[Sundaycommunity] After Christmas

[Tina Neves]

Thank you, Mario, for your sharing. I am much with you....Love, it's all
that life is about...

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 2:08 PM Mario Calla via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> Hi Brian,
>
> I find the excerpts of Maria Valtorta's writings fascinating because they
> take me back to my childhood in Southern Italy in the 1950's where I
> experienced the type of Catholicism of which she speaks. I don't want to
> misrepresent Catholic life of the time because for the most part it was
> woven into our daily lives in a positive way as every day was a Saint's Day
> whose life we would celebrate.  People would stop at noon to pray the
> Angelus Domini as the church bells would announce the moment. My little
> friends and I would collect clay from the creek and make little statues of
> the saints and we would make up stories about them. They were our
> superheroes. But there was a darker side that is represented by the line
> you quote from Valtorta: "Suffer Maria, and tell the good to suffer.
> Everyone of those who immolate themselves is granted to save a few souls."
> There were people in my town who made sacrifice and piety a central part of
> their religion, the expression of which manifested itself in
> disturbing ways.  Some would march in Good Friday processions bleeding
> profusely from the crowns of thorns embedded on their heads. Men would
> march bare-chested with a bundle of thorny branches swinging down from
> their heads, flagellating them as they walked. And then there were
> those who would crawl from the back of the church to the front dragging
> their tongue on the floor.  Some did this as penance or as a promise kept
> for a divine favour received.  Not surprisingly, Maria Valtorta is from
> Southern Italy and was still alive during my childhood there. The focus of
> this type of Catholicism is on the Passion of Jesus, the crown of thorns
> and the Crucified Christ.
>
> I find that focusing on the Resurrection and Jesus' commandment to love
> God and our neighbours to be more fulfilling. There is so much more hope
> and promise in those messages. I think about how our Sunday Community has
> lived Jesus' commandment to love our neighbour by sponsoring a Syrain
> refugee family just three years ago. I think of the three children in that
> family who are doing brilliantly in school and are full of plans and dreams
> for their future. That's how we bring light into our often disturbing and
> disturbed world, by reaching out, by playing a part, by small acts of
> kindness.
>
> Valtorta says that "human beings have preferred hell to Heaven." Brian,
> don't believe it there is evidence of much goodness all around us.
>
> God bless,
>
> Mario
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 4:58 AM Brian Shaughnessy via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
>> JOHN's POST ABOUT "OUR WORK TO BE DONE AFTER XMAS"
>>
>> It would be great if Dr. Howard Thurmon's reflection was do-able, but
>> contrast it with this:
>> ________
>>
>> "The first time My Father, to purify the earth, sent a cleansing by
>> water.  The second time He sent a cleansing by blood, and by what Blood!
>> Neither the first cleansing nor the second has availed to turn the human
>> beings into children of God.
>>
>> Now the Father is weary, and to make the human race perish He lets the
>> chastisements of hell go wild.  Because human beings have preferred hell to
>> Heaven, and their Ruler, Lucifer, torments them to make them blaspheme Us,
>> so as to make them completely his children.
>>
>> Oh, if people could turn to Me who am salvation!  I desire only that and
>> I weep, because I see that nothing can make them raise their heads towards
>> Heaven from where I stretch out My arms toward them.
>>
>> Suffer Maria, and tell the good to suffer.  Everyone of those who
>> immolate themselves is granted to save a few souls.  *Only a few.*  It
>> should come as no surprise that only a few souls be granted to every little
>> redeemer if one thinks that I, the divine Redeemer, on Calvary, at the hour
>> of My immolation, of all the thousands of people present at My death, I
>> managed to save the thief, and Longinus, and very few others."
>>
>> ________
>>
>> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
>>
>> [image: image.png]
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 8, 2021 at 2:53 AM John MacMillan via Sundaycommunity <
>> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> *Second Reading *(Patricia Bradley)
>>>
>>> *The work of Christmas,   *a reflection from Dr. Howard Thurman
>>>
>>> *When the song of the angels is stilled,*
>>>
>>> *when the star in the sky is gone,*
>>>
>>> *when the kings and princes are home,*
>>>
>>> *when the shepherds are back with the flocks,*
>>>
>>> *then the work of Christmas begins:*
>>>
>>> *to find the lost,*
>>>
>>> *to heal those broken in spirit,*
>>>
>>> *to feed the hungry,*
>>>
>>> *to release the oppressed,*
>>>
>>> *to rebuild the nations,*
>>>
>>> *to bring peace among all peoples,*
>>>
>>> *to make a little music with the heart…*
>>>
>>> *And to radiate the Light of Christ,*
>>>
>>> *every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say.*
>>>
>>> *The work of Christmas begins.*
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sundaycommunity mailing list
>>> Sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
>>>
>>> http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
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>>
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