of us to holiness, to greatness, to a life of freedom in Him. There is no need to fear because He has already conquered, will you let your heart be conquered too?

            The Lord give you peace!

– Sister M. Xavier, FSGM

Judgment

In Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict wrote of the Last Judgment as the school of hope. Jesus’ return stands as the defining moment of history and of our individual histories. His return makes my life make sense.

In this time of Lent, it seems right to “stand under judgment.” Not judgment for condemnation, but judgment for mercy, for forgiveness, for conversion of life, for satisfaction for sin. In the moment that I stand before Christ as my judge, while still on the way, I see what makes each moment most important; I see what to strive for. In that moment, life becomes real. 

If God will judge the intentions of my heart, then I must examine the intention of my heart in this moment. If He will see every detail of every action and evaluate it in its holiness, truth and love, then I must examine my actions and work to bring them into greater holiness, deeper truth and more authentic love.

His love, His grace, will purify and mend all the weakness and failure, but I must cooperate. In this life, we have the opportunity to repent, amend, grow and repair. That is the call of Lent.

– Sister M. Luka, FSGM

Up From the Earth

            Lately I have been pondering the Paschal Mystery that we participate in during our personal lives. What strikes me particularly this season is the passing from death and darkness to life and hope, and even the presence of hope during times of trial. The new beds of bright, shining crocuses and other bulb greens in our backyard pushing up from the dark, sleeping earth seem analogous to me of our own spiritual experience of the Paschal Mystery.

            Our winter here in Alton has been unique this year, fluctuating between cold and warm spells, complete with December flooding and winter snowstorms. The result is that daffodils and even summer bulbs are already rising up from their dark winter sleep to pierce the wet earth and greet the sun. Many of us Sisters have marveled on the beauty of the glowing yellow-orange crocuses that have emerged from their beds of dead leaves and wet soil. They make me smile and remember that life and hope can spring from death and darkness in our own lives, just as these little tendrils and delicate flowers do. 

What are the situations in our lives that move us to draw closer to God in suffering or darkness? These times call for our acts of faith, hope, and trust in Him – in a loving God who desires the best for us in His Will. Thus, even in times of “drought,” as we read about in the Readings for Thursday of the Second Week of Lent, if we feel like a “barren bush,” but trust in the Lord, we can stretch out our “roots” to Him and find strength and grace (Jer. 17:6-8). God and His promises are trustworthy; He will bring us safely from the Passion to the Resurrection. Then we will blossom and flourish like new growth from the winter ground, pushing up through the bracken of our trials to meet the sunlight of His Love and Grace.

– Sister M. Christiana, FSGM

Re-focus

Blessed (middle) beginning of Lent! May this be a time a prayer and growth for you. Some of you may have dreams of giving up coffee, while the rest of your family is desperately hoping you won’t or you may be planning to give up that one dessert that you don’t like anyway, or you are somewhere between these two extremes, but remember that Lent is about YOUR relationship with God. Not about ignoring Lenten fasting and penance altogether or about making everyone else around you suffer. The three goals we are given is PRAYER, FASTING and ALMS GIVING. Your Lent should be balanced with all three. It is even possible to occasionally put all three together. Maybe get a plain coffee instead of the Carmel Latte you love and use the extra money to buy a meal for someone else, while you pray for that person…that will touch your heart and someone else’s. When we truly put our faith into practice, it becomes very real and tangible to us, this helps us, but it also helps the people around us as well. This Lent take the challenge to take your faith seriously and also make it tangible in your life so it can be a witness to others. 

– Sister M. Judith, FSGM

Fasting from food and freedom from fear

            Lent is a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The first few weeks of Lent were full of Scriptural references to these three pillars. Many Lenten songs include verses about them. But do we really make an effort to incorporate them into our own personal Lenten journey with our Lord? I would particularly like to consider fasting.
            Although the Church only requires that we fast on Ash Wednesday and Holy Friday, it is a good practice throughout all of Lent. Perhaps it is not often done because we don’t understand why it is so important. And when people do fast, it can be misconstrued as a way to lose weight or diet. So what is fasting for God? Fasting done for God helps us realize our own poverty. When I physically deny myself something good, namely food, I realize how weak I am. This should draw me not more into myself, but into prayer, communion with God. I am able to see myself more as I truly am before Him, a hungry beggar, in need of His love. It helps us to face our fears, our fear of hunger, our fear of missing out on some treat or experience. We can face these fears with God and realize, that with Him we can do all things. As we do this our trust in Him will increase.
            Fasting can also be more than abstaining from food, it can be fasting from complaining, negative thoughts, from watching T.V., or any number of things that can draw us away from God. However, in this “giving up” this sacrifice we make for God, there also needs to be something to fill us. We fast and experience hunger– a physical hunger from not eating and spiritual hunger as we realize our emptiness. Then, in that hunger, we need to be filled. This is where almsgiving and prayer find their proper place. We fill our hunger with intimacy with God (prayer) and goodness and merciful acts towards others (almsgiving).

            Remember, no matter how your Lent has begun, it is never too late to start anew in your resolutions. As St. Francis would say, “Let us begin again, for up to now we have done very little or nothing!”


 – Sister M. Annuntiata, FSGM

The Seed

“He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4:26-29

There is something rather hidden about a seed.  It looks rather ordinary and very tiny.  There may be misconceptions that it could amount to anything much less a plant or bush not to mention a tree.  However, there is a trust that comes from the gardener to nourish the soil and then place the seed in its own space.             Then the gardener will carefully attend to the spot of earth that looks rather barren for he has no idea if it really is growing.  He keeps tending to this tiny seed only with a certainty of faith.  He does not need to uncover the mystery to know that something is beginning and he waits expectedly to see the wonder and awe of a mystery. That seed is growing in the hiddenness of the earth.  The growth begins from within so even if one were to plant the seed in a clear jar in water (as some of the fourth graders experimented with this year), you only see the fruit of the mystery.
As the plant grows, it stretches and grows to become what God had always intended it to be.  It needs to preserve to push itself out of the confines of the seed.  The plant is transformed from the tiny seed and desires the sun to refresh and nourish itself.  There is a push out of the soil and into the light.  This is a gradual process and then it may take years for a tiny seed to become its greatest potential whether it be a bush or tree.  There is a lot of patience and faith that is needed.   
The seed reminds me of each one of us.  We are given many hidden opportunities to grow whether in prayer, in sacrifice, or daily events.  God the Father has planted us here with love and careful attention in every detail even the seemingly insignificant ones.  He gave us His own Son as nourishment for us.  I think of how the gardener continuously waters his plants with such hope.  Christ pours Himself out for us on the cross so we can receive His nourishment in the Eucharist every day.  When we enter into the mystery of the hiddenness of meeting with Christ, then we experience the growth.  It is quiet movement towards Christ in the deepest parts of our hearts. 

– Sister Maria Christi, FSGM

The Desert

Much of the theme of Lent is about being drawn into the desert. Indeed, this is one of the premises upon which the Christian life is based upon. And it is that which religious life is based upon. Even today in religious life we still draw much of our being and purpose from that which was started by the desert fathers and those who sought solitude to find God within the desert.
            
          Yet, at the same time I would say that in some ways that the internal desert is an even harsher reality than the external environment of the actual desert or mountain. An article I once read spoke of how St. John of the Cross despite never seeing the desert could more accurately explain it than others could. This is because he took the journey that so many of us whine and stuttered at and try to bargain with God about. He was willing to say words to the effect of; God, I give you permission, take over my life. And in doing so he entered into the edges of the environment and harshness of the soul that he never could have done on his own; that which is so often exemplified in the actual harshness of a geographical desert.

            
           For me, this is something which I often stare in the face of and try to go the other way. In some ways, I would willingly say pit me against the physical desert. I don’t know anything about survival within one and likely would fail miserably. However on the reactionary level it sounds better than entering into my own internal battle and willingly giving God the permission to enter into the wounds that I want to control or even prefer to let fester and deny their existence. Nor do I want to admit how they have shaped much of my reactions in my life and the barriers that I have erected in my interactions with others.  

            
            As beautiful as religious (and Christian) life is, in a very real way it causes us to enter into that desert.  It’s a call to lay down the very struggles that often define me. To find true freedom, I need to let God into those place that I don’t want to because of the pain that is there. As a religious community, each of us are human and have our own backgrounds and brokenness. Often it is the choice to daily enter into the life we have vowed which causes us to also encounter the broken edges that we have not allowed God to heal for in our human nature we try to control that which in reality is not ours to control.


As humans each of us carry both the grace which God intended us to have before the fall and the rebellion and weakness which entered into our nature due to the fall. So much of what I personally view as the theology of the desert to be is to enter into that battle. It’s a choice to courageously enter into the battle to lay down one’s will and fight to accept the peace, freedom, and love that God wants to hand us if only we allow Him. However; to do that we have to learn to accept the pain and allow God to fight for us and take over our lives. This for me is the beauty of the Cross and Christ’s agony in the garden. The cross is both humanity’s most gruesome moment and most beautiful moment. It is the moment of the absolute darkness of humanity’s soul being conquered by the absolute light of God’s love for us; manifested in the Son laying down His life for us, for me.

Two of my favorite scripture passages speak to this reality. Isaiah 30:15, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be you strength.” And Exodus 14:14, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still.” For me this is the essence of my daily battle in the desert. The choice to allow my baser nature to have control; to doubt, to fight God; and to constantly allow the lies that the devil has breathed into me to take control and direct my actions. Or the choice to abandon myself to God and trust Him in my life. To choose to believe that which I know in my heart to be true and allow Him to give me the freedom I desire.

A battle that if I’m honest I most often I prefer not to enter into and still haven’t fully reached the point allowing to come to the climax I know it one day will need to reach. One which means I need to allow the persona and projections I’ve carefully fostered to be released and instead allow God to shape me into who I’m truly meant to be in Him. For me, that is what the call to enter into the desert is all about, allowing God to have total control and trusting His lead.

– Sister Karol Marie, FSGM

Journey with Mary: Sacrificial Love of Spiritual Motherhood

                Recently, I found a reflection I had written during my first retreat as a postulant. The last conference that had been given was on Spiritual Motherhood. As I approached the 4th Station where Jesus meets His Sorrowful Mother, this is what struck my heart:

                What is the sacrificial love of a mother? It is the self-sacrifice made to love her children. Mary’s self-sacrifice to be there with Christ, her Son, in His passion was the selfless love that united her with Him. Her heart was pierced with 7 swords in the agony of watching her beloved Son endure a cross that He did not deserve, but which He embraced for the love of the Father and mankind. Could she not have said to Jesus, “You don’t have to do this, there are other ways. Do you know how much pain You are causing me and those who love you?” She knew He could have chosen any other way to save us, but this was the Father’s will, and so in silent love Mary trusted. If the world is suffering, why do you choose to remain with it in compassion? The invitation to motherhood responds with the proposal, “Why does a mother make any of the sacrifices she makes? Why do we follow Christ who chose to be poor, a suffering servant? So that He could be there for any of His children in their need and say, “I understand,” so that He could save us. As a Mother, Mary shared intimately in that call.

                So as daughters of Mary, Religious are called to self-sacrifice so that we may love all the broken hearted, the poor, the neglected of the whole world. To be a mother is to experience joy and sorrow, but like Mary let us carry it with Jesus and not become hardened or bitter but follow and remain with Him. We should pray that others may have the courage to do the same in poverty, chastity, and obedience. A spiritual Mother is free to love generously because her sacrifices are made for the other, and she seeks to love all who are entrusted to her by her Beloved Spouse Jesus Christ. May you allow Mary to be your Mother on the journey and teach you the way of spiritual Motherhood.

– Sister M. Caterina, FSGM

Simulasi Keamanan Cyber ​​Aid

Melalui simulasi, DHS / Idaho National Laboratory hack ke dalam sistem perusahaan dan menemukan kerentanan sementara perusahaan berusaha untuk memerangi hack

Setelah string hacks yang terjadi sepanjang 2011, seperti yang diluncurkan terhadap Sony, Fox News, dan CIA, pemerintah AS tidak mengambil risiko lagi.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) kini menawarkan program pelatihan keamanan jaringan untuk perusahaan yang ingin memahami lebih tegas tentang apa yang harus dilakukan ketika hack terjadi pada sistem mereka.

DHS, yang telah bermitra dengan Idaho National Laboratory untuk program-program pelatihan, melakukan selama seminggu, 12-jam sesi di Idaho Falls, Idaho sekitar sebulan sekali untuk membantu perusahaan belajar bagaimana untuk memerangi hacker.

DHS dan Idaho National Laboratory mengadakan acara media yang dua hari pekan lalu sebagai contoh dari apa yang menawarkan program pelatihan. Pada saat itu, skenario fiktif dengan perusahaan palsu yang digunakan untuk menunjukkan sesi khas. Dalam kasus ini, itu adalah perusahaan kimia ACME vs Barney Lanjutan Domestik (BAD) Chemical Co, di mana BAD berusaha untuk kembali ke sistem ACME untuk mencuri resep untuk produk kimia baru.

BAD mampu menyusup sistem ACME melalui phishing scam dalam email, di mana hacker, yang merupakan Idaho National Laboratory karyawan, mampu meng-hack sistem dan mencari lubang keamanan. Tim di sisi hacking atau sisi perusahaan dapat memperoleh poin untuk membeli item yang baik menembus atau melindungi sistem.

Melalui latihan ini, perusahaan-perusahaan belajar langsung bagaimana melompat ke komputer dan mendapatkan kembali kontrol jaringan. Menurut Marty Edwards, direktur Sistem Pengendalian DHS Program Keamanan, perusahaan dengan kebijakan perusahaan keamanan yang mendelegasikan tanggung jawab untuk peristiwa semacam itu telah menjadi paling sukses dalam program.

“Ini adalah permainan strategi dalam cara terbaik untuk menerapkan pertahanan Anda di lingkungan kontrol industri,” kata Edwards. “Ini tidak semua tentang teknologi, ini tentang orang-orang.”

Perwakilan dari industri transportasi, energi, minyak dan gas adalah beberapa contoh dari mereka yang telah mengikuti program.

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