Summary

In a world that struggles for justice, peace, and new meaning for our lives, we lift our eyes to Jesus in his most dramatic hour. His love, his determination, his generosity, made him accept a terrible death, leaving his disciples a sacramental memory of his heart given out for us that is now the source of our hope. The Eucharist teaches us that only love can save us, and leads us to live according to his heart.

The universal Church has just celebrated the 49th Eucharistic Congress in Quebec under the theme "The Eucharist, gift of God for the life of the world". I have been asked to speak about the Eucharist as a primary source of hope. What is this all about? Certainly the title of the Eucharistic Congress is pointing in the same direction of what I am asked to say, for truly the Eucharist brings hope and life to today's world.

Let us start asking ourselves what we hope for today, that is, what we need in our society, what we need in our families, what we need and hope for deep down in our hearts. We all have hopes, we need them to survive. We raise our eyes and our arms up to God in our difficult moments, for we know the only real source of hope is him. Today we will speak of the ways in which the Eucharist can respond to that basic need of our hearts.

In a broken world, violent and unjust, we hope for a better society, for justice, for peace. Many times our families are also broken, and we hope to overcome divisions and difficulties. Even our hearts may be broken, longing for true happiness. We hope to find meaning in our lives and our sufferings. Our hopes are bigger and deeper than just material achievements. We ultimately hope to fill our lives with God and his love.

In his Encyclical letter Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict puts it in these words:

In this sense it is true that anyone who does not know God, even though he may entertain all kinds of hopes, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that sustains the whole of life (cf. Ep 2:12). (27)

Day by day, man experiences many greater or lesser hopes, different in kind according to the different periods of his life. Sometimes one of these hopes may appear to be totally satisfying without any need for other hopes. Young people can have the hope of a great and fully satisfying love; the hope of a certain position in their profession, or of some success that will prove decisive for the rest of their lives. When these hopes are fulfilled, however, it becomes clear that they were not, in reality, the whole. It becomes evident that man has need of a hope that goes further. It becomes clear that only something infinite will suffice for him, something that will always be more than he can ever attain. (30)

Let us explore the meanings of the Eucharist to see whether it can provide an answer to these questions. We believe the Eucharist can in fact be a response to these longings and a primary source of hope in the many difficult situations we face.

We will pursue a greater personal understanding of the Eucharist. We may go to mass every Sunday, or several times a week, or maybe not very often. Yet we may not always understand fully what are we celebrating. Are we there just out of some sense of duty, because we have been told it is a sin not to go to mass on Sundays? Or do we only go "when I feel like it," but not always? Do we bring our questions, our problems, our hearts to that altar to ask the Lord that his love may be poured down into our lives? Or do we sit there bored, hoping for mass to end soon? What are you receiving in each mass? Pope Benedict says Christians "should cultivate a desire that the Eucharist have an ever deeper effect on their daily lives, making them convincing witnesses in the workplace and in society at large" (Sacramentum Caritatis, 79).

Let us look at the meaning Jesus gave to the Eucharist from the beginning, in the Last Supper. What is the context? It is Passover, the ritual celebration that reminds Israelites of God's liberation. It is the source of their identity as a chosen people, saved by God's love. Jesus will give the feast a deeper meaning that fulfils the ultimate liberation God wants to work for his people. It will become the source of identity of the new chosen people.

On that special night, he gathers his apostles to prepare them for what is coming and to give them his last instructions. He has come to the end of his mission on earth, and is about to undergo the most terrible part. He has loved his brothers and sisters and given out his life for them all the time, in all he did. Now he will give out his life to the end. He is scared, he doesn't want to suffer, and he will ask his Father to deliver him from this hour. But he will accept going to death, accepting his Father's will of loving to the last consequences. He understands that he is the new lamb whose sacrifice will bring about salvation for his people. This is the mysterious way the full extent of God's love will be shown.

The Eucharist is in turn the mysterious way in which his disciples, will later remember and celebrate his loving presence with us. He must go, but he has the deep desire not to leave his loved ones alone. So he will stay with them and with the pilgrim Church in an unexpected sacramental form.

All this is precisely what he explains to his disciples in the Last Supper (despite their incapacity to understand it). He takes the bread in his hands and says: this bread is me, this is my life being given out for you. He then takes the cup to say: I am this wine, it is my blood, which will be shed for you. He is accepting the terrible death that is coming up. Furthermore, in these words and these gestures he is summing up his whole life. He had always been a bread broken for others, he had always been willing to shed his blood for love of his people. Now he will love to the end, dying for us. He had faith that this path, the path of love, led to life and resurrection.

His expressions that night take a ritual form, so as to be repeated later by the Church, in his memory. This repetition throughout the centuries has been his way to remain present, though hidden, to his loved ones. Each Eucharist we celebrate today brings about his living presence for the community. We celebrate his love, his life surrendered, his victory over death. We are proclaiming that love defeated hatred and death, and that he now accompanies us through his joyful, living presence. We are always celebrating the paschal mystery, his life, death and resurrection.

Listen to these inspiring words by Pope Benedict to the youth in Germany at World Youth Day in 2005:

"By making the bread into his Body and the wine into his Blood, he anticipates his death, he accepts it in his heart, and he transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence - the Crucifixion - from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf. 1Co 15:28). In their hearts, people always and everywhere have somehow expected a change, a transformation of the world. Here now is the central act of transformation that alone can truly renew the world: violence is transformed into love, and death into life" (Cologne - Marienfeld, Sunday, 21 August 2005).

So every Eucharist is the memorial of Jesus' love and of what he did for us. But it is also the invitation to let our lives be transformed. "Do this in memory of me," he told his disciples that night. Do what? "Give out your lives for others, as I have done. Live as I have lived. Be bread broken for others, be blood that is shed for others". In this recommendation "Do this in memory of me" - the disciples are being associated to his mission and to his way of life. To keep his memory, not only should they repeat the ritual celebration of that Last Supper. They are invited to do as he has done, to live as he has lived, to love as he has loved. To die so as to become food that gives life to others, as he did. The washing of the feet of his apostles, that same holy night, emphasizes the same lesson: their lives are meant be at the loving service of others.

As we look at Jesus, we come to understand the meaning of our own lives. He is the model, the ideal, the perfect human being.

The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light (Gaudium et Spes, 22).

Our lives ought to be Eucharistic, just as Jesus' life was Eucharistic. This does not mean going to mass all the time, but rather living like Christ. It means having his heart, in constant offering of self to the Father. This is what Pope John Paul meant when he asked the National Secretaries of Apostleship of Prayer from all over the world to form Christians whose lives were moulded by the Eucharist (Rome, 1985). We are called to lead a Eucharistic life, that is, to live like Christ and share his mission.

Saying just this may not seem like good news or source of hope at all, for we all agree that it is extremely difficult to live as Jesus did. It is simply beyond our capacities. It is clearly something the disciples were not able to achieve out of their personal effort. It would only be possible as a grace of God, a gift of total transformation. The Holy Spirit they received transformed them from cowardly, fearful people, into brave witnesses of Christ ready to give their lives for him.

In the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit is at work giving us this grace. "By faith, we do not only learn about Christ's salvation, but we actually receive it!" (Pope Benedict, Spe Salvi, 7). Just as the bread and wine are miraculously transformed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit - the invocation of the Spirit in mass is what we call the "epiclesis" - the people of God are also to be transformed into Christ's presence for the world. There are two epiclesis in the mass, the first one over the gifts, the second over the congregation. In both we are calling on the Holy Spirit to come and act these changes. This is really the final purpose of the mass, that the congregation may be transformed into Christ. This will start in each one's heart when they receive Jesus in his Word, his Body, his Holy Spirit. But it does not end there. At the end of the celebration, the congregation is sent out with the same Spirit to set in motion "a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in all", so that "violence is transformed into love, and death into life" (Pope Benedict, WYD 2004).

We need to come back to the mass and Eucharistic Adoration frequently because here we find Jesus. We receive from him the strength to live this mission in the brokenness of our lives and of our world.

Pope John Paul gives us a beautiful paragraph in his encyclical letter entitled The Church Draws Her Life from the Eucharist (No. 60):

"Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination. In the Eucharist we have Jesus, we have his redemptive sacrifice, we have his resurrection, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have adoration, obedience and love of the Father. Were we to disregard the Eucharist, how could we overcome our own deficiency?".

So, we can now summarize how the Eucharist is really a primary source of hope for us. How does this happen? Six points.

One. The Eucharist is a source of hope basically because Jesus is our source of hope. And in the Eucharist we find his real presence for us, a joyful and loving presence. That would be enough to sustain that the Eucharist is a permanent source of hope for us. He is there, he comes to us in a hidden form, but in his full glorious living presence. And nothing can fill us with more hope than just being with him.

Two. We now know that in the Eucharist we celebrate the full meaning of Jesus' life as revealed in the Paschal Mystery. He portrayed himself fully in what he did and said that night, including the washing of the feet of the apostles. We understand that his life was always Eucharistic, in a permanent self-giving attitude. His heart was always a loving offering to his Father.

Three. By Looking at Jesus' Eucharistic life, we understand the meaning for our own existence.

Four. The Eucharist has the power to transform us into Christ's likeness, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit. The sacraments make present the events they memorialize, namely, Christ's presence in his Paschal Mystery. It is really he who comes to our lives, in his death and resurrection, making all things new. We find far more than a merely intellectual meaning for our lives.

Five. The Eucharist sends us out to transform the world. This is a source of hope because the Church collaborates in bringing about the kingdom of God. We can hope for justice and peace as more and more Christians are moulded to the likeness of Jesus, putting love and forgiveness where there was selfishness and intolerance. We learn to have a heart like his, to care for the ones he cared, to fight for the causes he fought. We work as him, with him, in him, to heal this broken world.

Six. It is source of hope because it is source of strength. In our weakness, we can always find here the strength to overcome the daily difficulties and temptations that make our lives sadder.

My words could finish here, for I have answered the question in the title. But there is something else.

In the Eucharist we are invited to let ourselves be transformed by the Holy Spirit and then to go out and transform the world. When this happens, the Eucharist is certainly "A gift of God for the life of the world" (Eucharistic Congress, Quebec 2008). But how do we open ourselves to receiving this gift every day? How will God accomplish this transformation of my life and of the world? Is there a practical way to keep our lives united to Jesus? Is it possible to lead a truly Eucharistic life?

Here is where the Apostleship of Prayer comes in, teaching us a way to live our daily lives always connected to this source of hope, the Eucharist, and not only when we are at mass. What is the basic practice of the Apostleship of Prayer? The basic practice of the members of the Apostleship of Prayer is, through prayer, to make a daily offering of our lives to God.

What is the meaning of this prayer? As we begin our day, we offer ourselves to God and ask that every moment of the day be lived in unity to the Heart of Jesus. We put our lives in the Father's hands in the same way the priest puts the bread and the wine on the altar. He offers the gifts and asks the Father to send his Holy Spirit so they may become Jesus himself. Likewise, every morning we ask the Holy Spirit to take our lives and mould them to Jesus' image. We offer our joys, our sufferings, our works, our prayers-everything we will think or say or do that day. We tell him we want our whole day to be transformed so we may live for him and with him. We are living our baptismal priesthood, "offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to God, our spiritual worship" (Rm 12:1). This Scripture quotation is referring to our own lives as a Eucharistic offering.

The Daily Offering prayer is not really a promise of what we will do, for we know our own weakness and cannot guarantee the results. It is a sincere manifestation of what we would like to do. We are wishing nothing less than to lead a saintly life in this day. Our daily prayer expresses our heartfelt desire to live in God's will and in Jesus' heart. For this we ask to be guided by the Holy Spirit rather than by our own self-centred tendencies.

In this way, through our constant practice of offering ourselves, we learn to live our whole lives as Eucharist. The Mass will begin for us in the morning when we awake, and will continue all day long as we offer everything to the Father, united with Jesus' perfect offering. The Eucharistic is "a mystery to be lived", as described by Pope Benedict in Sacramentum Caritatis No. 71:

"Christianity's new worship includes and transfigures every aspect of life: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1Co 10:31). Christians, in all their actions, are called to offer true worship to God. Here the intrinsically Eucharistic nature of Christian life begins to take shape. The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God (cf. Rm 8:29ff.). There is nothing authentically human - our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds - that does not find in the sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full. Here we can see the full human import of the radical newness brought by Christ in the Eucharist: the worship of God in our lives cannot be relegated to something private and individual, but tends by its nature to permeate every aspect of our existence. Worship pleasing to God thus becomes a new way of living our whole life, each particular moment of which is lifted up, since it is lived as part of a relationship with Christ and as an offering to God. The glory of God is the living man (cf. 1Co 10:31). And the life of man is the vision of God".

Since we Apostles of Prayer are sinners, we are not able to live up to the generous offering we made in the morning. Each night, we do our examen, a review of the day, to see in the first place what God has done with the gift that I gave him at the beginning of the day. We also see what we have done wrong, but it is more important to see what God has done right. We thank him, ask for his forgiveness and his help to correct what is wrong. The next day we begin again, once more putting our life in his hands.

Let us now move on to the connection between all we have said and the heart of Christ. It should be quite obvious by now. Offering his heart to his Father was what Jesus' life was all about. The words of the Eucharist, as we have said before, summarize his whole existence and show us what was always in his heart. It was always given out in love for his Father, and for his brothers and sisters.

When we live the Eucharist by means of the daily offering we align our lives with the self-giving attitude that was always in Jesus' heart. In the mass we are receiving the Holy Spirit that works to transform our hearts to the likeness of Jesus' heart. But there is more.

Jesus gave his life, his body and his blood, for love of us all. He died to bring together the entire family of God. In his heart we all meet; we all fit; we are all welcome. Here he offers the whole of humanity to his Father along with himself. As we pray our daily (Eucharistic) offering, we bring our family, our neighbours, our work, the poor. in short, all of humanity, into his heart. The Eucharist is the foretaste of the heavenly banquet of all nations, of all peoples, gathered and sheltered under God's loving protection. The Eucharistic altar is the place where we bring the whole world into Jesus' heart. We in turn are sent from the Eucharist back to the world, with Jesus, taking his heart to all who need him.

A final word on why we pray for the Pope's intentions. Jesus is present in the Eucharist giving his life for the salvation of humanity and for the prayer intentions of the whole world. These intentions are made concrete for us in the Pope's monthly intentions. He is whom knows best as to where the Church should focus its concerns and its missionary action today. As we strive to live our day according to God's will, we are enacting the Church's mission in our small share of the world. By praying for the Holy Father's major concerns today, our hearts grow to the dimension of the world and of the heart of Jesus. The Apostleship of Prayer joins our personal lives and our prayers to the whole Church's mission and prayer.

In conclusion, Jesus, our only source of our hope, comes close to us in the Eucharist. Here we recognize his heart given out for all of us. We could then conclude by saying this talk titled "The Eucharist, primary source of our hope", could also have been called: "The Heart of Jesus, primary source of our hope," and both titles would refer to the same content.

Glory be to Jesus and his loving heart, open and merciful to us sinners, inviting us to live in his friendship. To him the honour and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Keynote speech given July 3rd, 2008
by Claudio Barriga, S.J.
at the Regional Convention of the Apostleship of Prayer,
Naga City, Bicol Region, Philippines

Shortly before suffering from a cerebral hemorrhage, in the course of his last speech in Rome, Father Pedro Arrupe said:

“A symbolic expression of the deepest Christian spirit, of extraordinary efficacy for our own improvement and for apostolic fecundity, palpitates in the spirituality of the Heart of Jesus.

If you want some advice, here it is: this devotion to the Heart of Christ contains immense strength; it is up to each one of us to discover it, if you have not yet done so, and have it take root by applying it to our personal life in the way that the Lord teaches and grants it. It is a matter of an extraordinary grace God offers us.

Let us not succumb to the temptation of considering ourselves superior to a devotion which is expressed in a symbol or a graphic representation of this symbol.

Let us not join the learned and prudent of this world, from whom the Father hides his mysterious realities, while He teaches it to those who are or have become little ones.

Let us keep our simplicity of heart, which is the first condition for deep conversion: “If they do not become like little ones…”. These are words of Christ which we could translate as follows: If they want to enter as persons into the treasures of the kingdom and contribute to its building with extraordinary efficacy they must make themselves poor like the poor they wish to serve.

It has frequently been repeated that the poor have taught them more than many books. Let them learn from the poor this very simple lesson: recognize my love in my heart”.

In front of the multiple and changing circumstances the present-day Church is living, the figure of Jesus emerges for a great many people as their model in the search for meaning and hope in life. But we can also see in it a new palpable orientation in our present-day reality, born of the contemplation of Jesus’ life rather than of his death.

The redemption of Jesus, which springs from his suffering heart, enriches us with joyfulness and life. We can feel this motion also in the task of the search and the liberating social dimensions in our societies: life in spite of death, hope in spite of despair, sense in spite of senselessness, the interests of the many in spite of the egoism of the few, the rights of those who are excluded in spite of the privileged ones…

This, we might say, is the heart of the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer. Christ’s own Heart, palpitating, as Father Arrupe says, with extraordinary efficacy, which generates immense, profound, fruitful strength… It is this same spirituality of the Heart of Jesus which, loaded with challenges, stimulates us to hope and to service through these simple means which the Apostleship of Prayer in Ecuador uses.

The history of the Apostleship of Prayer of Ecuador has been widespread and tinged with great devotion for the over 50 years of its existence. Still, and in spite of this long and fruitful history, the scope of the present article is simply to outline the scenario of the present challenges and dreams of this Apostolate.

The medias

The material the Apostleship of Prayer diffuses is contained in a size A5 sheet of paper (21 x 15 cm.) which has included some changes consequent to what we have received as the requirements and needs of the people among whom it is spread.

This material is given out to people who assist at eucharistic celebrations, and who in their turn bring it to their homes and read it to the elderly, to people who are alone, to the sick and the disabled. On the basis of this the need emerged to increase the typographical size in order to make it easier to read, and the same reasoning led to printing the sheets in full colour.

The service the AP offers in Ecuador directs its distribution channels through two vast hubs: Quito and Guayaquil. These try to cover the national territory, though certainly so far the effective coverage is basically limited to the areas where the Society of Jesus has centres, i.e. in five provinces: three in the sierra and two on the coast.

Thus approximately 12.000 sheets are distributed through the city of Quito and approximately 18.000 in Guayaquil, bringing the national total of distributed leaflets to 30.000.

This simple material offers the fundamental elements of the spirituality of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which is alive in the Apostleship of Prayer:

- Page 1: Front page: images which refer to the General Intention of the month, with an emphasis on scenes of daily life, with ordinary people, carrying out ordinary activities, as well as a title which refers, not always literally, to the text of the General Intention.

- Pages 2-3: The word of God for each day: information on the lives of the saints as well as the readings of the Psalms and the corresponding text of the New Testament, to which is added a brief quotation from the reading, which in itself could be studied as a prayer.

The Daily Offering prayer.

- Page 4: General and Missionary Intentions, as well as a commentary by the Pope on the general intention.

Finally, information on some electronic web pages which we allow ourselves to recommend for consultation.

Complementary to this material we have also published small cards with the following information:

- Ignatius’ prayer of “take God and receive”
- The Daily Offering prayer
- The prayer “Soul of Christ”
- Father Arrupe’s prayer on “Our way of proceeding”
- mini-cards with the general intentions on the front and the prayer of daily offering on the back.

The challenges

I have read a great deal these days on the AP: its statutes, documents, recommendations, meetings, initiatives, communications, the “Charter”, books on the spirituality of the Sacred Heart of Jesus…

Inspired, beautiful and profoundly motivating texts. And now I ask myself: what can I add to the service the AP seeks to offer through its simple means in Ecuador?

I do not want to add more theory to the few lines already written, nor to repeat myself. And so I may move into reverse, not from the AP to the people but from the people to the AP. From ordinary and normal people, the common suffering, defeated, weary people… How can these lives be illuminated with hope through the AP?

My daily offering, transforming my life, is a path to holiness.

Some months ago, while I was returning home with my family, we saw a humble-looking lady wearily trudging up the road on foot. It was about midday, and the sun was burning hot. The area in which I live is still rather uninhabited and no regular public transport is provided. The lady carried a little girl of about six years old on her shoulder.

God, Our Father,
I offer you my day.
I offer you my prayers,
thoughts and words.

We invited her to get in, for there still was a long way to go to the inhabited area. In the car, we asked her where she was going and she answered that she was going to the INNFA (National Institute for the Child and the Family) for the child to have therapy. The child was suffering from cerebral palsy and she hoped that the therapy she was receiving on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays would help her, and since she could hardly walk she carried her on her shoulder.

She told us that she lived in a small town nearby and made these three trips a week on foot to where she could take a bus to go to the hospital. She made the return journey in the same way: by bus and then on foot with the child on her shoulder. It took her an hour and a half to go there, and the same time to get home.

Works, sufferings and joys
in union with your Son Jesus Christ
Who continues to offer himself to you
in the Eucharist,
for the salvation of the world…

She earned her living doing laundry, always accompanied by her child. Couldn’t your husband, some older child or relative help you? No-one. Her husband, or someone else? He had abandoned her a short while earlier, though he was not much help, he was an alcoholic. She had another child, but he was epileptic and while she was doing laundry or going to therapy she left him locked in at home, “offering up” so that nothing should happen to him or that he should suffer an attack in her absence.

May the Holy Spirit,
Who guided Jesus,
be my guide and my strength on this day,
that I may bear witness to your Love.

We were overwhelmed in the face of this suffering and misfortune, though we remembered it with gratitude and were even more overwhelmed by the enormous amount of love and hope in life this mother showed…

With Mary,
the mother of the Lord and the Church,
I ask especially
for the intentions the Holy Father
recommends to the prayer of all the faithful for this month.

People who are not in close touch with God often feel unworthy of addressing him. Their lives, or those they can offer, may not seem worthy material for prayer, and even less for offering. Daily prayer restores the most purely human and divine essence of our lives: what I think, what I say, what I suffer, what I rejoice over… everything is prayer for my own salvation and for the salvation of the world in which I live.

What can I say to God , how can I pray with him? People who approach the theme of prayer through complicated and lofty preparation which is beyond their capacity constantly repeat these questions. Doesn’t what to say or what to offer God occur to you at the beginning of the day? Offering oneself, the day we are going to live, both simple and marvellous, full of God and his gifts.

The Trinitarian spirituality of the AP is summed up in this prayer just as the “Take, Lord and receive” sums up the whole of Ignatian spirituality, which is also Trinitarian.

The Lord receives my offering, and his grace touches me through the Holy Spirit. I am touched by the loving hand which accompanied Jesus, and this renewed contact, shared daily, requires of me an attitude of greater consistency with God’s plans.

The hope of extraordinary and miraculous successes then becomes the exercise of a life which is more consistent and engaged in what we ask for in this same prayer: “that I may bear witness to your Love”.

Our life is transformed by the perception and responsibility we assume in front of each of our days, and of what we do during them, or neglect doing. The scenario of the “incarnation” of the Kingdom is our own life and how we perform daily towards our neighbour.

And holiness, the holiness which seems so far and unattainable, so difficult to achieve, so ungraspable, starts with an elementary disposition, the desire for holiness for my life too.

A very simple definition of holiness says that it is what is “without blemish or fault”. The AP proposes, with the grace of God , to wash out the blemishes and cleanse away our faults. Close contact with our Creator, like the closeness of Jesus in the history and reality of the social, political, ethical, economic problems which people live in their daily lives makes us be workers in the construction of the Kingdom, and it is through this work, with all the frustrations and challenges it implies, that this path to holiness presents itself.

In universal communion of prayer, nourished by Christ in the Eucharist

She is known as doña Angeles, though this is not he name, her name is Gloria. She must be about eighty years old and lives in the “Hospitable Citadel”. Where else should she live? One day about two weeks ago, she was going slowly down the street leaning on a broomstick. She stopped in front of a humble little house near the chapel and called some children who hurried up to receive some candies and chewing-gum which she took out of a carefully folded piece of newspaper. She went to the 6.30 p.m. mass.

God , Our Father,
I offer you my day.
I offer you my prayers,
thoughts and words,

At the end of the Eucharist we offered to take her home. She lives with her daughter who has a small store (hence the candies). On the way she told us how wonderful it was to be able to go to mass every day, and take communion, with Jesus who comes home with me, she commented. And though we did not see more than eight people attending the eucharist, she was happy, very happy.

Works, joys and sufferings
in union with your Son Jesus Christ
Who continues offering himself to you
in the Eucharist,
for the salvation of the world…

She is constantly telling everyone of the presence and company of the angels and has a great devotion for them. She says that they are her inseparable companions. Hearing her and seeing how she acts I feel that it is true: this is precisely why she is called doña Angeles…

Doña Angeles collaborates with the AP by zealously distributing fifty leaflets every month, one by one, delivering in each one of them, she says , a “crumb” of God.

May the Holy Spirit
Who guided Jesus,
be my guide and my strength in this day, that I may bear witness to your Love.

This brings to my mind Ignatius proposing the first Prelude of the Contemplation to attain love : to behold myself standing in the presence of God our Lord and of his angels and saints, who intercede for me”.

With Mary,
The mother of the Lord and of the Church,
I ask especially
For the intentions which the Holy Father
Entrusted to the prayer of all the faithful for this month.

A message intended for many people, for those who do not have time to pray: for this passive and boring exercise, for this escape and disappointment. The fact is that the children and the family need to be looked after, and one must have fun and enjoy life, and miss out on life and quarrel and become embittered, and deal with so many difficulties that there is no time to pray.

What are our certainties? The universal communion of prayer nourished by Christ from the world and with the world should be one of them.

Reconciled with Christ in the sacrament of penance

Her husband earned his livelihood mending shoes, she looked after the house and the children. A shoemaker’s life is hard. When does he ever stop! This young man was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and died soon after.

Miriam remained a widow with two children. She washed clothes, looked after gardens, sewed, did everything she could to support her family.

We wanted to organize a small party for my son. But what is a children’s party without magic pots? As we knew that she, Miriam, the widow, also sold magic pots, we went to buy a dozen from her. The pots – made of mud - are decorated with coloured paper and streamers, eyes and ears like animals or cartoon characters. And then one fills them with candies and small toys.

God, Our Father,
I offer you my day,
I offer you my prayers,
thoughts and words.

The pots she offered us had different shapes and gaudy colours which contrasted with the austerity and poverty of her small home. She removed the price of the pots: she sold them for one dollar a piece. How can she survive earning so little?: to sell them to us at a dollar a piece she has to go by bus to buy the pots at the Sangolquì market, then come home with her load of pots on the bus, hoping that none will get broken. Then she must buy paper, cardboard, streamers, eyes, nostrils, and paint, fold, paste, ruffle, sew…

Works, sufferings and joys
in union with your Son Jesus Christ,
Who continues offering himself to you
in the Eucharist,
for the salvation of the world…

The undecorated pots cannot cost less that 50 centimes each, to which must be added the other materials: cardboard, colours, paste, streamers, as well as her own work and the cost of transport. How much does Miriam earn for each pot? 25, 30 centimes? Which means that she earns about three dollars for a couple of days’ work, while cooking, washing, sweeping and lovingly caring for her two children at the same time ….

May the Holy Spirit
Which guided Jesus,
be my guide and my strength on this day,
that I may bear witness to your Love.

And one can see that she lives in peace. She may sometimes be sad, but she also laughs and is reconciled with life and its penances. She also has God in her heart, earning her livelihood in an honourable and dignified way, in spite of sadness and solitude.

With Mary,
The mother of the Lord and the Church
I pray especially
for the intentions the Holy Father
Recommends to the prayers of all the faithful for this month

Following Mary’s example

On the way to my office I often stop to look at the portraits of the Jesuits murdered in El Salvador, and among them I see the portraits of two women. And I think in my heart that the sacrifice and suffering is less patriarchal and more human in this way, and closer to the reality of life and death intimately shared in its quotidianity by men and women. This becomes like receiving a whole heart, with ventricles and auricles, opposed though complementary, distinct though necessary, part of a single palpitation in life and hope, received through the Lord in this way: praying for life.

It is a fact that devotion to the Divine Mercy has taken hold among devout people. It is a reality that many elements of the more traditional devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus remain in the hearts of many people. This ought to be no surprise, since it is rooted in the “secret of love” which clearly remains the abundant fountain of the pierced and open Heart, “so that you too may believe” (Jn 19:35).

Evidently, in the case of both devotions the attention of the faithful converges on the Heart of the Redeemer. But it’s also clear that the message and its respective icons differ. And it is natural that we want to understand better to what degree, how far, and why they do. In what follows I will share with you my reading of the more striking similarities and differences, plus a first attempt at evaluating them in search of a synthesis of the message conveyed by both traditions.

1. More general similarities and shades of meaning.

1. Both devotions receive their impetus from a private revelation to a religious woman.

The first and most evident similarity is that both devotional currents impact believing people driven by a private revelation of the Lord to a young woman religious.

- The traditional devotion to the Sacred Heart transmitted by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in Paray le Monial, France (1647-1690).

- The devotion to the Divine Mercy coming by way of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938).

2. Both messages are similar in that they call us to a total and unlimited trust in the infinite compassion and mercy which we discover in the font of the Redeemer’s Heart.

- The popular aspiration, called miraculous, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in you” does not originate directly with St. Margaret Mary but with the strong current of spirituality which so deeply marked Catholic piety particularly during the 19th and 20th centuries. Without mercy being as essential an aspect of the Lord’s message to her as to Sister Faustina, St. Margaret Mary’s writings abound with comments about the confidence and hope with which we ought to turn to the Heart of Jesus as a fathomless abyss of mercy.

- “Jesus, I trust in you” is the caption of the image which the Lord explicitly asked St. Faustina to make the model for paintings and images It underlines much more decisively the spiritual state without which we cannot embrace the Divine Mercy, making that a constitutive element which could not be lacking to the devotion. Sister Faustina repeats continually that almost nothing offends the Lord more than our lack of trust. In the devotion to the Sacred Heart, trust is more a result than a prerequisite.

3. Jesus manifests himself to both saints as the Risen Christ.

- Margaret Mary: “Jesus Christ, my sweet Lord, appeared resplendent with glory, with his five wounds blazing like so many suns bursting from every part of the Sacred Humanity, but above all from his breast, which seemed like a blazing furnace. Opening it, he disclosed to me his most loving Heart which was the living source of the flames”.

- As observed above, Faustina’s vision comes, as it were, from the Lord’s breast as from a white tunic out of which gush water and blood transformed into beautiful rays of light. “The fountain of my mercy was opened by the lance-thrust I received on the Cross. The two rays which shine from my side represent the blood and the water. The pale ray is the water which justifies souls; the red ray is the blood which purifies them. Both burst from the depths of my mercy”. “From this image I look on them as from the height of the Cross”, the Lord adds later. But it is the risen Jesus whom she contemplates in radiance before her.

4. Both receive a mission of vital urgency to confront the difficulties of their respective moments in history.

- “I can no longer contain the fire of my love,” Jesus said to Saint Margaret Mary. “Now it will be spread over the world by means of you,” etc. And we know that Christianity was suffering from the Jansenist sickness and that the message of Paray was for centuries the most effective antidote to combat the prevailing and recurring frigidity of the Church.

- If there is one medicine necessary to combat the merciless times humanity has had to endure since the dawn of the Second World War right up to the present, it is the Divine Mercy for both individuals and for the world as a whole. For such huge evils, the one remedy which can provide effective healing is the divine compassion. “Humanity is anxious and will never find peace until it turns with confidence to my Mercy, God’s greatest attribute”.

2. More general differences and shades of meaning.

Looking to the essential or formal object of both devotions, we observe these differences:

- In Sister Faustina’s message, the formal object is the Divine Mercy itself as a divine, Trinitarian attribute.

- In the message of Paray, the formal object is the Incarnate Word of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In terms of the material object:

- For St. Faustina, it is the very image of Mercy which the Lord commissioned.

- For St. Margaret Mary, it is the human, physical heart of Jesus as our Lord displayed it.

In terms of the essence of both devotions:

- In the case of the Divine Mercy, it is trust.

- In the case of the revelation to St. Margaret Mary, it is the satisfaction, reparation and consolation due the Sacred Heart.

(Regarding these differences I rely chiefly on the theological study by Rev. Ignatius Rosycky commissioned by Pope John Paul II when he was still Archbishop of Cracow.)

In terms of the demands made:

- The demands of the message of Paray are chiefly expressed in terms of the fruits of personal holiness and consecration to the Heart of Jesus in an attitude of oblation and reparation.

- The devotion to the Divine Mercy explicitly includes a pro-active practice of mercy toward one’s neighbor, with all the practical demands involved. If that element fails or is missing, the devotee excludes himself from the special favor of the Lord. “I demand of you works of Mercy which ought to spring from your love for me. You must show mercy to your neighbor always and in every way. You must not shrink from that, or try to excuse yourself from it” (Diary 742).

We know that authentic devotion to the Heart of Jesus has always been productive of notable works of charity – extraordinarily so, in fact. But it was always in terms of results which flowed naturally from modeling ourselves after Jesus’ Heart, more than from an explicit and programmatic demand.

Similarities and precise shades of meaning in practices:

In both cases the Lord manifests his desire that the Church celebrate a special feast.

- Of Margaret Mary he asks a feast which will express the desire to make satisfaction and reparation for the many offenses committed against the Lord by us who owe him everything, especially love. We have that feast and we celebrate it annually - as he asked us to – on the Friday after the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi.

- To Faustina he designates the Sunday after Easter as the Sunday of Mercy.

The Lord asks both women to give particular attention to determined hours of the day or the week.

- He asks Margaret Mary to accompany him and share his sadness in Gethsemane every Thursday evening from eleven o’clock to midnight.

- He asks Faustina to do everything she can to accompany him daily from three to four o’clock in the afternoon, with the intention of being with him in his sorrowful passion and in grateful remembrance of the hour in which he consummated his work on the hill of Golgotha.

Jesus asks both women to see to the distribution of a graphic representation of his incarnate love.

- The Lord Jesus bade Faustina, in a way much more emphatic and precise than Margaret Mary, to: “Paint a picture in line with the model you see, with an inscription beneath it reading ‘Jesus, I trust in you’”. “Look at the Lord Jesus dressed in a white tunic. He holds one hand aloft in blessing while the other touches the tunic above his breast. From his breast through an opening in the tunic two rays burn…, one red and the other pale”. “I offer humanity a vessel with which they are to keep coming to the fountain of mercy”.

- He let Margaret Mary, for her part, only know interiorly and without more detail that he wanted “to bless those places where an image of his Heart would be placed and honored”.

Both women received the mandate to spread a saving desire for the Lord related to a devotional practice privileged with particular blessings.

- The Communion of Reparation of the First Fridays of the month, in the case of St. Margaret Mary.

- The Chaplet of Divine Mercy, in the case of St. Faustina.

He assured both women repeatedly that he would bless abundantly whoever helped them spread the mission and the mandate they had received.

- Still today, the faithful have hundreds of thousands of copies of the twelve promises of blessing culled from the writings of St. Margaret Mary and printed for the first time in the state of Ohio in the United States.

- But the promises of the Lord to Sister Faustina are much more known: “For those who spread my Mercy I will be, not judge but merciful Savior”, etc. Media of mass communication like EWTN have lovingly and effectively enabled the projection and spreading of the Message of Mercy.

Both spiritualities are notably Eucharistic:

- “Bring to God the prayers the Savior offers in our place in the Sacrament of the Altar,” St. Margaret Mary encourages us. There is a very close relation between the devotion to the Heart of Jesus and movements like the Apostleship of Prayer which encourage faithful people to offer their lives in union with Jesus Christ who continues to offer himself to the Father on the altar of the Eucharist.

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy gives powerful encouragement to people of faith in their consciousness of the universal priesthood exercised in offering “to the Father the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of your Divine Son, Our Savior Jesus Christ in satisfaction for our sins and the sins of all the world”.

Differences and precise shades of meaning in practices

These are not of major importance, nor are they very marked. I mention only one in relation to reciting the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, one of the privileged practices for anyone embracing the devotion to the Divine Mercy. I named it in the paragraph above as a similarity regarding the Eucharist. Even so, we need to take into account that this is a prayer of propitiation or of expiation for the sins of everyone, directed to the Father, invoking the Eucharistic merits of the Passion of Jesus Christ and imploring his mercy. The prayer itself is a gesture of mercy on the part of the one offering it in favor of this or that person in particular, and everyone in general. In that sense, the accent here is decidedly Trinitarian. Yet Jesus, the incarnate Mercy of the Most Holy Trinity, is the mediator for us of all those graces.

We notice, therefore, that here there is a shift of emphasis from the message of Paray urging reparation for the personal offenses directly to the soul (Heart) of Jesus caused by our coldness and sins, particularly in regard to the gift of the sacred Eucharist.

Unquestionably, the historical repercussions of the message of Paray go far beyond that; they are not limited to an attitude of reparation to the Lord Jesus for the offenses his love receives in being ignored or made little of. But it is obvious that the message which St. Faustina received has another focus: “Have recourse to my Father and invoke the merits of my sorrowful Passion, take hold confidently of my mercy and share it generously in imitation of my compassion”.

3. An attempt at synthesis and conclusions

In his encyclical Haurietis Aquas, Pius XII went so far as to affirm that in the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus we find the most complete expression of Christian faith. And even if the content of his message goes beyond the limits of the message of Paray le Monial, we know that it includes that message, affirms and embraces it. In that sense, we have to recognize that we are talking of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in capital letters, and because of that of a message more all-embracing than the one that comes to us through St. Faustina. I would say at least that she herself was already nourished by and already embraced the devotion to the Heart of the Redeemer which Haurietis Aquas recognized and proclaimed as the most perfect expression of Christian life.

The second affirmation is that the Devotion to Divine Mercy which St. Faustina transmits to us falls fully within the great Devotion to the Pierced Heart of the Redeemer cultivated for centuries in the life of the Church. It doesn’t complete it, but continues, strengthens and spreads it through a prism both providential and urgent. I believe it doesn’t complete it because its richness is unfathomable: “the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love is beyond knowledge” (Ep 3:18). And Jesus himself continues to reveal to us the Father and his Mercy.

Before Jesus’ intentional revelation to us of the broad demands which his Mercy poses to humanity through the message of St. Faustina, I find no other response than to “kneel, do homage and give thanks” (Ep 3:14).

That said, let it be understood that I neither hold nor believe that we should harbor doubts about dealing with private revelations. That the content of Revelation was completed with the death of the last apostle does not mean that God has remained mute, much less his Eternal Word, our Savior Jesus Christ.

Following the evangelical norm “by their fruits you shall know them” (Mt 7:16), both messages have passed with flying colors the responsible scrutiny of ecclesiastical authorities. Both feasts were approved and both messages amply authenticated, more in their general lines than in detail, from the outset. By its very nature every mystical experience must be conditioned and limited by the psychology and other qualities or defects of its subject. But that has not prevented, and will not prevent, the Lord from communicating with us or charging us with what he wishes.

Because I know something of his boundless mercy, it does not seem at all strange to me that he wanted to come to remind us of what we continually forget, what we neglect to practice, what we need to affirm and cry from the housetops: his compassionate mercy which wants to illuminate our night, our despair and our obstinate refusal of his love and his gospel.

Until recently there was one aspect of the message of Mercy which did not succeed in totally convincing me. I put it to the Lord affectionately as a rhetorical question framed this way: “Who today needs this mercy which you offer us through St. Faustina? Today humanity, instead of being mistrustful of you, ignores you. Who doubts your mercy today? They aren’t even conscious of having offended you... And worse still, they’re convinced that they don’t need you at all!

Something Cardinal Christoph Schonborn said at the International Congress on Divine Mercy in Rome (April, 2008) helped to clarify for me what I only intuited affectively: “-- Precisely for that reason! Because we are so sick that we refuse the only remedy and medication capable of healing us - - that’s what urges us so strongly to remind the world of your obstinate mercy. It’s our last and only resort!”

Your heart, Lord, is the only hospital door we need knock on. You are the only physician the Father endorses and certifies as capable of healing us. But like the inveterate alcoholic we continue to do ourselves progressively greater harm.

For the sake of the pain of your Son’s passion, Father, have mercy on us and on the entire world! Jesus, I trust in you!

“Let us live like Jesus, sharing and working…” is one of the verses that resounded most strongly in the voices of the eighty or so young people who took part in the National Gathering of EYM which took place in Regina Martyrum on 9th and 10th August. Both aspects were lived out in our meeting: sharing and working.

Saturday: day of sharing.

On Saturday, very early in the morning, the Regina Church received animators from the different EYM communities in the country: representatives from San Miguel, Guernica, Gonzalez Catán, Posadas, Córdoba, Salta and Resistencia came to celebrate this encounter.

After we had sung and danced together to break the ice, Fr. Alfonso Gómez, S.J. Provincial, opened the day, encouraging us to renew our enthusiasm for service and commitment.

Next Ernesto Giobando, National Director of our Movement, presented the first edition of the Latin American EYM Handbook. What is new in the new Handbook is the union of Uruguay, Chile and Argentina on some points of our spirituality and style; and, thanks to its simplicity, it will enable us to share more easily with others the joy of belonging to the Movement. Then we shared in small groups, in the light of the Handbook, the present situation of each EYM community. As a result of this sharing we made some contributions and suggestions for thinking about the current challenges for EYM in Argentina.

Late in the evening we came together for the Eucharistic Adoration characteristic of our spirituality, the driving-force of which is Jesus in the Eucharist. It was a very special moment in the day, in which we were able to give thanks for all that we had experienced, and to place in Jesus’ hands all the members whom He has entrusted to each animator.

At the end of the day’s programme we needed to have fun. So each community prepared a sketch to liven up the camp-fire, which brought our evening to an end in gales of laughter.

As regards the organisation of the event, the members from the senior stages in the Regina community were with us, and made the meeting possible. The Disciple stage were responsible for the cooking, a task which they carried out with an incredible spirit of commitment and joy. The Witness stage did the reception, animation decoration, and accommodation, also with great enthusiasm and excellent results.

Sunday: day of working together.

On the following morning the rough draft of EYM Materials was presented to us. This is a compendium of resources, meetings, songs and texts for Eucharistic Adoration, to support our work with the members and to encourage our creative skills as EYM animators. It is a collection built up from the work of the different EYM communities in Argentina over the years. We think that sharing our efforts is also an attempt to live the spirituality of the Eucharist, since, by putting our resources together, we trust in the One who multiplies them.

After the presentation we divided into areas of interest according to the different sections of the draft, and worked at correcting and enlarging the Materials. This work aims to achieve a final edition of the material, to be augmented by contributions from animators of the different EYM communities in Argentina.

Before midday we shared in the Mass for the children of Regina celebrated by Fr. Provincial, in which we took part with songs from the recently-formed animators’ choir, and by offering our Personal Notebooks as a symbol of the EYM spirituality in which we seek to grow, after being nourished by Jesus in the Eucharist.

As we were already coming towards the end, we put together various proposals for continued work at EYM national level this year and next. The central project proposed is to form a National EYM Commission which will bring together representatives of all the communities to coordinate and plan activities and common goals for all the EYM members in Argentina

We said goodbye with a Eucharistic Adoration at the end of which our National Director sent us out on mission, going out from our communities to make EYM known and to invite other children and young people to set out to live, as we do, in Jesus’ way.

Dear Fathers,

Peace of Christ.

The 8th South East and Oceania, and South Asia Assistancy Meeting of the Apostleship of Prayer was held in Tokyo, Japan from October 6th to 11th, 2008. Soon after returning from there I had sent on email a report about the meeting to all the Provincials. But unfortunately, it was not delivered to you. Here is a humble hard mail which is more reliable I guess.

As days pass by, we hear more and more of terror attacks, violence, slaughter, burning, rapes and humiliations of human dignity and gross violation of human rights. Humanity is totally bewildered and confused. People are depressed and suffer from all kinds of physical and mental illness. There is a deep search for meaning in everyone’s life. People are looking for authentic and genuine spiritual leadership. They would like to know where and how they can meet God, and find a way through this valley of darkness.

At this juncture ‘The Apostleship of Prayer’ can come as an answer to the immortal longing of humanity. People approach our Jesuit communities for material help, for jobs, for recommendations and for various other needs. But how many come to us asking for spiritual help: To know Christ and to find ways to experience Him and to interiorize His values? We have of course, retreat centres for spiritual ministry. But should we relegate our core responsibility to the four walls of a retreat centre? In this Pauline Year, every one delights in quoting, “How terrible it would be for me if I did not proclaim the Gospel!” (1Co 9:16). But how do we concretely bring this to realization?

We invest so much of our human and other material resources mainly in Education and drain our energy in administration. But don’t we give a step-motherly treatment to spiritual ministry even in educational institutions? I write this after having spent 27 years in education ministry. Luckily I was not immobilized by the structural and bureaucratic labyrinths. Today people in India do not look for efficient and learned religious, although they are needed, but for God-realized and self-renounced servants who rise above caste and communal feelings and power politics. People are no more fascinated by eye-catching advertising lights, but humble altar lamps who reveal the living presence of the divine.

May I request you to think seriously what you are doing in your province for The Apostleship of Prayer? How many of our men are directly engaged in spiritual ministry? How do we bring the Gospel in our other ministries?

My letter might almost sound like your official letters. But after having spent 44 years in the Society I write this with an unbearable agony. Kindly let me know the name of your Provincial Secretary for the Apostleship of Prayer. I hope to revitalize this ministry by meeting all of them and chalking out a concrete plan of action for the days to come.

With sincere thanks and prayerful wishes

Yours faithfully in Christ

Jayabalan, S. J.
National Secretary AP India
29th Nov. 2008