Friday, December 28, 2012

An Evergreen Life - Christmas Greetings 2012


As every year, Fr. Flavio Peloso FDP, the Superior General, has sent a message of greetings to the whole Family of Don Orione.

With the Christmas Gift of last year I invited you to look at the ass and ox in the crib. This year I invite you to stop and contemplate the Christmas tree.
The tree and the crib in our homes promote a religious atmosphere and family closeness at Christmas, and they are a historical reminder and a symbolic celebration of the birth of Jesus.
Benedict XVI has defined the tree as “an important symbol of the Birth of Christ, because with its evergreen branches it reminds us of the permanence of life”.

It seems that this symbol stems from the time of Saint Boniface when, in the seventh century, he cut down from the roots a great oak under which the rite of sacrifice of a little child was to be carried out. Everyone was amazed when, after the oak had been felled, a spruce tree sprang up from the log. Saint Boniface explained to the people that the spruce, an evergreen, was the tree of life and represented Christ.
The lovely story I am going to tell you is from Paulo Coelho.
In a forest, on the top of a hill, lived three trees. One day they started to speak about their dreams and hopes. 
The first tree said: “One day I hope to become the strong box in a treasury. I could be filled with gold, silver and precious jewels.  I could be decorated with inlaid work and be admired by all”.
The second tree said: “I hope to become a mighty ship. I would carry kings and queens across the seas to the most hidden corners of the world. I would like everyone to feel safe because of the strength of my hull”.
Finally the third tree said: “I would like to grow so much that I became the highest tree and the straightest tree in all the forest. Everyone would see me on the top of the hill and while admiring my branches would contemplate the heavens and God and how close I would be to Him. I would be the biggest tree of all times and all would remember me”.
Several years passed and each tree prayed that its dreams would come true. Some wood-cutters passed near the three trees.  One of them approached the first tree and said: “This seems a very strong tree; I will surely manage to sell the timber to a carpenter”.  So he began to cut it. The tree was very happy because he knew that the carpenter would make it into a precious treasure chest.
Reaching the second tree the wood-cutter said: “This seems a very strong tree, I believe that I will be able to sell it to a ship-builder’s yard”. The second tree was happy because it knew that it was going to become a great ship.
When the woodman approached the third tree, the tree became afraid because it knew that if it was cut its dreams would never come true. One of the wood-cutters said: “I have not yet decided what I will do with my tree. But anyhow I will cut it”. So he cut it straightaway.
When the first tree was handed over to the carpenter it was made into a box for putting animal feeds in. It was taken to a cave and filled with hay. That was certainly not what the tree had prayed for.
The second tree was cut and made into a little fishing boat. Its dreams of becoming a great ship and carrying kings and queens came to an end.
The third tree was cut into large planks and left in the dark.
The years passed and the trees forgot about their dreams.
One day a man and a woman arrived at the cave. The woman gave birth to a child and the newborn was put in the box for animal feeds which had been made from the first tree. The man had hoped to be able to make a cradle for the baby, but the manger took its place. The tree realised the importance of this event and understood that it had received the greatest treasure of all time.
Years later, some men were in a fishing-boat which had been made from the second tree. One of the men was tired and had fallen asleep. While they were at sea a violent storm took them by surprise and the tree thought that it would not be strong enough to protect its passengers. The men woke the man who was asleep who, standing up said: “Peace”. The storm subsided immediately. At this the second tree understood that it had carried the King of Kings in its boat.
Finally, someone came to take the third tree. While it was being transported along the streets, people jeered at the man who was carrying it. When they stopped the man was nailed to the tree and when it was raised up in the air he was left to die on the top of a hill. When Sunday came the tree understood that it had been strong enough to stand on the top of a mountain, and thus, close to God, because Jesus had been crucified on its wood.
In this account, the story of each tree is taken up and given value within the story of Jesus. Leaving aside the metaphor, our life has value, it is not “useless suffering”, because the Son of God, who came to live among us, has saved it by uniting it to himself in the destiny of eternal life.

 Best wishes, dear young children, boys and girls and young people who come to the schools, playgrounds, churches and youth clubs of our Congregation: make beautiful dreams and high hopes for your future and entrust them, through prayer, to the Lord who wants you in this world for something great, divine and eternal.
Best wishes, dear older people and sick people: we do not know what God has in store for us, but we do know that He always loves us, as a father and as a mother, and that there is no leaf that falls without God willing it.
Best wishes, dear friends and benefactors: each tree in that little story had what it wanted but not in the way that it had imagined. When you give an hour of your time, an offering, a smile, a prayer, know that it serves to bring about “His kingdom’s coming”.
Best wishes, dear confrères and religious sisters walking in the footsteps of Don Orione: go ahead, with trust in Divine Providence even when surprising things happen; God always has a plan and all works for the good of those who are loved by the Lord.
Happy Christmas to everyone! It is the feast of Divine Providence who comes to dwell among us, the feast of the evergreen life, like the tree which we decorate at home.
Lift up our hearts! We know that the ways of God are not always our ways, but His ways are always the best. Hail Mary and go ahead!
Happy Christmas!
                                                       Fr .Flavio Peloso

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Jesus Child, Jesus Love, Grant Us Your Blessing



In December 1922, Saint Luigi Orione sends his Christmas greetings to his religious, asking them to be one in the heart of Jesus.

… I have come to offer you my most affectionate greetings, and to make the holiest vows in the joy of the coming Christmas feasts. In my soul, I make these vows and wishes every day, in this soul which for the great part lives your life, your joys and your griefs, in this soul which prays at the Lord's altar every day, but which will supplicate for you more fervidly on the most happy Christmas night.
Oh how I should like to have been able to write to each of you individually on this propitious occasion; but you yourselves will understand that this would have been impossible for me. Therefore, embracing you all spiritually, it is for me the sweetest grace to write to you together, with the sweet affection of a brother and a father in Christ, which God alone knows.


 I must say that it seems to me more beautiful to have you all here in front of me in my heart, all on the altar united together, this sweet Christmas, around the Jesus child, and to say the same words of charity to you all, words which so softly unite us; this charity has such all-embracing arms that it is impossible to see either mountains or seas, or boundaries and barriers of nationality; this charity that unites us, as Scripture puts it, which is what happened in the hearts of Jonah and David—and that makes us One heart and one soul in life, in death and hereafter, because in charity we live in God and man lives for ever!
In these Christmas days, in which Christian souls feel all the chaste joys of the faith and of the love of Jesus, and the mystic poetry which breathes from the crib, where the poor and the simple go in pilgrimage, and over which the angels fly and make feast in the light and the hymn of glory proclaiming God's peace to men of good will; in these joyous solemnities, I send to each and every one of you, my brothers, my sons, my crown, not only my wishes for all that is good, for all celestial consolation, but, as I make for you each more fervent vow, I lay at God's feet a great prayer, which is love and charity.

 
It is the same prayer that Christ our Lord made for his disciples and apostles before he left them: oh Lord, make us one with you, that we may be with you always in your heart so worthy of adoration! Grant us, oh Jesus child, oh Jesus love, your sweet blessing! Amen.

Letter to the Sons of Divine Provindece. Tortona, 8th December 1922. Feast of the Immaculate Conception. A priceless treasure, Volume One, pp. 257 – 259. 266

Friday, December 7, 2012

Love always and give your life singing of Love



 The soul, flooded with the goodness of the Lord and with His grace, red-hot with the fire of charity, hovering above, on high and overflowing with love, experiences a happiness which is spiritual joy. It becomes a hymn and a longing, yearning thirst for the infinite; it longs for all that is true, all that is good, all that is beautiful: the attraction and ever-growing ardor for God: loving everyone in the One, the rays in the Center, all light in the Sun of suns.

 And in this intoxicating light, I throw off the old man, and I love; this love makes me a new man and, loving, I sing and sing! I love ineffably and sing of the same infinite love and of Our Lady of Divine Love, and I rush to immeasurable heights, where I sing and sing with a great cry of victory and of glory to God and to the Blessed Virgin.
The divine splendor and passion do not incinerate me, but temper me, purify and sublimate me and expand my heart, so that I would like to clasp every creature in my little human arms and bring them to God.
And I would like to make myself spiritual food for my brothers who are hungry and thirsty for truth and for God; and I would like to clothe the naked with God, to give the light of God to the blind and to those avid for more light, to open hearts to the countless, human miseries; to make myself a servant of the servants, giving out my life to the poorest and most abandoned; I would like to become a fool for Christ, and to live and die in the folly of charity for my brothers!
Love always and give my life singing of Love! Get rid of everything! Sow charity along every path; sow God at all costs, in every furrow; infinitely sink, and fly ever higher, infinitely, singing of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, and never stopping.
 To make the furrows shine with God; to become a good man among my brothers; to stoop and always open my arms and my heart, to receive staggering weaknesses and miseries and bring them to the altar, because in God they become the forces of God and the greatness of God. Jesus died with His arms outstretched.
Charity! I want to sing of Charity!  To have great pity for everyone! Lord, write on my forehead and on my heart the sacred Tau of charity. Open my eyes and my heart to the miseries of my brothers: may my life blaze, as in a towering pyre, before You, O Jesus!  An ardent life!  Make me a brazier, sparkling with light. To live in light. Kneeling with all my wretchedness, I stretch out, groaning, before Your mercy, O Lord, You who died for us. Lord, I am not worthy, but I need some of Your joy, a chaste joy, a joy that ravishes, that transports us in peace, above our own selves and everything: an immense joy! The soul has decided to conquer all to rise and unite itself with God: it is the joy of humility.
Charity hungers for action: it is an activity that savors of the eternal and divine. Charity can in no way be lazy. We die in God and we live in God.
 I feel like coal burning on a great altar: to live in Him, and He in us. This is the sublimity of life, the sublimity of death, the sublimity of love, the sublimity of joy, the sublimity of eternity!
Whoever follows Mary will be victorious over his own enemies and will reach the kingdom in which she reigns with her Son, in a glory without end, in immense blessedness; even higher, in the sacred silence of the incomprehensible, where a mysterious splendor trembles, where the Most High is!
Pray to God for the one who, with the help of divine grace, is writing of this foolish love; he is praying for all of you who will read it. May God grant you His very Self: generously and for eternity. Amen. Oh, the marvels of light!

From a note of 31-8-1931.