We are more than our dreams. More than our expectations. More than our egos. More than success, status, and silver.
We are fragile. We are vulnerable. We are dependent.
We are HIS.
There is a lovely conversation between Jesus and Julian of Norwich in the first of her Revelations or Showings. Julian was an anchoress in 14th Century Norwich, England. Jesus showed her a hazel nut lying in the palm of her hand. “What may this be?” she asked him. “It is all that is made,” was the answer she understood.
Julian was amazed. The hazel nut was so small it seemed that it would fall into nothing. Hazel nuts were like acorns today. We don’t even notice them, they are so ubiquitous. We sweep them away, so ordinary are they. Julian understood Jesus to answer her: “It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it.”
Julian’s world, like our own, is as fragile and seemingly ready to fall apart as this hazel nut. She had lived as a child through the Black Death that decimated Europe and the resulting social and economic disruption that followed. She experienced the devastation of the Hundred Years War between England and France, and the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. In 1378, the temporal leadership of the Roman Catholic Church split, and for the next 68 years there were two popes claiming authority over the Catholic Church.
The world as we know it now is also chaotic and confusing; it seems so tenuous that it could at any moment dissolve into nothing.
With the Incarnation, the Son of God himself became small and fragile and needy. A babe born in the night in a stranger’s lodging and laid among the animals. A preacher with nowhere to lay his head. The Lord and Teacher laying down his life for the life of the world.
“Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness” (Phil 2:6-7).
While we creatures aspire for power and status and riches and security, God himself in Christ chooses to be fragile. To be vulnerable. To be dependent. He shows this to be the only way. His way.
In these days the Pauline Family is praying the novena in preparation for the feast of Jesus, the Divine Master, the Father’s Son, the Teacher who shows us what it is to be loved, how to love and trust and risk, how to remain small. He knows from the inside the tragedies that tear apart our hearts. He reminds us that we are HIS.
Sister Marie Paul Curley, FSP, describes this love this way, “The mastery of Jesus Christ is that of perfect, complete, unconditional love. As our true Master, Jesus, is the One who gives the deepest meaning to our lives, and we are his inasmuch as we were loved into being through him. He died to save us, and he constantly reveals his loving care for us.”
Sister Mary Tiziana, of the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master, remembers meeting with the Pauline Family’s founder, Blessed James Alberione, before she departed for Brazil in 1963. He said to her these words which she never forgot, “The Divine Master radiates himself to the world and gives himself in love to the world through you.”
Father Alberione traced out for Sister this path of love, this way that Jesus radiates himself to the world throughout all of history, giving himself to everyone in love. This path, Alberione explained to Sister Tiziana, originated with creation and stretched through the centuries until the Word took on flesh and dwelt among us, the human adventure of God made man. “Father took the time,” Sister continues, “to lead me into each part of the life of Jesus until his passion, death and resurrection, and ascension. He wanted me to be able not just to understand the mystery of Jesus’ life, but to feel it, to taste this mystery in all its fullness. He opened my eyes to the glorious life of Christ at the right hand of the Father, where he intercedes for us until the whole universe will be one in him.”
Eucharistic presence is at the center of the life of a Sister Disciple of the Divine Master. With her contemplative prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, she is the Sentinel of Jesus’ Eucharistic Presence. “I will never forget that meeting with the founder before I departed for Brazil so many years ago,” says Sister Tiziana. “He wanted me to be absorbed in Christ, the Divine Master. He encouraged me to throw myself into intense spiritual work, so that Christ himself would utilize the faculties of my mind, will, and heart, my whole being, as my Truth, my Life, my Way. This work that he gave me is still in progress. It unfolds day by day.”
Sister Marie Paul, FSP, reflects: “Jesus Master still accompanies disciples of all time throughout their lives, teaching us through his Word, but even more by the witness of his life, his love for us, his guiding presence; in other words, by his relationship with us. As disciples, we share both in his life and in his call to serve.”
On this Feast of the Divine Master, let us take up this challenge to live Jesus, so as to give Jesus to the world:
Lord, I offer you everything out of love.
You are my All!
You are with me in times of joy and in times of loss,
in times of clarity and in times of confusion,
in times of apostolic success and in times of apparent failure.
You supply peace, grace, and strength at all moments.
I hope in your promises and offer everything to you
in gratitude for your holy will.
Right now I find the work I carry out,
both internally and externally,
to be hidden in you.
Help me to remember that the foundation of a house is hidden from view,
yet it sustains the entire building.
Strengthen me in virtue and in humility.
Based on a prayer by Venerable Mother Scholastica Rivata, PDDM
Sister Disciples of the Divine Master
