NINE-MONTH NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

NINE-MONTH NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
Start March 12 to December 12

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Jude, Chapter 1, Verse 12
These are blemishes on your love feasts, as they carouse fearlessly and look after themselves. They are waterless clouds blown about by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead and uprooted.

Jude is talking about people who only come to church for the food and drink or for social interaction. God will not be mocked. Maintain your life with God first then glory in Him with others. Remember God is your true spouse via the Holy Spirit. Love the Lord by spending time alone with Him. Plan to make use of the US National Park Service and get out there where He can speak to you in that still small voice.

Max Oliva, in “The Masculine Spirit”[1] recommends a four step process to the art of reflecting.

1.      Get to a special place of quiet for you where you are able to slow down as Christ stated, “Let us go off by ourselves to some place where we will be alone and you can rest awhile.” (Mark 6:31)
2.      Promote self-searching and look for deeper meanings. Look where you are vulnerable; surrender to Him. It requires faith to find Him.
3.      Are you afraid? Stay with the experience; be it painful or pleasant in order to discover its deeper meaning. You must pass through fear to find your true self. You must acquaint yourself with your dark side, your faults and vices. Hear the words of T.S. Eliot:
Old men ought to be explorers, Here and there does not matter, we must be still and still moving, into another intensity, For a further union, a deeper communion, Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters, Of the petral and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
4.      Sharing is the last step, not the first. After you met Him share Him, with someone you trust that will take in your feelings and thoughts.





[1] Max Olivia, The Masculine Spirit, 1997.

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