[Kd1871-covenant-solidarity] Sunday Sermon by Fr Carlos Padilla, Madrid - in english now!

[maria fischer]

Dear friends of schoenstatt.org,
each Sunday, our spanish speaking readers enjoy Fr Carlos Padilla`s 
Sunday sermon... Now we also receive it in English.
Greetings,
maria


> Padre Padilla's Homily February 23, 2014
> Love thy enemy, pray for those who persecute you.
> /The breadth of the law doesn't merely consist of giving the 
> corresponding amount, the minimum; but rather the maximum. .../
> The other day, an eight year old girl asked me 'What must I do so that 
> Jesus speaks to me?' The question surprised me but at the same time 
> seemed so elemental.  Is it clear, what we must do so that God speaks 
> to us?  It doesn't appear that easy. His silences are disconcerting 
> and he words often seem incomprehensible to us. It appears he doesn't 
> speak our language. At least, we don't understand him.  His voice 
> seems to be a whisper, a cadence in the soul, a melody we barely 
> listen to. But he is there at our side, everyday accompanying us on 
> our path.  He embraces us from behind without our feeling his arms. 
>  He holds us when we feel tired and overwhelmed. He tugs on us so to 
> draw us from our laziness, when we feel we can't follow him. He speaks 
> and is silent, always watching over us.  Yes, his gaze is that of a 
> father who loves, an open door to heaven, an abyss of grace, a flare 
> of hope in the middle of the night. He continues to contemplate our 
> steps, to foresee our falls, to wait for us when we lose heart. But 
> yes, he respects our liberty. Never violent, he doesn't force us. He 
> only wants to entice us with his love. To draw us in with his voice. 
> And suddenly, resting in his arms, we have a new-come peace. And in 
> our heart we find new answers, as though He had sewn them in the soul 
> as we slept. It requires, with certainty, a garden well kept, a ground 
> worked, deep and fertile. It requires a deep ocean because, in the 
> noises of the daily world, His voice is lost. It requires that we 
> spend time at his side, that we seek him out, that we spend time 
> waiting in a fruitless wait. It invites us to seek Him in persons, in 
> places, in emptiness. He doesn't want us to merely find him in people 
> who we love, who fascinate us. He wants us to find him also in those 
> who are displeasing to us, in the faces of those who are not our 
> friends. He wants us to read the book of our lives, filled with errors 
> and erasures. With patience, we decipher signals, we lift stones, 
> ventilating the place in our souls where God wanders. Yes, clearly God 
> speaks to us. We can't do anything so that he speaks to us more or 
> more clearly. But yes, we can do much to learn to listen to his voice 
> in the midst of so many voices that confuse us. God speaks to us in 
> humanity and through humanity he leads us to the  heights, to his 
> heart. Father Kentenich said  "All that is created can inflame my 
> heart. A feminine figure, a beautiful land, a thought etc. All of that 
> might attract me, but in the final terms, how I act [respond] should 
> be in accord with the divine." We always want to go to greater 
> heights, to skip to the heights....
> Today we hear what we are. God says that we are saints. "You shall be 
> saint because, I, the Lord, your God am holy." God has placed his 
> glory in our heart, he has sown his divine life in our soul. We are 
> saints because he is saint. Saint Paul said we are temples of God "Did 
> you not know that you are a saint, that the spirit of God lives in 
> you.The temple of God is holy; the temple of God is in you. Make no 
> mistake. If one of you thinks he is wise in this world, he will be 
> fooled in order to become wise. Because the wisdom of this world is 
> foolish before God. 1 Corinthians 3, 16-23. It has to do with longing, 
> with tending to the intimacy with God. It has to do with living in the 
> temple of our flesh, in a profound union with God. He lives in us, in 
> our transformed lives. But sometimes this temple has no order, it 
> lacks peace, it is muddied, it bears obstacles that keep us from 
> rising higher. The soul is heavy. It weighs and pulls us down. It 
> blunderingly enslaves us. We want to love God but we love ourselves 
> selfishly. We desire to perfect that love....  But we don't feel 
> worthy of His presence and we yearn it.  We need to learn to pray, to 
> see God in our lives, to love Him in the temple in our hearts. 
> Although we like spectacular things and extraordinary encounters with 
> God, God speaks to us in our very life, in the holy temple of the 
> soul, filled with our loved ones and our unloved ones, filled with our 
> encounters and our missed encounters, filled with our accords and our 
> rantings, filled with routine. There is God watching over, wanting to 
> live in our hearts.
>
> -


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.mchosting.eu/pipermail/kd1871-covenant-solidarity/attachments/20140223/339da28f/attachment.htm>