Already as a young clerical student I heard about one candidate for sainthood – that his personal ideal and life vocation, as well as the key to understanding all life situations was: “to be a living tabernacle.” If I’ve received Lord Jesus in my heart, it means He lives in it, so I’m a living tabernacle and may bring Him to all the places where He is most needed. And from my heart – He can radiate on the other people, places and situations.

Today our towns and villages, streets and squares, roadside Saints  and the windows of our homes are welcoming Jesus, who wants to visit us. He wants to be there – where we run to work, go shopping, meet our friends or business partners and clerks…

Our celebrations are very festive – thank God, because there are the countries where such processions don’t take place any longer. 🙁

But it’s also up to us – if we let Him visit our homes, our marriages and families, when He comes in a most discreet ways: in the hearts of our “First-Holy-Communion” children, in the heart of the wife coming home after the day of work to her husband, or in the heart of the husband returning to his wife, waiting for him at home. And maybe on Monday, from my heart I’ll show the Lord round my workplace and colleagues?

Fr. Jay

Round anniversary of our friends’ wedding… Occasion not so extraordinary… But…

When four years and a half ago we were expecting our middle child to be born, She was waiting, too. We exchanged the news “from our bellies.” Their son was born first. Earlier than ours. And not in a way that all had expected.

He was baptized very quickly in hopsital, before his first (then it turned out – one of several that followed) operation. Afterwards – there were four years of struggle, of everyday laborious rehabilitation… Strength and kindness flowed from that Family. Small successes. Small joys.

So the Anniversary Mass is not quite ordinary. Because it takes place in the Intensive Care Unit, in hospital. The four-year old child is unconscious, and his parents, engulfed with pain, are asking the Lord to keep him alive, if He wants him to be healed. On the other hand, they are close to accepting the doctors’ diagnoses – so they ask for no more suffering for their child.

And there is this extraordinary priest with these extraordinary words. Not preaching about the pain. Not talking about leaving and losing. About Love. About the support that the spouses may give to each other. And that in the first place, the Husband is there for his Wife, and the Wife – for her Husband. And only then for their children, and for the rest of the family.

He also talks about the Marriage Vows – that they never become outdated, they have no expiry date. And that one for the other is a support on their way to salvation. And that it is Love that wins. And Love brings peace.

And that it’s good to be grateful for all the good things – and cherish the memory of those things, multiply them and share them. In good times and in bad.

That was the sermon, in those circumstances. Addressed so much to me. Also to me. To you, too… ?

Agnieszka

PS. A couple of hours after the Mass I recieve a text message that the doctors have declared the child’s brain dead and the small Angel is already in Heaven.

or on the potential of love:

“Love is never something ready made, something merely ‘given’ to man and woman; it is at the same time a ‘task’ which they are set. Love should be seen as something which in a sense never ‘is’ but is always only ‘becoming,’ and what it becomes depends upon the contribution of both persons and the depth of their commitment”. (K. Wojtyła*)

* Love and Responsibility, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1981, p.139

…to find time for organizing Program 1: “You and I are We” (couple reatreat) in Łomianki, Poland, together with the marriage preparation course “Gaudium et spes”. We welcomed a dozen or so couples.

The schedule was arranged in such a way so that I could move from the married couples to fiances and back. For the former group of participants – the program was a chance of coming back to each other, finding each other after months of years of being lost; for the latter –  it was the opportunity to face the questions that one doesn’t notice at this stage of relationship.

When I do Program 1 I always recalll those who have already taken part in it. I would like them to find some time to moor in our Harbour despite their manifold activities and tasks.

Together with you I make the first steps in this new week: on Monday – I remember the lesson of gentleness, on Tuesday – I’ll remember how to show respect, Wednesday will be my day of creativity, freedom and joy in treating my life as a gift for the others, Thursday will refresh my rituals, Friday is the invitation to dialogue abounding in tenderness, so that on Saturday my gift could express the purest word of my love.

It doesn’t take much for a married couple to nourish the love necessary “not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment” (HV 9).

It doesn’t take much, does it?

I’m keeping you in my memory.

Fr. Jay

“But you … keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life … Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear.” (Jude 1:20-23)

Wonderful are those moments in which our spiritual batteries have just been recharged and we’re coming back from a family retreat, where we could experience again the actual presence of God and loads of warm welcome from the other people. Where everyone was nice, kind and kept their hearts open wide. Then we just miss those moments gone by, regretting the idyl is over. In course of time, when everyday floods us with drawbacks and setbacks, we also lose the ability to be nice and kind, and, instead, filled with resent – we rebel against the idea that “it is me who should concede, stop insisting, resign”.  Our peace is taken away from us.

So we’re left with this question: what to do to “keep ourselves in God’s love”?

We go back in mind to the memories of the past, but memory may easily fail us, or get littered with other stuff. Sometimes the help comes with the photos and meetings with firends who experience God in a similar way. Some people go through the retreat materials again – and that helps a lot, too.

And there is one more way. It consists in looking for similar moments during each day – the moments that used to be so helpful, so supportive, which made us stronger. Those tiny events of every day, when – in the kind word from the husband, in the grip of the small preschool child’s hand, or in by preventing a quarrel with a teenager – you notice the smile of God, who is present in the other person. Those moments are worth memorizing.

For example – through blogging. 😉

Dosia

I don’t know, for whom it is easier to celebrate it? For the parents endowed with the grace of parenthood, who can celebrate with their children their feast, and to discover child-like joy within themselves, too?

Or for the adults who don’t have kids of their own? They can always count on their loving Mums to call them – bacuse for her you’ll always be a child?

Or for those, who find new joy each time they say “Our Father” prayer, because they discover: “God loves me as His most precious child”?

Today, since I’ve become a Father by choice and vocation, I pray for all of you to the One who is the source of all perenthood, and I want to ensure each of you that you are the apple of His eye – of the One who called us all into being.

It was Him who whispered our names most tenderly – and we were conceived.

You are so much loved!

Fr. Jay